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How many different ways can you make money for yourself? |
My high school education really let me down. Sure, they taught me reading, writing, and arithmetic, but what did they forget to include? What’s more important AND more practical?
Well…it’s money! Learning how to make, save, and spend money was never a topic.
I’m not a big conspiracy nut, but don’t you find it highly suspicious that most high schools across America (and I’m guessing the world too) avoid specific courses that teach this valuable knowledge semester after semester?
This should be required study starting in elementary school! REQUIRED…NOT OPTIONAL!
Think about it: why would the rich and powerful want you and I to compete with their rich children? If you know anything about Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
, you’ll know that rich dads teach their children about the money world, and poor dads do not.
But the burden of financial education shouldn’t completely rest on the parents’ shoulders. Public and private schools need to step up since most parents don’t have the proper knowledge anymore.
It’s no wonder that almost everyone I know is in debt. Credit cards are dangerous in the ignorant minds of consumers (especially the young). And most people are grossly incompetent when it comes to responsible spending. I learned this lesson the hard way!
But why did I have to?
No one taught me the wise ways of Wall Street, buying a house, taking out a business loan, dealing with credit card finance charges, investing in a money market account, getting business licenses, creating a simple budget, filling out different tax forms, marketing strategies, writing a simple business plan, customer service, saving for retirement, and as you can see, the list can keep going on and on.
What the hell!
This is America! The land of opportunity that implies anyone can start a business and get rich. What are your thoughts? Do you feel like they (I’m not exactly sure who “they” are) pulled a fast one? What’s the situation like in other countries?
Any way, I want to talk about diversifying your income:
Since you might not have a 100% understanding of what I’m talking about, this simply means to create more than a single stream of income. Having 2 or more ways to make money from different sources at the same time is safer because if one of those dries up, you still have other streams to protect you.
You need to have money coming in from multiple angles.
This is pretty important in these crazy economic times. So many people have been conditioned (brainwashed?) to have ONE job. Having only one job, one stream of income is so dangerous considering the rise of outsourcing and CEO’s laying people off left and right.
So, here are some of my ideas on diversifying your income as an online English teacher in an ESL world:
Idea One: Sell English lessons online by using Skype as a way to connect you with the student wherever he or she might live. My e-book will give you on a step-by-step plan on how to start, operate, find students, and keep them paying again and again. Sorry for the shameless self-promotion, but this site was created to make me money in a rewarding way that I could be proud of :-)
Idea Two: Write an e-book. Create an e-book that teaches them something. Make your own creative and exciting lessons and throw it all together in the form of a .PDF file (and there’s your e-book). Make another website (or blog) just for your e-book, and market it the same way you would as your Skype lessons.
After you make a sale to a student, you’re in a better position to sell them more products. Your student trusts you, they were satisfied with one buying experience, so logic dictates you can repeat this with other products.
Idea Three: Suggest Amazon.com products that the student might like. Sign-up for Amazon’s affiliate program, find some good English learning products, and do the following:
- Create a separate website/blog that focuses primarily on these Amazon products.
- Add a shop (an extra page) to your website (the one that sells your Skype lessons).
- After everyone of your student’s paid lessons, suggest a new product to them. Or bring up the product during the lesson at some point in which it smoothly fits and then send them the Amazon affiliate link in the Skype chat box.
Idea Four: Create a membership site that students only pay a few bucks a month to join. Once in the membership site, the students will have access to special text, audio, and video lessons that you’ve created or acquired. You could have a forum and a live chat page for students to interact together and thus increase the site’s sense of community. I’ve never done this, but I really want to. Does anyone know the best way to create a membership site that could do this? I’m not a big programmer, but if there’s an workable solution, let me know!
Idea Five: Write a paperback book and sell it through Lulu.com. This site is a publishing-on-demand company. All you do is upload your correctly formatted file to the site, and anytime someone buys it, Lulu will print off the book and mail it to the customer, and you’ll get a commission. They take care of all the sales and customer service! And you don’t have to pay any upfront costs!
Idea Six: Sell your own created t-shirts or other merchandise with catchy expressions. Gear them towards the love of English learning. Check out CafePress.com or Zazzle.com to get started (it’s free). One cool thing about Zazzle is that you can promote products that other people have made and get at least 15% commission.
Idea Seven: Create a blog just for English learners and put Google Adsense ads on them. And if you include Google Adsense to any of your other sites (like the one selling your Skype lessons), be careful. You don’t want a prospective student to click on the Google link thus only making you a few cents when the student might have bought a big package deal of lessons from you otherwise (you could miss out on $100 to $500 if they never come back to you). I would only put these ads on your site if you’re getting over 1,000 unique visitors a day.
Idea Eight: Make DVD video lessons. Sell these DVD or CD’s through Lulu.com or just CD’s through Zazzle.com.
Idea Nine: Create an affiliate account at ClickBank.com and refer English learning related e-products that other authors have created. You can always try to suggest other products to non-ESL people in the same way. If you’ve never heard of affiliate marketing, discover more at Wikipedia.
Idea Ten: Create interesting podcasts and give away half of each podcast for free. And if the student wants to hear the rest, they should pay you a few bucks or so. Here’s some free software to create nice podcasts.
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Time to get serious! |
Some of these ideas I’ve never experimented with, but I assure you, I will! We all need to buckle down and create multiple streams of income in this day and age!
If you’re ready to buy a domain name or two for your various websites and get some hosting for it, use the same guys that I currently use.
I’ve been happy with them and have been using them since 2003, and their prices are right, and their customer service is outstanding…no complaints! See what you think of the hosting plans. At least secure a domain name before someone else gets it first! Go here to buy your next domain name.
And yes, the above links are my affiliate links, but I really do use this company, and I’m proud to be their customer. I’m confident you’ll like their services too for your URL and website hosting needs.
Another good reason to go with them is that I can help you if you have trouble publishing your site. I’m familiar with their control panel that customers get.
I can easily walk you through any problems. I’ve used the control panel so much, it’s like riding a bike for me.
I could really help lower your learving curve. Time is money!
Contact me on Skype, and I will do my best to assist you with your newest website. If you have Skype, click here to chat with me, or click here to call me (if you have a microphone) or click here to add me to your list of Skype contacts.
And if anyone has any more ideas on creating multiple streams of income for online English teachers, please let us know! We’re all in this together, and we will be more successful if we share. The universe will reward us because of our good karma :)
