Discovering and exploiting your own talents can be the ideal way to boost your earnings – whether you merely want to supplement your existing income, or go all out to establish yourself as a self-employed entrepreneur. There’s no limit to the possibilities, once you have discovered the best methods of developing your talents to the full.
So where should you begin?
Ideally you need to make a comprehensive list of all the skills you have – professional and otherwise. Be thorough and include everything. It does not matter at this stage how obscure they might seem – from balancing people’s books to digging up weeds in the garden. Both of these are valid skills which you can readily exploit to earn that extra cash. All you need is the right approach.
Include on your list details of any specialist courses or tests you have passed or taken part in. If you decide to take your talents to the limit and carve out a career in self-employment, your letterheads and business cards will take on a more professional and reliable appearance if the relevant credentials are included. It pays to be positive and include everything you can think of when compiling your list.
Your hobbies and pastimes may also provide you with further ideas for moneymaking opportunities. Let me give you a personal example to prove how easy it can be to latch on to that extra cash, once you get your talents working for you.
A while ago, I started collecting and completing commercially produced cross stitch kits for framing. Cross stitch is at present the fastest growing pastime in the UK, with many new designs appearing every month.
It is also highly addictive, and it wasn’t long before I decided to have a crack at working out my own design. I submitted a full outline and plan, together with the finished product, to a magazine which specialized in printing new designs by and for cross stitch fanatics. It was accepted straightaway, and I have since designed several other projects for the same purpose.
Of course, if you have any craft based talents or a hobby like this, placing your work with magazines occupies only a small portion of the opportunities available to you. If you provide all the materials needed to complete a project of this kind, you may be able to find an outlet which will take your work on a sale or return basis.
But let us return to our list of talents and skills to see what else could be made from them. Let’s look at professional skills first.
Office skills and such like can always be translated into a part or full time moneymaking venture. People will always require the services of qualified accountants, freelance typists, and so on. If you’ve been made redundant, or are looking to be your own boss, make use of the skills you have been employed for in the past.
That’s fair enough, but what about eh skills you have acquired in your personal life, in the home environment?
Let’s suppose you love doing the ironing (there must be someone who does!). Very well, why not hire yourself out to do the ironing for all those people who hate it? This is a potentially massive marketplace!
If you’re good at gardening, you could sell your skills in this area. You needn’t be an expert at landscaping – there are many people who, due to illness, age or work, find gardening a chore rather than a pleasure. To them, your ‘everyday’ skills in the garden will provide a much needed service to keep their garden in shape. Don’t underestimate your talents!
By the same token, other household skills such as cooking, washing and cleaning, which most of us take for granted, could still be worth marketing. And what about mending broken furniture, knitting, making picture frames, sketching, painting… the list goes on. The key is to target the right people when you research how viable your skills would be as a money spinner.
As you can see, there is no end to the money making possibilities offered by your own skills. Once you know how to promote them and use them to the full, the sky’s the limit.