Cash Kitties

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

There’s a statement that I’ve read far too many times on blogs.

I’m making enough money to pay for my hosting costs, and that’s a good thing.

Or something to that effect. Who the heck goes online to make money with a goal of making $10 a month?!? I mean, if that is all you want, come to my house and I’ll pay you $20 to clean my house! There is simply no way you are going to make money online or off if your goal is to make $10 a month.

Here are some examples of tiny thinking:

Surveys

The companies that “pay” you to take surveys know this. Sometimes they don’t even bother to pay you with real money! This summer, I played around with the survey scams and found exactly one reputable company, Pinecone. I signed up with them, and six months later, my inbox is still full of questionaires, most of which are unpaid ones. The paid ones pay…are you ready for this…$3.00! Is your time really worth that little? Yes, it may only take you ten minutes to fill out a survey, and that’s $15 an hour. But not really. Try adding up the time you spend doing the unpaid ones. It gets sad real fast.

Personal Items on eBay

I see tiny thinking a lot on eBay. Selling your kid’s old jeans will net you five dollars, yes. But, you had to…have the product, clean the product, take the photos, upload the photos, set up the eBay page, write a description, take measurements, find packaging, deal with emails and inane questions, drive to the post office, wait in line and finally mail the dang thing. For five dollars. If you have done this, you are a victim of small thinking.

Adsense on small sites

By small sites, I mean any site that gets less than 10,000 hits per week. Even with 10,000 hits a week, you are going to be doing good if you make $5.00 a day. Wait, did I say good?!? Eeek. That’s not good. Not unless you have multiple sites with that kind of traffic, which is highly unlikely. I’m not knocking it, because it will buy you your daily Starbucks. But it’s not something to crow about.

Selling Crafts

I look on Etsy and I can tell who has a business plan and who doesn’t. Most people don’t. Most people are selling items that cost $5.00 to produce for $8.00. These same items took them about two hours to make. Not counting all of the picture taking, shipping, etc. that’s $1.50 an hour. That’s really small. Of course, no one is selling enough to actually make $1.50 an hour, so it is more like $1.50 a week. Switch to Folgers. There are ways to make money with crafts, but you have to be smart about it, and you have to think big.

Underpricing Services

I’ve found that there are some really talented people out there who will charge five dollars for a Photoshop banner. This is good for people who can’t design, but bad for the designers! There is no reason for this. If someone wants a Photoshop banner in the style that you produce, they’ll pay $50 as soon as they’ll pay $5, except in rare instances. And the rare instances don’t count, because since you are now charging $50, you can definitely afford to lose those $5 customers.

I could go on and on. You see so much small thinking out there. If you are willing to accept only five dollars for your time, then that is what you’ll get. Period. If you see yourself in any of these examples, stop.

You can change tiny thinking. Here’s what you do:

Decide what you are going to focus on. This is your niche. It applies to both online and offline businesses. Research it like crazy. If you discover that it pays very little, then ditch that idea unless you can do it differently and make more cash.


Find out how the big boys are doing it. Ask yourself why you aren’t doing the same. There are really no excuses. Using the “make money online” industry as an example, if you can’t program, hire a programmer to implement your idea. There are plenty of programmers who are small thinkers, so you’ll be able to afford it!

Set a goal. For crying out loud, please set a goal. It should not be something like “quit my job and stay at home”. That is very vague, and it doesn’t specify whether or not you will be eating oatmeal three times a day while you are at home or whether your personal masseuse will be arriving at 10:00 each morning. Instead, decide how much money you want to make and give yourself a realistic time frame in which to make it. Then, when you’re exploring opportunities, if what you’re looking into doesn’t fit that model, then you can ditch it right away and not waste your time dithering away.

Tell people you are what you are. Even if you are currently making a few cents a day writing, if that is how you have decided you are going to make money, then tell people you are a writer. You don’t have to tell them how much you make. Or perhaps you are a marketer. Or a quilter. The idea is to convince yourself that your endeavor is a career, not a hobby, and careers make money. Your expectations of yourself will change.

My purpose here on this blog is to point out as many money-making opportunities as possible that will make you independent from a bricks and mortar workplace. Opportunities can be approached in a big way or a tiny way. It all depends on you. So think huge!

Photo by fofurasfelinas