Making money online is a fantastic way to support an adventurous and creative lifestyle. But if you’re new to online earning, you may feel overwhelmed by the quantity of information. Inexperience may have led you to make bad decisions, such as:
- buying into online scams
- remaining so distrustful of genuine opportunities that you never dare to try them
- waffling about, trying one thing after another but never staying with anything long enough to be successful
If any of these sound familiar, no wonder you’re frustrated. Unfortunately, this is where a lot of people give up or become cynical. But if you want to support your alternative lifestyle, learning how to earn money online is invaluable. No other income venue allows you to make money from anywhere in the world that has an internet connection. No other income venue instantly connects you with millions of potential customers. No other income venue provides opportunities for passive income (otherwise known as making money in your sleep).
A quick vocabulary detour (blink and you’ll miss it)
Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink
Malcolm Gladwell, in his excellent book Blink, popularized a type of rapid cognition known as thin-slicing.
Thin-slicing refers to the ability to make sense of a situation based on the thinnest slice of experience. It’s how a heart specialist can make an accurate diagnosis within a couple moments of examining a patient. It’s how John Gottman can predict whether a married couple will still be together in 15 years with 90% accuracy, after watching them converse for only 15 minutes. It’s how a friend of mine can tell you not only the song, but the year and venue for nearly any Phish album you play for him, within 30 seconds.
Thin-slicing means that the more time you spend doing something, the more able you become to make accurate snap judgments.
That’s nice. How does thin-slicing tie in with making money online?
Like everyone else who decides to earn money online, I went through a learning curve. Dumb luck was my friend: I didn’t lose any money, I didn’t get scammed, and I hit upon some reliable ways to earn money online fairly quickly. However, I did spend a lot of time investigating opportunities that–while perfectly legitimate–simply didn’t suit my personality or didn’t have enough earning potential to be worthwhile.
Now, after thousands of hours experience earning money online, I no longer waste time testing out and evaluating every potential earning opportunity. I can usually tell within a matter of moments whether an opportunity is worth pursuing. This is an example of thin-slicing (and it’s bloody useful).
When it comes to making money online, thin-slicing allows you to make better decisions about how you spend your energy. It dramatically increases your earning potential because you’re not frittering away time on dead-end online jobs. You’re focusing on what really matters.
If you’re new to making money online, then you obviously won’t yet have developed the ability to thin-slice. The only way to gain this ability is through experience. Unfortunately, as with any experience that involves large amounts of money changing hands, you can end up very happy or you can end up bankrupt.
Going bankrupt, as well as being irksome in itself, would probably put a damper on your attempts to earn money online. If you’re getting ready to support an alternative lifestyle by earning money online, the five tips below will help keep you out of trouble until you have acquired the power of thin slicing. (Which, according to Gladwell, should only take 10,000 hours.)
1. All that glitters is not gold (but it might be)
When you’re more experienced, you’ll be able to evaluate online earning opportunities in a few seconds (thin slicing, remember?). But one of the biggest mistakes people make when they’re just starting out is to dismiss opportunities without trying them. They usually dismiss an opportunity because
- they don’t understand the model or
- they erroneously think it’s identical to a similar opportunity.
Don’t make this mistake. Obviously, you don’t have time to try everything, but if you find yourself saying, “This can’t possibly work,” or “This would take forever to make any money,” take a couple minutes to play devil’s advocate. If there are related forums, go read what people are saying. If even a few people have achieved success, that means anyone can. Investigate each and every opportunity on its own merits.
2. Test your parachute before leaping off the Cliffs of Insanity
It’s great that you’re taking the leap into an alternative lifestyle, but making good money online is not something you can master in a couple of hours (although hopefully it won’t take you 10,000 before you start seeing results).
If you’ve never earned money online before, there’s no reason to assume you’d enjoy it or be good at it. Test it out first before jumping into a massive lifestyle change. Also, if you’re counting on your online income to support your travels around the world, you might as well start earning before you leave. You’ll be able to plan your budget more accurately, and you can see what’s working and what’s not.
3. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket
It’s never wise to rely on one income stream. Most people do this with offline jobs, and they find themselves up poo creek when someone pulls the plug. With internet jobs, it’s even sillier to put all your eggs in one basket, because it’s so easy to diversify without adding any time to your workload.
Imagine if you were counting on one specific website as your income source, and the country you travel to just happens to block that website. Or the website changes their policy and doesn’t allow offshore labor, or you can’t find a fast enough internet connection…any number of things could happen, and those little glitches turn into disasters if you don’t have more than one income stream.
It’s fine to focus mainly on one (I make a large chunk of my income by writing articles at Constant Content, for example), but always have a back-up plan in case your main stream dries up.
4. All play and no work makes Jack a broke boy
Some people seem to be laboring under the impression that there exists a secret button labelled “instant wealth,” hidden somewhere in the mysterious folds of The Internet. They willingly spend hours searching for this button, sometimes even going so far as to shell out thousands of dollars to charlatans, yet the idea of actual work sends them into a fit.
Would you walk into a brick-and-mortar office and expect someone to pay you for sitting on your butt? If your goal in earning money online is to “not have to work,” then you are barking up the wrong tree. If your goal is to find work with flexible hours, a convenient schedule and a portable interface, then the internet is the tree for you.
While we’re on this arboreal theme, I want to emphasize that even passive streams of income require pruning and watering now and again. Make sure you plan out how often you’ll be working and where you’ll be working, before you zoom off on your magic carpet.
5. Nobody steals the internet
Always back up your work online. If your computer is stolen or breaks, you need to be able to work from an internet cafe until you can replace your equipment. Also, if you’re using a public computer for work, you need to be able to do so securely, so that your personal information can’t be accessed by anyone.
If your main stream of income requires a toolbar or a program that you have to download, you probably won’t be able to do so on a public computer. So make sure you have a few online jobs that let you log into a simple website and work without having to do anything fancy. There’s no point having an online job if you’re relying too much on offline equipment.
Were these tips helpful? Do you have anything to add? Make a comment at the end of the post. But first…
2 resources to help you evaluate online earning opportunities
If you come across an online earning opportunity that’s sending off alarm bells, but you’re not sure why, and you’re feeling sorta tempted, but sorta scared….check out these two sites before making a decision.
Paul Schlegel reveals work-at-home scams and helps you find legitimate work at home businesses and jobs. Not only does Paul discuss specific sites and products, he also posts tons of helpful articles that teach you how to improve your evaluation skills.
The site’s tagline is “We lose money so you don’t have to,” and that’s the site in a nutshell. The owner, Steve, tests online earning opportunities and then posts reviews of the good, the bad and the scammy.
If you want answers about a specific site or product, search those 2 sites and see if either of them has reviewed it. If they haven’t, maybe you can get them to!
Fly, little bird, fly…
Earning a living online has been wonderful. It sets me free from financial stress, it enables me to travel anywhere in the world, and it helps me focus on living my life rather then “just getting by.” This is what I want for you, too. I wish you the best in your journey to an alternative lifestyle, whatever shape or form that may take for you. Don’t give up.
I want to help you find your calm center and experience travel with courage, curiosity and compassion.