when I was 12 years old I had this dream
of making money on the internet now 13
years later and with a ton of failures
and experience under my belt I make over
3 times as much money from the internet
on the side as I do in my full-time job
as a doctor in the NHS the UK's National
Health Service this is the video I wish
I would have had when I first got
started hey friends welcome back to the
channel if you new here my name is Ali
and on this channel we explore the
various principles strategies and tools
to help us live happier more productive
lives and we're talking about money in
this video because firstly more people
should do it and secondly because money
is such a massive source of stress in
most of our lives we often feel like we
don't have enough of it and most of us
trade more than 80 thousand hours of our
lives a huge chunk of our short time on
this earth to go to work so we can make
money which we need to live but being
able to make money online outside of our
day jobs is pretty cool it means that if
we're lucky enough to be doing a job
that we love then happy days we've got
some spare cash to go on holiday with
but if maybe we're not entirely happy
with working 40 to 80 hours a week then
we've got the option of going part-time
or taking a job that pays less but that
we enjoy more or even to stop working
altogether if that's what we want now
obviously this isn't an overnight thing
it takes a lot of time and effort and
luck to get to the point where we can
quit our jobs and stick it to the man
but to be honest I don't think anyone
watching this with say no to having an
extra few hundred dollars a month
kicking around and the process of
getting there isn't as mysterious as it
can sometimes feel so let's break it
down
basically there's only three ways three
legit ways of making money online but
before we go there we need to talk about
what money actually is and there's a
poem from the early 1900's that goes as
follows money is a matter of functions
for a medium a measure a standard a
store and so putting this all together
at its core money is just a medium for
exchanging value like we all use money
to buy things that we find valuable and
so if we want to make money or make
money online we need to be providing
some kind of value that someone else is
willing to pay for so there's basically
three forms of value that people will
pay for over the Internet and these are
are three levels of making money online
and that is level one services level two
products and level three attention I've
been doing variants of all three over
the last 13 years like I started off
selling services as a web and graphic
designer I then moved towards selling
product
so products for med school applicants
and online question banks and now it's
mostly through the attention that I've
got on platforms like YouTube that I can
leverage to superpower the sale of
services and products and those are sort
of the three levels of making money
online level one make money online by
selling your services this one's
probably the easiest way of making money
online it's the one I've recommend to
everyone to begin with and it was how I
got my start there's only two things we
need to do firstly we need to develop a
skill that people are willing to pay for
and secondly we need to find people who
are willing to pay for that skill
step one develop a skill that others are
willing to pay for if you're thinking
that I don't have any valuable skills
that's okay you've got the internet and
you can learn when I was 12 I decided I
wanted to be super cool and therefore
learn how to code through using Google
and finding a ton of free resources
online I taught myself HTML and CSS
which are the basic and a markup
languages of websites and then because I
wanted to make a videogame for my nerd
friends I decide to teach myself PHP
which is a server-side programming
language and I did that in 2006 with
just free information on the Internet
way back when all of these online
courses and stuff were a thing so you
can pretty much learn anything online
for free these days there's hundreds of
ways you can learn how to code online
I'd recommend starting with the basics
of HTML and CSS by following random
YouTube tutorials or by paying for
something like code school or code
Academy and then trying to build your
own personal website and if you want to
learn proper coding I'd recommend the
introduction to Python course over it
brilliant who are sponsoring this video
but I'll tell you more about them later
if you're not into coding there are
literally hundreds of services you can
offer online like if you just look on
the websites Fiverr or upwork and browse
their categories there are literally
hundreds if not thousands of different
things that people will pay you for some
of them are related to doing stuff on
the computer like coding and websites
and graphic design and illustration and
stuff but there's no other things like
writing and copywriting and data entry
and being a personal assistant and admin
service isn't and just there's just like
this whole world of stuff that you can
do on the internet wherever you are in
the world pretty much as long as you
have a reasonable internet connection
another easy ish one to learn is video
editing if you want you can check out my
skill share class on how to edit videos
in Final Cut and after working through
that you'll be pretty good like not
having a monetizable skill is not an
excuse anymore at all if you want to
actually make money online because you
can literally teach yourself anything
over the internet and then you can sell
that skill to other
a step to find people who will pay you
money for that skill or service now
there's two sorts of people who will pay
you for your services essentially
there's a people in real life or
secondly people in the internet I got
started with people in real life I
learned how to make websites when I was
twelve thirteen and then I sent an email
to like my eight email contact and told
all of my friends that I was gonna be
designing websites and I made this
