WBW 33: Do What You Love + Serve Others What They Love = Entrepreneurial Happiness

People often ask which is more important in an entrepreneurial venture, doing what you love or serving others what they love and earn a profit. Chances are, a big debate will occur between these two polar directions. However, ask Jehzeel Laurente, the successful blogger behind jehzlau-concepts.com, and he'll tell you that both are important and that one cannot thrive alone. Watch this week's episode and learn more about the real measure of entrepreneurial success – when one can mesh doing what one loves while serving other people what they love - and in Jehzeel's world, while enjoying the simple joys of an LCD TV, PS3 and a long time desired laptop. 

Who is Jehzeel Laurente?

Jehzeel was a DOST-SEI scholar during his college days, and a proud graduate of the University of Southeastern Philippines - Main Campus. After graduating Electronics Engineering Technology, he decided to pursue a career somewhere along the lines of web development, something more in line with his interests.

He is a member of the minority group of left-handed individuals, a slow learner, amateur graphic designer, a trying hard web developer, noob computer programmer, happy Adsenser, below-mediocre grammarian, search engine optimist, FOSS user, DMOZ editor, Ratified.org administrator, Linux enthusiast, phpBB modder, high school math genius, college math idiot, frustrated singer, newbie photographer, dreamer, astronomer wannabe, philanthropist, online gamer, poet, novice writer, self-proclaimed critic, philosopher, thinker and a trying hard Pro?

He is an avid free/open source software user and he firmly believes that free/open source software is the best and most efficient way to develop applications that is why he strives hard to contribute to the FOSS community as much as he can, even if he can’t.

He was a born artist and he loves to paint. He even have several oil paintings that was left into oblivion.

When asked what's his greatest failure?

When asked what's his greatest success?

Show notes:

How did you start as a blogger?

• Started when he was working as a web developer
• He was bored so he decided to make a blog, started out as a personal blogger
• Blog mostly was a diary of his work experiences and a compilation of everything he learns from work
• Convenient since he can access his learnings anytime and anywhere via his blog, somewhat as an online tutorial to himself

How did you progress from making a personal blog to an income generating blog?

• He would just normally post online his learnings (guides to php, other online resources, etc.)
• Lots of people would end up visiting his blog for his learnings and the resources he posts
• He tried to monetize it, putting ads, etc on the website
• It was a happy experience being able to do his hobby (writing) and earn from it
• Continuously looked for ways to improve and monetize it

When you started, did you expect making money out of it?

• Nope, he didn’t really think or expect to make money out of it
• Blog started May 2006
• He had his job, this was just an online hobby
• Aside from his work, he would also post his experiences for other people to look for as reference (room rates in hotel, places to visit in Cebu and Davao)

What inspired you to become a full-time blogger?

• He was mostly inspired when he read it from other websites
• Read up on interesting topics via Google Trends and identified which of his posts earn money and which do not

He split his blog into different topics/blogs

1. Main blog - Jehzlau Concepts
2. Tech blog - Gizmosync
3. Games blog (My Brute Cheats Blog) - My Brute Cheats
4. Exam results blog - PRC Board Exam Results
5. Food blog - Patay Gutom
6. Entertainment blog - Showbiz Gossips
7. Art blog - Kuris Kuris
8. Lyrics blog - Lyrics Area
9. Travel blog

What were the obstacles you encountered when you started blogging?

• It was not really hard
• Other people believe that blogging is an art or expression. If you accept corporate ads, you don’t do justice to your blog
• But other materials online would say its okay to put ads. It just depends on what you want to do  with your blog.
• You should just blog because you want to. Then the income will just come later on because people will find what you are writing about interesting
• You should be able to help people via your articles
• As you help others, and you earn from it, it’s a very good experience

What were the things that you had to go through to attain your goal?

Constant research

1. Find constant ways to increase traffic
2. Most common way of generating traffic is people finding your site is via search engines
3. Challenge himself to generate more traffic and more income
4. Rss feeds, php-enabled websites versus pure html

Costs

1. There is more flexibility in doing your own hosting rather than through free hosting sites
2. Can make web apps, forums

Identify other opportunities

1. Affiliate marketing

Writing quality articles

1. Constant research

Where you are happy, that is where you focus

• Some people get into web development for the money but are not happy with it
• Some people blog but aren’t happy about it
• For people to blog, earn money from it, but aren’t happy blogging, its pretty much useless
• It's nicer if you are happy doing what you want and concentrate and find ways to improve what you are doing

How do you compare the mindset before you started blogging to the present?

• Others were planning to take masters, Ph D, etc after graduating from college. Most online companies look for people with 3 – 5 years experience
• What's more important are your interests and what you want to do
• Hobbies are important too
• He was an electronics engineering grad but applied as web developer. It was pretty far from his course but he was interested in it.
• Would go online and read up at internet cafes. Would read online tutorials
• Improve his blog gradually and he would update his blog regularly
• It was because of his hobbies and interests, he was able to buy what he wanted – desktop pc, laptop pc, lcdtv, ps3, etc.

Do you have any regrets on pursuing this path?

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