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How to Make Money Doing Whatever You Want to Do

Bold title, bold claim, but is it true? Stay with me, read me out here for the next few minutes and then you can throw up all over what I have to say if you want.

Is it true that you can make money doing anything? To answer that, we must first discuss how money is made. Money is made when value is delivered in form of goods or services, usually as a form of payment or consideration in exchange.

If the saying “one man’s trash is another’s treasure” is true, then there must be some validity to the premise of this post? I am a firm believer that there is an audience out there who needs what you have to offer to them.

Whether it is your knowledge, subject matter expertise or life experience, someone can benefit from what you have to offer and they are willing to pay for it.

The challenge is often positioning yourself to be able to do that, and then marketing yourself to get the word out there so that those who are interested in what you have to offer come to know about you. Marketing yourself is a topic I will save for another discussion.

It suffices at this point to realize that money is simply an exchange of value people are willing to pay you for what you have to offer them. There are a few billion people in this world today, so don’t you think there is even just a very slight, remote possibility that a selected few have personal preferences and tastes that coincide with yours?

Can You Get Paid to Eat?

Human beings are generally lazy. They love to eat, sleep and play. So can you get paid for engaging in those activities that we are naturally inclined toward?

Of course you can. If you don’t believe me, Google the skinny Japanese guy named Kobayashi who can pound down hot dogs like nobody’s business. The guy gets paid massive bucks for doing so. He has won several food eating competitions across the years and has gotten paid pretty good in prize money for it.

You don’t necessarily have to pound flesh down your throat to get paid to eat either. Read about Kish and my adventures mystery shopping, where we have gotten paid thousands of dollars for fine dining and fun experiences.

Alternatively, you can start your own website or blog like I did and become a dedicated “expert” in your field (in this case food). You may just become the next big thing on the Food Network. Food aside, you can do this for pretty much anything.

You can also get paid to sleep. There are several sleep-over experiments out there that pay anywhere from $75 to $200 per session. If you don’t mind people monitoring your sleep behavior and patterns for research study purposes, then this can be your extra money making side gig. You can count on an extra few dollars if you snore!

I have written extensively about countless others ways you can make extra money on the side, from writing, blogging, texting, speaking on the phone, browsing the web, checking email, you name it. You can read more about all those options here.

How to Make Money Doing Anything You Want

Junk yards sell totaled cars to make money, average Joe’s compost worms and Waste Management, a global and publicly traded company that gathers trash, reprocesses it and sells it to make billions every year.

By the way, the company is profitable and growing leaps and bounds. Similarly, I am sure you have seen businesses and people make money all kinds of money in all kinds of ways.

How is that possible? If they can make money doing what they do, you can make money following your passion too. Figure out what you love doing, then get someone to pay you a lot of money to do it. That’s the way to live the dream.

Whatever it is that you are passionate about, there is a business model out there you can implement to turn that passion into a stream of income. The reason why this always works is because there are almost 7 billion people in this world, and everyone out there is working in some way and earning money. Wealth creates disposable or discretionary income, and people spend that income on things they are passionate about.

The common denominator here is passion. If your passion coincides with someone else’s, I can guarantee you that they will at least be interested in hearing more about what you do. In such a vast world that we live in today, we all share common interests with tons of others coexisting with us.

I have long pondered over things one cannot do to make income and found myself perplexed. I finally thought one can’t make income breathing and killing other people, but not surprisingly I was wrong!

There are breathing experiments that pay you to be the “subject” of the experiment. You can make money killing as a “hit man” or by joining the Marines. Can you think of ways you CANNOT make income?

What Do I Like to Do to Make Money?

As a very curious individual, I have limitless hobbies in life. Some of the higher ones on the list are sports, movies, music, video games, traveling, billiards, bowling, shopping, reading, inspiring, encouraging, teaching and entrepreneurship.

I can pick any one of these activities and make money from engaging in them. Wait, that is exactly what I do! I make most of my money today through entrepreneurship and teaching others how to do the same.

I have been able to establish several passive streams of income over the years. Recently I recruited some of my students and co-started niche content websites with them. I plan on blogging about this more in the future.

Making money doing what I love doing has been more than anything I could ever have asked for. It’s truly a dream come true and I look forward to continue doing it.

Do You Need a College Degree to Make Money?

I am a big advocate of education. One can never be too educated. It is something no one can ever take away from you, and in my opinion it is a significant part of one’s development and approach in life.

Is it a mandatory requirement to be able to make money doing what you love? No. In fact, most people who work in corporate America are in careers they didn’t go to school for.

The point is that you do not need the formal or standard education that we are familiar with today, nor do you need a standard career in Corporate America for that matter. What you need is a passion and understanding of how you can use that passion to deliver products and / or services to those that share the same interests as you.

Many successful ventures I have come across started from the entrepreneur identifying a need or a gap in the marketplace. The entrepreneur simply addressed the need and ended up with a successful business. Think about the personal computer, or the automobile.

Conclusion

The world we live in is a massive place, and there are countless preferences and tastes spread across geographies and demographics. There is plenty of discretionary spending cash out there, and with the increasing use of the internet globally, there is no limit to who you can sell to.

Always remember that where there is a will, there is a way. My life is a practical example of this phrase.

Readers: So what kinds of things do you want to get paid to do? What’s the most unconventional activity you’ve heard someone get paid to do?

Sunil
Materializing

2 Comments

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2 Responses to “How to Make Money Doing Whatever You Want to Do”

CAL says:
November 3, 2010 at 10:43 am
Thank you so much for saving me!! I was just ready to walk out the door to this so called “opportunity of a lifetime” when I decided to Google the company (storesonline of course). They sent me a text reminder of the conference today (probably wasn’t a smart move on their part).
Wow…what an eye opener for those of us who aren’t looking to get rich but a little edge to get ahead, or maybe the opportunity for future growth. It really sickens me that there are vultures who pray on the weak (the elderly, sick and the financially disabled).
I would not have fallen for the scam, because I only wanted the free gift. I rate things in measures of “time worthiness”. Due to the statements you made, this scam is not even worth the time. Again, thank you so much for saving me time and aggravation!!!
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Sunil says:
November 3, 2010 at 2:23 pm
Glad we could help Cal 🙂
All the best
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