Wait, George… What? Only 2?

If you go to google and search for  “make money online”  or “earn money from home” and related terms you will see that you will get many results with variety. Especially for beginners, this can be very confusing since there is no “clear” answer on this topic. Others may say “best 10 ways to make money online” or “37 jobs you can do online”. And the list goes on.

So I am going to explain what I mean that there only two ways to accomplish this. These are the two MAIN categories. Everything which is related to the making money online niche belongs to either one of two. And these are :

• a) Do the work by yourself
• b) Outsourcing

Below i going to explain each one of them separately.

Do the work by yourself

This is the most common way for people to get involved and start making money online. The majority want to know first what they are doing, by making things done alone. And this also requires minimal cost which equals to minimal risks. However, there are so many sources, so many ways, products, websites, courses, articles, videos, tutorials, software, terms, that usually people don’t know where to start, what to do first, what to learn and which path to follow. I was in the exact same position when I started. And in the beginning, you kinda have the feeling that you need or want to learn everything. Might be useful. Until your mind fill up from information overload. And then you feel more confused than you were before starting.

Doing the work alone is not an easy task (is not hard either). You must consider that you need to put effort to reach a goal. There is no get rich quick scheme (there are some exceptions which I will describe in the next chapter of outsourcing). But first, you must know what to do, what you need to learn to accomplish your target, what tools you must get, and so many other things. But the most important of all is think for yourself what do you want to do.

If you ask a random person “Do you want to make money online?” the answer will be close to 100% yes. Sounds easy, interesting, modern with a lot of potential. And this is exactly what it is. But what most people don’t consider is that money from home is not a one-way ticket. For example in real life if someone loves cooking would it be better to work in a restaurant or hotel as a chef rather than in a supermarket as a cashier? In which job between the two do you believe he will be more happy and more productive? (let’s assume the salary is the same)

This is what the internet is all about also. You must be very interested in what you are going to get involved, otherwise, you will get bored, believe that nothing is working, will not put the effort needed, won’t try to learn and improve your skills, not invest in your business, and finally quit or try the next “big thing” or “shiny opportunity or product”. In real life, if you are working you are kinda tied to the job you do because it fills your needs. Whether you like it not. Most of the people would be very happy if tomorrow they could quit their jobs and do something they love. Have more money and more freedom. Work from the comfort of their home. However, when you get involved in the internet world you are not tied. You are free to do what you want. What to learn. What to buy. In general what to do. And you can quit anytime. This is one of the most difficult tasks people can’t do. Never quit! 

I can tell you hundreds of ways to make money online working by yourself. Let’s name a few general: freelancing, blogging, e-commerce, video making, affiliate marketing, trading, CPA, promoting products, etc. By freelancing, there are hundreds of things to do: design, coding, web development, virtual assistant, copywriting… By designing I mean you can design logos, banners, thumbnails, icons, vectors, posters. You can sell your own art or provide your services to others. The list is endless I will create an article in the future for freelancing alone and for many other things also.

As you can see there are so many subjects you can do that you literally must choose what you want and my personal opinion is to get involved with something you really like. Money should not be your main focus. But someone may ask: I want to be a designer but I don’t know how to do it. Well, the good news is that every service or skill can be learned if you don’t have it. If you want to create a blog you can. And everything else you will be able to do all you need is effort and discipline. There are so many tutorials out there that fulfill your needs. And almost everything you want to learn is free. At least the basics. Even software for example needed for designing can be free if you choose it. Some may say that in order to design you need adobe’s photoshop or illustrator but I can say the free alternatives which are gimp and Inkscape are of equal quality. You can go and see some amazing work made by free software. So it’s not so much about the software here, is about the effort, the knowledge, the never-ending learning process. This is what makes a designer successful. Of course, at some point, there are certain tools needed to accomplish something but you first start from the ground up.

Of course, you cannot learn everything or do everything by yourself when things get complicated. For example, let’s say you want to start a blog. Maybe you will learn how to set up a blog (buy domain name, hosting) but if you need to buy a theme, for example, you don’t need to learn how to code a blog theme. Or if you created a simple logo by yourself and your blog grows big maybe you need to consider to create a professional logo. At that moment you don’t need to learn to design from scratch you can pay someone ( a freelancer) to design the logo you want. This is what called outsourcing and is the topic I am going to talk about next.

Outsourcing

Outsourcing is the business practice of hiring a party outside a company to perform services and create goods that traditionally were performed in-house by the company’s own employees and staff.  (source >investopedia<)

This is a huge topic also in online marketing. Outsourcing really means you pay the services, products, and in general, anything you want and the job is done by someone else. Usually, people start by doing the work by themselves and when they reach a level of knowledge and experience they start to outsource things and they focus more on other staff which are the end projects. As mention above we can start outsourcing some things even from the very beginning. Or we can outsource everything and focus only on the end result.

For example, let’s say someone has an idea of building a keto diet website. He can pay a freelancer to set up the website, another to create the design-related (banners, logos etc), another to write articles, and maybe some others to create youtube channel and videos, create and manage ads, etc. So creating a website can be a quick process with great results but you must pay for it so all the job is done for you without effort from your side. A lot of entrepreneurs are doing this. But most of them have gone from the way of starting themselves and know things from the inside side. This way you can understand and know what needs to be done and how much money is going to cost. You are focusing more on your ROI (return on investment) rather than the actual work. If you create a website that will cost you 500$ and will give you let’s say 100$ per month that is a great investment to make. But you must know what to do and how. Even finding the right team to make your idea a ready production takes time, knowledge, testing. Nothing is easy as it may seems.

So if you have an idea to create the next facebook or youtube, for example, you can pay for someone (not one) to do it. This is a way let’s say to get rich quick. Maybe you have an idea for a mobile app. You can pay a developer(s) to create the app, you publish it and if it is good or innovative it can go viral in no time. You hear some stories about people who got rich on the internet because they created a product or a website but usually this means outsourcing or a lot of effort behind the final result.

That is all, for now, I think I made this concept clear for you. So even if you are a beginner or a more advanced user in internet marketing or entrepreneurship you will know what to do to continue from now on.

Tell me your thoughts about working alone and outsourcing. Which is more suitable for you on your online path? And what do you want to accomplish?

George 😀