In the course of your professional and personal life, it’s likely that you’ve picked up significant knowledge or developed strong skills in a few areas. Perhaps you’ve become an expert in data mining, or maybe you’ve managed to teach your children to become skilled musicians.
Whatever that specific skill is, it’s likely that there are people in the world who value it and would like to learn from it. How can you turn that special knowledge into money in your pocket?
Here are five strategies that offer the chance to make money while improving your own skills, building your brand and creating great resume material.
[See: 12 Best Part-Time Jobs to Pay the Bills.]
Write a blog. A blog centered on a useful topic tends to attract people who are also interested in that specific topic. When you collect readers, you’re also collecting opportunities for revenue through tools such as Amazon referral links and advertising. Even better, a popular blog can be a great career-advancement tool when you list it on a resume or refer to it in a cover letter.
It’s easy to start a blog using a straightforward hosting service such as Squarespace. A good way to start is by selecting a clear topic on which you’re going to focus and writing a bunch of “basics” articles that you can link back to when you write articles on more specific and advanced topics. For example, if you’re going to create a blog about data mining using the programming language Python, you might start with an article on learning Python and a few articles on the basic concepts of data mining, so you can just link back to them later rather than having to re-explain them.
[See: 15 Financial Steps to Take Your First Year After Graduation.]
Write an e-book. You can think of an e-book as a series of interconnected articles (chapters) that, when put in a sensible order, form a strong coverage of a particular topic. For some people, this works best if you collect a long series of blog posts and reformat them to flow well together. For others, this might work best as a standalone project.
You can sell e-books on your own website (Squarespace, for example, has a module for this) or easily list them on Amazon’s Kindle Store and let them do the selling for you. It’s an effective way to self-publish, which enables you to earn a greater percentage of the revenue for yourself, but it also requires you to do most of the marketing and promotion yourself.
Do consulting or freelance work. If you have a specialized skill that many people or businesses might value for small projects, consulting or freelance work might be perfect for you. This typically requires some mix of self-promotion and contacts within your chosen industry or field.
In essence, freelancing and consulting work amount to short-term contracts to take on specific projects for which your particular skills are suited. Typically, the pay for time invested is solid when you get a gig, but you often have to invest time promoting yourself or discussing opportunities that don’t work out.
Give lessons. Some skills and talents are well-suited to tutorials and hands-on instruction. If this describes your specific skill, consider offering lessons in your local community or over the internet using a service such as Skype or Skillshare.
Again, this takes some self-promotion to get the ball rolling. You can start by sharing this information with your own social network and on local community boards, and you might want to consider lower rates for your first several students in order to attract them.
[Read: 7 Money-Saving Tax Tips for Freelancers and Remote Workers.]
Create YouTube tutorials. Another approach, if you’re interested in visual teaching, is to create YouTube tutorials related to your specific area of expertise. You can think of this as a visual, video version of a blog, in that you can create a bunch of “basics” videos, then refer to them later when you make advanced ones.
The advantage of YouTube is that the hosting and ads are all handled for you, but it does require some time spent scripting, recording and editing videos, which can be time-consuming. This is a great avenue to follow if video-editing sounds interesting to you, you have the patience to learn this skill or you can partner with someone who already has this skill.
Remember, your areas of expertise and professional skills are things that other people will want and value, even if that doesn’t necessarily translate directly into full employment. Recognize that you have a lot of value to offer and find creative ways to share that value. When you do, the rewards often show up, not just in your wallet, but in your sharpened skills and career opportunities, too. Good luck!
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How to Make Money by Teaching Others Your Professional Skills originally appeared on usnews.com
