A reader asked me how am I earning a good side income?

Back in early 2009, I listed out my “Goals” for the year 2009. And sitting at number 6 is “Side income of RM10,000/mth by Oct 2009.”

My side income comes from Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising on expired domains and also selling of text links. After the Chinese New Year …. starting in February 2009, I could see a drop in my PPC income. Advertisers were cutting budgets. Advertisers were also reluctant to renew their buying of text links on most of my websites. As a result, my side income took a plunge. Currently, my side income average about RM1,000 a month.

Looking back, there were a few months between July 2008 to September 2008 whereby I was earning more than RM3,000 from my side income. And at that time I was so tempted to quit my job and go full time building on my side income. Luckily for me I was patient enough to adopt a wait and see approach. And now I am glad I did not quit my job back then.

I have now turned to offering Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services to add another income stream for myself. Currently I am optimizing the keyword “Top MBA Malaysia” for a local education institute. This niche industry is competitive as well. However, I do see an opportunity for me to build a business out of SEO and SEM (Search Engine Marketing).

My goals are clear and I just have to find ways to overcome these obstacles to reach my goals.

I’ve done a bit of SEO (aka Search Engine Optimization) work on some of my domains before. Knowing I have some knowledge in SEO, my brother has contracted a simple SEO job for me. This is my first SEO job.

I am tasked with getting this food service company to rank for certain keywords like “food service Malaysia“. More and more businesses realize the importance of ranking well in search engines. In the old days, only e-commerce websites would seek to rank well. Nowadays, websites from food stuff to farm equipment all want to rank well.

This SEO industry is a booming industry. And depending on how things develop in the next one year, I might switch career from accounting to SEO specialist.