Thanks to HubSpot for sponsoring this video.
So naturally, a lot of people think that to get a high income job,
you need to go to university.
Now, there is nothing wrong with going to university.
I think if you're doing something that requires a university degree,
then, of course, you have to go to university.
It makes a lot of sense.
But I also like to make the case that you can make money
without having to go to university.
And I'm the prime example here.
I'm someone who is not going to university, is not going to college.
And I've been able to build income streams.
I've been able to build businesses that can make me serious money,
more money than most, 9 to 5 jobs.
I feel like we're also very lucky where we live in this digital age,
where you can make a business just by sitting behind your computer.
It blows my mind and it's exactly the type of businesses I've built.
So in this video, I wanted to share some business ideas
that you can start their actual proper businesses.
They don't have to just be side hustles
that make a little bit of money.
They can be grown into fully fledged businesses.
The other great thing about the businesses
that I'm going to be covering is that they don't require
a ton of money to get started.
You can easily get started with what you already have,
and they also provide
a lot of flexibility and freedom, which is important to me.
The whole idea, the whole point of me starting online
businesses and doing online businesses is so that I have freedom.
So number one is of course, content creation.
So I have turned content creation into a full time basis.
A lot of you that are watching this channel may not already know
that I actually have another YouTube channel.
I have a tech YouTube channel.
I also make content for Instagram and TikTok.
I make content for all sorts,
and I'll be making content for five or ten years now.
Content creation for me has unlocked so many different opportunities.
And now with the position that I'm in, I want a couple of YouTube channels.
I'm starting new YouTube channels, I have Instagram,
I have Tik Tok, I'm making content for brands.
There's just so many different ways that content creation
has helped me make a lot of money.
I think the best thing about content creation is that you can turn things
that you already love doing into content.
It is very easy to get started now.
Of course, it's not easy to grow,
but I think with the way the Internet is right
now, you can make content really about anything.
You can find niches everywhere.
If you love doing something, if you love showing something,
there will be other people out there who also love that same thing.
For me, it was tech, it was gadgets, it was design.
So all those things mixed together, especially product design
and things like that, all of that mixed together.
That's what I loved and that's what I made a YouTube channel about.
And it's going really well.
It's doing incredibly well.
I was making an incredible amount of money for me
and it's just been such a great way
for me to turn something that I love into a business.
The other great thing about content creation and social media
is that it's not just about you.
Like, I think a lot of people fall into the trap of thinking
that they have to make content where they're in it,
when they're doing the voice overs, where their faces on camera,
stuff like that.
Not at all.
You can really do all sorts of stuff.
You don't even have to do content creation, free stuff
you can do for other businesses as well.
If you are interested in social media trends, HubSpot
have put together a social media trends report and expert panel.
If you want to follow in my footsteps
of making a business out of content creation.
One thing I would highly recommend
is just keeping up with social media trends and seeing what's trending.
Of course, the one issue is how do we know what's actually trending?
Because things are moving very, very fast in social media world.
But I have just the right resource
here to help stay on top of this year's trends.
How to Spot Social Media Trends Report.
It's an e-book that covers a wide range
of social media trends, including community building, social commerce,
influencer marketing, content creation
and platform specific strategies.
There's a whopping
40 pages of insanely valuable information in this e-book.
It's a vital resource for anyone who wants to take social media seriously.
It covers important metrics, goals and challenges faced by social media
marketers, providing benchmarks and insights to measure success.
Understanding user behaviour trends highlighted in the report enables
tailored content strategies, ensuring content resonates
with audiences and drives meaningful engagement by anticipating
future trends and staying informed about competitors strategies.
Those who take social media seriously can maintain relevance,
optimise advertising campaigns,
and can stay ahead in the landscape of social media marketing.
Content creation for me has been the biggest driver for my business.
It's how I've been able to give myself
the freedom, freedom to grow my business.
This e-book does a great job of demonstrating that content creation
can be a huge driver of new customers
and revenue for pretty much any type of business.
So make sure to check out.
It's completely free to download.
Next up is short form content and repurposing.
So if you have any sort of skill when it comes to video editing,
which I think is actually fairly easy
to pick up this is such a great business.
This is such an easy way to make some money.
But growing a business like this for a lot of people can be quite difficult
and it's because they go about it in the wrong way.
What I've noticed is that a lot of editors that are making shorts
don't really have a style, and they're also
not really seeing what's trending
on the social media landscape.
You could say they're not seeing what other types of clips
people actually want to see.
So I find a lot of these short formats says they're just trying
to make as many clips as possible just to get the job done.
However, if you want to make big money, proper money
when it comes to making short form content editing, short form
content for businesses, for creators, whatever it might be,
it's all about coming up with clips that will either go viral
or can actually make money for the end client.
