It’s easy to go through your career taking the same paths others did before you. But small, simple tweaks can make a huge difference in your lifetime.

One of my readers, Alexander, writes:

“I’m reviewing NIH grant proposals right now and seeing your tweets made me think of something that might interest you — doing the “expected” career progression instead of the one that makes sense. Typically, biologists who want to do research as a career go to grad school ($22K annual stipend; I did this part and learned a tremendous amount) for 5-6 years and then do a postdoctoral fellowship ($40K salary; ridiculously low wages for someone who is now a subject matter expert in their research area) for up to 6 more years before becoming assistant professors ($65-70K or so starting). I skipped that postdoc stage and I’m currently a 33-year-old “senior scientist” with my own research grants, etc (the normal age for that career point is about 42). Although there’s certainly the usual mix of luck and me maximizing my exposure to luck in my having leapfrogged that whole postdoc phase, the thing that I find really jarring is this:

When I talk to friends and acquaintances who are going through grad school now, they frequently don’t even want to entertain the possibility of making this kind of “jump” themselves. I’ve tried to pitch them on it, and been told, “It doesn’t work that way.” When I offer myself as proof, I’m told, “You’re a special case.”

I though that might interest you, given your appreciation for the psychology of success. I’ve personally found it a little tiring, although I have realized that the set of peers I chose to spend time with in grad school match my outlook, which makes sense — I picked positive, productive friends (who are now doing quite well in positions at consulting firms and major biotech companies). Still, I find it odd that people don’t like the idea of jumping ahead if it’s demonstrably possible.”

Few things I’ve noticed:

• I used to hear friends complain about money, and I would rush to tell them what to do. Even when I knew the objective “right” answer, they never, ever listened to me. Instead, their eyes glazed over and they ignored me. Eventually I started resenting them for not listening (which is a ridiculous reaction on my part). After 1.5 years of this, I decided to implement what I called the Honey Pot Strategy, where I let the right people come to me, via this blog. It has been a miraculous change. People are smart: Only the right people come, and the wrong people realize this site isn’t for them, and leave (that’s why I don’t mind when people say they’re unsubscribing from this site). Read more: Bob Bly, the noted copywriter, writes about why he never gives unsolicited advice.
• People feel comfortable putting others into buckets. “Oh, you study economics” or “Ah, you’re a product manager.” I do it. You do it. We all do. But when you start doing something “weird” like doing a side job, or earning $1,000 on the side, or even doing a free internship, people generally get uncomfortable. There are a variety of reasons for this, but the most important result is that it makes us question what we’re doing. Yet if you think about it, why would you care what people who are not doing what you want to do say? The reason, of course, is we are profoundly social, and our reference groups are broad. Even if I think your job sucks, you’re still my friend, and I’m still influenced by your judgment. In some of my advanced courses, I teach people how to deal with this.
• Doing offbeat, “weird” things early in our careers can produce huge rewards. Witness this blog, my comedy blog “Things I Hate,” or even the “You have died of Dysentery” t-shirt that I created. None were created to make money. Yet each one played a pivotal role in opening up doors. The challenging thing about doing offbeat, weird things is that there’s potentially huge upside, but you don’t know for sure. In general, people don’t like doing things that don’t have a clear ROI, especially as they get older. That’s why people consistently ask, “Can you guarantee I’ll make $1,000 in Earn1k? How do you KNOW that taking people out to lunch will work?” You don’t know. Otherwise everyone would do it.

I cover specific tactics in my writings on entrepreneurship, my entrepreneurship bookmarks, and my Earn1k course.

The Earn1k launch — for my new course on teaching people how to earn their first $1,000 on the side — was one of the largest I’ve ever done. Last week, after the launch dust settled, I did a post-mortem call with my team, and I thought I’d share some of the results with you.

Even though they sound dark and ominous, “post-mortems” are some of the most useful things you can do when launching a new project. A post-mortems is simply an analysis of what worked, what didn’t, and what you can learn to improve next time. Doing this helps keep you sharp and stay ahead of 99% of people who never do this (the Craigslist Penis Effect in action).

Here are some things we learned that might help as you try to earn more money or launch your own project.

Costs matter — but not as much as revenue does. This is especially true if the costs are non-scalable, like a one-time fee for a support system. In other words, you can scrimp and pinch about paying someone $2,000 or $3,000. Or you can just make 10x more with a better product/marketing and make the point irrelevant. This is the benefit of releasing amazing content, not run-of-the-mill BS that anyone can copy.

Measuring is important, but pick your battles. I like to measure myself in a lot of areas. But it came down to deciding to measure something — or just make it better based on our intuition. We chose to improve the launch rather than measure everything. The downside is I don’t know exactly what caused some of our results. I hope to figure it out in future launches.

Lots of communication problems. Once you get above 2 people, communication starts getting very complicated. We used PBworks, Google Docs, Etherpad, email, and phone, and we still weren’t all on the same page. This is why there are so many collaboration tools. This is also why it’s such a hard problem.

Have ridiculously detailed backups. After a technical snafu that cost me over $10,000 in 10 minutes, we created an insanely detailed checklist, including…

POTENTIAL PROBLEM — SOLUTION

…with every conceivable technical problem that we could encounter. This was detailed down to the level that, if my home internet failed, my shoes were already on so I could run to a friend’s house, who was standing by so I could jump back on a webcast.

Again, I never cared about this in my early days, and you shouldn’t if you’re launching something for the first time. But now, after growing for years, even a few minutes of launch downtime can cost me a lot. (And I’m just a teeny tiny player. Imagine the resources a company like Amazon dedicates to this.)

There are red flags for users who will never become customers. At my last company, our head sales guy told me an interesting thing: He said, “When prospects call up and ask for XXX [specific word], they will never buy.” In other words, non-buyers identify themselves with certain phrases, and you need to learn to identify them. For Earn1k, whenever someone’s FIRST question was, “How much does this cost?” I knew they would likely never buy. That’s because they focused on cost, not value. The people who asked, “How much can this help me make — and how do I know it’s worth it?” were much more likely to buy.

