11:45 AM
CR Zaman
Earning more money: Finding the right idea
In our research of over 5,000 people, we found that the #1 barrier to earning more money was, by a huge margin, finding the right idea. If you’re like me, it can get frustrating to have 0 ideas — or too many! — and not know where to start. Today, I’ll cover several frameworks to generate and test profitable ideas that you can implement today.
Recently, one of my readers, Barbara S., made a very interesting comment that highlighted why many people can’t find a profitable idea:
“Many of the people who focus on the “save” half of things do so because when they focus on earning, the things that come to mind are so little that saving actually does measure up better.
For instance: I have an ongoing freelance gig that brings in over $1,000 per month. Because it sometimes results in a long day, I have no problem doing the work over a sandwich rather than working and then cooking. $10 meal/$300 session of work.
The friends who find this wasteful aren’t thinking of that scenario. They’re thinking about doing a $15 an hour shift someplace: $45. So, they’d rather cook at home and save the $10 than earn $45.
It makes perfect sense. If you’re not sure how to make more money, and the only ideas that come to mind will generate a paltry $50/month, why would you try to earn money?
Here’s the kicker, though: I’m not talking about a crappy $50/month. I’m talking about $1,000+.
Today, I want to challenge the notion that you should “look for an idea” to earn more. Instead, I’ll show you the first step of identifying, testing, iterating, and validating to virtually guarantee that you’ll make more money to live a richer life.
Freelancing is the easiest way to earn more money right NOW
Let’s first cover a few stipulations. For delusional people, these will crush their kooky dreams of living a passive-income lifestyle with no work. But for people who are serious about earning money — and who realize that to earn money passively, you have to start out doing work actively (just like I’ve done) — this is what you need to know.
Out of the 3 primary ways to earn money, the easiest way to earn money on the side is to start a freelance business, meaning you take your skills and turn them into direct income. It costs virtually nothing to get started, you can start earning money right away, and you can rapidly test and refine what you offer to earn even more. For this reason, freelancing will be the main focus of my strategies for earning more, but note that you can (and many, many of my students HAVE) applied these lessons to other productizing or to increase salary at their regular jobs. (Productizing is unrealistic for most people who are starting out since it involves both the critical aspects of freelancing, as well as an entirely separate set of skills.)
MOST jobs can translate directly into a freelance work and EVERY job implies skills that can transfer to indirectly to related freelancing jobs. But there are a small percentage of professions that can’t: For example, you don’t see any freelance cardiothoracic surgeons. (But you can see some doctors moving in that direction.)
People worry about the time involved, but this is really just an excuse to do nothing. Do you think successful people say, “Waa…if I start earning money, I’ll have too much work, and I don’t know if I want that…”? Of course not. They know that the real problem is getting any money at all, not getting too much. Since you’ll be earning money on the side, you can control exactly how much time you put in. There are proven ways to minimize the time you spend so you can hit your target goals. Finally, it’s FUN to earn more, not drudgery.
Just like dating, it will probably take repeated failures to find a good match between your skills and what the market wants.
Please re-read that last point about repeated failures. This is probably the most important fact to keep in mind as you’re working through ideas that can make you money. I personally keep a “Failures” tag in Gmail where, if I’m not getting at least 5 failures/month, I know I’m not doing enough.
What are your real skills, and how can you turn them into something that other people will pay for? Let’s say you have a full-time job as a project manager or salesperson or translator. How can turn what you already know how to do into $200/month, $500/month, or even $5,000/month in side income?
Earning more is about creating a process to rapidly uncover, test, and hone a series of ideas until you find the right one. Of course it’s difficult. That’s why losers whine about it, but you’re going to actually do it.
Setting up a Facebook page or Twitter is a waste of time... Most people waste time on things that will never produce a cent of income. If your goal is $1,000+/month, here are the biggest wastes of time:
- Setting up a Twitter account
- Setting up a Facebook page
- Setting up a blog
- Buying business cards, getting a business license, or doing anything backoffice-related
This angers a lot of cranky unsuccessful businesspeople, mostly because they see themselves in the above and wonder why they’re “still” not earning money — even though “they’ve done everything they can.”
Yes !!
They’ve done everything they can. EVERYTHING EXCEPT TALKING TO SOME GOD DAMNED PROSPECTS. It’s so much easier to set up a useless Twitter/FB page than talking to actual people about their actual needs, isn’t it? I swear to god, if I hear another person complaining about business, yet they haven’t done any customer research, I’m going to drink 40 gallons of water, take a barrel into a sauna, sit in it, and drown myself in my own sweat. What the hell is wrong with these people?
None of the above things will get you paying customers. In fact, they will distract you from what you really need to be doing, which is identifying needs of potential customers, talking to them, and validating (or invalidating) your ideas. I have a guy who works with me who has NO website, yet he is killer at understanding what his clients (aka me) need. I paid him $10,000+ last month.
Because it’s so hard, the rewards of earning more are large...
