It’s Stupidly Easy To Make Money

It’s stupidly easy to make money. All you have to do is sell things to people for more than they cost to acquire or produce, and pocket the difference.

You know what the hard part is? Getting people to buy from you.

And you know what’s even harder than that? Making people aware that you exist in the first place.

In the old days, people used the might of the legacy media for publicity. These people either ran big corporations, or they were celebrities. The legacy media comprised television, radio, newspapers, magazines, billboards, and a few other outliers. But basically we’re talking about TV. If you wanted to let people know you existed and to have them buy what you were selling in large quantities you’d have to get on TV.

These days TV is still a huge marketing avenue—but it’s on the wane. Fewer people are watching ‘appointment to view’ TV, preferring catch-up and things like Netflix. And whereas there were once only a few channels, these days there are a bazillion (99% of them crap).

In addition, we have had the emergence of the internet and social media, which have changed things so profoundly that we’d require a whole book to get into it properly, rather than a solitary article.

Suffice to say the game has changed, and it’s changed in favour of ordinary people.

Fame

I have a friend who was a big pop star in the 80s and 90s. He rose to fame via the ordinary channels—TV, radio, newspapers and so on. These days he’s still making great music, and he’s on the social media channels like everyone else.

But here’s the thing—I know ‘non-famous’ people who have just as many, if not more followers.

Even though he has an established media profile, others without that profile have been able to match and sometimes eclipse him on Twitter, Insta and so on.

And you know how they’ve done it?

By posting a lot of content, consistently.

Your Secret Weapon

In the social media space—which is where I work, and where anyone can build up a personal brand if they wish to—your secret weapons are volume and consistency.

Every piece of content you publish—every photograph, video, blog post, Tweet and so on—is another gateway into your world. another opportunity for new people to discover you.

And the more that you put out, the more people will discover you, the more your work will be shared, and the more well-known you will become.

And when you are well-known, and when you start to attract ‘fans’—people who really buy into you and your content—the more product you will sell.

I don’t, by the way, want to make this sound like a cynical process. It isn’t. Every bit of content you release should provide massive value to your followers—for free. So much so, that when, once every little while, you decide to release a product, they are eager to support you, and keen to consume whatever it is you have created for them.

It’s stupidly easy to make money. But it isn’t so easy if you don’t have a profile. What social media has gifted all of us with is the ability to create our own profiles that can rival and sometimes dwarf those of already well-known individuals. And the best thing is that the only real limit to your success is how creative you are and how hard you’re prepared to work.

So what are you waiting for?