Making Money - How it Works

Disclaimer: There are exceptions to most rules.

1. We make money by selling something. This something might be a product, it might be a service, or it may only be an idea. Replace selling with exchanging energy.

2. We make money by exchanging energy. If you sell a natural resource, something that you did not have to expend energy to create, you still expend energy collecting and distributing that resource. If you sell a product, you use resources and expend energy to create and distribute that product. If you sell a service, you are selling your energy. Even if you write an ebook on your computer and sell that online, you have expended energy. Ebooks are information products and the resources used to build it are ideas and knowledge.

3. To simplify things, you make money either by selling a product or selling a service. Think in these terms and apply it to what you know.

Here is an example of how a friend of mine will be able to switch from selling products in a store to selling online. She currently runs a small store where she sells beads and other jewelry-making products along with some cool clothes, cards, incense, and other similar items. She wants to work from home and move her store online. Should she just sell the same products through an online store or is there a better way? The problem is one of competition. There is relatively little competition in the small town where her store is located, plus it is a college town which increases the percentage of potential customers (college kids tend to like these kinds of stores). Going online, she suddenly is competing with thousands of other online stores selling similar items. How does she stand out or compete?

One of the best things she can do is shift to a main product line that has less competition. In her case, her skill and knowledge lies in creating jewelry. She can put together kits from the resources she already has and include instructions in both written and video formats. She is shifting from selling simple resources (the beads, wire, tools, etc.) to selling a product in which she has added considerable value by using her skill and knowledge. If she then leverages all the ways to connect with customers through online social networking, she can compete against the huge online stores that sell hundreds of varieties of beads and other jewelry-making resources.

This article is not meant to be an exhaustive treatise on how to make money, rather it is meant to show how simple the basic ideas really are and how you can apply them to your own situation. Can you take some less expensive resources, add your own energy, skill, and knowledge, and create a product that will sell for more money?

Chris O’Byrne
OnlineArtsMarketing.com
YourArtMarketing.com
CreativeTribe.TV