really terrible looking banner thing to
advertise my services I had my home
phone number on it at the time don't
worry it's not my home phone number
anymore we've moved houses many times
since then but I actually found that one
of my friends dad's on to the web site
built and so my first web site that I
made was there's a janky looking HTML
CSS thingy that I made for my mates dad
and he paid me thirty pounds for it so
that was pretty solid alternatively and
a much more viable long-term solution is
that you can find people to pay you for
your services over the Internet now I've
got my start on a website called get a
coder com where you know people would
post projects saying they need a web
designer or a developer to do these
various things and I would bid on those
projects and say ah I'll do it for ten
dollars I'll do it for five dollars I
would basically undercut everyone else
in the market because I was like twelve
thirteen and for me five or ten dollars
was like oh my god I'm rich these days
this place is like upwork and fiber that
seemed to be the biggest ones and you
can just kind of browse through all the
different things people are looking for
and then you can sell your services
there you can say ah do it for a fiver
I'll do it for ten I'll do it for twenty
hundred fifty and over time as you get
better at the thing you can start
charging more and more especially as you
start getting decent reviews and you
start building up your own portfolio of
whatever the thing is that you're doing
and so I did this whole selling services
thing for a few years but I realized
pretty quickly that ultimately what I
was doing is I was trading my time for
money and that's ultimately not very
scalable model because obviously my time
our time is is limited and so if you
really want to make money online then we
want to get to level to level to make
money online by selling products when
you start selling products like physical
or digital goods then your ability to
make money online magnifies a lot
because it suddenly becomes scalable
like it's not directly tied to the
amount of time you're putting it now if
we want we could sell pretty much
anything online but the ideal thing that
we want to sell is something that has a
one-time cost of time or money to make
but then we can sell infinite copies of
and we want the cost of reproduction to
be zero and ideally we want the cost of
distribution to be zero
ideally we want the ongoing time
commitment to be as low as possible so
we can make the thing once and then we
can sell it like a million times without
having to spend much more time so the
ideal product category then is digital
goods or digital product now a digital
good is anything from a website to an
app or an online course or an e-book all
of these things have a one-time cost of
production a zero cost of reproduction
zero cost of distribution and hopefully
a zero cost of maintenance as well all
right so we can either sell digital or
physical stuff but obviously I think
digital is it's better but there's
basically two ways of selling it like we
can either sell other people's stuff or
we can sell our own stuff level two
basic is selling other people's products
now there's various different ways of
doing this but just to simplify for
clarity the two that we're going to talk
about today are firstly drop shipping
and secondly affiliate marketing let's
start with drop shipping the basic idea
is that we could make a pretty-looking
website that sells nice-looking watches
let's say for a hundred pounds apiece
when a customer orders that watch we
then buy it from a third party that's
actually selling the watch and we
arranged them to ship it to the customer
so we're making fifty pounds without
ever handling the watch at all now I've
never really done this myself and I
would recommend you probably stay away
from it as well just because I've seen
so many kind of online courses that seem
to seem a little bit scammy about how
you can make money online by drop
shipping I also don't like the fact that
drop shipping January focuses on
physical goods and as we've talked about
physical goods are just not as fun to
sell as digital stuff because you
actually have to pay for it you have to
arrange the logistics and the shipping
is just a massive bollock whereas
digital products really are the way to
go the second way of selling other
people's products is with affiliate
marketing affiliate marketing is when
you're selling someone else's stuff but
you're getting a commission from each
sale like there's a really good review
website called wirecutter and they do
reviews about the best electronics in
different categories and they have
Amazon affiliate links so when someone
clicks on that link and buys from Amazon
then wire car to the website will make I
don't know 1% 2% 3% Commission on that
sale and so if you get enough visitors
buying enough things you can make a load
of money from affiliate marketing or you
can do what I do which is to have
affiliate partnerships with certain
products like there is the paper like
screen protector who I've been
evangelizing for the last two years
because I genuinely love the product and
so if someone buys a paper like screen
protector for the iPad pro using my link
I will get some percentage Commission on
that sale and if enough
doing that that can make a reasonable
amount of money so that is how affiliate
marketing works you're selling someone
else's stuff but you're getting a
percentage Commission on the sale if
you're interested in learning more about
this there's a dude called Pat Flynn who
runs the website and a podcast called
smart passive income and they've got a
load of materials that teach you the ins
and outs of how to do affiliate
marketing properly but selling someone
else's stuff is absolutely fine but
really we want to be getting to the Holy
Grail and Holy Grail is level to expert
level to expert is when we're selling
our own products if we're selling our
own stuff then we control everything
from the aesthetics to the price to the
