I spent the last few days in sunny Las Vegas to attend Affiliate Summit West 2009. It’s a conference for affiliate marketing in which I was able to meet with some of the companies I’ve been working with, put some names to faces, and find new opportunities. All in all the trip was a very successful one from a business development perspective but one of the selling points of the conference was really the person keynoting it, Gary Vaynerchuck. Gary Vaynerchuk, whom I’ve mentioned before (How to Buy Wine, How I Prepared to be a Problogger), is most known for his Wine Library TV show but has also done a lot of speaking engagements. Well, his ASW09 speech was no different (video below after the jump) and I’ll be looking forward to meeting him at Elite Retreat next month. After the speech, one fellow attended remarked, having not known who Gary was, that he probably could get a janitor pumped up about cleaning up puke at a preschool!

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Six months ago, I became a professional blogger (or problogger, as the lingo goes) but the process of going professional was easily six months in the making (three years if you ask my wife).

I don’t know if it’s come through in my writing, or if you’ve read long enough to tease this out, but I’m a predominately conservative person with regard to risk (not political leanings). However, given the right opportunities, I’m willing to make aggressive moves that some would consider extremely risky. Resigning my full time position to pursue what is essentially a freelance writing gig ranks as extremely risky in my pantheon of risk. While you’re never 100% safe in your job, it’s certainly more stable than working for yourself. Being self-employed has its benefits, stability certainly isn’t one of them. This article will detail how I mitigated those risks, as best I could, and how I prepared to become a professional blogger.

This article is pretty long and might not be all that useful to many people, but several other bloggers and my friends have asked about how I prepared to become a freelancer/problogger so I thought I’d put it all together.

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