How To Make More Money In 2023 - A Beginner's Guide

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If you are looking for easy and legitimate ways to boost your income, you are in the right place. There are actually many ways for you to make more money, but I am not going to show you how to download apps or do surveys for pennies because I believe your time is worth more than that and you are worth more than that.

So, what I am going to do is to give you tested and tried strategies to help you increase your income every single year.

How To Get A Raise At Work

If you are working at a full-time job and need more money, you can either ask your boss for a pay raise or find a new job which gives you a higher salary.

Back when I was still working in the financial industry many years ago, I negotiated a 20% pay raise with my boss after working there for one year.

First and foremost, I really needed to increase my income back then because I had to pay rent and also make student loan repayment every single month. That didn’t include all my other living expenses.

So, my plan was to work very hard and add a lot of value to the company.

When it was time to do my salary negotiation, I could use that to my advantage because I knew very well that the more valuable I became, the more likely they would be agreeable to my demands.

Let me just give you an example.

Imagine that you are working in a digital marketing company.

If you could bring in 10 new clients for total revenue of $50,000 every month, you would be more valuable than a co-worker who only brings in 3 new clients for total revenue of $15,000.

Now, If both you and your co-worker go and ask your boss for a salary increment, who do you think would have a much better chance of getting their wish granted?

The answer should be obvious.

If you work harder and bring more value to your company than all your other co-workers, it is much easier for you to ask for an increase in your salary.

So, how do you make yourself more valuable?

Here are a few things you can do:

Increase sales and revenue for your company by improving your closing skills and finding more clients
Save more money for your company by implementing cost-cutting measures or finding a better yet cheaper supplier
Improve company productivity and efficiency by helping automate business processes and streamlining workflows
Take on more responsibilities and work
Learn new skills that are useful for your company

When you become much more valuable to your company, you might not even need to ask for a pay raise yourself because your boss would probably be very eager to keep you around with higher salary and better incentives.

I would not be surprised that you might be headhunted by competitors with more attractive remuneration packages than your current one.

How To Make Your Money Work For You

Getting a pay raise is just one way to increase your earnings. And there is a limit to how much more your boss is willing to pay you.

So, if you want to make more money, you should make your money work for you. In other words, you make money with money by investing wisely and strategically.

Before I go on to share how you can do it, I just want to say that you should NEVER leave all your savings sitting in a bank earning close to zero interest for you.

If you are doing this, please go search for high yield savings accounts in your country and put your money there.

But, what it does actually is just maintaining your purchasing power and NOT really growing your wealth because of this thing called inflation.

Of course, your goal should always be to grow your money instead of just preserving it.

So, how can you make your money work for you while you are working, sleeping and playing?

Depending on your life stage, money goals and also risk appetite, you can choose an investment method that is most suitable for you.

For myself, I am not a high risk-taker, so I only invest my money in good quality dividend stocks or stock index ETFs that have a decent dividend yield of at least 3%.

And every time, I get paid a dividend, I will reinvest it back into my portfolio.

Why do I want to do that?

Because I want to take advantage of the power of compounding to grow my wealth significantly over time.

Below is a graph that demonstrates the power of compounding.

With a comparatively small amount of $20,000 invested, Aaron was able to grow this amount to $500,000 while the other two people couldn’t even beat his returns even though they put in much more money.

Why?

Compounding works best over a longer period of time.

So, by investing much earlier, he let compounding work its magic to exponentially grow his money.

From the graph above, you can see the huge difference between ” compound interest” and ” simple interest”.

Generally, good stocks with strong fundamentals will appreciate over time. But, you should always avoid putting all your money into any single stock to minimize your risk.

Besides dividend stocks, there are other popular investments:

Rental property
Bonds
Endowment plans
P2P Lending
REITs

Start A Side Hustle To Make Extra Money

There are hundreds of different ways to make extra money on the side, but NOT ALL are worth putting your time and effort if your ultimate goal is to start a side hustle and grow it to give you the option of leaving your 9-5 job.

To me, there are two types of side hustles.

Type #1: Side hustles that will NEVER allow you to make enough to replace your day job and achieve the freedom you want.

Examples are taking paid surveys, mystery shopping, becoming a Uber driver, and food delivery.

Type #2: Side hustles that you can start and grow to earn a consistent income for yourself and even have the potential to surpass the income you are making from your job

Examples are starting an online store selling your own products, launching a service business around your skills(or other people’s skills) and starting an expert business selling your expertise.

So, how do you choose which side hustle is perfect for you?

Here are a few questions you can ask yourself:

Question #1: What is your goal for your side hustle?

Is it just a short term gig to help you make extra money to pay bills?

Or is it a side business you want to build over the long term and give you the option of leaving your day job?

Question #2: How much time can you spend on your side hustle every day and every week?

Are you only free on the weekends to work on your side hustle?

