It’s time to take a step back and look at ways to make a bit of cash. The landscape has changed drastically in the last 10 years and it is easier than ever to make money in our society (I will explain more below).
If you follow our blogs or audio shows you know we are both (Chris and I) always on the lookout for ways to make money. I’d say we have both been in a bit of rut in the last few years so I thought this blog post would help me to realign thoughts on ways to make money (since, like I said up earlier, things have changed in the world when it comes to making money).
So come along as I do a bit of brain storming with the years of experience I have to guide that brain storming and use that info to make some money yourself. If you have ideas, leave some comments below. I will also be linking to some old blog articles that may bolster (or hurt) my thoughts on the matter.
In 2021 I made the goal of making 1 million dollars gross. Now, I am not going to analyze why it didn’t work but I will look at what I was doing towards those ends and see how they fit below. You can read about my goal here.
As a side note, my wife supports the lifestyles of many YouTubers (to my annoyance) and many of them say if you are going to make money, you need multiple (like 10) streams of income. I feel I am pretty close to that but that just seems to prove that thought is crap…
Making Money (the list)
This is the initial list and I will get more specific in upcoming blogs, but this is a more general list to start with:
- Job
- Traditional
- We all (most of us) have our jobs. Our little slice of comfort we are so reluctant to let go of. I have (edit HAD) a good job. I am (edit WAS) paid well and have (ok) benefits. I find it hard to just up and quit it unless I have some iron clad form of major income. I have expressed my interest in the past of taking a step back and taking significantly less to have a job I’d enjoy more. I have applied many times for jobs that pay way less than I make now for the (perceived) fun of working for Six Flags here in Texas. Will that ever happen… no probably not unless I’m forced out. When you have a family to support, making such drastic changes is just too risky.
- Contract
- This is more or less side work. I am in IT and I also have a few doctor’s offices that I do work for on occasional basis (edit NOT ANYMORE). The amount of work has never really ‘made it worth it’ to focus on this. It seems to be more spending money than anything else. I could focus on this and expand the business, but it would eat too much into my time with my normal job. It’s nice to have a ‘backup’ job so to speak if something happens, but I certainly don’t put my eggs in this basket.
- Traditional
- Sales
- Ebay
- Ebay Reselling seems to be the fall back since it is relativity easy. I’ve had the most luck with it thanks to Goodwills and the like. However, it appears to be little more than a hobby-type job. The return percent is high but the return amounts are just to small to call it a major money maker unless you have the passion for it (or some sort of great supply)
- Retail
- The first business I started in 1997 was selling Japanese model kits and import games. I then opened an ill-fated comic/collectible shop (click here to read all about that and just click on the link at the bottom to go to the next part) and then moved to conventions. Conventions aren’t too bad but the rental cost and the need to travel make it prohibitive to making a major income source. It is sort of a hobby-type business too.
- In 2022 (as we did in 2014 and 2018) we are reprinting the game Chris and I came up with (Zombie Death Force, Go!). We are getting it printed in bulk from China and will be Kickstarting it soon. This will give us some retail (via Amazon) sales. This retail route kinda bleeds over into the Art/Creativity category since we create the games we sell. If we can get some sort of momentum going and can turn the profits from the previous games into new bulk purchases from suppliers this could lead to bigger and bigger paydays (and provide a nice stock).
- I have also created a new card deck based on Prepardness. As soon as it arrives (it’s currently shipping) I will be adding a link to it.
- I am slow working on a 50ish page Dice Games book to sell on Amazon (print on demand). More to come…
- Liquid Assets
- Cars, houses, and personal items is what I put in this category. Our house is our biggest asset so this would be one of the best things to ‘invest’ in. I have been climbing the real estate ladder for years and am sitting on a nice return if I sell (edit NOT ANYMORE). My goal with this (house) is to pay for my next house (or most of it), so it is not necessarily going to make me wealthy. I could do the whole flipping thing (which Chris thinks is a great way to make money), I just feel housing is too much now and I don’t seem to have enough time (or money down) to make that start. I don’t own many personal items that have any real value so that won’t work for me either.
