A step by step guide for 18 years old to become financially strong
There are multiples ways to make money online/offline. Many online articles are full of scrap advice, they suggest you to start online business, rent your apartment, blah blah.
None of them even thinks for a second about who they’re giving this advice. Just think for a second starting an online business requires money, you can rent an apartment only if you own it and owing an apartment – also need a lot of money in the first place.
This is article is not simply written for the younger generation but also for the people who are looking to grow their money and become financially sound.
The first thing we’re going to talk about is how to make money?
How to make money?
This topic is only for the younger generation who is not earning money by any means.
The first thing you need is money to make more money or simply start your own business. We’ll discuss the method in few seconds.
In today’s era where artificial intelligence is wiping out jobs and making people unemployed – it’s not going to be easy for those who are still following the old school methods to build their career.
Younger generation needs to be proactive in trying out different ways to build their career and money.
Freelancing is the best way to make money online. Although it’s not going to be easy for you.
First thing you need is to learn an in-demand skill. In my opinion, content writing and coding are the best skills to learn.
I can do the content writing and website designing for you. Let’s discuss on fiverr.
Learning these skills requires time and effort, but once you have invested the required time it will reap the benefits for you.
Well, content writing and coding are not the only skill you should go for – you could choose any skill of your interest such as graphic designing, video editing (in-demand) etc.
By the way learning a skill might take anywhere from 4 to 6 months depending upon the fire in your belly.
Once you have learned a skill you need to your first client. I would recommend using LinkedIn to find your first client.
Always serve your clients with affordable and timely completed projects. Do more than their expectations. Your first few clients are critically important for your freelancing career and foundation of your business.
Okay once you have started making money with your side freelancing work you can build business around it.
Starting a business
If you’re not already freelancing and looking to start a business in the first place then you should consider reading some other articles.
We’re going to talk about starting a business from the side projects or freelancing which is already making some money.
You can now look for other people in the same niche who can work for you to scale your freelancing business.
The question over here is why we’re talking about starting freelancing, which is a service based business?
Well the reason over here is that the number of companies operating is always to going to increase and all of them would be looking to outsource their business projects.
In short, the demand for service-based business is never going to die. As a service based business you’re not going to deal with the customer directly in most cases and that’s what makes this business safe.
Big, small, and medium size companies are going to be your clients and you only have to fulfill their demands.
For example: Every company today needs content writers who can helps their business drive organic traffic for search engines. And the best thing you business is that once you mastered the content writing skill you don’t need to worry about the technological changes.
Okay, okay I know AI is used to generate content but people love to read content written by real people and Google also favors it.
Building a business around something already making money for you is a good idea. Of course you couldn’t do that with your day-job.
Rule of thumb: It is a lot easier to go from self-employed to business venture than from a job.
Investments
If you have built a good system for your business, it will generate a passive income for you.
However, you shouldn’t neglect stock market and mutual funds. Well, you’re familiar with stock market, if you have no idea about how stock investing works, I recommend you to learn about it first.
Then start investing with as little money as possible – your primary focus must be to learn the basics of investing.
The stock market is volatile there’s no fixed returns like FD. However, you can invest in index funds. They are the safer options in the stock market. (Do your own research about index fund)
Stock market is not gambling and it takes a lot of time to grow your money. But it can generate passive income in the form of dividends – but to earn a significant amount of dividends to pay your bills you need to heavily invest in financially sound companies that pays dividends.
Advice: You don’t need to watch daily ups and downs of the market. Do a thorough research for a company, invest in it and forget.
There are other assets in which you can invest – but please do your own research first.
The best ROI is generated from the money invested in self-education and your own business.
Self education
The last step is to keep educating yourself while building your business. This is the only factor that will keep you financially stable, as it will give you insights into new ideas.
Almost every skill can be learned from the internet. By the way, theory is not enough you need to practice it.
I heavily recommend you to read business, finance and self-development related books as these will keep you on track.
Conclusion
The conclusion over here is that you need an income source at the first place before looking for ways to grow your money.
And in my opinion starting a freelancing business is worth it. Always remember that you need skills, knowledge and little bit of luck to succeed in business and career.
Well that’s all from my side, if you have any suggestion on improving this content please share your points on LinkedIn.