You read stories all of the time about how to make more money. We are all searching for ways to make money and surprisingly for most of us, the answer is staring us back in the mirror. That’s right, you make money by banking on yourself.
How do you do this? It’s an easy process but I will admit that it will take some time. While I can’t help with the time piece, I can offer up a solid process to start making money for yourself by using the skills you already have. Let’s get started.
How To Make Money By Banking On Yourself
Your first step in the process is to take a little bit of time and reflect. Write down what you enjoy doing and what you are good at doing. The list you create doesn’t have to be categorized or anything like that. Simply list out the things you enjoy doing.
Spend 10 -15 minutes on this and call it a day. In a few days, repeat the process in case there are other things you missed. I would recommend taking another 10-15 minutes here as well.
Then again in a few days, do this exercise once more. After that, I want you to wait a week to allow yourself to forget about the list.
After that week is up, revisit the list. Instead of adding to it, we are going to remove things (or cross out) from the list. Maybe there are some things you enjoy doing but aren’t good at. Maybe there are things you are good at but don’t like doing.
In either case, you want to remove these from the list. This will become clearer later. Also, don’t think you should skip the first part of putting everything on the list and only put on things you enjoy doing and are good at on the list.
You want to be in full creative mode and put everything down you think of first. By trying to think through things, you slow or even stop the creative process. I know you want to start making money today, but trust me when I tell you this process is how you should go about things.
Once you have your list of things you enjoy and are good at doing, it is time to see if there are any ways you can make money doing them. Thanks to technology, the answer in many cases is yes.
You can offer your skills on sites like Upwork and Fiverr. You can place ads on Craigslist. You can even post about your services on Facebook and have your friends share your post.
Ideally once you get a few clients, you can start relying on word of mouth as well.
Sample Ways To Bank On Yourself
So now that you know how the process goes, what are some ideas for ways you can start making money based on your skills? Below I list just a handful. There are many more, but I just want to show you that you can do almost anything when it comes to making money with things you are good at.
Coaching: If you are good with your finances, you could become a personal finance coach. There are lots of bloggers out there that do this to supplement their income. Charge $50 an hour and help people set up a budget or a plan for how to get out of credit card debt.
Edit Photos: Are you a Photoshop whiz? If so, you can edit and retouch photos people take. After all, most people take decent photos, but a few simple edits can make them go from ho-hum to wow. If you can do this, you can make money.
Create Photobooks: Piggybacking on the idea above, if you are digitally creative, you can turn digital pictures into photobooks. Many people take pictures but never do anything with them. If you can create an interesting photobook, people would pay you for it.
Create Slideshows: No, not for corporate presentations. I’m talking photos here again. If people don’t want a photobook, maybe they would pay to have a set of photos put together in a slideshow and have music set to go along with it.
Copyeditor: Are you good with spelling and grammar? Do you know how to get your point across without using a lot of filler? If so, you could be an editor. While you could do this for books, bloggers and other online media companies would love to have someone make sure their content is put together well and is free of spelling mistakes.
Social Media: Are you popular on social media? I’m sure you could take those skills and help companies and bloggers with their online social presence. In the event you don’t want to beef up other social media profiles, you could simply set up accounts and provide introductory lessons for people who want to get started but who are clueless.
Remember The Goal
At the end of the day, the goal is to make money. But you don’t want to feel miserable doing it. You want it to be fun so that it doesn’t feel like work. This is why you need to be smart when crossing things off your list.
You very well can make money editing photos, but if you would rather be taking photos than editing them, then editing photos should not be on your list.
Final Thoughts
If you take a little bit of time and are honest as you move through the process, you can find things you enjoy doing and that you are good at doing so you can make money. You might not be making money tomorrow or next week, but if you go through the process, you increase your chances of making money on the side by banking on yourself.