People will pay for content if you demonstrate enough value. We sold out of our $2,997 tier in 1 hour because we spent a month showing people to focus on value, not cost. I never expected to sell out. Yet I now know I under-priced that tier. So next time it will go up — dramatically.

Blogs have extreme variability in the quality of users. Most blogs have 90%+ freeloaders, aka people who never want to pay for anything and get mad when a blogger charges for anything. I love driving these people away from iwillteachyoutoberich as fast as possible. While the blog will remain free, I’ve consistently showed you guys why paying for value is important, and we now have an audience of people who are willing to invest in themselves — and don’t believe in fixed-pie syndrome.

People like when you turn away business for genuine reasons. I turned down over $100,000 of customers. I screamed at people who asked if they should join while they still had credit card debt, and told them to get their debt under control before going back. We refunded a $1,500 customer who treated iwillteach staff poorly and sent her packing. And we didn’t serve a $75,000+ segment on purpose (see below).

We were surprised: People LOVED this. It caused them to sign up more. Why? Because they knew the focal point wasn’t to gouge everyone and make as much money as possible. As I told them, “I don’t want everyone. I want the right people.” People respond when they know something is tailored for them, not everyone.

Measure your projections to see where you were wrong. At the beginning of each project, I create a simple table/spreadsheet of the results I project. The first 5 times you do this, you will be terrible. (Once, I did a projection and forgot to include one conversion #…which meant my results were 90% off…in the “bad” direction. Oops.) But each successive time, you’ll learn small ways to get better. In this case, we created 3 projections — Low, Middle, High — and then compared the projections to the “actual” results. We learned some fascinating things, including areas that we totally forgot to factor in. Next time, we’ll be better.

The $75,000 problem: As I said, we sold out of our top ($2,997) tier. Here’s an interesting thing: I could have sold at least double the number of seats over the remainder of the launch. But I intentionally turned down $75,000 in revenue. Can anybody guess why?

I know that’s different than most of the stuff I write on iwillteachyoutoberich, but I hope that was helpful. Let me know if you have questions and I’ll answer them in the comments.

The Briefcase Technique

This is just one simple example of the hours and hours of HD video in a new course I’m launching, called “Earn Your First $1,000 on the Side.”

Live webcast tonight, Tuesday, 2/2

So tonight, I’m hosting a special webcast.

In the webcast, you’ll see…

• 2-3 “teardowns” of people’s freelance ideas: I’ll get them on the line, analyze their freelance business, and show them how to skyrocket their earnings. Live.
• What the #1 mistake of people who try to earn more money is
• The first public look at the new “Earn Your First $1,000 on the Side” course — choose which course is right for you

How to attend the live webcast

• Date: Tonight, Tuesday, February 2nd

• When: 7pm Pacific
• Where: http://www.earn1k.com/webcast
• Backup URL: http://earn1k.weebly.com if something goes wrong

The webcast will not be recorded.

Oh yeah. On the webcast, I’ll also answer this question:

Why did I turn down $60,000 cash last night?

And then I’ll be releasing a step-by-step program to help you earn your first $1,000 on the side.

Sign up for free.

* * *

Today, a case study to show you how even the weirdest skills can be very, very profitable.

This is one of my favorite case studies because you’ll learn how to take your skills — even if they’re unusual or seemingly not in demand — and turn them into significant income.

Cassie Phillipps realized that she was working too hard for too little money .She was a theatre stage manager, and as you know, I usually make fun of weirdo drama/artsy types because they revel in their poor financial skills and complain that the world is against them.

But Cassie realized how to carve out a specialized niche using her existing skills. Now, she produces exclusive events for the tech industry. She went from $17/hour to $75/hour and works fewer hours than her old job. What if you could do the same?

In this 35-minute interview you’ll learn:

• How Cassie managed to turn specialized skills from her stage manager job into a profitable and high-profile freelance business
• Where she chose to invest in her business, and where she’s chosen to save (if you’re wary about spending money to make money, listen to this section)
• Her marketing strategy, where every engagement is a secondary marketing channel
• How she’s developed multiple pricing plans to fit an unusual niche
• How she cultivates repeat business, even with big-budget, infrequent conferences

Listen to the interview here:

* * *

Introduction

• 0:24 How do you earn money on the side?
• 1:05 Why Cassie’s unusual skills turned out to be perfect for freelancing
• 2:40 Cassie’s old job as a stage manager — lots of hours, little pay
• 3:45 A friend sees her transferable skills, and asks for her help with events
• 4:35 Getting started working a little on the side, and realizing she’s already making more money

Psychology

• 5:01 It’s not about the technical specifics. It’s about what the client wants.
• 7:59 “We have $5,000 for you, can you make it happen?” Cassie is offered money for something she can do in less than 10 hours
• 8:06 Getting over fears: “What if I’m not the right person?”
• 9:45 Cassie goes from $200 a WEEK to $100 an HOUR
• 15:02 Addressing startup costs and getting over initial barriers
• 16:33 How she spends for value, and invests in her own business
• 16:41 “If you don’t have the confidence to invest $2000-$4000 in something you’re going to be doing for the next 5 years, then you’re not ready to do it yet”

Tactics

• 11:16 Understanding her clients’ worst fears
• 11:24 How Cassie negotiates rates with vendors, and pays for herself
• 12:35 Specific phrases to communicate her unique value proposition
• 13:35 Cassie cuts her hours, and triples her income

Marketing her niche business

• 19:17 How Cassie gets new clients, and attracts only big names
• 20:41 Cassie’s marketing strategy: work with influencers, and don’t hide in the background
• 22:08 “Niche it down!!” What this means for freelance event production
• 23:57 “By specializing in the startup industry, I can pretty much beat out any other events person”
• 27:15 How Cassie screens clients, diagnoses her client’s real problems and needs, and eliminates the need for hard sells
• 29:38 Creative rate plans
• 31:35 How Cassie guarantees repeat business
• 34:47 Her work does its own marketing

* * *

Get advanced strategies to earn more: You’ll find more case studies — including someone who turned down over $100,000 of side income — plus an MP3 download of this interview with Cassie. And lots more unannounced techniques to help you earn more.

