JustGottaMakeIt

       After nine months of actively searching and applying to many many MANY jobs, I was on the prowl trying to find out what I can do to make any type of cash. Of course, I went straight to the internet and searched for ways to make money online. I read article after article and watched video after video of suggestions, options and success stories. As I’m searching I am seeing more of the same. Nothing is really sticking out to me. I see surveys, secret shoppers and a lot of people talking about Shopify and dropshipping. I did look into dropshipping, but I wasn’t too sure how to feel about it. It’s a gamble, but sometimes the bigger the risk the bigger the reward, right? In some cases, people do get lucky, but I had to look at the facts. When it comes to starting my own online store, I can go down two paths. Path number one, I can buy a product in bulk and hope it will sell. Path number two, I post what I see online from a store or wholesale company for a higher price and have them ship it to the consumer and I make a profit off the difference. I definitely wasn’t comfortable with path number two, and I didn’t have money to buy anything in bulk. Back on the money-making prowl I go.

       I revisited an old project I was working on. About a couple years ago I started a YouTube channel about diets, fitness, and etc. I made a couple of videos and then I backed away for a while, and then I would go back to it and then stop posting again. I told myself that I needed to be committed and post at least 2 to 3 times a week. It was going okay, but then my channel got suspended for 30 days. After the 30 days I was back to it, but then YouTube changed the rules. You had to have at least 10,000 views to monetize your channel. It threw another wrench in my plan. A couple months later I finally reached 10,000 views. After that the views were coming in! I was back to having my channel monetized and I was getting closer and closer to meeting my first threshold. January hits and I get an email from YouTube stating that you now must have 4,000 watch time hours and 1,000 subscribers to keep your partnership. I was devastated. I knew that 4,000 watch time hours was not doable to reach in a 30-day span. I still post on the channel randomly, but I had to focus on another idea. The stress from the lack of money was really piling up, so I had to think of something else.

       I looked into making T-shirt designs on Teespring. I know what you’re probably thinking: “Really? Teespring? In 2018?” I get it. Teespring was awesome a couple of years ago until everyone jumped on the bandwagon and now everyone was no longer amazed by it. The ads you would see down your Facebook timeline was no longer unique and appealing. It didn’t make you stop in your tracks. You probably just kept scrolling after a while. The odds were against me, but I figured why not try anyway? I started designing tees like crazy. I couldn’t figure out my niche, so I had a few of them. I started new social media accounts to get them out there. No one was taking the bait, so I looked into advertising through Facebook and even Instagram. I didn’t pay that much, because as I mentioned before I didn’t have the money to spend on advertisements. I put a few bucks towards advertisement each week. I had to stop because it wasn’t working for me. I got views and traffic but, no one was really buying anything. They would like, tag or share it, but that was really it. In the end I only sold 5 items (4 t-shirts and 1 tank). I didn’t even profit or breakeven. I probably spent 50 or more on advertisements, and I only made 18 dollars. One thing that surprised me was that you don’t get the profit amount that it says for each tee you sell. It starts off low and then increases when you get more orders. On to the next task!

       I heard about being an online juror, and how people are getting paid to participate in a mock trial from home. After looking at the different websites eJury and OnlineVerdict looked the most appealing. I signed up and checked my email daily. As soon as a trial was available you would get an email and it’s first come first serve. I didn’t want to miss an opportunity, so I kept checking my phone to see if I received an email. Unfortunately, I don’t live in a big city like Manhattan or Los Angeles. It all depends on your zip code, and where I live there’s not a demand for mock jurors. I had to find something else. I came across something called ClickWorker, which is similar to Amazon Turk. There’s a few assignments available and you do each task for a couple of cents. You might get luck and see a job for 25 to 50 cents a task. The more skills you have the more tasks that will be available to you. What really sucked was you could do hours of work for only 50 cents or less. Everyone thought it was a waste of time, but I was putting in a lot of time for nothing. I’m sure if you spent 8 hours a day on ClickWorker like it was a fulltime job you would make around 20 to 100 dollars a week if you’re lucky. You would have to be really desperate and I wasn’t then, but I’m more open to it now. It’s really getting hard now. I’ve even tried to make money off Fiverr, but that was a disaster that’s not even worth mentioning. If you’re a graphic designer I bet this website would be perfect for you!

       Have you tried any of these ways to make money? Have you tried something else that I have not mentioned? If you have, please share in the comments below! Some things were a waste of time, but some of the projects were fun. It gave me something to focus on when I wasn’t getting any job callbacks. I will still revisit a few of the projects and I will keep you all updated, so don’t be surprised to see a post about what happened after 30 or 60 straight days of consistently doing this or that in the future.