3 Best Ideas to Make Money: So you can Do What you Want and Live Anywhere

So you like to travel the world? You think 2 weeks a year is not enough time to see what you want to see and do what you want to do? You like the feel of the warm afternoon sun beaming on your face while others are at the office? You like to live by your own clock and set your own schedule? Then this article is for you.

In order to do the above, we need money right? It doesn’t have to be a lot, but it has to be enough to sustain our basic needs and comforts. I consider the basics: rent, food, phone, health insurance, and transportation.

If the issue was just about making money to support these basic needs I think you could get a standard job. There are many job options such as: an accountant, account manager, office assistant, sales agent, lawyer, server, teacher, engineer, programmer, etc. The issue is that most jobs require us to physically be in a certain place at a certain time, disallowing for maximum freedom with our time.

So for the sake of helping you enjoy a FREE and INCREDIBLE lifestyle, I will share some low capital start up ideas that meet the requirements above and will help you make money in no time! I have been experimenting with these ideas for the past few years so I’ll save you time by sharing my experiences and the pros and cons of each option:

1) Ecommerce – Online Shop

With the growth of the internet it’s now VERY easy to set up an online store. All you really have to do is pick something you’d like to sell, pick a shop name, maybe make a logo, promote the site, then let the sales roll in.

The basic costs involved:
Website/Domain name: $8/year
Professional Logo: $300-500 (Free if you have design skills and DIY.)
Hosting/Hosted Solution*: $72/year or $360/year (hosted)
Your products and packaging costs*: Depends on products.

*Hosting– This is basically where all your information lies. If you have some basic web and IT understanding you could host your site with some recommended hosts like www.hostgator.com or www.bluehost.com

*If you don’t want to deal with that IT mumbo jumbo, just simply pay around $30/month for a host and shop SOLUTION such as: www.shopify.com or www.bigcommerce.com and even www.amazon.com

In terms of products, you will have to find a product you are interested in selling.

You could Create your own unique product. If you have great information to share this could be an ebook. If you have musical talent it could be a song or album. If you have great fashion sense or style it could be apparel. If you have an idea for something that the world needs it could be an invention. This would be up to you to source, manufacture, or produce. Once you make it, you would have to package and then distribute it.

As for selling existing products, you will need to find a vendor where you can get the products at wholesale price. This I will leave up to your resourcefulness. Essentially though you have 2 options once you find this vendor.

Buy wholesale or Dropship
Buy Wholesale would mean you buy the products at a lower cost and then sell it at the retail price. You control the quality and the packaging of your product.

Or you could dropship the product, which means EACH time you have a sale, you let the vendor know and then he will ship the product for you. This is convenient because you don’t have to worry about warehousing the item and they will pack and ship the item for you. You might not make as much of a profit off the item, but at least you didn’t spend any money to buy it and store it. You make money each time there is a sale on your site and you didn’t have to throw down any capital up front.

Pros and Cons:
Pro is that if you pick a good niche you can really make this a profitable lasting business. Some people make millions off a good ecommerce site and or make a good amount monthly from high cash flow and then sell the business for a good amount as well.

Con is that when you are starting up you will still have to deal with shipping logistics, product returns, following up with vendors, customer service, retaining customers, and maintaining your permits and various tax information since you are a retailer.

2) Content Website – Blog or Youtube Page

A Content Based Website is pretty much any site where you have interesting stuff on the site and people come see the interesting stuff on your site. You could have a blog, forum, online community, etc.. but for simplicity I’ll just focus on blogs.

For an easy start you can set up a: HOSTED blog www.wordpress.com or www.blogger.com or a SELF-HOSTED blog* www.wordpress.org

*It takes a little bit of online tech knowledge to get the self-hosted wordpress running, but I highly recommend it if you are going to build your own site.

The more obvious ways to MAKE MONEY from your blog is through ads or affiliate sales.

For Ads – You would just start off with google adsense. If and when you have more than say 3000 visits a day (this is just an estimate number) you could entertain private ads for companies. There are also other ad networks as well.

Affiliate Sales – Through a link on your site, you basically send people to another site like amazon.com. If the online surfer buys something because of coming from your site you will make a percentage off of that sale. It could be a small amount if the customer bought a pencil, but it could be a decent amount if he bought 10 computers and 10 monitors.

The reason I mentioned Youtube at the top is because funny videos, interesting videos, tutorial videos, vlogs (video blogs) are all forms of content as well. Anyone can be a partner on youtube now. All you have to do is set up an adsense account and plug in your adsense ID on youtube. It’s very self-explanatory. You select the option to “monetize” your video and they will start serving ads on your videos automatically. The more views and clicks you get the more money you make.

Quality over Quantity – Some people have this idea that they could make 1000 very mediocre sites that make $1/month (3.3 cents/day) which translates to $1000/month. This is do-able but for me, I’ve found that quality over quantity is the way to go. Assuming our time is limited, it’s about making one thing really good as opposed to scattering ourselves on sites that don’t add value for anyone. (This is different if you are setting up a huge network of sites and you do dedicate hundreds of hours into each of them.)