Or do you have time throughout the day to work on your side hustle?

Some side hustles give you a lot of flexibility in terms of time.

Examples of such side hustles:

Blogging
Creating & Selling Online Course
Part-Time Uber Driver
Publishing Kindle eBooks

But others might demand more of your time and require you to be available during a specific time period of the day.

Examples of such side hustles:

Online Teaching Jobs
Remote Customer Service Jobs

Question #3: How much money do you want to make from your side hustle?

Are you only trying to make an extra $1000 dollars every month?

Or are you looking to ramp it up to replace your salary and maybe make even more than what your day job is paying you?

You see, some side hustles have limited earning potential while some side hustles allow you to earn much more because you can grow and scale it over time.

For example, virtual assistant jobs and food delivery jobs are not going to make you a lot of money in the long term.

You are essentially just trading time for money, and there is also a limit on the hourly rate your employer is willing to pay you.

On the other hand, starting an online business (e.g. an online store, blogging or coaching business) on the side would have much higher earning potential.

So, depending on your situation, you choose side hustles that best suit you.

If your goal is to work at your own schedule outside your full-time job to make a consistent monthly income of $1,000 and more, here are the two kinds of side hustles that I recommend:

Service Business: It refers to turning your own skills or other people’s skills into services that other businesses or individuals already want and are willing to pay for.
Knowledge Business: It refers to packaging your expertise and knowledge into a product or service to help your clients get results that they desire. You can do so by offering coaching program and online courses.

First, let’s talk about how you can start a service business as a side hustle.

Selling services is one of the quickest ways to make extra money on the side.

It is all about solving problems and providing value for other people.

Just think back about what services you have paid for in the past.

What are those services?

Why did you pay for them?

Personally, I have paid for many services before:

Language classes
Dance classes
Personal trainer
Air-con repair services
Interior design
Business coaching
Babysitting

Each of these services either helps me solve a problem or offers a benefit that I really want.

So, what problems can you help other people solve? And what results can you help other people get?

First, I want you to write down all your skills (preferably at least 5).

If you are struggling to come up with ideas, it helps to take a look at the following:

Books you usually read
Activities you do in your free time
Subjects you studied in university
Tools you often use
Results you’ve gotten for yourself or others
Advice other people always ask you for
Certification you have obtained

Once you have identified all your skills, I would like you to think about what problems you can help other people solve with each skill.

For example, if you are good at playing the guitar, you can give guitar lessons to kids or adults.

If you are a good photographer, you can offer wedding photography services to couples.

If one of your skills is graphic design, you can turn it into graphic design services that help business design their marketing collaterals.

But what if you don’t think that you have any marketable skills or you don’t have time to fulfilling the services yourself?

There is actually a way to get paid without you providing the services yourself.

A few years ago, I started my own service business offering graphic design services to businesses.

The interesting part is that I didn’t have any graphic design skills.

What I did was that I found a group of talented freelancers online from platforms such as Fiverr and Upwork and asked them to work with me because I always have projects that I want to outsource.

Freelancers need work. And I need talented people to deliver the work for my clients. It is a win-win situation.

So, if you don’t want to sell your own skills or don’t have the time to deliver the services yourself, you can consider Service Arbitrage.

Basically, you are reselling other talented people’s skills and services.

How you make money is that you will charge your clients at a higher rate than what you are paying your freelancers.

So, that’s how you can make more money starting a service business.

Now, what if you have a lot of knowledge and expertise in certain topics?

How can you make money selling your knowledge and expertise online outside your day job?

There are three main ways to do it:

Start A Blog
Create And Sell Online Courses
Start A Coaching Business Online

If you are knowledgeable in certain areas, you can write about it on your blog and build an audience. When your blog reaches a certain amount of traffic, you might want to start monetizing your blog through affiliate marketing or selling your own products like online courses.

When it comes to online courses, you can package your knowledge into courses to teach people what you know. Generally, you can price your online courses as low as $27 to as high as $2,000.

So, if you have an online course that sells at $197, you just need to have 10 sales to make about $2,000 a month.

If you don’t want to spend a lot of time creating courses and training, you can choose to offer coaching to people by personally guiding and helping them through Skype or emails.

Generally for coaching, you can either charge an hourly rate or you can offer a coaching package.

Let say you have a high ticket coaching package that is priced at $3,000 for 2 months.

You just need two paying clients to make more than $5,000 every month and to replace your day job.

Free Training: How I Generated A Full-Time Income Online With My Blog In Less Than 12 Months

Conclusion

To make more money is not difficult. What you don’t need are more strategies and more information. You just need to follow ONE strategy and then take consistent action every day until you achieve your income goals.

Additional menu

How To Get A Raise At Work

How To Make Your Money Work For You

Start A Side Hustle To Make Extra Money

Conclusion

About Gladice Gong

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