- Ebay
- Art/Creativity
- Games
- As you have seen Chris and I enjoy making games. If we really stuck to it and converted these ideas into tangible games we could start a nice business that is also a bit of a hobby (this relates to the Retail category above).
- NFT
- Another one of the ways making money is alot easier today than in the past. Now this is another Crypto type fad but if you have the skill (and it doesn’t seem to take much) to create some sort of work of digital art, there are some possibilities. Seems like you in order to make a profit you need to really mark that stuff up cause it takes money upfront to get it into the blockchain. At this point tho, I think this fad is about faded out…
- YouTube (Monetization)
- As I stated in my 2021 “year of riches”, monetization was the way to go when it came to making significant money. This way of making money is also the focus of what I was saying when I spoke of things changing and how easy it can be to make big money. One trick though… you must have the DRIVE. You aren’t going to get rich by posting a video a month. It takes commitment. Ive seen it all, people digging though trash, people cooking, people playing with toys, people whispering into a microphone while stroking it… all making enough money to quit their jobs and live off of YouTube. However… they have one thing in common, they KEEP DOING IT. They are committed, they have schedules, they keep going back to the well to sustain those views. That is what most of the rest of us fail utterly to do. I honestly don’t think you have to have anything special to say in order to get monetize. You just have to keep saying it…
- At the end of 2020 and beginning of 2021 I hit this idea with fire!!!!! I did some research on what types of videos were pulling in mega views and decided that kid videos were the place to be: They are not topical so they are timeless. Doesn’t matter when a kid watches them, yesterday or 2 years ago. Most Youtuber’s material is very much about right now, so videos get stale. The end goal is to produce a video that keeps getting views. I got started watching videos on getting the most out of your YouTube channel. I busted butt getting over 100 videos made and posted in the first month of 2021. I added all the options and keywords, tips, and tricks, to getting views. You can see them all here. In the end I got a big fat nothing for a month of hard work. I actually paid for a couple of the videos to be promoted via fiverr and that still didn’t get me anything.
- Then Chris and I started the whole reselling sub-business and I started making videos for those. They did even less well. You can see them here. This channel/effort was right in that ‘must be topical’ since people what to see whats out there in the reselling realm at this moment. I shoulda known.
- So why is this category so much bigger than the rest? Because this appears to be the easiest path to big money. Like I said earlier, it is if you have the DRIVE. If I had continued to play with toys/puzzles/etc consistently for the last 13 months would have that 1,000 subs and 4,000 of hours of watch time? Possibly. There is this guy who started following Chris and me on the reselling channel and he literally puts out a video (or 2) each day. They are short and they are usually about toys he likes and buys and opens from various stores or goodwills, etc.. most of his videos have 3 or 4 views and he isn’t the most photographic dude, but he has the DRIVE. He is almost to 1k subs. Gotta give him props.
- If you want to see what those people are making with their dumb videos of hamsters, cats, playdoh, etc, then check out Social Blade. This site isn’t super accurate but it can give you a decent idea. When compared to YouTubers who reveal what make, Social Blade typically shows less than what they actually make.
- Games
- Investments
- Stocks
- Last year I made some discoveries when it comes to buying/selling stocks and taxes. Here is the blog. I then instantly got hooked into the Crypto craze and am still regretting it. Stock are a long-term investment, nothing to get you rich unless you are day trading (and that is probably just as risky as crypto). Let’s move along…
- Options
- This is my latest (2024) craze for get rich quick. I am just learning how to do it, since it is so convoluted. It’s pretty much gambling but there you go…
- Crypto
- A craze, that’s all this is. It’s like going to the casino. If you go in with that mentality, you will be fine. It’s a game. How are their 17 year old millionaires out there because of it? They were lucky.
- Liquid Investments
- I am speaking of precious metals. I have a little and it is more of a long term investment like stocks, so unless I am doing some sort of crazy speculation this method is just a bit too out there for me.
- Stocks
Now that I have laid out my ideas on the different types of income (I am sure I have missed a few) I need to stew over this list and come up with some new items and additional thoughts on what I do have listed.
The next set of blogs will take the following ideas and split them out more:
- Retail
- Services
Then we will look at a sub-set of Services which will be online content creation.