How to Make Money When You Don't Have a Job

There it is in black and white. We got laid off along with about 6 million other Americans who are all coping with job loss as best they can.

What I want to share with you is a few of the things I've learned in the 4 months since I got "separated due to lack of work". The letter they handed me was so pretty I have decided to keep it as the only souvenir of my eleven years with the company. The caption underneath will read: My Declaration of Independence

The pundits and newscasters all act as if we are living in unique times. The reality is that our nation has undergone economic collapse many times and much worse than what we face today. I won't go into the plitics of it as that isn't really germane to the issue at hand.

The truth is that each time our nation faced disaster from whatever source the resilience and hard work of our people turned those depressions and hard times around and came back stronger and more vital than ever before. We will do so again in spite of Wall Street and the Governments best efforts at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Just because you lost your job does not mean you lost your earning power. There are a lot of things that you can do to earn money. You have talents and skills that you use every day which can be used to make money. Here is a list I'd like you to try.

1. write a list of your skills, hobbies and personal assets
2. make a list of the things you really enjoy doing
3. compare your lists and start thinking creatively

Are you getting some ideas? Many of your hobbies can be turned into money making activities. The hub you are reading is one way to make money-writing. Write about the things you love, have a passion for or are expert in. Everyone has specialized skills and knowledge. There are people out there looking for what you know. To make money by sharing your knowledge:

1. get an account at HubPages and share your knowledge
2. Write hubs that provide useful and interesting information
3. join the HubPages Ad program
4. Get paid when your page views earn over $50-this can happen much more quickly than you imagine

For a good guide to making money with HubPages read some hubs and there is a good video that explains the process below.

Share Your Knowledge

If you like to write there are lots of ways to sell your work.Write an eBook and publish it on Smashwords or Kindle publishing. One eBook that sells online for $1.99 or more on Kindle-if you sell ten thousand copies are you making $$$?

Consulting

Many other skills can be sold in the same way. For example,maybe your job was in IT or engineering. Perhaps you were an efficiency expert at XYZ Corp for years before they laid you off.

My point is this- the skills that made you a valuable employee all those years also make you a valuable freelancer or consultant and there are companies who really need just your kind of expertise.

Offer your services as a consultant to the companies that competed with your previous employer. Advertise on Linked In and Google Local offering your consulting services and help for small businesses in your field. Just one satisfied client is all you need to start your own profitable business.

Write a Book

Many of you might think I'm being facetious here. I'm serious when I say write a book to make some money. There has never been a more opportune time for ordinary people to write, publish and sell books than now. The digital age shifts the balance of power from traditional brick and mortar publishers to indie and online publishers.

• In 2012 more ebooks sold worldwide than paper bound books
• you can publish an ebook with little or no upfront cost
• there are many free and inexpensive methods for marketing and promoting your ebook
• your experience and knowledge has value

A famous author once stated that everyone has a book in them. If you are willing to do some research and put in the effort you can write, publish and sell a book through online publishing platforms like Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords and many others.

I began writing full time in 2009 by writing content for "content mills" and article directories. One of my greatest strokes of fortune was finding HubPages. I began to hone my abilities and even made a little money from AdSense and the HubPages revenue program. Many of you may be where I was then or looking for a place to begin. Start writing your book just as you would researching and writing a Hub or Squidoo Lens.

Step One

Look at your work experience, hobbies and activities as if they are idea mines. You have done and learned a lot over the years and guess what? There are people out there right now searching the Internet for what you know. Take an idea from your store of experience and work it into a topic for a book. It should:

1. Answer a specific question
2. Satisfy a specific need
3. Be something you can share that will really help other people

Next

Do some keyword research using the Google keyword tool. Don't look for just keyword phrases that have tons of searches, you are looking for a niche you can exploit to sell some books. Find keyword phrases for your topic idea that have medium to moderate traffic but low competition. Incorporate this phrase into the title of your book so that you can get it indexed quickly and rise in search engine ranking. Higher rank means more books sold. More money in your pocket.

Use your word processing program to write your book. It does not need to be novel length. You are selling ideas and solutions, not writing the next great American best seller. Write the book in about 50-75 pages and keep your focus on the reader as you write. When you are done, lay the thing aside for a few hours before proofreading. Every Book needs to be revised, never try to publish the first draft of anything. Read what you have written with an objective eye and correct any errors. ( I love Word 2007 because it has a built-in grammar and spelling checker and will auto-correct as you type.)