distribution to the logistics that are
the entire customer experience we are
controlling ourselves so here there's
kind of three broad categories of things
that you could sell you could try
selling physical products
Peter McKinnon has done very well
selling his camera bag Pat Flynn has
done really well selling this switch pod
which is a tripod for vloggers it's
quite hard selling a physical product
it's a lot of work you have to
manufacture it distribute like logistics
it costs a load of money
I wouldn't recommend doing the physical
product thing it's something I'm kind of
looking into myself when it comes to
selling merch but it's it's kind of hard
and I think personally more trouble than
it's probably worth secondly you could
make a website or an app and you could
sell access to that like for example
let's say you make an iOS game or
something and people buy it from the app
store you're making money off of that or
let's say you're making a website that's
offering some kind of service and you're
charging people a subscription fee or
something for access to that service
this is something that my brother and I
did in 2015 we both know how to code and
so in the summer of 2015 we built an
online question bank for students in the
UK applying to medical school taking
these certain exams and so we charge
people for access to the question back
and through the platform they could do
the questions they can mark their
answers right they could see solutions
but the problem with this whole I want
to build a website and make money off
that is that it's really quite hard to
do in general you need to know how to
code usually want to find some
co-founders you can go down the start-up
route this this kind of so much stuff
out there for essentially building an
app that makes money but if you're a
complete beginner to make money online
the very first thing you should do
probably shouldn't be to try and get
rich off making an ass it's really very
hard and it's kind of a more advanced
way of doing things point number three
is I think a much easier way that anyone
can make money online and that is by
selling info products so buy info
products I mean things like ebooks or
digital downloads or online courses
because if you can teach something and
you can teach it in a compelling an
interesting way online
increasingly it's becoming easier and
easier to find people who are willing to
pay you for that online education you
know more and more people are turning to
online education so if you can teach
something well you can make money off of
that so with me for example I've got a
series of online courses aimed at
medical school applicants that teach
them how to do well in these exams and
medical interviews so that makes some
money every week every month by selling
online without me having to put any more
effort in I've also got online courses
over on Skillshare like of course on how
to edit videos and a class on how to
study for your exams and again those
generate passive income ie
I've put the effort into creating the
course once and then it's just selling
itself repeatedly without me having to
do much else and to be honest it's
reasonably straightforward to develop
the sort of expertise that then means
you can teach the thing and I think a
lot of us really struggle with this
because we think oh I'm not an expert
therefore I can't teach online but you
can because if you're a beginner you can
teach other beginners right now if
you're thinking I want to make money
online you could very easily sign up to
a free trial of skill show and then you
could watch my course and how to edit
videos in Final Cut Pro and then you
could make your own course for complete
beginners on how to edit videos on Final
Cut Pro like it's it's so easy you could
literally learn anything online and then
you can make an online class teaching
that thing to other people and if you
want you can set it through your own
website or if you want you can scout it
through udemy course or a skill shed
there's all sorts of different platforms
that you can sell your expertise on and
as long as it's good obviously has to be
good because you know we make money
online by providing value if it's
valuable then people will buy it and
you'll just kind of make money and a
pretty kind of magical system really but
as you might be thinking you know we can
make all of the digital products that we
want the physical products that online
courses whatever the problem is we still
need to find people who are willing to
part with their hard-earned cash to buy
the thing that we're trying to sell them
so how do we do that and that's where
level 3 comes in level 3 is when we
supercharge our money making powers with
attention now there are all ways that
you can get your product in front of
people whatever it is you could try
running Facebook or Instagram ads you
can go around knocking on doors in your
neighborhood you can send a cold emails
to mailing list whatever you want but
really the easiest way of selling
anything online is by using attention
and that's the attention of people who
know like and trust you and by far the
easiest way of getting people to know
like and trust you is by providing
valuable content on the Internet
completely free of charge for example if
you wanted to write now you could start
a blog about productivity tips and every
week you could write one or two blog
posts sharing your favorite productivity
from books from academic papers from
articles from podcasts from your own
life and over time if you do this
consistently and provide value because
again this is an exchange of value we
all care about value there's no snake
oil you can sell here there is no
shortcut to making money online you're
providing value for free across the
internet over a long period of time and
then in three years time you build up a
mailing list of 20,000 people and now
when you want to run your own
productivity course you've got this
mailing list of 20,000 people who know
like and trust you from the value that
you've given them for free over an
