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Picture you’re at your cubicle.

You’re sitting down at 9:06 am (you’re always a few minutes late — why not, it’s not like you enjoy this job).

You open up SalesForce or some other CRM that lays out the onslaught of daily tasks you’re going to need to fumble through until lunch.

You see you have 3 meetings today with people who are going to talk about conceptual ideas that don’t help get anything done, rather than things the company, as well as you, can do to take action now.

You continue after lunch building up energy to cold call a bunch of prospects and sell a product or service you don’t believe in.

You keep staring at the clock, watching the second-hand tick and tock — each movement feeling like it’s mocking your existence at this job.

You head home, make some frozen dinner in the microwave, put on another rerun episode of Friends or some show you’ve watched completely through at least 7 times until the clock gets close to midnight.

You brush your teeth, change into your pajamas, and settle into bed.

Before you completely fall into a mediocre slumber, you stare at the ceiling above your head and reflect briefly on how tomorrow is going to be exactly the same until you finally fall asleep.

What I described above is an image familiar to too many individuals.

I know it was an existence that I lived for a handful of years after I graduated from college and started my first “Big Boy” job.

When things began,like most new adventures, things were great.

• I was learning a lot
• I was earning my first salary (a barely-enough-to-live-off $31,500)
• I felt a sense of purpose showing up to a cool, rehab’d warehouse that was now an office building

And then when things started to settle into a routine similar to the one I described above, a gloomy realization started to weigh on me.

Before I knew it — I was fired from my job.

The reason? Pretty much not giving enough of a shit.

And now looking back, I can honestly say it was one of the best moments of my life (cue cliché).

It was one of the best moments of my life because it helped catalyze my new adventure into the “Wild West” of making money online through various income streams.

In this article, I’ll go over exactly how I turned my life into making over $5,000 a month through my own efforts, all online.

I want to let you know:

• I’m not an online “celebrity”
• I don’t have tens of thousands of followers
• I don’t sell a monthly subscription SaaS product (at least yet…)

I’m just an Average Joe — just like you.

Let’s get into it…

How to Make Money Online

There are plenty of ways to make money online.

I make money online through 3 different income streams.

What will follow is a brief breakdown of each online income stream, an outlook of the industry, and how you can take action and start capitalizing on making money online with each income stream.

Income Stream 1: E-commerce and eLearning

There are a few reasons making money online is not only advantageous but something that should take focus. For one, the industries involved in making money online are all growing.

One of the ways in which I make money online is through e-commerce. E-commerce, also known as electronic commerce or internet commerce, refers to the buying and selling of goods or services using the internet, and the transfer of money and data to execute these transactions.

In 2019, retail e-commerce sales worldwide amounted to 3.53 trillion US dollars and is projected to grow to 6.54 trillion US dollars by 2022.People shop online.

I am involved in e-commerce through the creation and sale of information products and online courses.

Currently, I make a few hundred dollars a month with my information products and am growing steadily every month.

How can you start making money through e-commerce and eLearning?

You may not realize it, but chances are you are an expert or at least able to educate an audience in something.

I know, I know… Everyone and their mother says this but it’s true.

Now I’m not promising the world with this method, but if you were to design a course or create an ebook that can help and educate an audience to solve a problem, you’ll be well on your way to generating money online through e-commerce and eLearning.

You create a course > market it online through Medium, Linkedin, Quora, or Pinterest > capture sales.

The above strategy brings me to the next means of making money online.

Income Stream 2: Content Writing on Medium

It can come across as obvious, annoying, and insulting whenever you read about someone making money on Medium.

Shit, everyone talks about it.

Of course, it’s only obvious, annoying, and insulting until you’re the one who is making money via Medium.

According to SimilarWeb, Medium.com experienced over 210 million unique visitors on its platform in May 2020. This is almost a 400% increase from when VentureBeat recorded monthly unique users at 60 million in 2016.

The platform keeps growing.

Along with the unique monthly users, the platform keeps growing in terms of it’s actively paying users as well (with users paying $5 a month to read the stories “behind the metered paywall”). While the exact number of paying subscribers isn’t available, it’s estimated that the platform, as of 2019, experiences anywhere from 200,000 to 400,000 active paying subscribers.

That’s $1,000,000 to 2,000,000 that will be redistributed to Medium writers every month!

I currently earn anywhere from $3,000 to $3,500 from my Medium stories on a monthly basis.

How you can make money online through Medium’s Partner Program

There are so many stories on the platform educating “Medium Regulars” on how to make money through the partnership program.

Many of the stories share commonalities in their strategy:

• Write “great” content
• Write regularly
• Write clearly — without grammatical errors, proper sentence structure etc.
• Write “behind the metered paywall”
• Write for publications within your niche
• Write stories that lead to curation

And, I have to say, all of those guidelines are spot on.

Of course if you don’t believe me, you can go straight to the source that outlines exactly what content both Medium as well as the Medium audience is looking for.

When you’re writing and publishing consistently, it can grow and leverage you into making money online through the third income stream I have for you in this article.

Income Stream 3: Freelancing for Agencies and Companies

When you’re consistently publishing on Medium (as well as Linkedin, Quora, and other content sites) you are setting yourself up for freelance content writing opportunities.

How so?

Well, consider that your Medium account is essentially forming a portfolio of your works for the world (i.e. potential employers) to see.

The freelancing industry (also known as the “Gig Economy”) keeps growing. According to a 2017 study, it’s estimated that by 2027 that the majority of the U.S. workforce will freelance. Currently, research indicates that approximately $1.7 trillion is contributed annually by freelance work in the United States economy.

With the increasing size of the ecommerce industry, businesses are looking to get content to their site and they’re looking for it right now.