Here’s the link: http://www.earn1k.com

1. Below, you’ll see how to take your skills and identify what “the market” — or prospective customers — will pay for
2. I added lots of examples below, but it’s still complex and information-dense. When you sign up at Earn1k.com, I’ll be going over a more structured, step-by-step program.

In a survey of over 1,000 people that I recently did, the #1 reason people don’t start earning money on the side is this: They don’t know what to do.

How do you take your skills and turn them into something that people will pay for? Let’s say you have a full-time job as a project manager or salesperson or software engineer. How can you help that make you $200/month, $500/month, or even $5,000/month on the side?

I want you to pay attention: This is the #1 barrier because it is the hardest step. It’s not some simple 1-2-3 checklist, which is what most people want: a one-size-fits-all solution that they can blindly follow to start earning money. But because it’s so challenging, the rewards are disproportionately large. That’s because 90%+ of people will wash out at this step, leaving the few, the proud, and the now-earning-a-lot-on-the-side.

So if you expect this to be easy, go away.

If you expect this to be customized to your situation, go away.

You’ll have to take a leap to tailor the advice here to your own situation.

My goal is not to have you start earning money immediately after reading this post — even though we all love 1-2-3 steps, earning more successfully is much more complicated than that.

With that, let’s get started on the first steps of taking your skills and turning them into income.

The easiest way to earn more money is freelancing

There are a few things that we need to acknowledge up front:

• Out of the 3 easiest ways to earn money, we think the easiest way to earn money on the side is to freelance. You can start earning money immediately, you can rapidly test your offerings, and you can cut through the unnecessary work of productizing and increasing your salary. Accordingly, we’re going to focus on freelancing for the rest of this course.
• My guess is that 95% of jobs could translate into related freelance work. But 5% of could not: For example, you don’t see any freelance cardiothoracic surgeons. (But you can see some doctors moving in that direction.)
• Just like dating, it will probably take repeated failures to find a good match between your skills and what the market wants.

That last point is very important. Sometimes people spend so much time building up a business — with business cards and websites and licenses — that when they actually launch and find the market won’t pay for their offering, they give up, exhausted and frustrated. We’ll teach you how to streamline the launch process so you can rapidly test ideas and refine them. Just like in the dating world, you probably won’t find your right match the first time, second time, or the 5th time. That’s where people give up. But if you optimize your system of learning what people want (and are willing to pay for), it’s simply a matter of time until you hit on something that matches your skills to the market.

Two examples: Turning skills into income

Example: How I used these principles to launch this blog and find readers

I originally started “I Will Teach You To Be Rich” as a 1-hour free course that I taught at Stanford. (I consider the blog a mix of freelance and product since I spend ongoing time writing here.) It was never designed to make money, it was just something cool that I wanted to do. When I’d hear friends complaining about money at the dining hall, I’d say, “Hey, you should come attend this class I put together…it’s free and it takes about an hour, and I’ll show you all the basics of money — banking, budgeting, saving, and investing.” The response was VERY positive. People said, “Wow, that sounds awesome!”

And then they would never show up.

Repeatedly, over 1.5 years, I struggled to have anyone show up. I would wonder to myself, “Why am I trying so hard to give people GOOD, FREE information about stuff they really need to know?” I felt like a career counselor, one of the most under-appreciated (and hopeless) jobs.

After trying all kinds of strategies to get people to attend, including emailing THEM and trying to coordinate times, I switched approaches. Instead of in-person events, I launched iwillteachyoutoberich.com so people could read it out of the comfort of their own dorm rooms. Later, I learned why this was so successful: People don’t like attending events about money because (1) it makes them feel bad about themselves, (2) the events are usually boring and/or scammy, and (3) people have to publicly admit they don’t know about money.

It was a classic mistake of not understanding my users (substitute “customers” in for your business).

Lesson learned: You MUST get into your clients’ heads. What are their fears? Hopes? What do they care about most (hint: How much it costs is almost never the first priority.) Similarly, once you get in their heads, you learn that the medium in which you serve your clients matters. (Is it an in-person event or a blog or a weekly phone call?) The way you approach your client matters. And the way in which you sell to prospects matters.

Example: How I consulted for venture capital firms

Like all of us, I know how to use YouTube, Myspace, Flickr, and Facebook. A few years ago, during college, I was able to turn that into consulting gigs with multiple venture-capital firms who wanted to learn how young people were using consumer services on the web. This consisted of me giving them a course each week — online music, videos, social networks, etc — including showing them how guys checked girls out on Myspace. This was perhaps the greatest achievement of my life: Showing how guys found hot girls’ profiles to a bunch of venture capital partners.

Would you have ever thought you could turn your daily routines into a consulting gig? I wouldn’t have before I landed those gigs. But people were willing to pay for it because they had concrete needs: They wanted to understand how young people were using new technologies so they could remain sharp investors. Money wasn’t an issue, but time was: They’d rather hire someone who lived it than try to learn themselves. Once I’d established that I was skilled at these services, but more importantly that I could create an effective structure for teaching the VCs, they hired me.

Lesson learned: It’s not enough to simply be good at something, whether it’s freelance writing, dog walking, or graphic design. Millions of other young people know how to use YouTube/Facebook/Flickr far better than I do. It’s not just knowledge: You have to package your knowledge into something that clients can recognize as valuable. Usually this involves them making more money, saving money, or saving time.

Should you be passionate or just make money?

People love talking about passion. Your job should be your passion! You should be a passionate lover. Eat food passionately.

