If you’re a technocrat, there are many ways to make money online. There are opportunities galore for those tech geeks who want to make a little cash on the side or own a full-time income from the internet.
Consumers online are hungry for technology content. If you have the passion, knowledge and communication skills to share your expertise, you can make a substantial income online.
Here are some ways many other technocrats are running a successful side hustle or building an empire.
1. Tech Reviews
There is new technology coming out all of the time. The pace of innovation is accelerating at top speeds. That means people are hungry to see reviews of new tech they may want to potentially adopt.
There are new headphones, computer gear, smartphones, smartwatches, and all kinds of gadgets coming out every month. There is no shortage of material you can work with.
If you are a verbal person and enjoy talking, consider starting a YouTube channel and start doing unboxing videos and full product reviews.
The great thing about reviews, in particular, is that you don’t even need to have your face onscreen. No one cares about what you look like. They just want to see your comments on the products.
If you don’t like to talk or you’re not good with verbal communication, you can start a blog. Tech blogs are popular and if you do the SEO correctly, you can get a ton of traffic to your website.
You can monetize both a YouTube channel and blog with Google Adsense. You can also have affiliate ads as well.
For example, if you’re reviewing the latest Bose headphones, you can put a link in the description below the video with an Amazon affiliate link. You can do the same on your blog post.
If you do affiliate marketing, to stay within FCC regulations, you have to say at some point that you are making money from that product review.
2. Tech Products
Instead of just doing reviews and making money from ads, you can sell tech products yourself. It’s a little more complicated, but you can make a lot more money than with just ads.
You first have to source your products. You can get them from platforms like Alibaba, where you get gear manufactured in China. There are other good places to source products as well.
Then you have to decide how you’re going to sell your products. Most eCommerce merchants sell on every distribution channel they can get into. They’ll have their own website that they do SEO and Google AdWords on, they’ll list their products on Amazon, eBay, and Newegg.
In order to be able to manage multiple distribution platforms, you must use a platform like Magento Enterprise. If you want a platform that requires less customization and more streamlined, there are alternatives to Magento Enterprise out there that you can evaluate.
You’ll also need to figure out warehousing and fulfillment. Amazon has a service called FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) where they will warehouse your products and ship your products for you.
There are many services and platforms out there for eCommerce merchants of every size. And most solutions are scalable so you can go from $100 in sales to $10 million on a single platform.
3. Tech Tutorials
If you’re more into software than hardware, doing tech tutorials is probably the best avenue for you. There are many technocrats online that are great with software and they do tutorials to help others learn how to use different software products.
Most tech geeks who do this do it on YouTube and many write blogs as well. As same as above, you can monetize through ads and affiliate links.
Many also sell online classes as well. If you’re a really good Python programmer, for example, you can have free tutorials on YouTube, but then upsell people who would like something more comprehensive a full course.
You would then send them to your own website to purchse the course or you can use a platform like Udemy or Coursera to distribute it for you as well. Some even do live workshops or boot camps for those who are interested in going even deeper in your subject matter.
Growing Market for Technocrats
There are many ways for an astute technologically savvy person to make extra or full-time income online. If you have a knack for this and are good at communicating complex tech garb into plain language, there is a high demand for your services.
In addition, technology is a fast growing market. If you get in the groove in this type of work, there will be unlimited demand as our society gets more and more advanced.
10-15 years from now, you may be doing a review on the latest housekeeping robot or a tutorial on a new artificially intelligent virtual assistant that books meetings for you and coordinates your dry cleaning.
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