A lot of people don't seem to really be focusing on that.
Like I said, they just want to make as many clips as possible.
But if you can prove
that your clips are either going viral
or they're bringing conversions, you can charge a lot more money.
I would happily pay for a short
film editor who I know can regularly get me
hundreds of thousands of years or millions of views
or who can sort of figure out
what's trending was not trending.
Look at my videos and stuff.
See where they could see a clip
maybe potentially going viral or maybe for other parts
of my business that I helped drive over.
If they can prove all those sorts of things,
I'm happy to pay them big money like that.
Obviously, being able to deliver the results,
I want to be able to reward them for those results.
And I know there are short form editors out there
who are making well over five figures a month.
They have a few clients that don't have that many clients,
maybe three or four clients, but they're regularly churning out
good quality repurposed videos
that are doing well for their clients.
And that's the most important thing.
Instead of
just trying to figure out I'm going to make ten clips for like $1,000.
No, no, no.
And I think it's actually better to make sure
that the clips you're making are actually going to do well.
Another thing that I've noticed when it comes to short form content
is that a lot of people try to overdo this or flashy ideas,
try to do crazy captions of sound effects and things like that.
But some of the most viral clips that I've seen online
don't have any flashy editing at all.
The person has just found
a clip from a video or from a podcast or something
like that, which they know will go viral.
They've gone through the effort of figuring out
what can work on places like Instagram and TikTok tutoring.
So this is a perfect mind
for anyone who is also a student, because I've always said
that the best person to teach another person is another person
who's also learning that same thing, but only a few steps ahead.
I found that people who are already very,
very knowledgeable in a subject, I'm actually great teachers
because they're already way too far and maybe they learn the basics
or something.
Years ago, decades ago, and now teaching someone
who is completely new to the subject can actually be very, very difficult
because they're thinking years ahead whilst this new beginner,
this person is just starting to learn the subject
is trying to just learn the fundamentals and the basics
so it can be quite hard for those two people to really learn
from each other.
The best person to learn from is someone who's just a few steps
ahead of you.
And the great thing
about something like this is that you don't need to be an expert.
Like you don't need to know everything about a certain subject to teach it.
And I think that's why tutoring is actually such a great way
to make money,
because a lot of people fall into the trap of thinking
that they need to be an expert in a subject
and they need to know everything
about this certain subject to teach it to someone else.
And yeah, it just really isn't the case.
So if you're someone who's also a beginner
who wants to make some money, he wants to be able to
you can make a lot of money doing this.
You're in the perfect position to also teach someone else.
The great thing about this is that if you want someone
who happens to be at university and you're watching this video,
you can be someone who's teaching multiple people.
So you can have your own class.
You can teach multiple students most people at the same time,
and you can charge them all the same way, really.
So maximising your income, scaling your income,
this is such a great way to scaling income,
having lots of people that you can teach at the same time.
And then if you want to take it
up a notch, you want to take it to the next level.
You can make courses.
Digital courses especially are such
great businesses and so many people
who have digital courses that are teaching stuff online.
They put a curriculum together
and they're making absolute bank
because it's such a scalable business
and you're not necessarily limited to a number of students in a class.
You can really just sell it to as many people as you like.
I have my own course video credit, of course dot com,
and it makes great money.
I still just have it sitting in the background.
It's all about
how to make high quality videos, not necessarily for YouTube,
but just making high quality videos in general.
And yeah, the great thing about it is that it's
all just making money passively in the background.
But there are creators out there
who have turned courses into fully fledged businesses
that are just making millions, like making millions.
It's absolutely insane because people are willing to pay for knowledge.
That's the most valuable thing about courses.
If you can teach something that's valuable to other people
where they can use it to maybe make their life better,
maybe make relationships, love
whatever might better make them money.
So those three things happiness, love, money.
If you can take something
that takes advantage of one of those three things,
you can make a lot of money.
I found with courses
the people who are looking to buy, courses
that are looking to learn stuff from courses they're looking for,
the money details are looking for the fun in details and things
because they want to see how other people are doing it.
They want to see systems and processes
in place that has worked for someone else
and they want to see if they can apply the same systems and processes
to their own sort of way of life, their own way of doing things.
Gym workouts are a perfect example of this.
If you see someone who you think, Wow, they look incredible,
you might also be interested in How can I look like that?
So if that person had a course, if they shared their gym routine,
you're obviously going to look at it and you're going to think, okay, let's
see what they're doing and maybe I'm missing out on something.
Maybe I'm not doing something right because clearly
they're doing something right that I'm not doing right now.
Social media management.
So this is one I've covered in the channel before,
but there are so many businesses out there,
especially businesses run by older people who you could say
who just have no clue about social media.
They don't know anything about his found TikTok
YouTube or any of these social platforms.
