There were countless times during my years at that company when I tried to make a difference by presenting alternative ways to implement and manage their internal network of websites. In the end, all of these ideas were either dismissed or put off on the basis that these “alternatives” were unknown, untested and unsupported open source technologies such as Joomla, WordPress, etc. I specifically remember one manager telling me that my ideas sounded amazing, but a little “wild and crazy” for the company.

Making the Decision to Change

It was pretty much at that point that I realized if I didn’t at least try and do something different, I would wake up one day (years later) in that same ever-shrinking cubicle working the same dead end job. I was ready to step up to the plate.

As much as I wanted to, I knew that I couldn’t just walk into work one day and quit on the spot. I had responsibilities – a wife, a house and bills to pay. With that in mind, I researched and then approached my manager about taking a 2 month “sabbatical”… a trial run if you will. Basically a leave without pay, but at least I would still have a job if I needed one at the end of those two months. Management signed off on it (no questions asked) and off I went into the unknown.

Getting Your Feet Wet

My plan was simple… I had a passion for web design and I was determined to turn that passion into a career. The first step was to get my name out there, and I figured the best way to do that was to start a blog and begin writing about web design, development and other related topics. Please keep in mind that my skills as a designer/developer were all self taught to that point (still are actually), so I really was not all that confident about doing this – but I had to try.

WordPress seemed to be a trendy topic at the time, so in January of 2008 I launched a site called WPelements.com and started blogging about WordPress. Really, all I was doing was writing about things that I myself was learning at the time as I played around with the platform. I spent hours on end every day working with WordPress, reverse-engineering themes and tweaking code. WPelements.com gained some traction right after I released my first free theme called “Massive News” which was downloaded a few hundred times within the first week. Right after Massive News, I released my first WordPress plugin called the “Featured Content Gallery” which was also an instant success. I remember thinking that this was my ticket into something new, a step toward that “big change” in my life that I was searching for. Soon after I released Massive News, the emails started rolling in from people looking for custom WordPress development services which is how I started my (short) freelance career.

By the time my two month sabbatical was up, I was confident enough to walk back into work and put in my two weeks notice. Actually, what I said was… “I am prepared to give you two weeks, but if you can let me go in a week that would be great because I’m really really busy”.

Trial and Error

During the first two months of 2008, I was able to build enough of a name for myself where I could sustain my income by doing freelance WordPress design and development work. However, it was about that same time that I realized that I still was not quite happy with what I was doing for a living. Basically, it was the exact same thing I was doing at my previous job, just with clients instead of managers. Back to square one… something needed to change once again just two months into my entrepreneurial career.

The WordPress community was growing, and I took note of a trend which was on the rise… “Commercial WordPress Themes”. Brian Gardner pioneered (or at least was one of the first) the idea of selling commercial WordPress themes in August of 2007 with a theme called “Revolution” (now StudioPress.com). Shortly after Brian, a few others popped up selling their own themes as well including Adii with his “Premium News Theme” (now WooThemes.com). To say the least, the idea of creating a theme and selling it as a commercial product perked my interests. I remember emailing both Brian and Adii about their businesses looking for tips on how to get started. Surprisingly, both of them already knew about me and what I was doing with WPelements.com, and gave me the inspiration to try selling some themes of my own. Let me say that Brian and Adii are some real stand-up guys who I am happy to consider my friends even though we are each others competition.

Then Success

I had created a site called TrailerFlick.com in December of 2007 which never became popular, but there was always interest in the site design by random users who just happened upon it one way or another. I created TrailerFlick.com to provide an alternative method of viewing movie trailers, and the design was simple… just a grid of movie posters that when clicked would display the trailer in a pop-up window. This was actually the first live website I had ever built entirely on WordPress. In February of 2008 I had a client that found TrailerFlick.com and wanted a WordPress theme based on the design for his own movie production studio. I spent a week tailoring the theme for this client who in the end never paid up. I decided that this would be a good candidate for my first commercial theme, so I cleaned up the code, called it “Video Flick” and threw it on WPelements.com for just $5.00 per download. I just want to take a second to thank that client for never paying his tab.

The interest in Video Flick blew me away, and I immediately knew that had something on my hands that I could build into a real business. One theme at $5.00 per download was definitely not enough to make a living, but it was good extra cash to throw on top of the freelance work I had at the time. As the months rolled by, I released two more video-centric WordPress themes (TV Elements followed by Video Elements) and started charging $25 a piece. By June of 2008 I knew there would be no looking back and that I had a substantial business on my hands. Not many theme developers (if any) were creating video-centric WordPress themes at that particular time, and I think that releasing a commercial solution for video was the key to growing my business as fast as I did.

At that time, I was still doing freelance work and blogging about WordPress on WPelements.com, but I finally decided that neither blogging or freelance work were really what I wanted to do which is why I designed a simple theme store and moved all my commercial themes over to Press75.com separating my theme business from my freelance business and blog. By August of 2008, I had doubled my income on Press75.com with only 4 themes at $50 a piece. This allowed me to completely close the doors on freelance work to focus 100% of my efforts on commercial WordPress themes.

Nearly one year and about a dozen themes later, Press75.com continues to grow and I just launched a second site called ThemeGarden.com in hopes to expand beyond my own personal brand. Needless to say, I could not be happier with what I do for a living. I get to design and create WordPress themes that are used by thousands of people around the world, and the best part is that the only one telling me what to do and how to do it – is me.

Let Your Passion Drive You

I really don’t consider myself any sort of talent when it comes to writing, but if you have stuck with this story to this point, a few more minutes aren’t going to kill you. I didn’t write this for recognition, or to brag about what I consider my own personal success. Honestly, I’m sure most of you don’t even know who I am or what I do, nor do you probably care. The whole point of writing this article was to share with you that life is in fact, what you make of it. If you want to change, there really is nothing stopping you from doing so. That is not to say that change is at all easy, or something that will happen over night. It took me more than 10 years of working at a company, developing skills, experimenting with different ideas and just growing up before I found the confidence to do really go after my passion.

Also, it is my strong belief that if making money is your only goal in life, you will probably spend the rest of your life chasing that goal and never end up where you want to be. I realize that the title of this article is “How I Monetized My Passion”, but what I really mean by that is money can sometimes become a by-product of chasing your passions. Money is not a bad thing, but it really should not be your means to happiness. When I left my day job two years ago, money was never my end game, and I hope it’s not yours when/if you decide to make a major change in your life. Let your interests and your passions be the driving force behind change in your life – I did.