A reader emailed me this week with a suggestion.

She left her job over a year ago to travel the world and start a business with her partner. After struggling to get her business off the ground for the better part of a year, anxiety got to her.

Despite having significant savings, she became so distracted by money-related fears that she could no longer focus on building the business.

She started look for a job.

She found a great job. Excellent pay, fantastic benefits, flexibility on travel. The ability to live a great lifestyle without being self-employed.

So what’s the problem?

As I was reading this story, I couldn’t help but think about how familiar it sounded to my own story.

I too left a comfortable job to start a business. I too started feeling anxious about living off my modest and hard-earned savings.

My anxiety got so bad I sought medical attention. Stress can be debilitating for entrepreneurs. For some reason I slogged on, despite having no income, no investors and dwindling personal funds for a year. Twice.

I also came very close to looking for a job, and my path could have been very different if I had.

This reader wrote in to suggest that I offer some perspective on the issues and questions both she and I faced when starting a business.

So here it is, the other side of the story.

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Before you ask how to become self-employed, there’s another much more important question to ask yourself.

Have you found the answer to this question for yourself yet?

Let’s face it. Jobs suck.

I spent 13 years of my life working in various jobs, and I never felt right about it. Not once did I feel like I was doing my life’s work.

There was always a little voice in the back of my head telling me “you’ll never be happy working for someone else. When are you going to get the balls to try working for yourself?”

In 2006 I found those balls.

After 13 years of working on shit I didn’t care about, after the boredom, the depression, after all the crap I endured from bosses who expected 60 hour weeks and still gave me a hard time about taking a week off here or there, after feeling like there MUST be more to life than Corporate America™…

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Perhaps there’s a way to give away all of your work for free and still support yourself from it. I haven’t discovered that yet, which means I have to charge for some of my work.

If you’re planning to build a business online, you’ll have to face this question yourself soon enough.

When do you charge for your work, and when do you give it away for free?

Some businesses charge from the beginning. Think about your local stores and restaurants. They probably opened with (shock) things for sale.

Online things are much different. Both blogs and service-based sites usually open without anything for sale. To successfully compete in this market, you’ll probably start by giving away most of your work for free as well.

Giving away your work for free has some great benefits. If you do good work and create something useful, people will find out about what you’re doing. You won’t have to pay for advertising to build an audience.

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If you didn’t get paid for what you do, would you still do it?

If you’re working to support yourself through your creativity, are you doing it for the money, or because you love the craft?

What’s your love to money ratio for your job or your startup idea?

How would you like to change that?

Is there a right answer?