Some of this is true, but passion is also overrated and used as a panacea for everything under the sun. Guess what? You get passionate when you start winning.

As Cal Newport says:

“Passion: The feeling that arises from have mastered a skill that earns you recognition and rewards.
[...]

My alternative definition claims instead that passion is the feeling generated by mastery. It doesn’t exist outside of serious hard work.

When Scott’s readers say “I have too many passions,” what they really mean is “I have lots of superficial interests.” When my readers complain that their major is not their passion, what they really mean to say is “I don’t have a level of mastery in this field that is earning me recognition.”

This is a controversial view, so don’t get hung up on Cal’s definition.

The 2 major takeaways are these:

1. Your job does NOT have to be the source of inspiration for freelancing. If you’re a project manager by day, you can be creative writer on the side. Both share similar skills, anyway! You have to be organized, create structure out of chaos, and focus on delivering on time, every time.Now you see why turning your skills into income isn’t some cookie-cutter formula. Because if a project manager can earn $1,000 on the side being a creative writer, what could you do? Suddenly, it’s overwhelming.
2. Your job skills CAN be transferred, no matter how unique you think you are. So you’re a dolphin trainer at Sea World. Wow, unique job! Not really. You have skills in working with animals, obviously, which would suggest training pets. But you also have expertise in behavioral change, which many academic labs and companies would love to tap — and pay for. You can tutor children. You can help people stop biting their nails. Or 100 different options.

Don’t simply say, “I’m a process engineer! Nobody hires freelance process engineers. I give up (wipes face with tears and reaches for a large slab of beef). Instead, ask yourself: What do I enjoy? What am I good at?

A friend of mine left a management consulting firm to start a local events-based business because he became an expert on estimating attractive local markets.

Another friend left Deloitte to do system optimization for bloggers (integrating email, Twitter, YouTube, etc).

A third friend, who finds cleaning her room therapeutic, is starting a freelance business where she’ll be a professional organizer. Her full-time job at a non-profit has nothing to do with this at all.

So: “Think outside the box” is the sort of trite advice that I hate, so we’ll go into this in more detail later. But you really do need to challenge yourself to see what skills you have that the market would potentially pay for.

Start with your goals

Too many people jump into the tactics without understanding why they’re doing what they’re doing. To be honest, I did that with iwillteachyoutoberich, and I still do it sometimes.

It’s better to do something WRONG than to do nothing at all. But if you can spend a little time planning — and still continue executing — you can save hundreds of hours of missteps.

Here’s a simple rule.

If you want to start freelancing because you want to earn extra money, identify a profitable market first, then adapt your services to it.

However, if you want to freelance because you want to take your passions and turn them into side income, first create your services that are based on your passions, then identify a profitable market.

Do you see the difference?

Example: Jack just wants to earn money

Let’s say Jack wants to earn an extra $1,000/month because he wants to pay down credit-card debt and propose to his girlfriend after he’s debt-free. Great! His first goal, then, is to generate income. As a simple rule of thumb, he should figure out the most profitable market that matches with his skills and pursue it relentlessly.

Jack is a customer-support rep for his fulltime job, so he looks outside to the market to see where he can generate income with his skills. He reads lots of mid-size bloggers via his RSS reader, and he realizes they might need help editing their email newsletters (such as iwillteachyoutoberich. He gets in touch about a paid freelance job. Success! 2 clients in a month start generating an extra $500 each month. Since Jack cares about generating income first, and his passions second, he simply found an easy market that would help him earn more immediately.

Example: Mary is passionate about jewelry

By contrast, Mary is passionate about jewelry. She feels like she has a lot to teach other women about accessorizing the right way. Jewelry is her passion, so she wouldn’t want to, say, start a freelance business helping CRM companies optimize their sales funnels.

Since she already knows she wants to earn income in the jewelry field, she spends her time researching different services she can offer to create that people will pay for. Will she help jewelry makers appear at trunk shows? Will she be the trusted jewelry specialist who delivers to high-end clients? Or can she be a jewelry specialist who handles return or customer-service calls? We don’t know what will be profitable yet — but Mary will find out via rapid experimentation.

Remember: Whenever possible, start with your goals, then let the tactics (How should I reach customers? How much should I charge? What software should I use?) follow.

And, as always, if you don’t know what your goals are, I’ll show you a way to get started anyway. That comes later.

The simplified process: Matching your skills to earning money on the side

This is a simplified process to turn your skills into side income. Later, I’ll get into it in extreme detail. But I encourage you to try to fit the general principles here to your personal situation.

It’s overwhelming to consider that you could literally have 500 potentials ways of earning money. That’s why people love simple SEO or other automatic ways to earn money on the side, which give you a repeatable formula…but rarely work.

Take it one step at a time.

1. What industry are you in? Oh, finance? Ok, you probably don’t want to be a freelance investment banker. But..hmm….you spend all day doing analyses. How can you use that? Example 1: Excel is a breeze to you. Maybe there are people (like me) who HATE Excel yet need detailed analyses for their business. Could you build models for other people? Example 2: You’re really good at doing valuations of industries. Are there pre-launch founders who need that skill? (Alert: Observant readers will have noticed a BIG RED FLAG over the last example of pre-launch founders: They can’t pay you. So if your goal is to generate revenue, you want to re-think your target market to make sure they can afford to pay you.)
2. Identify your skills and interests — then think more broadly. The most common thing I hear is, “I’m a really good communicator…but I don’t know how to turn that into a side income.” That’s because you can’t. Nobody hires a “good communicator.” They hire people to solve their problems. What does a good communicator mean, anyway? That’s just a lazy way of saying you haven’t spent the time doing research on the available options you have to channel your skills into something that’s worth money. Are you great at writing press releases? (I’d pay for that.) Are you great at training public speakers? (You might be able to find a specific segment of people who’d pay for that. This one is tricky, though. Can you identify why?) Are you a good communicator because you can speak Chinese? Boom, I’d instantly be a tutor for Chinese kids since their parents will love/trust someone who speaks Chinese — even when tutoring their kids for any subject.
3. If you don’t have any marketable skills, there are still options. Etsy is a perfect example of people making great side income — and many of them don’t have any skills that would commonly be considered “valuable.” Yet they do well selling niche products to a niche audience. If you aren’t some professional with software-engineering skills or online-marketing experience, that’s okay. Can you hammer something into a wall? (I’d pay for that.) Can you cook? (I’d also pay for that…infact I am.) Can you walk dogs? Tutor kids in 4th-grade math? Help moms with routine tasks? You can make money on all of these things — good money — without having to have some hard technical skill…as long as you find a market that will pay for them.