They need to educate their online shoppers in order to capture sales.

This is where your content on Medium can be leveraged into freelance work.

How you can make money online via freelance content writing

I cannot tell you how many freelance clients I’ve secured by simply publishing content on Medium — really without expectation at first of securing work.

Okay… I can tell you — it’s 2 (with a third in the works as this article is being written).

Currently, I make anywhere from $2,000 to $2,500 a month freelance content writing for agencies and online companies.

Furthermore, even if you don’t have potential clients/agencies reaching out to you via your Medium portfolio, you can secure work via word of mouth.

How?

A recent 2020 survey notes that 38% of freelance work is searched for via word of mouth.

This could be through your own professional or personal network.

I actually secured two other clients from talking about (okay fine, it was bragging about) my work on Medium.

They actually came forward with the idea of me writing for their marketing team as a freelancer because they needed content for their business.

One of those word of mouth clients led to work being published on Forbes.com!

The days of heading to an office via your 35–45 minute commute in stop-and-go traffic are behind us.

More and more, workers are telecommuting and vying for alternative means of making a living.

The catalyzing engine that has allowed for these new means of building a personal enterprise is the internet.

With the internet, any “Average Joe” and his brother can take their mind and various expertises and produce content that the world not only wants and needs but will pay cold, hard cash for.

If you have been contemplating taking the plunge and putting content online in attempts to make money online, you’re too late.

Just kidding…

If you do feel like you’re too late, I tend to turn to this Chinese proverb,

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”

It’s not out of reach.

In fact, it’s more within reach than any other time in history.

But you have to act.

You have to start creating.

You have to start taking chances.

Because what is the alternative? To keep staring at the ceiling of your white-walled bedroom hoping the next morning you’ll wake up in another life?

We know that’s not happening.

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“If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), “Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?” chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.” -Steven Pressfield

Blogging and content writing is a hot industry right now.

With just a brain, a keyboard, and access to the internet one can take what is in his/her imagination and share it with the world.

He or she can take their passions and share it with the world.

This amazing opportunity is a double-edged sword.

• It is a positive because everyone feels so special that they want to share their voice with the world.
• It is a negative because if you are one of the people Pressfield is talking about above, it will be one of the scariest things you’ve ever undertook.

The irony is you have been given a platform where your wildest dreams are so easily accessible but find yourself terrified to pull the trigger.

I’ve been there. I’ve been writing for my entire life. Most of that life I kept my writing to myself. I thought I wasn’t putting out “good enough” work for the world to see so I kept it to myself.

About a year ago I changed that and started publishing my work online. Since doing so I have seen my work:

Go viral.

I have built a community of writers on my site.

I have built an income as a result.

I have had my work published on other sites.

I’d like to share the lessons that I’ve learned with my writing in order to produce better content.

1. Write until your hands hurt.

“You can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.” -Stephen King

Writing is a very difficult endeavor. Writing “good” content is even more a pursuit. Well how does one get better at content writing? The simple answer is practice. Write every fucking day. There really is no excuse. Most of your writing is going to be bad. It’s like Venture Capitalism: You invest in 10 companies knowing 9 will fail. The 1 company that does succeed will pay for the losses of the other 9.

2. Seek feedback.

“We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.” -Bill Gates

This is a very hard step in being a writer. We think everything we put out into the world is “solid gold.” The hard truth is that it’s not. Again, so much of your content is going to be bad, So seeks feedback from your audience (or your potential audience).

How do you do that?

Well, send your work to friends and family. Also, make sure to foster comments and a discussion with your work.

3. Understand that your opinion is different than the reader’s.

“The perception of beauty is a moral test.” -Henry David Thoreau

I’ve fallen into the trap of always thinking my work is crap (sometimes it is). I’ve seen so many times throughout my writing career that I will write an article, think it’s crap and get amazing feedback. People will respond and tell me, “wow, this is fantastic. I really like your writing.”

It surprises me often. On the other side, I can feel like I’ve just written my “Magnum Opus” and get negative feedback. Once the content is out in the world, it doesn’t belong to you anymore. That’s a beautiful thing.

4. Ask and seek help.

“A leader’s job is not to do the work for others, it’s to help others figure out how to do it themselves, to get things done, and to succeed beyond what they thought possible.” -Simon Sinek

You cannot get to where you want to go alone. You are going to need people who have been where you are looking to go. You are going to need people that can help catalyze your progression.

We live in such a beautiful time that we can access this help through many different means (cough, cough enter Quora for instance). You can find video modules, ebooks, Youtube, conventions, online coaches etc on top of meeting people in the flesh.

5. Read.

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.” -Stephen King

You cannot get better at writing unless you read a bunch of material that is being put out into the world. Human beings aren’t created in a vacuum. We are social creatures. We need to spread and absorb ideas. Look at the style of other writers, look at the vocabulary of other writers, look at their sentence structure. Read articles, read non-fiction, read fiction, read poetry. Get your hands on whatever you can and expand your own language set.

6. Have the belief in yourself that you can do it.

“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.” — Thomas Jefferson

This is a fundamental attribute for every facet of life. If you are going into a baseball game with your team and think for just a moment that you aren’t going to win, chances are you will lose. This is true as a content writer as well. If you always think your work is crap and that you are a “bad” writer, you probably will always and forever remain a terrible writer.

There is no “shortcut” one can take in order to become a better writer overnight. It is going to take time and practice.

Think about when you were a kid in perhaps second grade. Why did you take math class?

To get better at addition and subtraction.

It took me a long time to understand how this applies to the more subjective fields of writing and art- but it’s true!

You are going to need to practice and put your words out in the world. This is the best and more efficient way to become a better blogger and content writer.

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