What are the best ways to make money?
A question that appears so many times in blogs, newspapers and other media channels. We all have this opinion that the classiest lifestyle is one that allows you to work for less hours and earn you more.
This sounds a lot like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? However, to those lucky ones who set up their base in passive cash through various investments, it’s more about reality.
In this world, the fact remains that if you wish to make more money, you need to progress and build multiple income streams. If you are wondering what I are talking about, then here’s an insight to the path that I believe to be working best.
Have you heard about Robert Kiyosaki? He’s a smart businessperson who actually came up with the paths (or methods you can say) that can lead people towards generating more income. He came up with a “Cash flow Quadrant” that pretty much breaks down the way that people need to follow. Here it is:
Employee (Your Time = Money)
Working on an hourly wage is something that should come with no shame.
Just like majority people out there, when you work in a good company, the chances are you will get some good cash.
Also if you’re not working yet and looking to score a job in marketing, then check out my detailed guide to start a career in marketing.
However, the only drawback with this means of income is that your wealth may face restrictions because of the number of hours you spend working in a day.
The chances are more that you may have enough to pay up your monthly bills. What about a comfortable lifestyle? It is likely that you won’t find a way to financial independence through this way. According to the quadrant by Robert, this channel can help you to earn only as much as 5% of income as compared to the others.
Self-Employed (Your Efforts = Money)
Being a self-employed person, in this case a freelancer can allow you to move on a path of self-determination of how you wish to control your day, yet get money out of the time you spend.
In a day, there are just 24 hours, and having a regular job could mean limiting your wealth because your willingness and stamina will eventually go away.
However, working as a freelancer gives you more time to work on your stamina, work on flexible hours, and a lot more advantages. In simple words, if you actually dedicate your time to freelancing, then you are likely close to live your dream life of comfort, and earn as much as 95% of money compared to other job options.
Business Owner (Efforts of Others = Money)
Business owners have a bigger potential chance of earning some serious cash.
As a business owner, you can develop a good system that would allow you to combine the efforts of a serious group of people to help you work towards the enhancement of your own wealth.
Definitely, they reap out benefits too, but the main point of choosing this path is to catapult yourself out of the time, efforts, and wealth constraint as compared to the first two paths above. If you actually practice this right, your chances of earning money can turn very high.
Investor (Your Money = More Money)
This is a common practise.
It’s a about you putting more money to work so it helps you to make more. Where the previous three methods may require you to invest your time in the work or management, investing is all about pumping your money into valuable property and other income generating assets.
Through this channel, you can escape the constraint of management and time, but at the same time, you are at the risk of market prices changing. Being an investor is commonly viewed as one of the best ways to make money.
Pros and Cons of Being an Employee
Pros
- You get sick leaves and paid holidays
- A salary that proves to be secure for you and your family with a chance of getting bonuses and promotions
- Access to employee benefits including employer pension scheme
- Interaction with new people, new friends and a healthier social life
Cons
- Hectic routine due to constant travelling from home to your workplace
- Fixed number of holidays you can take every year
- Less time with your family because of longer hours of work
- You work constantly with little freedom to make choices that matter to you
Pros and Cons of Being a Freelancer
Pros
- You can work any time of the day and attend to your family
- You are “your own boss”
- You can choose to take up any project that suits you
- Escape from the pressure of time work and travelling
- Choose projects that pay higher
Cons
- Have to take care of every aspect of the business (accounting, sales, insurances etc)
- You probably aren’t going to take holidays as each day means new projects
- Irregular income as some projects may earn you more and some will pay less
Pros and Cons of Being a Business Owner
Pros
- Great earning potential as you will have people working for you
- Make important decisions that are crucial for your business success
- Experiment different plans and practices to see which one works out best and which doesn’t
- Higher learning capacity as your staff can add in their knowledge and experience
- Opportunity to lead people
- Having a sense of “making the world a better place”
Cons
- Usually requires capital to set up the business
- You need to dedicate time and long hours to start. The thought of holidays is a “no go zone” for you
- Starting a business means no time for your loved ones and no time for things you enjoy
- Sometimes, you have to undertake unpleasant tasks like firing a friend or someone who doesn’t have the right talents
- Income is somewhat fluctuating based on the market
Pros and Cons of Being an Investor
Pros
- You are in control what happens with your finances
- Higher stability and financial freedom through proper money management strategies
- Very high earning potential
- You have more free time to spend with your family and loved ones as there’s is rarely work related urgencies
Cons
- It could become stressful to follow up on investments that are not showing returns
- Need large amount of capital and knowledge to only live off your investments
- Money management and investing knowledge is required to be successful
The Best Way to Look at These Lifestyles
As you can see, each one of these four lifestyles have their own pros and cons. However, my suggestion is that a happy who want to be successful, should try to move from employee to self-employed to business owner to investor at some point in their life.
Since earning money is not the most important thing in life (being happy is), one most figure out which lifestyle suits them best. Because if you love what you are doing, chances are that you will be happy and the money follows.
