The truth about money is that it is good motivator for people to get out of the bed every morning and go make some $$$.
Don’t click away, as this could be a post that will be your a-ha post if you are finding ways to make money.
My situation was pretty much – earn money by typing words. Type type type.
For me, I had my computer literally set up next to my bed and the edges of the table met the bed – meant that I actually didn’t have to get out of the bed at all.
(I just had to tell this to you all and get it out of my system as I always found it to be funny.)
I would wake up and the turn the computer on and click click I went.
Making my first dollar didn’t take me a long time. What did take time was to make sure that I keep on earning and not stop at some $10 or $15 or get scammed on the way. Once I had figured that money can be made, there was no stopping this 18 year human.
My mother would get worried about me that every single minute that I was at home was spent in front of my computer. I was dedicated. She thought I was wasting my life away by not being social in real life – I agree to some extent with her. Sitting in front of the computer the first thing when you wake up and the last thing before you fall asleep, doesn’t sound very healthy.
However, those were my grassroots days. I needed to know everything possible to run a successful business on the internet.
It doesn’t get any grim or anything like I didn’t leave the house for days etc.
In fact, I had actually managed to have a setup that allowed me to have 4 hours work days. Two hours in the morning, two hours in the evening and I was done. The rest of the time I was able to spend outside my house without worrying about anything. More on this in another post.
Earn money by typing words
Yes, you read it right. Everything that I did that earned me money was with typed out words.
Content is king – this is what the common phrase was amongst the online community.
To rank webpages you needed a nicely written piece of content and I understood this from the very beginning of my journey.
This is where I got curious what makes a good piece of content good? Now, its great if you have a great hold on the written English language. This certainly wasn’t the case for me.
However, at the same time the search algorithms cared a little bit more about the keyword placements – and this is where my strength was/is.
A perfectly crafted piece of content will have keywords sprinkled throughout it – long tail, short tail and synonyms. (Like this one should really have “how I earned my first dollar” throughout the post. )
And I was able to produce such content.
Most my money came from writing content for others. I had clients all over the world who were willing to pay a decent price per article.
Story of my first dollar ever earned
I will keep it short.
I was looking at ways of making money online and saw some ads (black background and white text, that’s all). I hesitantly clicked on it and got connected to a guy.
We chatted with each other that day on a messenger service and I wasn’t sure if he was legitimate or not.
He ran a business of writing content – he never told me anything more than this. What he wanted from me was unique content on several topics with keywords included in there.
I did my first job for him. My thoughts at the time were that I have put in some time and effort and its all going to go to waste. Why? Because I thought who would give me money for putting some words together.
But then he emailed saying that he has transferred the money to my account.
I checked my account and there it was. I had earned a dollar for an article. (the going rate for an average article at the time was $10 – of course, I didn’t know about it!)
This had made me soooo happy. My mother could not understand the whole concept and it took some time for me to explain how it all works but she still thought that I worked for Google. LOL.
(What’s funny was that the guy actually lived about a 1000 meters away from my house – which we found out after about a few weeks of working together. However, I never met him in real life.)
Freelancing job
I earned money the first time by doing content writing as a freelancer.
Here are some tips on how to find content writing jobs that will pay money. This is a legit way of making money online and most people can do it.
Content is still the king as internet will not be what it is today if there was not content.
Of course there are other skills that can earn you money too such as graphics design, coding, being an assistant etc.
If you don’t have any other skills then I would highly recommend that you start looking into content and how to write articles. It doesn’t take long to learn the craft.
Work online from home and get paid
I not only offered my freelancing services as a content writer. There were my own experimental websites that I ran to learn about Google Analytics, search algorithms, adsense and more. I ran affiliate websites and seasonal websites and many other things. They all made me decent amount of money.
However, there was a common denominator in all these jobs that I did – content.
So my advice will be to start by offering your content writing services to others and then go from there. Its a tried and tested method.
You can find many websites these days that will allow you to pick clients online. A quick google search will reveal some such websites.
Website that I am going to share with you is something that doesn’t get talked about often these days.
Warrior Forums – https://www.warriorforum.com/
This is one website where I learned so much about digital marketing, SEO, content writing and many other things related to running an online business.
There are many better websites and worse websites, but the key would be your effort to find different places to learn from and find work at.
So here is a list for your task
- Find at least 10 websites that offer freelance work.
- See what skills you have that people and businesses are willing to pay for. (Remember you can always learn a new skill. If nothing excites you, then try content writing – every article is a new topic)
- Try and create your profile on these websites.
- See how others have advertised for their services. Learn from their advertisements and craft your own that you feel confident about.
- Price your services according to your skills – in the beginning you might want to keep the price low. Once you build a reputation and core network of clients, then you may raise your price.
Just give it a go.
You wont lose anything by doing the above, but if you don’t try and then you might lose a chance at making it on the internet.
I made the mistake of quitting my business online but I am back at it again. If I had kept on going with my work, then I would be in a very comfortable position right now.
But oh well, we live and learn.