An interesting question, of course. The answer is “Yes” although there’s a big “but” attached to it. It’s a hesitating “Yes” today, but it was a sure “No” for quite a long time.
We started developing our site in the spring of 2017, went live with it in 2018, and it was only in September 2022 that we could sustain ourselves independently with the website’s revenue. So, that took a rather long time, more than five years. Moreover, it’s still not an abundance, but “getting by reasonably,” and it’s far away of “being rich” or “having made it.”
And the best of the story has yet to come: you see, we live in Brazil, a relatively low-cost country, and we certainly couldn’t live from our website in the USA, Canada, in Europe, or in Australia, for instance. That would have meant to having a serious nine-to-five job on the side.
It means, even in Brazil, that we live a humble life, no luxury at all, no vacations, no brand-new car, just the necessities and always watching our pocket. In Brazil, if you want a bit of luxury, a bit of more comfort, you need to grab deep into your wallet; it’s actually a very expensive country, for instance much more expensive than Europe for things that in Europe are not even considered luxury goods or services.
However, we certainly don’t complain, we’re happy that we don’t need to work for an employer and can schedule our own working hours and can venture into Nature whenever we want to or when the weather allows it. It’s still hard work, we both — Helissa and I — make more than forty hours per week each, and we basically work every day. The experience of having “the weekend off” is unknown to us.
So, until 2022 always one of us had a job (and sometimes the both of us), while we would work in our spare time on the website. We didn’t have enough savings to just spend a 100% of our time on building the website, so there was no other choice than doing it like that.
At the end of 2022, we finally were more or less sure that we could do without another job and jumped into the unknown. Until today it worked out well — with some months having less income and in other months more — it’s always a bit uncertain, but you cannot think too much about “what could happen” and you must take every month as it comes, always hoping that it will turn out well. And if not this month, well, than the other.
We have no illusions about continuity, we know that things can suddenly change. We saw that happening during the COVID pandemic. Nothing in life is certain, except for “paying taxes and death” as the saying goes.
It means that we always need to find new ways to maintain what we have now, while at the same time creating more diversity on our website, that is, aiming for different streams of income, and hence spreading the risks. All by all, this is what it is today, we’re grateful, and try to take things day by day, one step at a time.
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