5 ways to make money without selling your body

No need to sell your body

Selling your skills can be one of the quickest and lucrative ways of making some more money. Before you say you don't have any skills to sell, everybody has something they can do that someone is willing to pay for. Now before you go selling your body take a look at your talents.

Your skills

Write down everything you are good at. This includes what you currently do for a living, what your hobbies are, what other people say you are good at, what your mum says you're good at. Now look at how you could market what you are good at. There will be people out there who say they just don't have any skills at all. Let's look at an extreme example: A couch potato (euphemism for someone who lies on the couch watching TV all day and night). What skill does he or she have? TV; they watch TV all day, why not write about it, blog about it, write to the local paper and become their resident TV critic. Everybody has a skill or talent they can market. Even if you don't you can acquire one in a matter of days.

I was speaking to someone about this a while ago and he said he couldn't think of anything he was good at. I knew the person quite well and advised him he sold telecommunications equipment for a living! He still didn't get it. He was the perfect candidate to set up selling telecommunications equipment as a reseller for the company he worked for. He looked at me a little blankly for a bit and suddenly got it. He is now selling broadband, telephones, business telecommunications products and making a tidy sum, he has gone part time at his place of work. Is this ethical? I would say it is as he is still selling and making money for his company.

There are a hundred ways to sell yourself and your skills and get paid for doing it. If you don't feel confident enough to sell your skills for money start it of by volunteering your skills. When you have acquired enough experience then start selling your skills and marketing yourself.

5 ways to make money

Set up a course. Now chances are if you are reading this blog, then you have a fairly good grasp of how the internet works and how to find information. You could set up a 4 hour course for internet beginners and teach willing learners at community centres and charge $25 per person, which is not a lot of money for someone looking to gain some knowledge. If you get 10 people per week signing up that's $250 every week or $65 per hour.

Teach your skills. Teach your skill at your local college of university on their evening or weekend courses,this is ideal for a Saturday morning course at your local college or university. Colleges and universities are always looking for tutors and you don't necessarily have to be a qualified tutor, you just have to know what you are talking about and put forward a proposal. I am about to start teaching blogging at my local university for 5 weeks, 2 hours per week. This may open up other doors. The pay from universities can be good as they are partly funded from the government, it can be as high as $50 per hour.

Write for money. There are pleace like www.elance.com and www.rentacoder.com looking for article writers for their blogs all the time. The money is not fantastic and it may be a little difficult to get a reputation, but once you have a good reputation you can start charging more money. For example someone may be looking for a blogger to write 15 articles for $100, not great but not a bad start if you consider an experienced blogger can write a 500 word article in about 30 "“ 60 minutes depending on the topic and amount of research required. This equates to nearly $7 per hour to start with and can go up to $14 per hour the quicker you get and more experienced researcher you become.

Cold calling. If you are good on the phone and don't mind cold calling you could become a reseller for the big telecommunications companies. This can be very lucrative as you get a percentage of repeat business. So if you sold a business a communications package and they kept this package for a few years you are making money every year by making and selling one package. Cold calling is not everyone's cup of tea but if you consider someone who makes 100 calls per day and the take up rate is 2% for a $5000 telecommincations package you have sales of $10,000 for that day and a commission of between $100 – $500 depending on the company. Work very hard at this for a few months and you have a tidy sum of money in your bank with the option of taking a break for a few months before starting again.

Become an estate agent. I don't mean work as an agent for an estate agents, I mean become an estate agent yourself. In the uk under the "˜estate agents act 1979' anyone can become an estate agent unless they have been banned by the office of fair trading or are bankrupt. Undercut your local estate agents and charge 0.75% per sale or even 0.5%. If you are selling a house for $200,000 you are making £1000 on that sale. There will be charges involved like advertising, signage, leaflet printing, lawyers and solicitors, however after a few sales you could be making a fair bit of money. If you wanted to do it part time; 3 sales a month could bring in anywhere between £1500 – £5000 per month.

I am constantly looking at ways of making more money and I constantly find new ways of doing it. I make a little here and there from the blog, I make it teaching basic IT, I make it teaching blogging, I write for other bloggers, I host websites, I occasionally build websites. If you want an easy way of making money there is no easy way. There can be some quick ways with a little effort at the beginning.

How do you make extra money?