In the seemingly infinite universe of ways to make more money, there are really 3 easy ways to make money that are relevant to you.
Learn these three core methods and you’ll know 90% of the basic options to make more money.
Most people who say it’s impossible to make more money don’t realize this. Some insist that it’s flat-out undoable, while others take an all-or-nothing approach. “You’re not going to invent the next Google, so what’s the point.”
Maybe you won’t make a billion dollars this year but how would an extra $1,000, $5,000 or $10,000 a month change your life?
In reality, there are 3 easy models virtually anyone can use to make more money:
- Freelancing
- Productizing
- Getting a higher salary
Let’s cover them so we can have a shared understanding of how to earn extra money before we go into more detail.
(Thanks to Rasteroids for the great design. Need a designer? They do amazing work!)
To recap:
- Freelancing – Freelancing is taking your skills and turning them into income. Freelancers usually work on an hourly basis.
- Productizing – When you productize your knowledge, you create a product that can generate revenue even while you’re sleeping. For example, my book is a product. So is Scrooge Strategy. While products can generate passive revenue, they’re also higher risk, because you’re never sure how many people will buy them.
- Getting a higher salary – Since the vast majority of us earn our primary income from our job, this is an obvious strategy. Obvious — yet few of us do it. You can earn a higher salary by improving your skills at work and translating that into more responsibility and a higher salary, switching jobs, or switching entire industries.
Don’t make earning money harder than it needs to be
I’m a big believer in not making things harder than they need to be. Sure, you could embark on a long, frustrating (and probably fruitless) quest to invent “The Next Big Thing” in social media or online gaming. But if you’re looking for the EASIEST and BEST way to make money, most people would be do well to stick to one of these 3 ways.
Not just because they’re simple, but because these 3 exact ways of making money been TESTED by thousands of people before you. THEY WORK. You aren’t staking your future on some random scheme that you “hope” will work. Instead, you’re applying your own talents to a proven method to make money – which practically eliminates any risk.
Which way of making money is best for you?
That’s up to you. Now that you know about each of the 3 models, your job is to identify which way of making money fits YOU best. Everyone is different. We all have unique circumstances, opportunities, strengths and weaknesses in front of us.
For example: a college student working at a local grocery store probably isn’t going to negotiate a huge raise…but he could absolutely freelance. Conversely, a recent graduate who is two years into a corporate job is PERFECTLY positioned to negotiate a higher salary.
The best way to make more money will vary depending on these types of circumstances. In any case, you should now have a much clearer understanding of HOW to make more money. The seemingly endless possibilities that overwhelmed you before are really just variations on the 3 models.
Do you have a goal?
One of the best ways to know which of the three methods will be right for you, is to have an income goal in mind.
The first impulse is just to say “MORE!” but if you have an idea what your dream lifestyle actually costs, your much more likely to choose the method that will get you there.
For instance, I’ve had students who want to make more money so they can go on exotic vacations every year. Realistically, making an extra $1000 a month for a year would pay for an incredible trip to Africa, or Thailand, or anyplace else for that matter!
An extra $12,000 is not as far out of reach as you might think!
As a freelancer, you could make that in 5 or 6 hours a week!
Maybe you have a talent, hobby or passion that could easily be turned into a physical or information product?
If you could get a 10, 20 or 50k raise at work, wouldn’t it be worth learning how to ask for one? Deciding how much money you’d like to will help you consider which of the three methods would be the best fit.
Next steps to make more money
My Ultimate Guide to Making Money covers
- Asking for a raise — and getting it
- Making extra money on the side
- Building your income using skills you already have.
Read the Ultimate Guide to Making Money now.
Click to expand transcript of 3 Easiest Ways to Make More Money infographic »
The 3 Easiest Ways to Earn More Money
by Ramit Sethi, founder of iwillteachyoutoberich.com
Freelancing
Freelancing is taking your skills and turning them into income. Freelancers usually work on an hourly basis.
The Pros
- Standard rates for most jobs (no matter how unique you think you are) make it easy to price your work.