Think about gathering enough experience in one quadrant, and finally moving on to the next.
Employee to Freelancer
Working as an employee as you can see comes with many advantages. When you work under an employer, you get to learn many new skills like business management and a lot more.
If you decide to change your job and think about the transition from an employee to a freelancer, then you actually have a plus point here. How is this so? As an employee, you learn more about becoming an expert; you can enhance your skills. Eventually, you can use those skills, and start up your own freelancing base.
Take Up Side Projects
When you become a freelancer, you can finally gather the courage to take up your own part time projects. You can spend more time of your day to make money, build a stronger client/contractor base, and choose to work on higher paying projects.
Freelancing businesses keeps growing every single day. There are thousands of companies and individuals who need help with all sorts of things where they are not experts themselves. They need you to be that expert.
Build up a Personal Brand
If you want to establish a strong base in the freelancing world, you can think about building up your personal brand. This allows you to present yourself as an authority and attract more business success and profits.
A great way to start building your personal brand is setting up a blog and creating a social media presence.
Freelancer to Business Owner
With enough experience from being an employee, then a freelancer, you can scale up your own business.
From freelancer to business owner transition is easy and logical when you are able to attract a lo of customers and you reach to the point where you can’t take on new project because you don’t simply have the time.
Get More Projects
Being overbooked and hands tied to work, should be looked as a positive thing. This allows you to actually go and seek out other freelancer, who could help you with your tasks. You don’t need to think about giving your job away. You still are the one who is the contractor you are simply outsourcing the service from somebody else. Search your own freelancer networks for help. Sites like Elance (now Upwork), Fiverr, Freelancer, peopleperhour, Toptal, and so many others are a good platforms where to look.
Hire part-time employees
Being a business owner obviously means to avail the help of team efforts. For the success of your business, you need to think about hiring long-term employees. Of course, you have to provide a stable income to them and sometimes be willing to get less for yourself, but this will pay up for it in the future.
These days, since freelancing is on fire, you can easily find multiple people with the best talents. Team efforts is the key to more money and you have to think about hiring people on part time basis. This helps to ensure the growth of your business as employees getting the sense of being part of something bigger than just a freelance business.
My suggestion is to start looking for employees when you have so much work that you need to work everyday. If you are engaged 24/7 – it’s too late. It will be very difficult to take on new people if you don’t have time to delegate work to them and be the project manager.
Business Owner to Investor
After you become an established business owner, investing is something you can finally think about in the long-term. With enough money, investments won’t be a problem for you at all. You can buy either market shares, properties, lands or even invest into your next venture.
At this stage, investments can help to increase your revenue and later as the years go by, you will see how your finances multiply. Eventually, a time will come when the money you’ve invested will start growing at stable pace. Depends on your lifestyle, but if done properly you would be able to earn more every year than you would spend.
Don’t Put your Eggs into One Basket
This is a very common metaphor for having multiple investments. While it is tempting to invest into large amount into one or two high return options, it is much more wiser to invest small amounts into multiple options.
The truth is that some of your investments will not be profitable and some will be simply lost. By investing into multiple options you have higher chances to make more money. When you start investing, you should look for options that are most appealing to you.
For example, I have worked with start-up myself and I know the struggle they are having. I also know that 90% of all start-ups fail, but the ones that succeed are often driven by new a technology and a very ambitious disruptive vision.
Therefore I would start by seeking out 20 most promising start-ups and see what is their growth strategy and are they looking for investments. I would then invest into all of the promising start-ups with proper growth strategy, strong team with track record and sound unit economics. I know that maybe only 2 of them will make it, but that will be enough to cover the loss of other investments.
So if you have $1,000,000 to invest, try scattering it between various companies. Same goes in all fields. Although real-estate is stable, there is no guarantees that it will stay stable and profitable for years to come.
2020 was a rocky year due to the global pandemic and we saw many crazy swings up and down. These moves can easily wipe out investors with “weak hands”. Either way when potential rescission is around the corner and we have uncertain economic times then commodities like gold and silver have historically done well.
Cryptocurrency market has also an interesting outlook for the future as it serves an hedge against inflation. We’ve already seen massive adoption of cryptocurrency in Venezuela as people slowly lose confidence in their national currency due to the hyperinflation.
Conclusion
- Pursue your career as an employee
- Become an expert in your area
- Start doing side work and freelancing
- Make the leap from being an employee to entrepreneur
- Build your business
- Have the courage to invest into other business and opportunities
- If you fail, learn from your failure and start again
Remember life is fun if you make it fun. So don’t settle if you are unsatisfied. Keep looking. I’d like to state one more time that making money is not the most important thing in your life – being happy is.
Don’t look for best ways to make money. Look for best ways to become better at what you do and the financial rewards will follow.
I hope this article helped you to start thinking about your life and career and what you could start doing today to move towards your dreams.
I can’t wait to quit my job and start working from home as a freelancer. From there I don’t know where I’ll take it but being able to support myself and make something extra from design gigs will be a big change from me.