Short-term Income Stream: Any Suggestions?

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1

Hey everyone,
Hope you're all doing well.

This is going to be a bit of a long read, but everyone here must be a regular reader of Partha's posts, so this should be a walk in the park for you.

Most of you on this forum are far more knowledgeable than I am in online marketing, so I would like to ask for your suggestions on something. Let me first give you some context.

I graduated from university with the highest level of distinction in May 2022, but I'm yet to find a suitable full-time job. My degree is in electrical engineering, and the entry-level jobs I'm finding either don't pay much or don't really match my career aspirations.

Since graduation, my only source of income has been online tutoring. I tutor many math, physics, and engineering courses. It's good money, but it's very intermittent because students, being students, mostly only reach out to me come the end of the semester when it's exam time.

In 2023, I decided to have a go at the make-money-online stuff, and I ended up joining Wealthy Affiliate. I joined in September 2023, so it's been 8 months since I started. I understand the huge money potential of the online world, and I'm really adamant on succeeding.

I'm making decent progress in my chess website, and I'm a fast learner, but I do understand that this is a long game that needs persistence over the course of years — especially with the continually changing landscape of Google, social media, etc.

Therefore, I'm currently looking for a way to make decent money in the short term.

Of course, I still have nowhere near enough experience to do SEO consulting or what not, but what I do have is good writing skills, which I have honed even more with writing articles on multiple platforms as well as on my website over the course of several months.

Also, I'd like to think that I'm good at creating content for social media. I'm currently active on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, and Medium.

I do small snippets of written content, educational reels, infographics, puzzles for my chess niche, anecdotes from my own chess playing experience, and of course, I try to promote my website articles.

I'm very organized in my work — perhaps a bit too much at times.

I'm also okay at using AI to help me facilitate some tasks, voiceovers, imagery, etc.

With this mind, from your experience, is there a demand I can supply?

The way I see it is: I still haven't seen any real success with my own website, so there's no selling point here.

The only people I can offer "packages" to are absolute beginners who aren't very good with technology, or those who are daunted by the task of being active on all these platforms, or those who have the budget to outsource work right from the beginning of their journey.

Perhaps WA is a good place to find those people, but it is of course not feasible for me to market my services there.

So my question to all of you is:

What suggestions do you have for me?
Where do I start?
What sort of money can I expect to make?

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Last but not least, thank you very much @partha and @andy (and anyone else involved) for creating this forum. I'm getting much more from it than I'm giving currently, but I hope I can repay the many favors one day.

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@yusuf What's your end goal? What are you trying to do with your degree, with your site, with all your digital marketing skills?

The reason I ask is because what your answer is will help point you in the right direction that you need to go. Part of the issue here that I'm worried about is if you try to pick up some freelance work, then that will start to consume the majority of your time (and you might just end up ditching all your work on your chess site. Which is completely fine if you want to do that, but you just have to be okay with that).

If tutoring students is keeping you financially set, then I'd almost just say use all of your remaining time on your site - start branding yourself better, networking with other chess sites, guest post, guest podcast, etc. Go hard on your business and see it succeed the way that you want it to in the next 6-12 months.

Also, are there any other sites/businesses/places you can use to pick up more students to tutor? I've never done it, but I've heard that some people have made decent money teaching English to Chinese students (and I would assume the same would be true for math / science subjects, and maybe this is exactly what you're doing already). If tutoring is working out for you, I'd see if I could pick up a few more students/courses from other places first.

But, putting that all aside, let me see if I can't answer your question, if I put myself in your shoes:

If I were you, I would look around for any jobs hiring 'technical copywriting' - this is basically copywriting where they need someone who actually knows what they're talking about to write about a certain subject (in your case, electrical engineering). @diane would be a good resource to talk about this (whether I'm correct in what to do, or if it's a lost cause to even be copywriting due to AI now), since this was what she did (still does?) back in the day. But that would be one starting point.

Also technical chess writing wouldn't be a bad one to look into either (since it fits your niche, though you'd have a harder time breaking into that since you're not titled).

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The way I see it is: I still haven't seen any real success with my own website, so there's no selling point here.

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I wouldn't worry too much about that - you've had enough success to prove that you know what you're doing. For example, if you were trying to get a Pinterest VA job, all you need to do is say "for one client, I tripled their Pinterest Monthly Views in 1 month" (obviously you're talking about your own site, but you are your own client) - after that just give them a ton of valuable advice on how to make their Pinterest/social media/site better. If they see that you do have value to offer, then they'll hire you for whatever job you're trying to get.

I'll probably have more to say tomorrow, but that's all I got for right now. Diane and Partha (and others) should have more insights that my random muddled thoughts above, haha.

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Hi - content writing, copywriting, and technical writing are entirely different skills.

Content writing is the easiest and unfortunately, with the introduction of AI, is nowhere near as lucrative or in demand as it used to be.

Essentially, it's to build up an audience and traffic, although the Google algorithms have also played a part in reducing the demand for this.

Think of it as blogging, entertaining and useful, answering questions.

Even just a couple of years ago, I could easily charge $70 per 1000 words for relatively easy topics, and have people queuing up for my services!

However, do bear in mind I have been doing this for 12 years.

Copywriting requires the ability to "convert" visitors to customers, somewhat more sophisticated than product reviews, and you need to produce results for the client, in terms of ROI.

It's about "selling" and persuading people to take action, leading them towards a sale.

But once you have that client, then the sky's the limit as far as income is concerned, literally the potential to earn thousands of dollars per project.

This is not as easy to replicate with AI, so there is still a need for human copywriters, but it's very competitive.

Technical writing can include writing reference guides, user manuals, software specifications, etc.

They are writing to "explain" rather than sell.

It requires in-depth knowledge of a specialized subject.

To be honest, it's a difficult industry to get into, and initially you may need to need join an agency or advertise on Fiverr and essentially "sell yourself short" by accepting low-paid jobs to build up your portfolio and client base.

If being a writer is your long-term goal, it's worth starting at the bottom of the ladder.

But if you want to make a decent income in a short space of time, then sorry to say, I personally don't think it's a viable option right now.

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Here's my 2 cents. Do you want to be an electrical engineer in the long term? You've worked hard for your degree. In some industries you have to take a lowly job in order to work your way up.

In the film industry, some people start off working for no money - but they know the experience and networks are invaluable.

I knew a guy here in New Zealand who had studied hard to get an engineering degree and couldn't get a job. So he took a simple roading job with the engineering company to get a foot in the door. He worked his way up the ladder once they knew him and his work ethic.

Life has challenges - that's the fun. You could accept an engineering job to stay in the game, and keep working on your chess website. That way you've hedged your bets!

Cheers, Alisa