I've seen this question asked quite a bit online in various marketing forums. People who want to get into marketing and are not sure the best way to go about it. Should they get a marketing degree to help them start a career in digital marketing?

It really depends on the kind of career path you want to take. Do you want to work for a larger, fortune 500 type of company? You'll probably need a marketing degree to climb the corporate ladder as they say.

Is that the only kind of marketing career to be had? Not by a long shot!

I've been working full-time as a digital marketer for over 10 years now and I do not have a marketing degree. I work from home and make a great living working on my own terms as a freelancer.

I mostly help small to medium sized businesses. I do freelance for some larger companies too, so that just goes to show a marketing degree isn't always necessary to work with bigger companies.

So how did I get my start?

I started a Wordpress blog back in 2006 which was about punk rock, metal and rock 'n' roll music. I learned a lot about creating a website, managing a website, SEO and email marketing.

At it's peak that music blog was getting about 500 organic visitors a day from Google. Even though the site wasn't a commercial success, and it's no longer around, I was able to leverage the skillset I developed and land my first digital marketing client.

From there it was just a matter of building up testimonials and case studies from past successes. Having these testimonials and case studies will help to sell future prospects on your services.

It can be rough in the beginning while you're building up your testimonials and case studies but once you start to build momentum it all starts to snowball.