This guest post is by Joshu Thomas of NapIncome.com.

Blogging is no more a mere hobby; it has become a full-time profession for many bloggers, including myself. Today I will share my journey as a blogger and how it helps me to earn a full-time income blissfully working from anywhere I like.

How it started

I had been working on diverse flavors of the Internet right from my college days. I used to earn a part-time income as a student by designing websites, and later I joined a multinational company as Information security engineer.
Corporate Work life is demanding and it never gave me any space to continue with my regular design and development hobby vocation. I was earning a decent income from my day job, but I failed to enjoy the work due to towering work pressure and deadlines.

I had a website that I registered early in the year of 2002 and used to receive web designing gigs from it. I don’t exactly remember when, but I transformed the website into a blog mainly to save the tutorials and code snippets as it could serve as a reference on the web for me to access from anywhere. This is how my blog was born.

The power of a web log

It began to become a routine that I stored all my new learning from the few web-based projects that I used to do on to the blog as a reference. Gradually I started observing that there were others who were interested in what I was writing as well.

Over time, I was overwhelmed by the response I was receiving from what I built for my personal use. This is when I thought, “Why not transform the blog into a webmaster community?”

I increased the frequency of updating quality unique tutorials and tips that I learned the hard way. Within a period of six months of an organized blogging approach, my traffic ranks were soaring. This was the power of the SEO-friendly advantage the WordPress system.

Taking it seriously

Within nine or ten months of blogging, I had already begun researching and learning a lot on the WordPress system, SEO, and internet marketing for improving my blog, and simultaneously shared that information on my blog as well.

The response I was receiving from my blog visitors, their comments, and traffic was the biggest source of enthusiasm and encouragement. I have developed many websites for myself and my clients, but never received this much consistent traffic ever! I had to take this seriously—and I did.

The flow of dollars

Now it was already a year and a half when I seriously started learning and implementing monetization of my blog traffic. I was under an impression that Google Adsense was the only method to monetize my blog content and traffic.

By that time, I was earning five or six dollars a day from the blog traffic, and that looked good for me. Approximately US$200 of additional income was great for me at that time. Gradually I started to explore and read more about monetization strategies, and I found affiliate marketing!

An earnings increase

Even though it is true that passion for blogging is the primary requirement for successful blogging, your earning from a blog will be a substantial fuel to your blogging journey.

Soon, along with my regular blogging efforts, I started to promote and review the best products on the Web. It is very critical that you only recommend what you have tried and tested: an honest review will certainly get your more fans and followers.

Gradually, I started to discover the power of affiliate marketing. And eventually, a single sale was fetching me more money I used to earn from half a month’s AdSense income. So gradually I started to write more quality articles and was doing in-post product recommendations.

Balancing job and blogging

It was already more than a year through my serious blogging effort. I used to return from my office each day and write one article for my blog. I’d also dedicate one hour to SEO and SMO tasks. On the weekends, I used to work four or five hours a day on content and keyword research.

By now, both my blog’s income and traffic were steadily growing, and when I started to earn around 70% of my regular job’s income, I started to think about blogging full-time.

The big decision

I was really enjoying the fact that my blog was becoming popular—the strongest proof of that was the fact that lots of people started involving themselves in discussions on my blog, and posting comments. I hate spam comments, so it was a pleasure to answer real people—and this was another form of encouragement.

After almost one and a half years of dedicated blogging, I was now earning more income than my day job and I started seriously thinking of making the leap to full-time blogging. At that point of time in India, US$1000 was my salary from my day job, and it used to be a pretty good income. But I was earning around US$1500 from blogging, and that played on my mind.

I didn’t want to make a foolish decision in hurry, so I thought I’d continue the same way and observe my income for three months. If it was consistent, I’d quit my job.

The next three months was a bit like a case study, and my blog came out victorious. I was consistently earning more than US$2000 for all the three months. So I took the decision and gave up my job to become a pro blogger.

Should you quit?

My story might inspire you, but I personally don’t want to encourage you to quit your hard-earned job unless you test yourself to earn at least double your day-job income. Becoming a pro blogger is a big decision and you might not want to be proved wrong.

The first month working full-time as a pro blogger was very exciting. I had all the freedom to do all that I wanted to, go anywhere, and—the best part—blog from any location.

I made sure that my work hours, earnings, plans, and strategies were accountable. I noted down every activity and progressed in a very systematic manner without losing sight of my goals.

The earnings steadily increased, and the first month after I quit my job, I analyzed my performance. Here are few findings:

• I almost worked the double amount of hours on my blog than I did before.
• My earnings from writing, blogging, and reviews touched US$3000 per month.
• I was enjoying traveling and spending time with my family.
• I had loads of plans for the next month.

If you don’t have a blog, or you have a low-traffic blog, don’t even think of quitting your job. It’s a huge risk. Be practical and put in lot of hard work on your blog to craft unique content that provides high value to your users.

Evaluate, measure your success, and prove yourself. When you are sure you’re ready to jump, make the big decision to become a full-time blogger … and you might just enjoy your work like never before!

Joshu Thomas is a full-time blogger writing on how to make money online blogging and runs a successful webmaster community.