Pros and Cons
Pros – The start up capital is super low. If you just use youtube and blogger.com you pretty much spend $0. If you want to get basic-level fancy, you’d have your own website and host a wordpress site on your own… that would still be under $100/year.

Another pro is that maintenance is very manageable. Unlike an ecommerce where you are selling something and you need to make sure your customers are satisfied, for a content driven site, you just need to make sure you are producing quality content. You should keep your readers engaged and reply to their comments.. as well as making sure your site is up-to-date both in terms of security and design (if you are self-hosted). Other than that, just take great pictures, make awesome videos, and write interesting stuff!

Self-promotion – A content driven site can be great if you are trying to promote yourself, a cause, or a service. So while you are sharing your thoughts, you are also building a reader/fan base that is interested in what you have to say. You can use this platform to share what you think is important– just make sure it’s useful or entertaining. No boring stuff.

Cons – Because it’s so easy to set-up everyone and their mother has a blog or youtube page. You will really need to be creative, an excellent writer, and or an expert-among-experts in your field. What will make people want to read what you have to say?

Also, you might not make much at first. It can take a a while for your site and reader base to build up. If you’re fiending for cash immediately don’t count on this as your Hail Mary play. People need to start knowing about your site and you’ve got to have consistent NEW posts coming out on a regular basis so that people will return. It’ll take some time to develop your own writing style and also to know what your readers like.

Google Adsense Horror Stories – At first when you start out it’s fine to make money through google’s adsense, BUT you might be cautious to place all your golden eggs in one basket because google has been known to shut you down without giving you an explanation. In all fairness, they have their terms of service, but as a small business owner you might unknowingly violate one of their terms or be a victim of mistaken invalid clicks and you run the risk of being banned from their adsense service for life. This also means your youtube account will no longer be able to make a dime even though they may still run ads on your videos.

Scalability – Unless you slowly turn your blog into more of an online “publication” where you have multiple writers/editors, it will be hard to grow this into a big business that runs on its own. This means you will always have to stay on top of things with new posts and regular updates. You don’t want to let your site grow stale.

3) Have a Skill – Freelance Services / Private Lessons

(Examples: Yoga, Dance, Martial Arts, Language, Music, Designer, Editor, Diving Instructor)

Step 1 is that you need to have a skill or develop a skill at a high enough level of proficiency that others will be willing to pay to learn from you. You could do personal training, teach guitar, or design websites. One that seems to get most people by is “teaching English in a foreign country”. Somehow that last one seems the least respected by the rest of the English speakers living abroad.. usually because after a while you just don’t feel it’s that rewarding. (If you are pursuing a career in education and or linguistics, this is a whole other conversation.)

Step 2 is basically to find clients. You will have to promote yourself and validate your credentials so that people will trust in your abilities. At this point, even if you are a low-tech person, I would still recommend having a basic website where people can read about your background and find a way to reach you.

Quality over Quantity – Once you get rolling more and more people will want to start learning from you. It may be tempting to try to appeal to everyone’s price range and build up more and more students, but you need to think what the goal is. Supposedly you are reading this article because you want to make money to continue doing OTHER things you love and not develop a career in personal training.

I’ve found that if you just have 3 private lessons 2-3x/week. That’s about 6 hours out of your week (not too much time considering that’s equal to watching Lord of the Rings + Titanic once a week). You can make about $1000/month which combined with whatever endeavors you might have (start up business, acting, blogging, etc) should get you well on your way to covering your basic needs.

Pros and Cons
Pros – You could be doing something you love and sharing that interest with someone else while making some money. It’s low-tech and very personal. All it takes to start is a suitable location and having the skills to teach.

Cons – Definitely not scalable. The business model doesn’t really build on itself. You are in fact physically tied down to the location of your clients. If you want to travel, you still can, but it means having to start over and find new clients in your new location. Not a huge moneymaker.

More resources on how to make money online —

One more piece of advice I’d like to share. Whatever you choose – If you choose ONE thing, focus on improving it every day, and stick with it– You will succeed.

Hope these insights I’ve developed over the years have been helpful. This article is a 101 basics level post. I am going to include some links below if you would like to research deeper into these ideas.

Also, I am a fan of the 4 Hour Work Week concept – finding a “Muse”. A muse, as described by Tim Ferriss (author of the 4 Hour Work Week), is a low-maintenance business that generates significant income. Once your “muse” is set up you are free to follow the passions of your life without worrying about the basic monetary needs.

How to make money from a blog: Very detailed post about making money from blogging.

26 Tips for writing a great blog: Focusing on the actual content in your blog and the writing that will make it stand out.

Three best ideas on making money online: An expansion on the ideas in this article.

Finding your muse: Case studies to give you ideas on developing your muse.