How the Baby Has Grown (Parts 2 & 3)

Part 2

This is a continuation of the thread from my introductory article which was a bit of background about the internet and I also mentioned the world of opportunities online that became available as the baby began developing. You don’t need a degree to make a heap of money by becoming a successful entrepreneur. Nor do you need a lot of money to start building an online empire. Keep in mind however that the 10, 15, 30, 100, or even 5 American dollars that may seem like petty cash to the average American, Brit, German, or any EU or other First World country citizen, to another, it may seem like a fortune. The cost of an expresso at a Starbucks in Seattle may be another person’s Sunday lunch in Maputo in Mozambique or Dhaka in Bangladesh. And that is not necessarily only due to currency exchange rates but also to an individual’s circumstances.

Options, options, and… more options

There are countless options available to look at on how to go about earning an income online and the number continues to grow every day as older methods fall away and the combination of technology and creativity spits out some truly incredible ideas and products. There is just way, way too many ideas and platforms for me to mention to make even a little dent in the list. To make an A-Z list would take another book and I doubt that one has been written yet or ever will. The best I can do is a little summary of the more popular ones and those I have looked at and at some time even dabbled a bit with varying degrees of success and others ending in complete failure.

Fancy yourself as a store owner?

Here goes! If you can write, then you would look at blogging, newsletters, freelance writing platforms … An e-book is a way to go, and who knows, if it’s a success and you make a few sales it might inspire you to attempt the real deal and write a novel. There are many platforms that one can register on and open your own e-shop, Not everybody has the means to open a brick-and-mortar shop but it costs nothing except time and effort to set up an online store. You can stock it with physical products if you have access to them but that entails shipping and other logistical issues. Digital products can just be downloaded.

Websites and products

Or if you know how to you can build a website and monetize it to sell digital, or physical products through dropshipping; create, buy, and sell NFTs (non-fungible tokens); create content in any one of its forms, written, video, audio, art; teach, create educational tutorials; affiliate marketing… The list goes on ad infinitum and there are thousands of ways to make an income online to one degree or another, many legit, some grey, dodgy, or just outright scams.

Turning skills into income

It helps if you have skills such as building websites, Adobe Photoshop, graphic design, forex trading, computer programming, AI, building click funnels, and hundreds of others. Use your skill to design courses and tutorials, knowledge is power, and promote and sell them on a multitude of platforms such as Teachable, Creativelive, Fiverr, Udemy, Ko-Fi, and Gumroad, to mention but a few. If you don’t have skills, access to skills has never been easier. Learn some!

In my final installment of How the Baby Has Grown, I will provide some information about the digital products to kickstart your skills-learning journey that will be available from my Kofi e-store.

Part 3

According to Population Matters the world’s population has now passed the 8 billion mark while Web Acquisition tells us the number of internet users continues to soar with 5.18 billion humans on the planet now having access to the internet. That is 64.6% of the global population! Mobile/cell is even bigger with 7.26 billion people accessing the internet via their phone or tablet. An astonishing 3.5 billion searches are conducted on Google daily, which equates to around 1.3 trillion searches annually.

Vision and birth

In Part 1 of this four-part series, I mentioned that 1983 is generally considered the official birth of the internet but the journey had already begun in the 1960s after the vision for the internet was glimpsed in the early 1900s. The numbers today are proof of how big a part of our lives it is and how much people rely on the internet today for communication, work, entertainment, research, and a host of other purposes.

In Part 2 I touched on the online business opportunities available, so many and growing daily, that I will not even attempt to list them as it is an almost impossible task. However, it is one thing to access the internet for your work, entertainment, and research purposes but if you are looking to make an income, passive or through a business online, you will in all likelihood need a skill or skillset that takes your internet usage to a completely different level.

A question of degree

In Part 2 I also mentioned that you don’t need a degree to make a lot of money although having one will open a lot of doors to a stable well- paying traditional job that being degreeless will not. Of course, if your degree happens to be in Internet Technology (IT) or related then you are well on your way to starting your online empire on the sideline while you continue to earn in your day job that you will soon be in a position to ditch once your after-hours online activities start bringing in more money than your 9-5.

For those without the benefit of a degree, however, all is far from lost as there are multiple ways to access information to learn skills and equip yourself to earn on the internet.

E-shop the next stop

In my next and final installment on this topic, I will briefly describe the four digital products available in my store on Ko-fi and although four does not sound like a lot, the subjects they cover are numerous and can be used in conjunction with each other and in other combinations depending on the direction you want to head in.

Writing is thirsty work and if you enjoyed this story how about visiting my page on Ko-fi at https://ko-fi.com/scabcorner49566 and buying me a cup of coffee? You will also find my shop there and feel free to check out my writing editing, and rewriting services available in the Commissions section.

Thank you.