I want to go a bit deeper.

People are very bad at identifying their own skills. They’ll say things like, “I dunno….I guess I’m good at writing and communication, and, like, general organizational skills…” AMAZING!! HERE’S $4,000/MONTH RETAINER!!!

Get a life, please.

Repeat this over and over: People pay for solutions, not your skills.

For example, I was recently on a webcast where I was suggesting ways for people to earn money on the side, and I mentioned that I hate cooking, am not good at it, and would love it if someone cooked for me. I got an email later that night from someone in SF who said, “Ramit, I can help. I can teach you everything you need to know over one weekend, and you’ll know 3-5 great dishes to cook.” I appreciated the offer, but wrote back, “Thanks for the offer! But you don’t understand. I don’t want to learn — I want someone to do it for me.” He ended up sending me another proposal and I’m now working with him. (I’ll release the details, including the exact email script he used to persuade me, at Earn1k.com.

Again: People have problems. They want solutions. They don’t care what you’re “interested” in. Are they too busy to organize their closet? Do they need someone to help them redesign their website? Maybe they want someone to teach their kid how to play flute.

When you make your offer, you’ll have to deeply understand what the market — your prospective clients — want. And then you’ll be able to turn your service offering into something so compelling….that they’ll actually pay you for it.

Let’s take a look at another example.

Case study: Identifying skills that people will pay for

This is one of the most difficult real-life questions I got from an iwillteachyoutoberich reader, so I thought it’d be instructive to tackle it.

“How would a systems process engineer earn money on the side?”

Warning this will be tough. First of all, what the hell is a systems process engineer? I dug around and discovered that they basically build and manage complex engineering systems. Perfect.

Start off by asking yourself this:

1. Do I like what I’m doing at all, or do I want to do something totally new? If not, remember, you don’t have to use your job for inspiration or passion — you could just as easily earn money teaching people to surf.
2. What if you DO like your work as a systems process engineer? Step-by-step: Is it freelance-able directly? No, most likely not.

Ok, you love your work but can’t find a freelance job that replicates your full-time work (plus, your boss might not like that). So you dig deeper into the skills you use on a daily basis: You…

• Do a little PHP coding
• Organize systems
• Automate complex processes
• Project manage
• Create technical documents that can be understood by lay audiences
• Lead a team

Don’t get stuck here. Ask yourself: Which of these skills can solve a specific problem? Brainstorm those out.

• I could do some PHP coding, but I’m not the best. Don’t censor yourself — put everything down.
• I could help businesses automate and streamline their income-generating processes. Vague, but okay.
• I could manage projects and lead teams towards deadlines / organizing. This is super-vague, any 22-year-old college grad would say he could do the same, and it doesn’t take advantage of my specific skills. Skip this.
• I could be a technical writer and help companies demystify their technical-support documents. I could even rewrite the technical portions of their websites to make them more comprehensible to normal people, especially companies in the consumer-energy field. Very promising, especially since I follow a few of these companies online.

Each of these individually is a potentially viable freelance trade – can you pick one and do it? The answer should be YES/NO to each. Put “YES” if even remotely feasible.

• PHP coding: YES
• Automate systems: NO (too vague for me to know where to start)
• Project manage: NO (too vague)
• Technical writer: YES

Excellent. Now you have a list of skills that might potentially be profitable. Optional: Combine skills together to make a more compelling, more niche offer.

You can often charge more and help clients more by packaging offers. In this case, it’s not very relevant, since technical writing and PHP coding are pretty different. But one of the people who helps on iwillteachyoutoberich pitched me to do video editing + marketing. Perfect fit. I hired him.

Next step: How can you prove to people that you’re knowledgeable enough for them to pay you?

This is something I’ve been encountering as I’ve been trying to hire a sysadmin for my blog. I’ve gotten a lot of recommendations, and the first thing I do when evaluating someone is look at their portfolio and past clients. At least half of potential hires don’t have this section. Easy solution! I move on to someone who does.

• For our systems engineer, can he point to a PHP project he did on the side?
• What about a sample of technical writing where he turned something very complicated into something totally palatable?

Having one portfolio entry increases your odds of landing a client by at least 200%. Having 5 increases it significantly more.

Which market should he target?

People tend to think about the market they work in only. But remember, virtually every industry needs the same skills — marketing, sales, engineering, etc. Our systems engineer shouldn’t limit himself to his field (energy). With his skills, he can limit it to technical companies, since they’re the ones most likely to need PHP consulting and technical writing. But to broaden his view and find more potential prospects, he could:

• Examine the companies he follows in magazines, blog readers, and TV. Does he love reading about technical blogs about how mom-and-pop shops automate their sales? (There really are a lot of these.) They might be the perfect target to reach out to.
• Examine the community of people he interacts with. Does he have a lot of friends or professional acquaintances who are all writing code for XXX purpose? He might: It’s not surprising that people with similar interests hang out together, so if your hobby is writing PHP, you may very well have some friends who need the service.

Our systems engineer has now taken his full-time job, excavated it to find skills that he might be able to use on the side, eliminated the unattractive ones, and limited the potential outreach to 4-10 companies he can reach out to.

