Do you know how to make money Or JUST DO A JOB?

There is a fundamental shift taking place in the world of work right now.

It’s a shift towards skilled people learning that they can make money on their own.

It’s a shift away from salaried employees waiting for their employers to pay them every month.

It’s a shift towards financial freedom and a shift towards globalised earning for a lot of people.

“We need to learn how to make money.”

This shift was always going to happen but pre-COVID, it was going to happen much slower. Since lockdowns kicked in worldwide, people have had to adapt and have realised that they need to figure out how to make money, not simply earn a salary.

There is a subtle but important difference between making money and earning a salary.

If you can understand this difference, adapt and explore the possibilities over the next few years, I believe you can capitalise on the remote, globalised and connected world to make money and live the kind of life you want to live.

For decades we have been told that in order to live secure financial lives we must receive formal education at traditional institutions and then graduate into a job that pays us a salary for a skill that we acquired which cost us our sanity, health and loaded us with student debt.

The problem with this thinking today is that traditional educational institutions are preparing us for jobs that don’t exist. They don’t exist because the coursework is slow to respond to the changing world but also because there literally aren’t enough jobs being created.

Globally, 73 million young people are registered as unemployed and 600 million jobs need to be created over the next decade to quell the storm. It’s rough out there and I believe it’s getting more difficult to rely on big business to employ more people and provide for those who are coming up into the working world.

We need to learn how to make money.

When you get a job you are hired to do work. That work is ingested into a larger organisation and then the business makes money according to their revenue model. Very rarely are you specifically responsible for earning a dollar. You are hired to be responsible for your work, your job, the tasks assigned to you every day.

Making money is different. Making money is a skill that you learn. Making money means never having to rely on a salaried job alone to provide you with income. Making money helps you diversify your finances and take control of your potential to earn.

Entrepreneurs know how to make money.

Entrepreneurs can spot a gap in the market or identify a unique product or provide a service that people might require and then sell to a customer base.

Salaried employees are more likely to work on a small piece of a large plan, never sell anything, never get to know their customer and usually never worry about profit or the bottom line. That’s a problem.

I run an Online Side Hustle Academy (OSHA) where I teach people how to start their own side hustles in 6-weeks. The skill that I teach, really, is to figure out what you can sell to a specific group of people in the shortest amount of time. This is a skill that I believe everyone will need to know in the coming decades.

So, the question is; do you know how to make money or simply do a job?

To get started ask yourself if you have any skills that people need, any assets that you can sell, trade or leverage to make more money or any products that you believe a specific customer base might want to buy.

I have also created a free workbook to help you get over the five common roadblocks that hold most people back from making their own money. Download it now and sign up for the five-day accountability email program too!

How making money ruined a good game

A couple of weeks ago I started playing a game on my phone called Bowling Friends. It's a game that allows you to play turn based ten pin bowling against your friends. Simple and effective idea. 

Initially the business model was one that worked: upgrades in the game. You can pay to receive more coins and gems which help you unlock better bowling balls and bowling alleys to play in. The better the bowling ball, the more your game improves and the better chance you have of beating your friends. Simple and effective.

I spent about $2 on coins and upgraded my bowling ball to a place where I was content.Then the app makers released an upgrade and all of a sudden there were adverts in the game. Everywhere. This is clearly not an innocent mistake. The adverts are post-game and force you to watch a 10 second video and you are then prompted with an advert screen allowing you to click the advert or close it.

There are also adverts every so often that cover the home screen. The reason this isn't an innocent mistake from game devs trying to make some money is because if you now go into the story you'll see a new product that allows you to remove adverts for $1.99.

This is infuriating. The game developers were onto something so simple and so great but they got greedy. They shoved banner and video ads into a seamless gaming experience and have ruined their core product offering.What they could have done was play the long game, be calm and hold their ground. There's no need to rush the money. You need to grow your user base and then monetize them. Right now I feel like I've been cheated and then forced to pay to "uncheat" my experience. I'm not the only one either. I've got friends who have stopped playing the game because of the terrible user experience now being presented.There's lesson in this for all app, web and game developers; be good at one thing. In fact, be so good at one thing that people will pay you to enjoy the experience. Don't trick your users into loving your product and then force them to watch adverts and pay you to remove them. That's called racketeering.

Adgator - The good, the bad and the money

My very first reaction to Adgator was "Dammit that's my idea". It's that sort of a concept. One that everyone thinks they should've started because it's so glaringly obvious that it's needed that it should've been done months/years/ages ago. But it hadn't been done, not in South Africa and not in Africa on the scale that the Afriguys have planned.Being the sort of blogger that I am I was extremely excited to try out what Adgator was offering in the form of an alternative to Google Adsense. Before I continue let me just stipulate that I am going to try and be as open and forthcoming with my stats, numbers, figures and cash for the purpose of this blog post. I am not earning enough money from my blogs to warrant me being secretive. The point of this post is to help people understand Adgator and have a bit of faith in the service. I will be talking through my experiences with Adgator on SA Rocks.So when the site launched I immediately contacted Justin and managed to have SA Rocks accredited for Adgator ads. I chose to make use of the 300 x 250 ad space but more on that further down.

