10x Your 9-to-5 Salary in 5 Years by Doing These 4 Things Today
There’s nothing more powerful than small steps compounding to give HUGE results with time.
There’s nothing more powerful than small steps compounding to give HUGE results with time.
In April 2020, an estimated 122 million Indians lost their work due to the coronavirus pandemic. On a worldwide scale, this statistic was no different, with almost 112 million jobs affected in the first quarter of 2022.
If these statistics shock you, please remind yourself that relying only on your job for money is never a good idea.
It’s impossible to predict what might happen tomorrow. That’s why it’s really important to invest in yourself and develop some extra skills that can double down both as a hobby and an additional source of income.
This post talks about four things you can do today to make more money than your 9 to 5 in five years. Curious? Let’s dive right in.
If you’d like to watch a more candid version of this post in video format, here’s a link.
1. Start a niche newsletter
A newsletter is essentially an email that you send to your subscribers recursively after a set of days. You can send a daily newsletter, a weekly newsletter, a bimonthly newsletter, or even a monthly newsletter.
In each newsletter, you can write something about your niche. If you aren’t a great writer, compile interesting articles in your forte and send the links to your readers.
There are numerous ways to generate money from a newsletter. But the unfortunate reality is that growing a newsletter takes time. If you do it for five years, you would almost certainly make far more money from your newsletter each month than you would from any nine-to-five job in any country.
I’ve created a detailed video on how to monetize your newsletter. I’ll briefly summarize and explain the three methods to generate money from a niche newsletter.
- Put your newsletter behind a paywall and charge your readers a subscription to read the issues.
- Collaborate with brands that appeal to the same audience as your subscribers to sell ad space on your email.
- Do affiliate marketing and promote items that are similar to those that your subscribers would want to use.
There are several other ways to generate money with a newsletter. If you haven’t already, started one, consider this your cue to launch one right away.
2. Publish your work online
It is vital to have some form of internet presence regardless of your skill set or industry. Being present online helps you create a personal brand — something that will come in handy no matter what stage you’re at in your career.
You can start by simply uploading basic videos on YouTube or informative images or reels on Instagram.
If you repeat this for five years, you’d have created a really valuable community that will help pay you for more than your 9-to-5 work.
The goal here is to maintain consistency and quality, as well as to ensure that you provide something valuable for your community members who support and have belief in your work.
3. Create a template and sell it
If you are really good at something or you possess a skill that can be improved and made more effective by following a specific number of steps, then you can create a template based on those steps and offer it as a digital product.
Some rules to keep in mind for creating a template:
- Reverse engineer your expertise and break it down into actionable steps.
- Convey them in a format the audience can implement the same in their own journey.
- Price your first product low, and keep increasing the price as you continue delivering value and gaining the trust of your community. Pro tip: Keep your first product for free to get more eyeballs on your work.
If you’re not really sure, how to turn your talent into a template and subsequently into a digital product, I have made a video covering how to build your first digital product on Gumroad. Digital products are amazing ways to build a scalable income, as well as build a name for yourself in your community.
4. Write an ebook
An ebook doesn’t have to be a fictional story. It may be a collection of poetry, jokes, brief quotations, or it could be a compilation of all the articles you’ve published online assembled in the form of an ebook on a particular niche.
It is quite easy to create an ebook. All you have to do is aggregate all of your writings in a Word document, then convert it to a PDF, and utilize Amazon’s Kindle Create software to convert it into an ebook that you can sell on Amazon.
Even though Amazon is an excellent platform for self-publishing your first e-book, the problem is that you must give Amazon 30% of your money. As a writer, you can only retain 70% of the profits for yourself.
A fantastic option to get around this is to use the platform known as Gumroad. On Gumroad, you get to retain 93% of anything you make. Isn’t that an incredible improvement over Amazon? You can convert your ebook to PDF and use Canva to design a free cover image.
Then you can just list the ebook on Gumroad and start selling it.
The first ebook won’t make you a billionaire, but it will teach you what not to do with your second ebook. The second ebook you publish will teach you how to improve your third ebook. If you keep publishing eBooks one after the other, in five years, you’ll have a big library of content that’ll continue to pay you every month far more than your nine-to-five salary.
Final words
Summarizing, here are the four things you can do right now to generate more money from your 9 to 5 job in five years.
- Publish a niche newsletter and in five years it’s definitely gonna blow up in both audience and revenue.
- The right online presence helps you to define your brand and gain credibility over your competitors. So do publish your works online on social media or blogging platforms.
- If you’re skilled at something, make a template out of it and sell it to people who need it.
- Start publishing ebooks, and with enough time, there’s a good chance you’ll end up making six figures.
What other skills would you like to add to the list? Do share your thoughts and opinions in the comments section.
Want to be a successful freelance writer but struggling to find good clients? Check out my 90-day guide to finding your first high-paying freelance client here.