The next steps would be understanding the needs of his prospects — to see if there is indeed a match with his skills — and crafting his service offering. We’ll get to all of these.
But for now, notice the takeaways of how to really think deeply about your skills, which may or may not have anything to do with your full-time job, and systematically narrow them down to something that people might pay for.

Get a more structured approach for turning your skills into income. Sign up for a free 1-week advanced course on earning more money.

Today, learn how Elizabeth Weil (formerly a venture capital associate, now at Twitter) turned her hobby of arts & crafts into a side income selling via Paperwheel.com and to premium clients. She has so much demand that she’s sold out of products — and this is her side job.

Elizabeth does high-end letterpress printing — basically super-premium custom stationery — like these:

An example of Elizabeth’s high-end letterpress

Think back to yesterday’s framework on the 3 easiest ways to earn money. In Elizabeth’s case, since the letterpress stationery is hand-made custom for each client, this is a combination of freelancing and productization.

In this 25-minute interview, you’ll learn:

• How she managed to make more doing letterpress than working at her venture-capital job!
• How she rapidly tested her idea
• Where she invested — and where she cut corners (and still does, to this day)
• The systems she’s built to scale her work
• How she manages time/productivity while working fulltime at Twitter

Listen to the interview here

Introduction

• 0:29: How do you earn money on the side?
• 1:44: What do you for your fulltime job?
• 2:42: WTF is letterpress and how’d you get interested?
• 4:02: I make fun of artists

Psychology

• 4:18: How did you take your interest and turn it into income?
• 5:30: What was the FIRST thing you did to get started?
• 6:50: What investments did you make in yourself?
• 6:57: (Rapid testing) Spending $200 or $500 on courses doesn’t come naturally to many people. How’d you decide to do that? How did investing in courses help you?
• 8:53: What barriers did you come across?
• 9:58: Crushing barriers: Nervous about delivering to first customers. How’d you get over that?

Tactics

• 12:26: How did you find your first paying customer?
• 14:04: First order of $250 sounds like a lot. Is that average? (Notice how Elizabeth understands her business in terms of the different kinds of costs. This takes a long time to get. You don’t need to understand it all from day 1.)
• 14:42: Freelancing + productization, and how to simultaneously sell prodcuts and services.
• 15:14: She’s sold out on Etsy!

• 16:32: How she systematized her side income as she grew.
• 18:56: How long did it take her to set up a website? (Notice her answer — 4 years! And she’s still doing incredibly well.) This is where people waste so much time earning money. I’ll cover more of prioritization and productivity soon.)
• 20:14: Let’s talk numbers. How she made more doing this side job than working at her venture-capital salary.

Time management with a full-time job

• 21:10: How do you do this while holding down a busy full-time job?
• 21:57: Did you tell your boss you have a side job?
• 23:00: How do you think about a side income? Fun money? The multiplicative effects of staying busy + earning money.

Get advanced strategies to earn more: You’ll find more case studies — including someone who turned down over $100,000 of side income — plus an MP3 download of this interview with Elizabeth. And lots more unannounced techniques to help you earn more.

Here’s the link: http://www.earn1k.com

Below are 7 stories, straight from readers just like you, who have saved and earned thousands of dollars using I Will Teach You To Be Rich techniques. The stories include details on how they got out of debt, saved more, and earned more so they could travel, buy a house, and live a richer life.

Remember — tomorrow I launch the I Will Teach You To Be Rich Boot Camp (early details), where I’ll unveil a 6-week course and curriculum to force you to take ACTION and automate, invest, and start thinking about entrepreneurship.

Jason Demant saved $50,000 in 2 years and is now taking a 1-year vacation

“The reason I’m writing is to thank you for your help in automating my money, getting my 401K properly allocated, and pushing me to sell my crap to make some cash. Using your step-by-step instructions and advice, my girlfriend and I have been able to save over $50,000 the past couple of years and now, in a couple weeks, we will be quitting our Silicon Valley jobs and traveling around Asia on an extremely extended vacation (1-year minimum)! I’ve been reading your site for a few years now and I’ve never properly thanked you for the help, so I decided it was time. Thank you!”

Terry Martin got off his ass and paid off thousands in debt — and earned more

“I’m writing you to let you know how much your blog has helped my wife and I take charge of our finances. I’m actually embarrassed to say this, but we were some of the people you mentioned in tip #25 of the save $1000 in a month challenge. We would complain about our financial situation, but did nothing to change it.

After I realized this, I got to work. I read all your tips and made a game plan. I saved $100 a month on cable, $20 on our cell phone bill, created several ING savings accounts, my wife got serious about cutting coupons (she has a 3 ring binder!), I sold an old camcorder on craigslist, and cut off my Sirius account (but when I called to cancel it, they gave me 3 more months free with the option to cancel it for good afterwards—who would have thought?). We cut back on eating out except we each get twice a month at lunch time. My wife got overtime at work along with a raise, I started a side job, and I will start teaching night classes soon. Not only did we cut our spending drastically, we also have more money coming in. Our debt will be cut in half by the end of the year and eliminated by the end of the next!

Update: “Right now we are just over 18,500 in debt not counting my wife’s newly added student loan which would add about another $8000 . By the end of the year, we will have paid about $14,000 off while putting at least $500 a month in savings for a down payment on a house and 50 a month into another savings. This is, of course, things keep going as planned.

But not only are we saving money, we are increasing how much we make too! I have started a side business, while its not bringing in a lot of extra money now, things are starting to pick up. I also talked my company into paying for training classes for a certification that will greatly increase my value $15 to $20K a year in the workplace. Especially helpful during these tough times. My wife is also getting her company to pay for most of her classes to get her bachelor’s degree so she can move up to a new, higher paying position. During this whole process, we have been saving for a down payment on a house and I’m happy to say we are closing on our first home July 20th.

I would personally like to thank you for website and your book. The tips were inspiration to get up and do more than just complain about our financial situation. Although we are not rich money wise, we love where we are at and what the future holds. You have truly taught us how to be rich. Thank you.”

