About Quit Your Day Job and Jeremy Palmer

The Grind

Back in 2003, I was working as Web Developer for a small Financial Services company. I was bored with my job, underpaid, and looked forward to clocking out at the end of every day.

My wife and I both worked full-time, while our kids were in daycare. At the end of the day we were both exhausted from our office jobs and long commutes, and only had a few hours each day to spend with our kids. We lived paycheck to paycheck and had little savings.

Every day was the same as the previous one; wake up, go to work, come home, and repeat. It seemed like we would never be able to break the cycle. It was hard for me to accept that I would be doing this for the next 30 years!

Throughout the years I had tried out several different web-based businesses, but none of them ever took off. I sold things on eBay, ran my own e-commerce site, and built websites for local small businesses. I had made a little money from each of these ventures, but none of them could replace what I was making at my day job.

Opportunity Knocks

While I was working at the Financial Services company, I discovered affiliate marketing. The company had setup an affiliate program as part of their Internet marketing strategy. Initially, I didn't fully understand how affiliate marketing worked, and failed to recognize how much money could be made as an affiliate.

After a few months, I started noticing some of our affiliates earning thousands of dollars through our affiliate program. All they were doing was referring visitors from their website to ours. When their visitors purchased something from our website, we paid them a commission. The affiliates didn't have to ship anything, handle customer service, or secure the transaction. They made money simply by referring customers to our website.

I started researching affiliate marketing further. I discovered that thousands of online merchants, including big names like Wal Mart®, Home Depot®, and Yahoo® had affiliate programs. I found out that merchants were paying millions of dollars every month in commissions to their affiliates.

It was at this point that I decided try affiliate marketing for myself. I added a few affiliate links and banners to an online dating site that I had built. Within a few days I was earning commissions from online dating services like Match.com®, Yahoo® Personals, and eHarmony®.

Quitting My Job

After seeing the success I had with my online dating site, I decided to start building more affiliate websites in different industries. Within two months I was making more money from my affilliate websites than I was at my day job. Within six months I was making twice as much, so I decided to quit my day job and focus exclusively on my affiliate business.

In my first year as an affiliate I was able to earn a six figure income from my websites. During my second year as an affiliate I made over a million dollars!

I now run over 100 affiliate websites promoting several advertisers in a number of different online categories. I'm recognized as an industry leader and advocate. I've recently been featured in a case study on Commission Junction's website, and am recognized as a top performer in their affiliate network winning the 2005 Horizon Award for Innovation. I've also been featured as a panelist at industry conferences such as Affiliate Summit, Commission Junction University (CJU), Ad:Tech, and eComXpo. In 2006 I was featured in Revenue Magazine (the premier affiliate marketing publication).

I'm still actively running my affiliate business and continue to grow my earnings month after month. In addition to my affiliate business, I've recently launched Quit Your Day Job as an affiliate education resource.