Potential

Initially I decided I wanted to know how much I stood to earn and luckily on the Adgator site there is a calculator that will calculate how much money you could earn according to your monthly pageviews.This is what I still see:Basically when I enter the number of pageviews SA Rocks did, according to Afrigator's analytics, from last month (16776) I am told that I should be earning over R2000 from Adgator adverts. Unfortunately this is not the case.Using February as an example according to Adgator the stats were:16587 advert impressionsR319.06 earnedThat is a fairly large discrepancy (R1692.86). However, let us go back and check through the Adgator estimator. If you look very closely underneath the blue bar above there is this:

* Projected earnings are calculated on a 50% revenue share and are quoted in South African Rand. In calculating this figure it is assumed that Adgator serves advertising for your entire inventory and that inventory has been filled by a client. All figures are estimates only and are subject to the rate agreed upon with each advertising client.

The theory

Now there is the tricky part. For me to earn the projected amount I would need to fill out my inventory with Adgator adverts, I would need a great rate to be agreed upon with advertisers, I would need there to be enough campaigns for the inventory on the site to be filled every day and night for the entire month. Then only will all of my page impressions become advert impressions and generate me the revenue that I am projected to be earning.The other major unsaid fact is that South African traffic is what is being bought the most by the advertisers on Adgator. This means that if you have 90% of your blog traffic coming from abroad you are in for poor times. With SA Rocks I've been lucky.So a quick display of these stats in regard to the Adgater estimator shows us:SA Rocks South African traffic according to Google: 12485 local page impressionsProjected Adgator earnings: R1498Unfortunately this theory is still not as sound as one might hope, but as I have already said there are many variables that come in to play.

Too many variables

Let's be honest, that is a lot of variables to earn a rand. But it is improving and will continue to do so as Justin and his small team of three grow and gather momentum. Advertisers will come to the party and begin to book out inventory months in advance.Unfortunately that is just not the case right now and I couldn't justify keeping the Adgator code on SA Rocks. So about a month or so ago, I took Adgator off SA Rocks. It wasn't earning me money, some of the stats were completely out of whack (in my head) and I just wasn't feeling justified in removing my Google Ads from the site. So I put them back.But let us be completely honest here, unless you are generating serious traffic (at the very least over 40 000 page impressions) then you are not earning in the thousands on a CPM (cost per thousand) basis, you are earning hundreds. But if you get it up to R500 that covers your DSTV for the month and that satisfies me for the moment.Since taking down my 300 x 250 Adgator ad code in the SA Rocks sidebar I have met with Justin Hartman, MD of Afrigator, and had a long chat with him about the revenue potential, issues surrounding the lack of earning, the way the systems works and it's all quite intriguing.

On the up

With December, January and February being relative unstable, confusing and disconcerting from the perspective of the blogger, March is definitely beginning to look up.I have already carried through an average of R22 per day in earnings. If this carries on for the whole month I'm looking at earning R660 in March. That's not bad. In fact that is almost enough for me to consider moving all of my inventory over to Adgator and have 4 ad slots generating that revenue which could take me up to approximately R2500 per month just from Adgator adverts.

The payment problems

The payment problem is not only hypothetical. It's practical. We are finishing the first week of March today and I have yet to receive a payment from Adgator. I am aware of tax issues that they had recently as Lester explains:

TAXWhen we tried to run the Adgator payouts, the good people at SARS had a few questions for us. The issue was raised about whether or not we should be charging you PAYE tax since you're earning money on Adgator. We were able to make them see that you are in fact selling us goods (your inventory) at a price (the CPM), and so there is no PAYE applicable. This was a lot harder than the two sentences above make it sound, which is where the first payment delay came in.INVOICESNow that we've settled the tax issue, SARS has requested that we get an invoice from you for the inventory you sell us. Quite frankly, this would be an administrative nightmare for both you and me, which is why we're working on a very clever invoicing system that will let you do everything with one or two clicks. Here at the Gator Pen we're all about simple, efficient systems.

Now with regards to invoicing on Adgator this was a major problem that has taken some serious innovative thinking on Justin's behalf to get it right. What Justin has now done is create invoicing software for all Adgator members. This solutions has provided multiple solutions to multiple problems. One of the main problems for me was that I couldn't choose when I received payment in terms of the amount. The minimum balance is R150 but what about my choice? Well with the new invoicing system I can choose when to send Adgator my invoices. The system will tally all of your earnings month on month and add it in to a new invoice every month. So if you delay sending through an invoice from January through April it will add all the revenue you've earned over that period and put it in to May's invoice which you can then choose to submit. This is a fantastic solutions that brings us close to the Google model of holding off payments until you are happy.