extended period of time and now they're
far more likely to buy your thing you've
got an audience of people that you can
sell to as a guy called Gary Vaynerchuk
who you should definitely be following
across every single social platform if
you care about making money online and
you haven't heard of him
you know Gary Vaynerchuk loads of links
in him in the video description he's got
a book called Jab Jab Jab right hook and
the model for that is that a jab it's
like kind of a boxing analogy I think a
jab is when you give someone content and
valuable content for free and a right
hook is when you ask them for something
or try and sell them something and he
says and interviews that actually he
wished he could have called the book jab
dab dab dab dab dab dab like 25 times
and then right hook but obviously you
can't do that because it's a title of a
book because that's the ratio that free
content versus paid content needs to be
you need to be providing 25 pieces of
valuable free content for every right
hook that you're launching every time
you're asking someone to buy stuff and
really this is the exact playbook would
word for word that I've been following
with this YouTube channel since 2017
I've been following Gary Vaynerchuk for
years I've been following people like
Tim Ferriss who kind of modeled this
perfectly over time by just flooding the
market with a ton of really valuable
free content not really worrying about
trying to charge people for things and
then later on you know once you've got
this audience of people who know like
and trust you hopefully you know through
this YouTube channel I've managed to do
that now for me if I want to sell an
online course if I want to put a class
on Skillshare I automatically have this
audience of six hundred thousand people
who are willing to hear my message and
will be far more likely to buy the thing
from me and so if you can build up that
personal brand that professional
reputation this this audience of people
that know like and trust you at that
point you are supercharging your
abilities to make money online because
now you can sell goods now you can sell
services and in fact you can even sell
attention directly by doing sponsorships
and stuff like that like I do to an
audience of people that cares
there's just that that's it like
completely an utterly life-changing when
you've got this huge audience that you
can leverage to make money online and in
fact the audience doesn't even need to
be that that big like there's a load of
podcasts you know my friend Noah Kagan
runs one about marketing and he shows
that even with a very small amount of
people if you've got the right audience
following you you could easily sell a
product there's a guy called Kevin Kelly
who wrote a famous essay ages ago called
1,000 true fans where if you can just
get a thousand people following you on
the internet and those are your true
fans those are the people that let's say
you're a musician they're the people who
will you know go to every show they'll
buy the special edition of your album if
you can get a thousand people who like
you enough to potentially pay you $100 a
year for the stuff that you make you're
making $100,000 a year you've got a full
time living from a thousand true fans
and so the audience doesn't need to be
that big but the way of building any
kind of audience as Gary Vaynerchuk and
Tim Ferriss say is to just produce a ton
of really valuable free content over a
long period of time but only if I give
away content for free people won't buy
my paint stuff that's not how it works
people will buy your paid stuff but only
if you give them content for free you
don't build an audience by selling them
stuff you build an audience by giving
them a load of stuff for free and then
you can sell to them three years down
the line and so for me right now I'm at
the point with passive income where I
make so much more money on the side
through these online activities through
selling goods services and attention
online then I do in my day job of
working 60 hours a week of being a
doctor in the UK now honestly all of
this started thirteen years ago when I
decided that I wanted to be a super nerd
and learn how to code and so if you're
watching this right now and you're
thinking that you want to maybe stop
this journey one thing that I'd really
recommend is that you learn how to code
yes in this day and age you don't
absolutely have to learn how to code but
it's it's the sort of thing that really
helps if you're trying to sell any kind
of and a software product online and
honestly the best place that I'd
recommend you learning how to code is
firstly teach yourself HTML and CSS
using random free tutorials on YouTube
you can learn HTML in a single day you
can learn CSS in two days and then you
can try building your own personal
website then once you've done that you
should definitely go over to brilliant
for their online course on learning
Python and
fundamentals of computer science
brilliant or Connelly sponsoring this
video they're a fantastic online
platform for math science and computer
science courses and their introduction
to Python and also their kind of
advanced Python courses are really good
at learning Python which is the world's
most popular programming language and
with Python you can do anything from
making an app to making a website to
making even a question Bank that you
know gives people access to medical
questions which is sort of the things
that me and my brother did so if that
sounds good you should head over to
brilliant or forward slash alley and the
first 200 people to click on that link
will get 20% of the annual premium
subscription but yeah those are the
three levels of making money online if
you're interested in learning more I put
together a playlist for you right here
that has a lot of my other videos about
how to make money online to watch those
read the books I recommend and then I
promise you'll start on your path to you
know getting rich by making money on the
internet
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