How to make money from your talents and skills: 7 amazing tips

What if you could make money from your talents and skills, and, with it, make living out of your passions? A very tempting question, and, for many people, an impossible scenario.

Although this is something many people strive for, working with what you really love, and, on top of that, having flexibility and freedom about when and where to do this work seems like a distant dream for those in the traditional job market.

The good news is that we are here to tell you that this kind of activity is more possible than you imagine. More than that, we want to help you find a way to make money from your talents and skills.

Stay with us and we will tell you how to live exclusively with the income from your passions. Are you curious yet? So let’s get to it!

How to find out what your talents are?

Talent is everything you have a natural ease to learn and do.

More often than not, we have talents that are so intrinsical that we don’t even realize that they are skills.

It could be anything! Taking care of plants, being able to socialize easily, being excellent at sports or drawing.

Some people do have explicit talents, others still haven’t found out what they are really good at, but know that we all have some skill or another.

To find out what some of your talents are, you can answer some questions, being as honest as possible. If you can, write them down to go back to them whenever you need. 

• What are your main activities outside of work?
• Which activities have you always enjoyed doing, but had to stop because you didn’t have free time?
• When was the last time you lost track of time doing an activity? Which activity was this?
• Which activities you don’t need any help to do?
• What do you like talking about the most?
• If money didn’t exist, what would you like to do for pleasure?
• What do you read about the most?
• What do people ask you to teach?
• What are your strengths?

After you have answered these questions, you have an inventory of yourself.

In it, you will find some of your talents, which are a great start to start making money from what you really love.

Are you ready to find out how to transform them into a source of income?

Create a list of the actions you should take

With the inventory you wrote of your skills, it is possible to discover the areas you have more aptitude with. And then, you can think of a strategy to make money from your talents.

This list should contain the actions you can take taking your talents into consideration to help other people. It is important to imagine who your potential customers may be, and then guide your actions. 

With this in mind, we have selected some items that may guide you in your journey to make a living out of what you love doing the most.

1. Teach lessons

Every single day, people seek more knowledge. So, why not think of a way in which you can you help them somehow?

Remember the list of things you read about, are knowledgeable, and that people come to you to learn more about?

These are excellent topics for you to teach, even if you don’t see yourself as a teacher (yet).

Then offer lessons and teach as many people as you can, with private or group classes.

Don’t think you only need to teach foreign languages or school subjects. You can offer lessons in handicraft, sewing, music, or any other topic you master.

Once you are able to obtain the loyalty of some students, it is possible to estimate how much you will be able to make with your lessons.

2. Offer consulting services

Do you know how to dress really well, and are always praised for it? So you can offer consulting services and help people to improve their style.

Can you organize a house like no one else? What about offering your services as a personal home organizer?

There are infinite possibilities in consulting.

Besides, some companies hire professionals that have deep technical knowledge of specific subjects to provide consulting services and improve the performance of a determined area. If you have a good history and has proven to achieve good results with your work, you can become an excellent consultant.

Still on consulting services, nowadays it is very common to hear about coaching. A little bit different from an image or business consultant, the role of the coach is to help the professional in decision-making processes and individual performance in his or her career. If you fit this profile, do some research on this new profession and get a degree in coaching to start consulting!

3. Become a freelancer

If you know how to write really well, or how to edit videos, for example, you can sell your talents working as a freelancer for other people and companies in your free time. This is a very sought-out niche especially by those who don’t want to quit their conventional jobs, but still want to find a way to make some extra money in their free time.

You can offer your talents to people you know that need what you do. But if you are not in contact with people who need freelancers, there are many websites that connect independent professionals to companies that need occasional work done, such as Workana and Freelancer.

As you carry out more projects, you earn more reputation, and more jobs you are offered. Moreover, you will become more well-known for what you do and will then be able to put together a porfolio to offer to people in these platforms. 

4. Sell your artistic work

Do you have a keen eye for photography?

More than just becoming a freelance photographer, which also fits in the tip above, people may become interested in your work if you know where to make it available.

Websites such as Shutter Stock, 500px.com, and Dreamstime buy professional photos for their image database and you may become one of their suppliers.

Alternatively, you can find physical retailers and show them your work, be it photography, drawing or painting, and then offer them for an exhibit, in exchange for a commission.

How to make make money from your talents and skills?

We were really looking forward to getting to this topic because this is what can really make a huge difference when it’s time to make money from your talents and skills. 

Think scalability!

Do you know what “think scalability” mean?

It means thinking about ways of selling your knowledge (which is also your product) to as many people as possible.

You may be an excellent teacher and have a full schedule of classes, every day. But we only have 24 hours in a day and if you teach private English classes, you will only be able to teach 24 lessons a day – not taking into consideration, of course, that you have to sleep and eat. And you will possibly have to travel around town a lot if the classes are not all taught at the same location.

Therefore it would be humanly impossible for you to teach everyone who wanted to have classes with you, which in turn would prevent you from making all the money you could.

