An Introduction to the 3 Simple Steps to Earning A Living From Your Skills Online

Are you looking to earn a living online? This article is the first in a series of posts on the 3 Simple Steps To Earning A Living From Your Skills Online.

What’s the earn-ability of your skill?

In other words, just how much are you earning presently from what you know?

And how much could you possibly earn?

The ability to turn your skill into something that earns you a living on your own terms completely depends on you.

If you’re at crossroads about how to turn your skill into a digital business that adds value, the three simple steps in this post will get you started.

So reading this is the best decision you could make right now.

Unlike other veteran freelancers, I’ve only earned from writing only for 5 years. But in that space of time, I’ve realized that you can practically earn from any skill, if you take the right steps.

I’ll briefly explain each of these three steps in the rest of the post:

Determine what you want to sell
Choose a marketing method
Share your good work

It’s Not as Tough as You Think

I won’t deceive you by saying building a digital business is an easy task. It’s not. But at the same time, it’s not hideous. Like everything else, it’s a process.

And knowing what to do puts you in the right direction. It sets you apart from those only looking to set up businesses that scam people of their money.

And it doesn’t require a million dollars to start either.

Everyone Started At the Beginning

Those authorities you look up to were also once a confused bunch of ‘wantrepreneurs’ who were still trying to figure out this digital thingy.

Funny enough, we’re all still trying to figure it out every day.

Like you, I tried everything online. From reselling PLR products, to sending emails for a few cents. Some worked, others were a complete waste of time.

If you did all that, you’d probably feel that every digital business is a scam. And that’s a completely valid thought because I felt that way too. All that time, I wasn’t sure what kind of skill to sell.

But all that stopped when I started getting people to pay for my services online.

Earn A Living From Your Skill With These 3 Steps

Now let’s see how you too can turn your skill into something that puts money into your pocket.

1. Determine What You Want To Sell

For me, the next logical step, after discovering my interest in writing wasn’t to write a book, but sell writing services.

And the value I thought I gave was very primitive. For a long time, my tagline was “I’d help you express your thoughts in words.” It wasn’t until I started learning about marketing that I realized that online content played a much bigger role than that.

What you want to sell doesn’t have to be so badass that you think so much, it paralyzes you from even starting. And there’s really no need to look too far at this stage.

The next obvious step is what you should take.

2. Choose A Marketing Method

There are a lot of moving parts in this point, but let’s simplify it a bit.

Here’s how I like to define marketing:

“Marketing is doing good work and telling the right people about it.”

What exactly is “doing good work”?

You don’t need clients before you do good work. And you don’t need a thousand subscribers before you do good work either.

To do good work, you only need to get your hands busy and focus on quality.

This is especially important if you’re just getting started online.

Your first step could be to create a personal project directly related to what you want to sell – concentrate on quality, and then complete it.

My own method of doing this was to start a blog and populate with quality blog posts (since I sold writing services).

A popular method would be to offer to do a couple of free jobs or product samples in exchange for recommendations and testimonials.

Who are the right people?

The right people are those you want to help. They’re your target audience. In marketing, this is called your “buyer persona”.

These could be potential clients, or people who would buy your digital products.

3. Share Your Good Work

Where you share your work depends on what marketing method you choose.

How you share it depends on who you’re trying to reach and what you sell.

If you share your work on your site, and you sell logo design services for example, then your posts are going to show some of your designs (personal projects) and how these designs help the brand in question (either a fictional or real brand).

The idea behind this promotion is to communicate the value of your work to the potential customer.

Increase Your Earning Power

There’s so much you can do with what you have. You only need to first start and then learn along the way, with the right guide.