Since 1996 I have believed that someday I would be able to make a full-time income by utilising the Internet. Here’s a brief timeline of events:

• 1996: Created a ‘fan’ website for the Spice Girls, a popular British girl band of the time. Ten years ago it took greater technical knowledge to build a web site, but seemed easier to achieve popularity.
• 1997: Let the site fall into disrepair due to time commitments, and a slight sense of embarrassment. Letting that site go is still one of my greatest online regrets as I believe it could have formed quite a springboard for other projects.
• 1998-2002: Became involved with some unfortunate MLM programs. I didn’t quite sell my soul to them, and fortunately didn’t lose too much money, but I was sucked in by the evangelistic nature of the guys near the top.
• 2003-4: Several attempts at creating a useful web site from my domain.
• 2004: Discovered blogging and started my first blog, a personal take on life and current events.

• 2005:
  * Discovered Darren’s ProBlogger site and Google AdSense and started to get a taste for generating online revenue.
  * Created the Piano and Synth and Family Relationships blogs
  * Did a month’s guest blogging at one of Darren’s site: Robotics News.
  * Discovered Shiny Media via Darren’s blog, and got into email contact with Ashley Norris.
  * Set up the Blue Fish Network to promote smaller bloggers, and British blogging, through community building.
  * Met Aaron Brazell online, who joined the BFN for a time, then left to spend more time working with b5media.
• 2006:
  * AdSense earnings from personal blogs started to increase significantly, but not to a point where I could justify blogging full-time.
  * Continued to have email conversations with Ashley at Shiny Media, and met up to discuss potentail freelance work.
  * May: Began editing Shiny’s HDTVUK.tv on a pay-per-post basis (effectively 5 posts per day for a monthly fee)
  * June: Had serious discussions and agreed with Shiny enough work to enable me to quit full-time employment and freelance. Handed notice in to employers.
  * July: Began full-time freelance work. Shiny contract includes editing HDTVUK.tv and writing a set number of posts for Tech Digest, for a set fee.
• 2007:
  * Began writing for TechScape and editing iPhonic, and was invited to be a contributor at The Blog Herald.

That’s an outline of my journey to ProBlogger. I’ll expand on various aspects of it over the coming weeks, but please feel free to ask questions in the comments below if you’d particularly like information about any aspect of it