There only three (legal) ways to make money.
Each of these three buckets can be broken down to specifics.
Way #1 To Make Money:
Sell Your Own Product(s)
My friend and mentor, Jonathan Milligan, is an author, blogger, coach, in-person workshop leader, and online course developer.
Since 2009, Jonathan has been selling his own products.
He has authored both traditionally published and self-published books that he sells.
He then has created audiobooks and course based on these books and other topics that he knows well.
Creating and selling your own product is a time consuming process. I know that it took me 100s of hours to write my devotional, The Christian Jedi: A Daily Devotional that is sold on my site and on Amazon.
You can create jewelry, candles, greeting cards, artwork, baby products, home office decorations, and more.
You then need to find a marketplace to sell them. You can sell on your own website, at local/regional fairs, Etsy, Amazon, eBay, and more.
Way #2 To Make Money:
Sell Your Own Service(s)
Most people sell their own services by sell their time to a company.
The level of service you provide will affect the amount you are paid.
A major drawback to selling time for money is that there are only so many hours in a given day, week, or year.
Another way to sell your own service(s) is to freelance, become self-employed, or start a consulting company.
A Brief Case Study: HR Services
One of my clients offers HR services to a dozen or so companied.
Dan was a Human Resource Director before he experienced a terrible motorcycle accident. He was out of commission for months.
Eventually he realized that he couldn’t come back to work a 40+ hour week being their HR Director. He trained a replacement to do many of the administrative functions he did and turned his former employer into his first client for his new self-employment endeavor.
A Brief Case Study: Auto Broker
Another client of mine acts as a broker for people selling their custom and classic cars.
He brokers the vehicles on eBay. He takes pictures of each vehicle, creates a video, and handles all the questions.
His service allows the seller (often a widow) to sell their vehicle without dealing with “tire kickers” and opens the market of buyers to anyone with an internet connection.
He has sold cars to those in the same town as the owner and also to buyers in Europe, Asia, and Autralia.
He is paid a percentage of the sales price and absolutely loves what he does.
Way #3 To Make Money:
Sell Someone Else’s Product or Service
My daughter works for a farmer that just started his farm in 2022.
He raises miniature sheep, goats, and pigs. To subsidize his income this year, he planted a large garden so he could operate a produce stand.
The issue was, for the first few weeks, he needed to buy from a wholesaler because his crops weren’t ready or abundant enough to keep up with demand.
Eventually, Ken decided to buy more from the wholesaler. He now makes the majority of his income selling mums, 9 different types of pumpkins, gourds, and more- all things he bought from the wholesaler.
Online, people refer products or services of another. This is known as affiliate marketing.
I promote products or services that I don’t make or am able to do.
On this website you might see links to books on Amazon. If you click that link and buy the book, I make $0.40 to $1.12 per book since I referred you. It doesn’t cost you any more to buy the book, Amazon is happy to give me 3-4% of the sale because I sent the traffic to the book and they didn’t need to spend money to promote it.
Obviously I don’t make a living on referring people to buy books on Amazon.
There are online courses or memberships that cost $1,997 and pay a commission of $500-$1000.
It doesn’t take long to make a nice about money promoting these. The amount of work to sell 500 to 1000 books would be better spent showing people the value of buy that online course or membership. You only need to help one person see the value in it versus finding 500 to 1000 people looking for a specific book.
That said, maybe you are an avid reader and create a website where you review books. You could very easily generate 1000s of visits per month and by providing more and more value, you can grow that audience who respects your reviews and buys books for themselves or as gifts based on your recommendations.