Overall

On the whole I have had quite a tumultuous time with Adgator. It's a love hate relationship that unfortunately must exist between bloggers and the people paying bloggers. I have the same relationship with Google too. I'm not satisfied that the best route forward for SA Rocks is Adgator and Google banners all over the show. I think content must be king and ads detract from the overall feel of a good, content based blog.The hard truth is that for the majority of bloggers in SA the personal audience is too small is relatively limited and only a handful of bloggers will earn enough money to do this fulltime. The advertisers are desperate to get to us as bloggers but previously couldn't. If you are involved in blogging only for the money best you cease and desist for the time being. If you want ads on your blogs to pay for your DSTV subscription then my advice is to have a good balance between Adgator and Google Adsense to allow you to maximise your opportunities.I am told that right now advertisers are clambering to get on to blogs (could you send them my way?). I firmly believe that if we give it time Adgator is going to be the place to be for local bloggers to earn money. I hear whispers of people earning R450 a day from one advert.I like to support Adgator because I can see the potential. As soon as Afrigator grows and there are more staff members selling Adgator to advertisers then bloggers will benefit greatly. But for now, keep the rands and cents ticking over while the market matures and we await our millions!

Too much money, not enough friends

This poor lonely soul is rich. He has money. He likes drinking. But alas he has no friends - which apparently is one of the byproducts of making money. The only possible answer is to advertise on gumtree for mates. No, to advertise on gumtree that you will PAY to have a someone drink with you whenever you ask.Click for full size imageWhat a sad but hilarious state of affairs.Unfortunately the advert has been taken down so you can't apply.

Bloggers, money and moving out of the box

Lately I've been thinking alot about monetizing blogs.There are obvious solutions to try and generate revenue from a blog such as Traffic Synergy and Google Ads.But I honestly think that there is more valuable to be had than simple clickthrough earnings.There are a few things that are important to considerAre you even trying to generate revenue from your blog?Some people just love writing whether it is coherent or not, they just like to write and have no intention of earning any money from there blogs. If this is you then you don't really have to worry about implementation of various methods to earn money. Throw on some Google ads in strategic position and hope for the best.Do you have a well established brand?If you do then this is your biggest value proposition. Using SA Rocks as an example. It is a valuable brand that can aid a products public image merely by association. In this case it's important to find sponsorships and build relationships with the advertisers on your site. They will gain value from brand association. Think outside of the box here, what you offer isn't merely clicks or immediate feedback, it's having their brand present on your site. This is value that deserves recognition and pay.Your business only operates onlineYou probably need to monetize your blog quickly. But if you aren't desperate and have other projects in the online sphere your blog might prove to be a valuable place to talk about your projects and rally support for them. This can indirectly translate in to profit or revenue. This can actually be interpreted as revenue generated from your blog.Your business is online and in the "real world"This is possibly where your blog-brand can extend your profits the most in my mind. It's here where I think bloggers need to start extending themselves and pushing their brands in to real results. A great example of someone who puts himself out there and has seen the results is Mail & Guardian Blogger Michael Trapido. Traps is a fantastic mind with lots to say and a firm and educated opinion on a variety of topics. He blogs on Thought Leader and Sports Leader and has turned online blogging in to an offline growth of his core business. Fantastic news and the way that online personalities and specialists need to start migrating.Another great example is the Girl With A One Track Mind blog. This used to be an anonymous blog that generated huge visits and pageviews. Then the author was outed by a journalist and Zoe Margolis was born. This has possibly been one of the best things that happened to her blog (see this interview by Paul Carr). She could become the face of her brand and take her thoughts in to the real world. This allowed her to generate more and different kinds of revenue from her blog.You blog to build a reputationThis can be one of the most valuable blogging currencies. If you are careful and smart about your blog you can gain a very strong following and a very good reputation in a relatively short period of time. This can be converted in to many different revenue streams.How do you or have you earned money from blogging? Let me know.

Click-A-Lot, Triple Your Cash

So I am a content buddy at mydigitallife (MyDL) and have been submitting content from SA Rocks for a few weeks now. I've been slack.I've been slack up until today that is. Today is "click-a-lot" day at MyDL. That means:

The “click-a-lot” day, will take place today 12 June – all day…This means three times your money…This will be for, not only original content written on the day but also reads on all your stories written to date. Therefore watch for your Author Dashboard and tonight all your hits accumulated today will be multiplied by 3!

I have just submitted a boat load of content to my blog at MyDL. Can't imagine why. Get over there, click my blogs, make me rich. Now. Do It.P.S: I still haven't figured out how I am going to claim back this cash.