That’s why the most simple way of reaching many people and being able to spread your knowledge to the whole world is to take advantage of the possibilities the internet provides.

With it, comes the market of digital entrepreneurship, responsible for making many business enterprises take off. And the same thing can also happen to you.

Instead of offering classroom lessons, why not recording video lessons and making them available in an online course?

This kind of strategy is not only available for teachers. A fashion consultant, for example, can write a complete ebook on matching colors and different outfits, just like a painter can create a course on the best techniques to paint walls by oneself.

The internet is here for everybody who wants to teach something. You just need to figure out what the best format to distribute your knowledge is.

Advantages of digital businesses

When you manage your own digital product, you can work from wherever you want, and you’ll only need a computer with internet access. This is a major advantage, especially if you wish to have more time to travel and be with your family.

Of course, being your own boss will demand more work, especially if you want to scale your business fast. However, the internet is here to help us, and this includes digital businesses.

You will be able to automate your business so that it works for you, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And you also have the possibility of expanding your business internationally.

From now on, I will tell show you what you can use to make an excellent income, just read one!

5. Start a blog

Do you like writing?

So you can start your own blog, which will definitely play an important role for you to make money from your talents in writing.

The secret is to start a very nice blog and maintain consistency in your posts. This way, your blog will have many visits and, consequently, build more authority.

Think about what your audience is interested in and create content that may help people to solve everyday problems they face in your area of expertise.

This is a very interesting strategy also for people who have created or want to sell an online course. With blog posts, you can generate value for your potential customers, who will, little by little, understand that your product is the best solution for them.

It is also possible to monetize your blog with Google Adsense. With this tool, you open up space for advertisement on your blog and will earn for every click on the banners.

Do you like this idea? So it is time to start writing!

Click here and read our 9 tips on how to create complete content for your blog.

6. Create a digital product

Remember the classroom lessons and courses?

You have probably realized it is possible to teach them to thousands of people simultaneously! You only have to turn your knowledge into a digital product.

As we have already mentioned, there are many formats that can be easily accessed from a computer, smartphone or tablet. The most common ones are ebooks, video lessons, audiobooks or you can also make a mix of products and host them in an exclusive members area for each student.

This is one of the most scalable ways of working with the internet and you can have Affiliates for your product to generate even more visibility!

To learn more, read our post on what digital products are and, if you are ready, download our checklist on how to become a digital producer.

7. Work as an Affiliate

Have you ever heard of Affiliates?

This is one the words from the digital market you must learn. But to help you better understand, let’s take a look at a simple explanation:

An Affiliate is someone who promotes products from other people/websites, with the objective of earning commissions. For every sale completed, the Affiliate gets a commission for it!

And it is much more common that Affiliate Marketing is done to promote digital products. Besides, you can use different ways of promotion to make sales. 

If you already work with sales or are excellent at promoting products and selling to people around you, this another way for you to make money from your talents. It is possible to work online without having to create a product. You just need the right product or service to promote.

To learn more about this niche, read our complete post on what Affiliates are.

Hotmart is an all-in-one platform that offers all the solutions Digital Producers and Affiliates need to create and grow their online business. Learn how Hotmart works in the video bellow:

How to promote your work?

Regardless of the way you choose to make money from your talents and skills, you should always focus on how to attract clients/students. After all, there’s no use in having a great product if people simply don’t reach your Sales Page, or, even when they do, they don’t make the purchase.

There are many ways of promoting your work and we have selected the main ones which guarantee better results:

• Social Media:

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social networking sites are excellent means to promote your work, especially if you have a loyal fan base and followers. Choose the ones that best fit your niche and audience, and keep a steady number of daily posts. It is important that you maintain consistency and always feed your social media with content that can engage your followers.

• Blog:

You can talk about almost anything in blogs and this is an excellent way of showing the world who you are and what you do.

The idea, as we mentioned earlier, is to write interesting content, which attracts the audience with the profile you are aiming at, without mentioning your company all the time.

For example:

If you offer a course on losing weight, write about healthy eating, ways in which people can increase the quality of life, and other subjects which will lead the audience to your product naturally.

• Paid ads:

Google, Facebook, Twitter and other channels provide space for people to advertise their products and services, paying a fee for it. These ads are also known as sponsored links.

The ads are segmented according to your ideal audience and with the top-ranked keywords that have some relation to your product or service.

• Email Marketing:

Email marketing is a powerful tool for you to talk directly to your audience.

If you have a website, provide forms for the visitors to leave their email addresses and receive information directly to their inboxes.

You can send specific emails to your subscribers, such as a newsletter.

Conclusion

If you were looking for a new way of making more money, after our tips, it will be much easier to take the first step towards making money from your talents and skills.

Working with what we love can be very pleasant, but remember that any work well-done demands dedication, discipline, and focus. 

See you soon!

This post was originally published in August 2016, and has been updated to contain more precise and complete information.