How to Make Money During Tough Economic Times

The world has changed drastically. What was easy may have become impossible. What was complicated may be simpler than ever before.

When your financial world has been turned upside down, how you make your money, so you can take care of your family, changes.

Tough economic times are some of the greatest times in history. It’s where people are rattled. It’s where existing paradigms shift. This is the time to own your financial past and make money that you can use to work less if you choose.

Right now, the power of understanding how money works has helped me. Many people are experiencing so much stress because of money. No one can predict a Black Swan Event. All you can do is keep a buffer so that you’re prepared when they do come and you can be calm as a result.

The recession in 2008 helped me see tough economic times in a new light so that I could use the situation to never experience that level of financial pain ever again.

Tough economic times are good for you. Here is how you can make money during these challenging periods.

Back Yourself When Nobody Else Will

Tough economic times only help you if you start with believing in yourself. If you still think you have no valuable skills, a change in the economy won’t help you.

What you believe about yourself shapes your earning capacity and the number of income streams you can have.

The limit to your earning potential is controlled by you. When you believe that it’s not luck, but conscious hard work and a series of habits that will change your financial situation, you can make money from anything.

Hidden Opportunities

They really should relabel the phrases “tough economic times” or “global downturn” or “deep recession” with one phrase: opportunity season.

It’s harder to make money during the good times.

Everybody is calm and believes in what they’re doing. When the economy goes in the other direction, perfectly smart people start to doubt themselves, panic, be overcome by fear, and take radical actions that they haven’t thought through. This change in mindset is where the hidden opportunities come from.

You make money from the change in the majority of people’s mindset — from positive to deeply negative.

Adopt One of These Income Streams

Whatever you were doing during the good times, you want to double down.

You want to add an additional income stream to act as a cushion against losing your main source of income or the terrors of deflation followed by hyperinflation.

The ways to make money listed below are fairly obvious, but I’ll name a few to remind you.

Podcast with paid ads

eBook to sell directly on your website and through Amazon

Paid newsletter (via Substack)

eCommerce website selling a niche product

Freelancing gigs (photography, music, film, writing)

Coaching/consulting as a side business in the same field as your main income source. (For example, if you work in a bank 9–5, you now consult to people on how to get a home loan successfully at a good rate.)

Surround Yourself With People That Already Do It

I sucked at making money online. Even though the answers were somewhat obvious, I didn’t know where to start. The simple solution was to get around people who did.

When I watched my friend make $400K USD from an eBook, and another friend make a living by selling music online, and another friend selling his favourite line of clothing through Instagram, it became almost ridiculous to think that I couldn’t do the same.

Last year, I worked in a social media agency and spent my day talking to young entrepreneurs who all found creative ways to reach people and add value to their lives.

Making money online can look impossible until part of your friendship circle is doing it and then it becomes ‘possible’.

Work Slightly Harder Than You Normally Do

When tough economic times hit, you’ve got to hustle a little harder. You don’t need to work 18-hour days or anything — but upping your effort is necessary. Why?

You’re going to be surrounded by an online world that tells you the sky is falling in and just surviving is a huge win.

The news will say no to your dreams. Your boss will say no to your dreams. The TV will say no to your dreams. The hiring manager will overlook your dreams. Your friends and family may unconsciously block your dreams.

Pushing against this resistance requires effort. Your effort level from before won’t be enough during tough economic times, because the chips will be stacked against you.

Fight back and use all the effort you can muster up.

Notice the One or Two Dollars

Today I sold one eBook worth $20 and had to pay costs for hosting that ate up about $18 of that money. You could say that the $2 left is chump change and maybe it is. But Ayodeji Awosika said it better than I ever can:

‘You [might] see a tiny amount of money that barely covers a cup of coffee. I see a seed of another stream to allow me resources to continue to do what I love.’

Making money online always starts small. You never wake up to millions of dollars from the sale of a bestselling book (and if you do, you won’t appreciate the money or the journey).

It’s making the few dollars here, and the few dollars there, which helps you believe that you won’t always be slaving away like a dog. The small amounts of money compound to make large sums of money that make it look like it happened overnight.

Give Away Helicopter Money

Helicopter money is where the government give you free money for doing nothing. Picture a helicopter with the president dropping money out over crowds of people in the streets and everybody taking home their own stack of cash.

You can take the idea of helicopter money and use it to support you during tough economic times. How? Give some of what you earn away to people who need it. If all you do is build your own bank account during a recession, you’ll become entirely selfish.

The process of giving away some of your earnings teaches you the most important rule: you have enough money.

If you never believe you have enough money, you’ll keep endlessly chasing it until you’re the richest person in the graveyard with a Bentley Turbo buried next to you that you can’t drive to heaven.

Give away money to people who need it so that you remember you have enough — and so you have a reason to earn more money, so you can help more people in the process.

Final Thought

A downturn in the economy means an opportunity for you to do something that may not have been possible before. A recession is really just a change in seasons that brings with it new ways of making money.

This can be the time you create a life for yourself where you get to work less and enjoy being alive, without having to worry about money so much.

Use tough economic times to help yourself and others who need it.

-------

Disclaimer

The original version of this story was published on another platform.

-------

Join my email list with 40K+ people for more helpful insights.