I became self-employed in 2017, at 20 years old, while on a gap year/backpacking trip in New Zealand.

This was at the height of the dropshipping hype (you may have heard of it), and of course, I wanted in. I quickly reached a thousand sales, and it taught me a lot about running a business. However, ultimately, it wasn’t for me, and three years later, I started to focus most of my time on something I did enjoy: blogging.

I technically started blogging when I was 14, when Tumblr was all the hype. I had a decent following on the platform (20k+) and made some cash via ads.

But that wasn’t really blogging. The real blogging started when I actually had something real to share, like my experience in eCommerce. Turns out, people do want to read all about that.

I quickly fell in love with writing and owning blogs, and I started pumping them out like crazy.

Not every blog really turned into a success, but one really blew up out of nowhere and quickly reached 10k visitors per day. To this day, that blog is still thriving and a big source of my income.

Most of my income from blogging comes from ads, but I did start making a secondary income from services—namely web design and SEO—as people wanted to hire me after reading some of my content.

I didn’t intend to sell websites. Actually—that’s a lie. I wanted nothing more than to be a freelance web designer growing up, but those dreams died as soon as I realized how easy it is to make a website yourself, thanks to AI and drag-and-drop builders.

But then readers started reaching out and sending me emails, and it got me thinking: is there still a market for this? Do people actually value experience? Turns out my younger self was mistaken—of course, people value experience.

I wasn’t really planning to do client work at this point, but one person kept pushing, and eventually, I thought, why not? And you know what? I actually enjoyed it. That “fun” feeling I get when I’m making yet another website for myself—I get the same feeling when I do it for someone else’s business. I just love creating, and the fact that I can do it with someone else’s passion—there’s something really special in that.