1. Ask yourself ‘what do I already do well?’ and brainstorm 5 ways to offer that out.
2. Figure out your market rather than spending a month planning the product. For example, ‘I will sell cakes’ is a vague idea. You don’t know where the money will come from! So change that to saying ‘I will identify local cafes that actually do take freelancer cakes, and visit them with samples’. That’s a plan that will actually get you results.
3. Niche. Know who your market is and you’ll speak to them better.
For example, if you realise you’re surrounded by cafes that cater to a certain type of health conscious/trendy organic client what you provide will change. Go in and look what’s on display. Seeing gluten free polenta cakes? That’s a hint that they have clients who care about the free from market. If you then notice that they don’t have dairy free cakes you have a beautiful selling point if you make those (but make ‘em good!).
Of course you don’t have to fill a gap – that realisation could lead you to make your usual full-of-everything cake but position it in line with that market (eg: ‘I only use organic eggs and blah blah blah). Decide on a market and you wildly increase your chances of success.
4. Identify a niche that a) can pay and b) is more than willing to pay (this is important)
5. Not sure about something? Google it. Seriously. For the other 10% of questions zoom to the source. Not sure about how much to charge a cafe for cakes? Then contact someone who does it and ask if you can get advice on that point. You may have to ask a few people before you get an answer but you will get one. Or walk into a cafe in a part of town you don’t want to sell to and ask them what you need to know! That way you get info without looking like a beginner. You’ll always find a way to figure it out.
6. Check people actually want what you have to offer. Do this by going up to the people who you would like to buy your offer, and telling them you are doing it and seeing their response. If they say ‘meh’ then ask them why. It might be you can reposition it to describe it better.
(For more on finding + choosing people who want to buy what you have to offer check out the 8 Day Series).
7. Get clear what problem you are solving. A tutor does not sell an hour of tutoring, they sell peace of mind to the parent who can stop worrying they are not doing enough for their child. They solve the problem of thinking “did I do enough”? Knowing this, you can also know that anything you can say that inspires confidence will impact on the rate you get clients “well Sally didn’t do that well in her last exams, but we now have a tutor from blah blah who blah blah and we’re confident that will change.” That’s the stuff you’re selling.
8. Got nothing? Get decent at something by doing it for free until people rave about you. If you’ve been messing around with that camera and just thinking about getting paid then offer to cover the events youwant to get paid for… but do it for free. Build up, get good, and you’ll have something to offer.
9. Don’t assume you need to learn a completely new skill from scratch. Your time is better spent learning how to make that money than learning a new skill and getting good at it and THEN hoping someone will pay. Even if you think “if only I had X skill I could make money on the side” I guarantee someone else is reading this article who has that skill and thinks they can’t make money from it – but that they could do something if they had YOUR skills.
10. Don’t tell me you have no time. No one is forcing you to do this. If you know that an extra however much money will have a real impact on your life – and your options – you can, and will, make the time.
Try it. Now. If it doesn’t work, come back here, figure out why not and tweak it (or launch something else) until it does.
Meet up with that person who might actually have something more useful to say to you than “oh that sucks”.
Take that chance.
Look outside the box.
Find the reason why not the reason why not.
And don’t think this is a list of cliches – it’s a list of damn instructions. Do them.
They might just change your life.
Got other ideas for money on the side?
