Stop Googling: “How to make money online 2024”
Part I: Google does not know the real answer. Only you do.
This article comes in two parts. The goal is not to keep you on screen for long. Part I focuses on why we should stop googling how to make money online. Part II tries to cover the what. Sit back, grab a cup of some fluid you enjoy drinking, and smile.
Open a private session from your browser of choice. Pull up Google.com. Type in “make” followed by a space. What is the first suggestion by Google you see? Yup, chances are we are looking at the same thing. A lot of people “want to” make money online. Including myself. Including yourself. Let me take a wild guess. It is quite likely that there are two main classes of us reading this article.
Class one: You have tried your hand in a few online opportunities. Took a lot of bruises, dented the ego, a lot of not-so-constructive comparisons with your peers who are where you fancy, and yet could not pull any of your online endeavors off. Meaning you have not yet hit the money mark you thought you would before kicking off the hustle. You should have earned x amount of dollars by now. You have yet not. What is the expected follow-up response here? Look farther outside of what you have tried so far. Let’s expand the search. Maybe you should target a different niche? How about listing more products (in a retail sector, for example)? How about spending more on ads to widen up the reach or impressions? Maybe. maybe not!
Class two: You have been looking at possible income generating avenues that are run online. There are countless possible drivers that led you to this point. That is besides the point. But you are entertaining the idea of making money online. Maybe YouTube, Medium, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, or a blog has bombarded your feed with what they do best: Feeding you the trend. Lots of it. You have probably come across one of the followings (at the very least):
- How I made x dollars doing y
- Top 10 best ideas to make passive income in 2024
- Top 10 AI services to make money online fast in 2024
- Top 10 niches to avoid in 2024
- Let me teach you a winning strategy that has earned me x dollars in y amount of time
- Here are my actual (financial) results doing y online in 2024
- I found the best making money online strategy that makes you quit your job
- How to find niches with low competition in 2024
Guess what? The more you show interest in such contents, the more will be sent to your personalized feed. With the exposure to a few of those, say in drop shipping, chances are you start to feel that everyone else on the planet earth is making shit load of money, taking vacations while doing nothing, turning off their phone notifications due to constant flood of cha-chings selling stuff (services or products), and hanging with some hot looking chicks in the Caribbeans. It might appear as though you are the only one with only one damn stream of income. You are like, fuck, I have been missing out. Been a chronic roller coaster at your current work, perhaps. This is a great idea; drop shipping seems to be popping. It is going to be a lot easier, faster, and noticeably less demanding of my time than the current misery I am at right now. It is called passive after all. The money flows in with minimal attendance from day one.
The two classes have one core element in common: “you” is NOT in the picture. It’s all about “them”, “their” experiences, and what worked for “them”. Let me give you an analogy:
Consider Facebook and Google as individuals. Facebook cares about engagement on their platform. Google cares about how fast you find what you are looking for; optimizing for relevance and speed. Both of them make money via ads (obviously they are competing to provide value in exchange for your time and trust). Now the question is: What does success mean to them? Revenue? It might appear so. It’s way more than that. They define success in terms of what they do best (aka values they add to our lives).
Google’s mission → “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”
Facebook’s mission → “Give people the power to build communities and bring the world closer together”
Do you see a trace of “revenue” in their missions? Yet they make fuck loads of money each second you are reading this article. And they both use almost the same monetization model: they run ads. Nope. Instead, they focus on what they do best. Google connects you to whatever you are looking for on the net quickly and efficiently. You see some ads. It’s a win win. Similarly, Facebook connects you with people. You get engaged to some capacity. You consume some content while seeing some ads along the way (in your feed). Again, it’s a win win. That’s why if Facebook launches a new feature (Marketplace, for instance), Google does not necessarily follow. They simply see values in totally different things. Now I hope it is clearer that money is NOT the goal. But merely the result of delivering value. The key takeaway here is this: Start from inside out. NOT the other way around.
With the excess amount of content these days, it is easier than ever to get tricked into people’s missions. And forget to spend quality times with ourselves, to dive deep inside, discern our true building blocks, our core values, and our long term goals (missions). Find a spot that’s comfy. Grab a pen. And a paper. Relax every muscle in your body as if there is no gravity. Instead of focusing on “how to make money online” I suggest exploring your very world within to answer these three questions (first introduced by Bud Caddell):
1- What do you want to do? (Imagine money is not an issue)
2- What do you do well? (Observe your past behaviors/achievement/recognition as an outsider. Don’t judge yourself. Just observe)
3- What can you be paid to do? (People’s needs. Not wants. Simply put, the demand that already exists)
Now “you” is in the picture. In fact, everything else revolves around it. Now with you being in the center of the attention, what is your mission? What values can you deliver that people are willing to pay for?
Do yourself a favor. Pretend that the word “passive” never existed. It’s perhaps one of the most misleading concepts that is used to underestimate the level of attendance/discipline required for an online endeavor to truly blossom. Part II of this article is dedicated to ways that help us deliver values online. Via data, observations, and facts.
Thanks so much for your time. What values can you deliver by the way?
With love,
United States, somewhere by the ocean, 7:50 am
