Mike Abasov

You can make money on your passion, because I can.

I want to share a little example from my life about how being passionate, knowing everything about your passion and creating a community around it made me able to start making money on it. This is not a story of a 20-years-old CEO (not that impressive at all :-), but I find this example very motivating for myself.

4 years ago I got into making websites. I wanted to create a browser-based MMORPG. Well, that never happened. But I found a free web builder called uCoz. I started creating websites there, made one for my school, one for my gaming clan, later one for my university program. Fact is, I’ve created many. During all this, I’d been actively talking on different forums about uCoz, writing some scripts, and participating to the maximum. I was gaining expertise and building my brand, although at that time, I had no idea I was doing it.

In 2007 I got into blogging. I started writing about my life and about uCoz. Step by step, I started gaining some influence. I would express my thoughts on an update, share opinions and discuss them in the comments. I was building a community of great, interesting people who were making cool websites in this CMS.

The first bits of money came from freelancing. Being an expert in this system, I was able to get some cool contracts. My personal “Mona Lisa” was the new identity and web design for one of the largest recycling companies in Ukraine.

But then the real game-changer showed up when I started a project called U.Blogs (in Russian). Its goal was to unite all bloggers in uCoz and create an awesome community. During the next year, I took my passion to a completely new level, even did some interviews and podcasts on the topic. It felt great and I was proud of what I was doing.

Today I don’t manage U.Blogs and don’t blog about uCoz anymore. And I haven’t been an active member of the community either until April, when the company whose client I have been for 4 years proposed me a job. Today I’m a member of a great team, and I manage all types of uCoz’s social presence in the English part of the Internet. It’s not my dream job, but its an amazing experience and good money for something I love doing.

The main point of this post is that I wasn’t looking for this job; it found me. All because of my passion, my expertise and personal branding. I had no idea when I started 4 years ago that my hobby can take me to the point of making money. I didn’t know that I could cash in on my passion, but it happened. And I believe that it will happen again and again. And I believe that it can happen to you too! So get out and do something!