Want a Green Career?

Make the planet a better place, and get paid for it too!

I've been into energy efficiency and environmental causes since I was a teenager. Somehow I wound up with an office job, and stuck with it for 25 years.

But I often struggled with the fact that my work, while fulfilling, wasn't doing the planet any good. I've been aware of the problem of climate change for a long time, but there wasn't much I could do about it. Sure, I cut my own home energy use, but that was a drop in the bucket. How could I help others do the same?

A year off work gave me the chance to try something new

In mid-2008 I took a year off work so I could travel to Costa Rica with my wife and kids. I wanted something to keep me busy, so I thought: why not write on green topics for the Internet, and make a little money?

Nine months later, my energy efficiency website is getting 20,000 visitors a month. Even if only 5% of my visitors find anything on my site that helps them save energy, I'm still helping over a thousand people cut their energy use each month.

Work that makes the world a better place

It's fulfilling to know that my website is making a bigger difference than I could have by just fixing up my home. And now that my website is running smoothly, I can go back to my office job, knowing the website will keep on growing on its own.

If you've always wanted a green career, but are stuck in a job that isn't making the planet a better place, you may want to consider something like I've done.

Do you have a website in you?

Everyone has a website inside them - a passion, a cause, a hobby, a skill they could write about. You do too - you may just need to figure out what it is. If you follow the kind of careful process I followed, you can build a website on a topic you care about, that earns you an income while helping others.

Then you can keep your day job but do away with the guilt - or, if your website really takes off, you can quit your day job and live off your online earnings.

Read more about how I turned a passion into an income, or check out my review of Site Build It!, the product suite I used to start a new green career.