My Recent Financial Epiphany Involving Seeking Alpha And My First Job

The past couple of years have been a renaissance of sorts in financial terms for me. It was just the other day that I stumbled upon a financial epiphany. I have essentially worked my way up from a two year degree in accounting to a four year degree in accounting. I went from a cashier job at the soon to be closed retail chain Shopko that barely paid above minimum wage to my current position that pays over 60% more than that. I'll even soon be achieving one of my goals for 2019 as this June I will be moving into an entry level finance/accounting position at my current employer, with a new wage that will be over double what I was making preceding July 2017.

As great as all of that news is, the point of this article is to discuss my experience with Seeking Alpha and how it compares to my experience at my former cashiering job with Shopko.

Since I began writing for Seeking Alpha in December 2018, I've been incredibly blessed to build up the following that I have thus far. The 20 articles that I have wrote to date have allowed me to build a base of nearly 1,000 followers. While this is still a small number of followers compared to the more popular writers on Seeking Alpha, the significance is not lost on me in a few ways.

First, that many followers is actually more followers than people that live in smaller towns. Secondly, I've only been writing for Seeking Alpha for 4 months and the momentum is starting to snowball much in the same way a dividend portfolio snowballs with each passing month and year.

Aside from the benefits which include making me a better writer, researcher, and investor, writing for Seeking Alpha has proven to be somewhat financially rewarding. How rewarding, you ask?

In Q1 2019 alone, I earned over $1,200 gross income on the 16 articles I wrote while spending around 100 hours writing, editing, and replying to comments on those articles. While earning $12/hr on side hustles isn't exactly going to make me a millionaire in my 20s, it's important to note that even after the roughly $300 in self-employment, federal, and state taxes, I'm earning $9/hr.

The significance of that is that it's still more than the $7.51/hr I earned dealing with disgruntled customers at my former workplace as a cashier. While a lot of people wouldn't feel comfortable giving this much information, the reason I do this is as a sort of time capsule for me to look back on some day and more importantly, to inspire others.

Writing for Seeking Alpha was something I thought about doing for over a year (credit to my friends and family for encouraging me to do it btw), but I kept putting it off with the excuse that I wasn't qualified and didn't know what I was doing.

It's important for us all to remember or to have someone remind us that dreams are worth pursuing for the reasons I outlined in this post.

Takeaways:

The lesson in this are 1) the master at anything was once just a beginner like you, so great things take time and dedication 2) once you find your hobby or your passion, it becomes pretty manageable to monetize it in the Information Age we live in 3) Side hustles like Seeking Alpha are a great way to not only earn more income, but to invest more, become a better investor, and ultimately be able to possibly become financially independent much faster and 4) Side hustles also could evolve into lucrative enough work for you to ditch your day job and focus on your side hustle with your investments to back you up, if you please.

Discussion:

Do you earn more from your side hustles or hobbies than you earned from your first job? How does that make you feel? As always, thanks for reading and I look forward to replying to your comments.