Let’s focus on how you can earn instant cash by getting your creative juices going. I can’t tell you how many times I have talked to one of my coaching student who is having a hard time putting together funds to purchase the necessary tools and education they need to build their online business only to find out they already have a gold mine between their ears that they are not tapping into.
Having creative or artistic talents can be very profitable online. There are so many people online who have icky looking web sites and could really use the help of someone with an artistic eye. However, the big companies that cater to many marketers in need of a web site are far too pricey. However, you know what they say, “pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered” why not offer your creative services at reasonable prices for up and coming entrepreneurs? Your great pricing will be rewarded in volume and you can start out your own marketing endeavors with cash flow instead of cash panic.
Are you a shutter bug?
1. Sell Stock Photos
What’s this?
Stock photos are photos that people can either use without fees or copyright infringements or can purchase at a reasonable cost to use in their blogs, web sites or anywhere on the Internet. Everyone wants fresh content and pictures speak a thousand words.
Let me give you an example. See the great picture I have added above of the old fashioned camera? Well, I cannot tell a lie, I didn’t take that photo. This is a photo that I obtained from a stock photography site online. When I purchase it, I have the right to use it in my online promotions, blogs ads etc… It looks great on my site and it was easy to find in a great “searchable” directory.
If you had taken this photo and submitted it to a directory, you could be receiving money for this photo. Depending on the volume, content and quality of the photos you submit, you could earn a nice chunk of change just by uploading photos. You may even already have some great photos on your computer that you took ages ago and they have just been sitting there! Found MONEY! gotta love that.
There are some people who do so well with this, it is the primary “supplemental” income source.
I highly recommend checking it out by visiting sites like www.istockphoto.com and www.bigstockphoto.com to see how it all works.
Also, if you want to get your hands on an e-book that better explains the process, you can check out How to sell Stock Photography Online for Profit
and learn how to turn your photos into cash and the process required and equipment needed to do so!
Photo editing is in great demand. Think about every time you have seen “before” and “after” photos online. Can you picture it? Many of those photos are actually edited/airbrushed and likely don’t even accurately depict the “before or the “after”. There is a need for this talent for marketers too. Sometimes there’s a need for photo cropping to removed subject matter that the marketer doesn’t find relevant to the message they want to communicate. Sometime there are great special effects to a photo that can be added like sepia color, black and white or even cartoon rendering of a photo. You may be able to sell your services on some of the popular outsourcing sites like Odesk.com or Elance.com. However, know that you are going to be competing on the world market place on these sites and you might get underbid on a job. However, wouldn’t you rather make $5 100 time over or $100 once?
Thanks to Youtube.com, one of the most popular sites online, videos have become one of them most important marketing tools online. Of course with that, many people need help with making their videos look professional and convey the message they want to convey. There is a huge market for help with videos if you have skills in the following areas:
3. Edit Video
- Edit regular videos for submission to various online Video Submission Sites
- Edit specialty green screen videos and add animated or high quality background
- Create Video Introduction, credit clips and exit pieces for online branding
- Create high quality animated Sales Videos similar to sales or squeeze pages that are so popular online
- Submit Stock Videos similar to what one contributor has done here
There’s a lot of money to be made in helping with video. Don’t leave your talent on the table here. Selling these skills once again on Odesk.com or Elance.com could replace a payment (like a car payment) in your life!
4. Create Custom Banners for Blogs
All blogs need a banner, and sometime using free WordPress skins won’t give the look you really want or the options you may need. Create a design portfolio with these simple steps:
Go to amazon.com affiliate program (it’s free) and check out their best seller list
pick an item with at least 10 reviews
go to namecheap.com and see if the url is available
before you by go to retailmenot.com and pick up the namecheap coupon and get a quick discount on the url.
make sure you pick out a .com, .net or a .org… you don’t really want the cheap .me or other types of url addresses.(that’s a whole other lesson)
buy and redirect your nameservers over to your host (I love hostgator.. the baby croc is a great and super cheap hosting service and it will let you host about 30 WP blogs before it goes a bit wonky)
Install WP using Fantastico deluxe
Upload your plug-ins
use paint.net or something similar and create your header
Go ahead and add some amazon.com iframes and some Adsense to monetize it (hey a few pennies on your portfolio daily can’t hurt)
This is an EXCELLENT way to show case your work because not only is it going to be an excellent “billboard” as it were, you might double dip and make a little change while you are at it.
Remember one you have a few beauties set up, you can advertise your services on Odesk.com, Elance.com, freelancer.com and other similar sites like fivverr.com.
5. Create Custom Social Media Backgrounds
This is a similar skill to making banners. There are great sites out there where people are making a ton of money creating custom looks for the hottest web 2.0 sites such as twitter, Facebook fan pages, Youtube and more. Hey, you may want to even toss in a link to Mike Dillard’s attraction marketing and really educate your clients on the importance of branding themselves.
6. Create Product Covers for Info Marketers (think about clickbank and all those nifty faux book covers)
We are in the information age and there has never been a greater demand for information related products and effective packaging for those products. We are really talking about 2 things. One, the product has to look good. Does it have blurry images, or look amateurish? Would you buy it? Two: if the seller is smart enough to try to brand themselves, it needs to have their logo/signature/thumbnail or signature color that comforts the reader into knowing they found who they were looking for (this is big time GURU style
If you feel confident in this arena, you email box will be filled with requests and your problem will be when to work on your residual income (this is quick fix income) since you will be so busy. Check out Ecover Creator Software to get started. This will be great!
Can you hear me beat the drum for branding? There are great companies like 99 Designs which provide original logos for flat rates.When you stop in, check out how you can join them and get paid for your designs or once again head over to Odesk.com, Elance.com or some of the top networker forums and let the world know a star is born!
Newsletters are a really hot ticket for those who are serious about marketing. It is a great way for marketers to have constant contact with their subscriber lists and a great way to provide quality content… but you want it to look good. This is where you want to have a custom look and if you know how to do the last few custom items, newsletter branding can’t be to far of a stretch. Think auto responders like Aweber or Get Response… all sorts of businesses use these services and if they look sharp, this can be an amazing tool.
So, are your brain cells buzzing? If you have that artsy edge, your are in more demand then you probably knew. Remember this is cash flow money. Money that you can use to fund your efforts to build residual money (money that keeps coming… this is what your longer term goal is.
Please tweet these ideas and share them around. There are so many people who want to make money online and these are a few great steps on how to do this.