- Work > income is very clear, compared to uncertain income-generating strategies like productization.
- Extremely easy to get started.
The Cons
- Freelancers are often stuck in a different kind of rat race — working for clients. You’ll need to work to earn money, just as with a full-time job.
- Challenging to raise hourly rates (even charging $100/hour is difficult unless you’re fully booked).
- Difficult to know which of your skills are monetizable. For example, nobody cares that you can do a 100% blind taste test of various flavors of lollipops.
- Where should you get clients? And not just one, but a consistent client base so you have a steady income?
How to earn money
- Per-hour
- Per-project
- Retainer (e.g., ‘You have access to me for 3 months’)
Examples
Marketing consultant, web designer, blog/sysadmin consultant, freelance writer, dog-walker, babysitter. I’ve been a consultant to the Omidyar Network, yenture-capital firms, startups, and individuals.
Productizing
When you productize your knowledge, you create a product that can generate revenue even while you’re sleeping. For example, my book is a product. So is Scrooge Strategy. While products can generate passive revenue, they’re also higher risk, because you’re never sure how many people will buy them.
The Pros
- Generate revenue while you sleep.
- Scale your knowledge to a greater audience than freelancing (e.g., you can sell more ebooks than you can serve individual clients).
- Products allow you to dynamically test pricing and offers to find your sweet spot.
The Cons
- Most products are a piece of crap, especially online.
- It’s difficult to know who will buy your product, how many items you’ll sell, and what to price it at
- Logistics of selling products include payment processors, email software, blogging, social networks, etc.
- Hard to market products in a sea of other horrible products. Can be expensive to acquire customers.
How to earn money
- Create a freemium model (like this blog: Thousands of people who like the free stuff go on to buy my book/Scrooge/my Boot Camp).
- Charge for single products like books or ebooks.
- Create a recurring product (like Scrooge Strategy).
- Create value-added content and sell affiliate products. For example, when I wrote about how to hedge fuel costs and showed how I do so using my ING Direct account, it generated massive interest and massive signups for ING accounts… each of which sent me a $20 fee.
Examples
I Will Teach You To Be Rich (book), Scrooge Strategy (btw not to plug my own stuff, but it’s worth buying products not only for their benefit, but to closely study how they deliver material, increase conversions, manage retention, deliver an amazing customer experience, etc. Ok, that was totally a plug for my own stuff.), SE0 Pro Tools, any of the extreme travel guides at UnconventionalGuides.com, stuff by Tony Robbins, GTD training courses, etc.
Getting a higher salary
Since the vast majority of us earn our primary income from our job, this is an obvious strategy. Obvious — yet few of us do it. You can earn a higher salary by improving your skills at work and translating that into more responsibility and a higher salary, switching jobs, or switching entire industries.
The Pros
- If you don’t know what it takes to get a higher salary, there’s one person who does know: your boss.
- Salary increases are cumulative and tend to follow you through your career, so someone earning $60 or $80k in their 20s already has a high salary relative to peers – and that will likely continue through their lifetimes.
- You already know what to do to get a salary increase: Get better at your job and make your boss’s life easier.
The Cons
- You might not like the result of digging into this closely. For example, if you’re an entry-level employee at an art gallery and you discover that it will take you 20 years to earn even $55k, will you switch industries?
- You’re dealing with something out of your control — your company’s budget and your boss’s discretion — so putting more effort into your job doesn’t always pay off.
- Hard to know exactly what proactive behavior will get you a raise vs. what will make your company nervous about you.
And there’s a basic overview that will teach you 90% of what you need to know about earning money online. Use this as an intellectual framework that you can plug future income-generating ideas into to see where they fall.
Of course, I hate presenting options without my specific recommendation, so stay tuned — more to come on how to earn money, I Will Teach You To Be Rich style, soon.
The 3 easiest ways to make more money is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.
from I Will Teach You To Be Rich http://ift.tt/1nENoIy
#money #finance #investing #becomerich
No comments:
Post a Comment