Christopher P. is saving hundreds of dollars and earning more

“I would say i have saved: $320 from cutting my cable bill by 40 dollars last 8 months (they raised it again 2 months ago. I just called right back and got it lowered . I put $30 a week into savings accounts (960 total saved 8/months)

8 months ago i decided that i would earn more money. First I asked for a 5% raise at work and got it. (This was scary because we had just had 3 rounds of firings.) Then i sat down and figured out what interested me and I could make money doing. I was in love with the iPhone but too poor to buy one. But I taught myself to program for the iPhone anyways and just 2 months ago finally purchased one. It was slow going at first and the amount i was putting away seemed pretty insignificant. But 8 months later looking back i am really seeing the transformation that took place.

Two weeks ago I finally finished and started selling my first app. It has been such a great experience and your website gave me the kick in the pants i needed. (Thank You) I haven’t done any advertising and on my first day i sold 17 copies! Not enough to quit my job but extra income. Since then the amount of units I have sold has been slowly but steadily increasing. (It’s been rated 5 stars)

People all over the wold have purchased my app now. (Japan, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Netherlands and United States so far) In the first two weeks after Apple’s cut i made $200. October looks like it will be a much better month!”

Brian Drolet is saving $2,880/year

“Big wins =

• Dropping cable $40/month
• $1 raise at work = $240/month extra
• Closed checkings account = $13/month extra
• Automated my cell phone bill = $7/month

I’m saving $720/year just from those 3 things and earning $2880/year extra.”

Misha has turned her savings around

“I wanted to write to you and say thank you. After reading your book I was able to get a good handle on my finances. I think the most helpful was the chart you use to show the movement of the money and the automation. Check out a snapshot of my my mint NET INCOME.”

Josh G has saved $14,000 in a few months

“I have saved 14k so far since I started May 2008 and I’m on track for 20k by the end of the year!
Fear kept me from automating my savings previously. I had bills and it seems that was all I thought about every month.

There was a blog post that you did which you mentioned using ING Direct to create sub accounts. It was in that post I decided to try the full automated savings because I could do sub accounts for future purposes.”

Michael Hagan saved hundreds from March to July of this year

“I’ve saved: $900 in savings since March, $700 towards Roth IRA since March. I started the whole thing around February/March

I would say that the things that held me back the most was a) not knowing what to do in the first place b) getting out of college saddled with massive credit card and student loan debt (working a full-time, unpaid internship in LA was expensive!) c) messing around in high school just enough to where I couldn’t qualify for scholarships and being just too middle class to get gov’t $$ for college, and finally d) trying to keep up with all my friends that had good jobs and nice things. A fool’s game!”

The difference between these people and others is they took ACTION. It’s easy to read blog post after blog post, but when you decide to take action — and you have a clear plan of which Big Wins to attack — the results can come quickly.

The Boot Camp will include a step-by-step plan to take action on your finances, automate, create a plan to pay off debt, and more. I’m including psychological techniques to use against yourself to lock the behavioral changes in. Plus, live video webcasts from me each week (where I’ll answer your questions), as well as guest speakers to cover entrepreneurship topics like marketing, pricing, and critical business mistakes to avoid.

Check back tomorrow, when I’ll open up Boot Camp registration.

I taught my friend how to negotiate an $8,000 increase in salary and a 50% boost in equity in 4 hours. And this was after she’s committed the cardinal sin of negotiating: revealing what her salary expectations were.

This is the kind of thing we all know we “should” do…but we don’t do it. Even though we can get the information for “free” online. Hmm….

In this video, learn how to:

• Negotiate with an experienced recruiter
• Rebound after you undercut yourself
• Why reading a negotiation book is not enough
• Know when to be adversarial and when to be cooperative

This video is probably worth $3,000 – $10,000 for my average reader IF YOU IMPLEMENT IT AND IMPLEMENT IT CORRECTLY.

Oh yeah…I have more videos on negotiation (thanks to Chris Whitmore for filming/editing).

Get more negotiation videos: For detailed videos of EXACT phrases, situations, and tactics for dealing with tough recruiters and intimidating executives, join the Boot Camp pre-launch list. Do it today because I’m closing it down soon.

If you’re a recent college graduate, you’re probably struggling with finding a decent job in this down economy. In fact, it’s tough for anyone right now. Just like with personal finance, most of us will shrug our shoulders, accept the circumstances, and assume there’s nothing we can do but wait out the storm (and complain about taxes).

Stop complaining and start dominating

The reality is that it’s actually possible to improve your personal situation and get the job of your dreams, within a year of college. My friend Charlie Hoehn was able to do exactly that, and I asked him to write an ebook on how he did it. I’m putting it up here for you because it’s one of the better things you can read during this recession.

The ebook contains the techniques he used to guarantee himself any kind of work he wants over the next decade — pretty cool since he’s continuing to work with me on several new projects. And as an added bonus, I’ve included a short video of Tim Ferriss and me discussing how Charlie approached us, and why his technique was especially effective.

How Charlie made the approach

Rewind to about a year ago, when I got an email from somebody named Charlie Hoehn. He’d recently graduated from college and wanted my help to work with Tim Ferriss. He mentioned that he had some feedback for “I Will Teach You To Be Rich,” and in a followup email, he sent me several details. It ended like this:

How I can help you: The answer to this is something I’ve struggled to come up with for both you and Tim Ferriss….shooting/editing video, and creating niche social networks…

Only a few months later, I left this LinkedIn testimonial for Charlie:

“Charlie is one of the most talented marketers and entrepreneurs I’ve ever worked with. First, some of the results he helped drive:

* He was one of the chief strategists to make my book, I Will Teach You To Be Rich, a New York Times bestseller, Wall Street Journal bestseller, and #1 Amazon bestseller
* Wrote scripts, filmed, and edited comedy videos that were collectively seen over 80,000 times
* Managed a team that created several new innovative strategies for book marketing

More importantly, Charlie understands the importance of blending strategy with rapid tactics. I feel comfortable calling him, giving him a high-level idea, and asking him to come back to me in 48 hours with a proposal for how to implement it. In fact, after working together, he now suggests ideas to me, then implements them completely on his own. He’s resourceful (he’ll take a high-level idea and flesh out every detail/resource needed to dominate it), detail-oriented (he edited our videos even further when I thought they were good enough), and versatile enough to create marketing strategies and write comedy videos. A true gem. I highly recommend him.”