They don't know what it takes to make content.
They don't know how to publish content
that I know what type of content to make.
And it's not just older people.
They're also people,
young people who don't really have any idea of social media.
These businesses, these sorts of people,
they are usually willing to pay someone else to do it for them.
And that's the whole point.
If you can take the pain away from someone else
and also make their lives better, make them more money,
you can charge big money for social media management.
The great thing about this business is that it is somewhat scalable.
So if you have systems and processes in place,
there's no reason why you can have three
or four or five businesses where you're charging
maybe, you know, between 2 to $5000 a month,
maybe even $10,000 a month, depending on how much you're doing for them.
You can also hire other people to come in and help you with those things.
It's such a great way to build a business
that can make quite a lot of money quite quickly.
If you're someone who is social media savvy,
I think it makes a lot of sense.
One angle that I would take with this, which is what I mentioned earlier
on in the video, if you can show a client
or a business, whoever you're selling your skills to,
that you're either bringing in fees or you're making them money.
Them going to be more than willing to pay for your services.
Next up, we have you want us design and website creation.
So well before I started doing YouTube and so making money
from YouTube, my main source of income
was UI, UX design and making websites for clients.
And let me tell you, I made a lot of money doing that.
It was just one of the best things that I ever did
is one of the best skills I ever learned.
I made a lot of money and very, very quickly, a few years
into my career, I was charging
$500 to $1000 a day
for my services, depending on the client,
depending on the business, depending on what they needed.
And I remember thinking at the time, like, holy moly,
I can't believe I'm charging $1,000 a day for my time.
Obviously I'm selling my time, but still it's $1,000
like I was in my early twenties, mid twenties.
And I think to myself, this is outrageous.
Like $1,000 today.
I did have some imposter syndrome back then.
So I was thinking to myself, I can't believe I'm charging $1,000 a day.
But now when I think back, the reason why I was charging $1,000
a day was because those sorts of skills just wasn't that common.
Not a lot of people had those skills.
Not a lot of people had the style that I had when it came to
UI UX design and making websites.
And that's the one thing I realised
from nearly all of the clients that hired me.
They were looking for my specific style
and that's what's so important about you,
why you design a website creation, having a style that's pretty unique
but also very refined and can deliver results.
The other thing is most people just aren't that technical.
They don't want to be messing around, spending time
learning how to use figma, which is what I use to design
and using things like framer or learning how to code to make websites.
Just like with social media management, mice, businesses,
they don't want to be focusing on making a website.
They don't want to be running a website, nothing like that.
They would much rather pay someone else to do it.
And the great thing about websites is that we know they make money
like that.
A good face for a business, whether it's like a restaurant,
whether it's an e-commerce site or whatever it might be.
We know it's a way for people to look
for that business online and for that business to make money.
And you could even take it a step further.
You can go to the business and be like, Look,
I will make your website for free.
However, any clients I get for you, any customers
I get for you through the website, I take a cut.
Maybe it's 5%, 10%, 20%, whatever it might be.
That's such a good way to make a lot of money.
This is also a very scalable business
because once you've made a website, you could just charge a retainer fee.
You can also hire other people to come in to manage websites,
to make websites with you, to make websites for your clients.
It's just a very scalable business.
And there are so many companies, so many agencies out there
that we already know are making millions doing this.
Another thing that's become very popular is just
charging businesses on a monthly basis a retainer, essentially.
And Darrel, a designer who shares his work on Twitter,
he runs a design agency called Endless Dot
Design, where he charges $8,000 a month.
And he's doing incredibly well from the information on Twitter.
And it's a simple retainer package that gives
you basically a one design lead.
One seeing the design on five days a week, one request at a time,
you get an unlimited amount of design work in that time.
Dedicated Slack Channel Unlimited revisions
and a 40 hour delivery, and he's charging $8,000 a month.
And you can see he only has one spot left already.
So people are clearly paying for this and he's making a lot of money.
And like I said, if you have other people in the business,
you can have more and more spots, you can have more availability
for clients.
This is a fantastic way to make money.
And like I said, it's how I used to make money
before I made YouTube videos and I made a lot of money doing it.
I made a couple of million doing this whole thing.
That's for this video.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed it.
As you can see, I am in a new setup.
I have a completely new setup.
This is in my new office in Dubai.
I still have a few things I enjoy, said.
I still have a few things I sought out like my microphone.
I'm using this lava lamp like most DJI,
like instead of my podcast, my I made my podcast.
Like I need it to come on.
So I'm just waiting for things to set up.
I'm shipping a lot of things from the UK to Dubai,
so I'm waiting for things to arrive.
So yeah, things will go back to normal,
the high quality order will go back to normal.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed it.
Follow me on Instagram and Twitter where I'll be sharing a lot
more updates and subscribe for more.