The next step is the easiest. Go to Amazon.com's Kindle Direct Publishing website and get an author's account. It is easy and free to do. There is a wealth of helpful information available to help your self-publishing venture succeed.

Format Your book as a word document according to Amazon's requirements, get or make a cover image and then publish the book for download on Kindle or PC. You can find some helpful information for formatting your word document properly online. I like

Creating an E-Book in Word and PDF

by Moira Allen. There is a wealth of information on her site to aid new authors. If you want to buy a guide to perfectly formatted Kindle ebooks try "Formatting Your Ebook for Kindle and Nook: Self Publishing for Smart Cookies." There is a ton of useful information and it only costs .99 to buy on Amazon.

It may seem like a little work in the beginning, I know. Think of the rewards; you'll have an ongoing stream of income from the royalty on downloads and the potential for earning a really healthy income is good. Write and publish several ebooks that sell moderately well and you could conceivably earn thousands of dollars each month.

I did it with my book "Living Monsters Dead Giants" and so can you. Unemployment is not the end of your life; it's the start of a new chapter in your life. Write your book and make some money today.

Earnings are what you get paid for your work and offer only temporary security from the dangers of life. Wealth is money you get to keep and provides long term security. The Internet is a good place to do both. The key to security is having streams of income from several ( or many) sources. Wouldn't it be nice to never have to worry about losing your job ever again?

Now you must understand that I'm not talking about the thousands of get rich quick sites on the net that promise fantastic results and the only work you need do is to buy their program or ebook. The only people who get rich there are the owners of those sites when they con some poor sucker into buying what they are shoveling. (Bovine Scatology - B.S.)

How to Make Money with Companies like Amazon.com

There are several ways to make money with Amazon right away.

Do you have a lot of books that you have collected or maybe CDs or DVDs? Sign up as an Amazon.com seller and sell them. It costs nothing to sign up as an affiliate and your books are listed in the Amazon.com system. Whenone of your items sell then Amazon collects the money, takes out a small percentage (usually not over 15%) and deposits the remainder in your account.

Another great way to set up a stream of income is with what you are reading right now. Become a Hub Pager and start writing content rich hubs and you can have three streams of income right away from Google AdSense, EBay and Amazon. It will take some time to build but there are hubbers right now earning thousands of dollars each month from their hubs. A great way to promote your Hubs and earn more Adsense revenue is with Traffic Digger.

Finally, I'd like to mention online stores where you promote your own products or other companies products and collect a percentage of sales in return for your efforts.

Amazon Web Stores

There are two ways to work with Amazon stores to create income. If you are an Amazon affiliate you can have aStores. It costs nothing to open an Amazon aStore and you literally have thousands of competitively priced quality products to promote.

If you have some products of your own or would like to have a more powerful presence as an online store owner there are two good ways to go. First I reccomend Amazon WebStore because they offer great support and Secure Shopping and payment tools. Second as a great way of earning some money is to open an Ebay Store. You can sell with Buy IT Now or Ebay Auctions.Either way the support is good and I would use PayPal as the secure shopping and payment tool.

How to Make Money Writing Web Content

If you enjoy writing you can earn some quick income writing for online content providers. There are a lot of ways to earn passive or residual income, Hub Pages is an example of the very best of them. Squidoo and Bukisa pay writers for content based on page views and traffic. So does Suite 101. It takes some time to create earnings but it is worth the effort because it is income that will keep on coming in while you only did the work once.

Content Providers are web media companies that specialize in connecting writers and their content with the online publishers who need that content. Writing for sites like textbroker.com and Constant Content can supply you with fast cash because you get paid when the article is bought by the client. To find out more about writing for content sites that pay up front I recommend

How to Make Money Writing with Interact Media and Making Money Writing for Upfront Pay. There is hope and life after you lose a job.

In conclusion I just wish every one who reads this a happy and prosperous life. You are a person of value with great skills and knowledge. Use them now to enrich your own life and not some boss or employer.Don't get depresed because times are a little tough right now. Look at adversity as an opprtunity to excel and you can make your dreams come true.