How did Charlie do it? How did Charlie end up working with me, Tim Ferriss, Tucker Max, and several other popular personalities?

As iwillteachyoutoberich readers, I thought you’d enjoy this because it’s a fresh spin on the popular drivel of “find your passion and the money will come.” WTF does that mean? Where should you start?

What you’ll find in the 30-page ebook

• Why CareerBuilder and Monster are useless during a job hunt (page 8 )
• The most painless method for getting a job right out of college (page 9)
• The best graduate school you can attend… free (page 11)
• Specific email script to reel employers who “aren’t hiring” (pages 13 and 27)
• Using specific skills to earn more…which seems obvious, yet most people never do this (page 19)
• How to fix the mistake that affects many college graduates in their job search (page 21)

Enter your email below to get:

• A downloadable copy of this ebook (completely un-DRM’d — sent immediately)
• Continuing interviews with successful entrepreneurs who are working their dream job.
• Case studies of people in their early 20’s who have accomplished, in just a few years, what most people accomplish in 10.
• Specific tactics and scripts to implement the principles in the ebook

Let me know what you think — is the style right? What would you like to see more/less of? And if you’re interested in having us do a case study of you, follow the link at the bottom of this post.

This is a guest post by Janna Marlies Santoro, a freelance writer and editor working toward the goal of increasing her income by $1,000 per month.

In this profile, meet Asia Nelson, owner of Pranalife Yoga in Ontario, Canada, who who went from earning $5k/month in a stressful corporate job to earning almost $3k/month working 1/3 the time doing something she loves. As you read, notice how Asia:

• Uses free time to earn more (instead of whining about how much her expenses are)
• Has a low monthly burn rate and ahead for slow business by setting up a rainy-day fund
• Is productizing her knowledge so she can scale her business

Now, read on…

Asia’s Financial Stats

Pay Day: on average $2,800/mo
Expenses: $2,300/mo
Big Ticket Items:
Car=$700/mo, including monthly payment, insurance, registration, maintenance and gas.
Rent=$550/mo, including Internet and utilities.
Food=$400/mo.
Urge to Splurge: Travel
Money Philosophy: “In yoga, breath is the source of life and your key meditation tool. Money is like breath: You definitely miss it if it’s not there. If you have an even flow in and out, you’re healthy. If you can take more in when you need it, and let it out when you need to, you’ve got a good system to feed your life.”

Hard Numbers

When Asia left her job as an interactive design advisor to start Pranalife in 2006, she was making well over $5,000 a month. That number dropped to as low as $500 during her first six months of business. The only reason she made that leap, she says, is that she was so in love with the idea of teaching yoga.

During those first months, Asia lived on a line of credit until her bank called with the news that the credit line was about to turn into a loan – a loan that she’d have to start paying back. “I asked myself what I really wanted and what I’m willing to do to get it,” she says. “I didn’t want to replace a stressful life that I didn’t enjoy with another stressful life that wasn’t making any money.”

It forced her to start looking critically at what she was doing. She made drastic changes and implemented several critical strategies:
• Purged negative and unsupportive relationships
• Took time to observe what parts of her business worked and focused on doing them well
• Recruited mentors, asking them what to do today to stop the bleeding
• Leveraged relationships at her bank and, with projected income statements signed by studios where she taught, petitioned for a new line of credit
• Got a commissioned sales job, which allowed her to work on her own time and still bring in extra cash

Before the sales job, Asia says she was freaking out, attempting to run Pranalife based on earning money as fast as possible. She was broke and had to get people to come to her yoga classes. The sales job freed her to make smarter business decisions.

Breaking Even

From there, Asia came to a place where, over time, she established a name for herself. She also knew the value of a quality web site. Because of that presence, one phone call gave her the niche she’s built her brand around.

“A big breakthrough came with discovering private yoga instruction,” Asia says.

But when she got the call, Asia had no experience with private yoga instruction. So she spent money to make money and signed up for her own private sessions, which allowed her to learn the nuances of private instruction and modify her teaching accordingly.

“Now I can make $60-$120 an hour from one client instead of trying to herd people into a class for the same or less money. I niched and flourished.”

Asia is also no stranger to feast-famine cycles. “My father was a contractor in the oil field so we were always having to plan for the down times,” she says, “and I’d been a student for seven years, squirreling away when I needed to and dealing with ups and downs.”

By dialing in her income cycle – the motivated months of January and September versus the slacker months of December and August – she budgets accordingly for the year based on her average monthly income. She adapts and uses the down times for personal development, research, business planning and writing.

Asia also considers herself a low-maintenance spender who lives simply. “I keep my material possessions to a minimum,” she says, “and put money toward a good trip instead.” But she does spend when necessary, like on her car: a $5,000 purchase that she’s paying off at $400 a month. “I hate interest,” she says, “so I take the big per-month hits in order to get things paid off quickly.”

Forecasting

Once she stopped worrying about her cash flow, Asia moved from short-term, fast-money-making thinking to understanding long-term investments. Her long-term investments with Pranalife include developing training for yoga teachers, planning yoga retreats and writing a book. Moving away from the time-for-money model, she’s implementing things now that will bring her returns in five years.

Asia now averages about $2,600-$3,000 a month, working 1/3 of the time as her previous job. “That’s where I’m really rich,” she says. “I have control over how I spend each day, which is more valuable to me than anything.”

Interested in being featured in a case study? Click here.