#66 - How to make $1000 a month online?

Summary

We want to teach you how to make $1000 a month online because we believe that if you had that extra money, you would have a lot less worry in your life. $1000 extra a month is enough to solve most money problems.

Today there are more opportunities to make money online than ever, you just have to know where to look. In this episode, Emil Ekvardt interviews Erik Bergman, who made over $50 million online, before he turned 30 and he will give you the exact steps you need to take to start making $1000 a month online.

Part 1
We will share a story about a friend of ours who went from 0 to $1000 per month and what made him succeed.

Part 2
We will talk about the most important ingredient to succeed when learning a new skill.

Part 3
Is about how you find the best skill for you and how you learn it.

Part 4
Is about how you start making money from the skill and how you can sell it.

Today's episode is an entrepreneurship episode, where Erik and Emil explore topics about how to become a better business person.

We are often sharing real-life examples that have happened previously in our careers. What we have learned, whom we have learned from, and how we have applied that into our real lives. Everything in a mix with personal thoughts and reflections.

We start the episode with the story about Felix. A friend of ours who went from 0 to $1000 per month when studying. We get to follow the steps that he took and what made him stand out from other people who tried. What were the elements of his success?

Then we move on to talk about the importance of having fun when learning a new skill. It's easy to forget fun when trying to make money, but the truth is that if you can find something you enjoy and make money from it, not only will you like it more - you will get a lot better at it.

Thirdly we go in what skills to learn to make $1000 a month online. We talk about different topics to learn. Based on what you enjoyed in school, this is a list for inspiration:

Math classes
Programming, start with "Python"
Web development, "Wordpress for beginners"
Accounting, start with "IFRS"
Spreadsheets, start with "learn excel"
Web analytics, "google analytics for beginners"
Facebook ads, "beginner Facebook ads"

The music or art classes
Create thumbnails, "thumbnails photoshop"
Content for social media, start with "canva beginner"
Audio editing, start with "podcast editing"
Video editing, "video editing"

Language classes
Copywriting (all kinds of writing online), "write product descriptions"
Copywriting, "SEO copywriter"
Subtitles for videos, "kapwing subtitles"
Translations, "start a translation business"

The social parts / Recess
Recruitment, "LinkedIn recruitment"
Sales, "cold email sales"
Coaching, "start a coaching business"

Finally we talk about how to turn the skills that you have learned into money. How you can sell it and start making $1000 a month online.

Transcript

[00:00:50] The goal with today's episode is to teach you how to make a thousand dollars extra per month online and to do that. I'm here with Erik Bergman, who made over 50 million dollars online before he was 30.

[00:01:04] Eric, why do you want to teach people how to make money online? Well, to start with, to make a thousand dollars a month online isn't actually that hard. And I believe that everyone can do it. And I believe that a thousand dollars extra is enough to solve pretty much everyone's like money problems.

[00:01:24] Like if you had a thousand dollars extra each month, you can get me a more free time. You wouldn't have to worry about a dishwasher breaking down or whatever could happen. And I just simply think you would sleep better at night. And I would love to take away that worry from people's lives and give them this gift.

[00:01:45] That sounds like a sense of peace that I think many people would enjoy having. So what can someone specifically do to start making money online?

[00:01:56] Is it the most reliable way to make money from home is to develop a valuable skill. And I will go through exactly what skills to learn, how to learn them, and then how to turn these skills into money.

[00:02:13] Beautiful. And if you are here for the first time, this is becoming great DOT podcast. And the purpose of this podcast is to teach you how to make the world or just your own life, too, for that matter. Better through business and personal development. Today's episode is going to be in four parts. The first part, we're going to look at the success story, a friend of ours that managed to make a thousand dollars online per month. And we're going to look at specifically what he did to succeed. The second part, we're going to look at the most important and the most overlooked ingredients to succeed at this strategy in the third part. We are going to look at which skill should he choose. What should you focus on? And how can you learn it fast and into fourth and final path? We are going to look at how could you sell this skill once you have developed it so you can start making money from it. Let's begin. I'll go with this episode is to change your financial future. And this happened to a friend of us.

[00:03:29] Eric, would you tell us the story of our friend?

[00:03:32] So a few years back, I got an email from a guy named Felix, who I've never met before, and he told me that he loved writing. And he asked me if there was something that he could write for me for free simply because he wanted to get some more business experience. He was currently in college or first year university or something like that as a young guy. And Haydock specifically told me. Can I help you to write things? I love writing.

[00:04:05] Okay, so. I guess at that point, you're running a company. There was a lot of people reaching out to you and a lot of different ways. What made Felix stick out? Why did you want to take an interest in him? So quite a lot.

[00:04:20] I had a lot of, like, social media followers back then as well. And a lot of people reached out and said, can I help you with something? Can I work for you with something? And the tricky thing with that is that it takes me off guard in a sense, like, I don't know really what do I need help with? I don't know what this person is good at. Some kind of need to come up with a task and say, can you do this? I don't even know if you're good at it. But when he was specific in his question, like, I love writing, can I help you with writing that way? I could just ask myself, is there any writing things that I need help with? And at the time, I needed help to write some newsletters. So like simple emails going out once a month or something. And I didn't do it myself and I. Well, I tend to forget about it. So I asked him 10 years do this, and he did it within like an hour from me. Sending him the first email is like, hey, this is something. So it became like he had already proven himself within an hour after me sending the first task compared to if I need to think of something, I might need it. Help with sand, something like general instructions about this, whatever task it is. But just thanks to him being specific and me could easily find such a task. And he could prove himself within an hour.

[00:05:42] Right. So he was specific with what he wanted to do. So you didn't have to spend a lot of energy coming up with tasks. You also had increased trust in that he could do the specific thing he offered. And Danny also proved himself by being quick to deliver.

[00:05:58] Yeah. And he delivered. Well, I mean, I could easily see that this guy is a good writer. He could easily turn my short instructions into good message.

[00:06:08] So what did he ask in return for doing this?

[00:06:11] He just wanted to do it for free. He wanted to get some experience and he wanted to show me what he could do. And after this, he asked me if there were more things he could do and he still wanted to do them for free. So I kept giving him tasks and he kept delivering very quickly. Then he asked me, like, OK, what can I improve on? What can I do better? And I started coaching him in this.

[00:06:34] He did a better job and kind of grew together for, like, I don't know, maybe a month or something like that.

[00:06:43] And then he did so many Tosk for me that he started asking, like, is it OK if I get paid at least a little? And he didn't want much. He started very low. And to me it only felt fair, like, yeah, of course I'm gonna I'm gonna pay you something. And now you're doing a lot. So for me, as an employer or coach or mentor or whatever you want to look into this, I kind of got something for free without even trying. And then he was really good. And he could show to me that I had this need and he could make my life easier without me ever needing to take a tough decision.

[00:07:22] It sounds very smooth, full. It's almost like a seduction. What more can someone learn from this story?

[00:07:30] Swell.

[00:07:31] I think it's the things that he did really, really well here is that he knew what he loved to do and he asked me very specifically, can I do this for you? Make it easy for me to say yes. He started for free. He delivered very quickly. He asked a lot of questions, what can I do better? And he did those thing that allowed him to do better. And then the more I gave him, the more Tosti getting better he got. And then pretty soon he started asking to get paid. And I mean, the best part about this story from his perspective is that he, after just a few months, started to make probably like a thousand dollars per month with this task that he took on to me. And he did what he also enjoyed, like it was the perfect kind of collaboration, as you said, was all like a seduction. I loved having him around because he made my life easier and it was just a great collaboration.

[00:08:22] This all sounds so smooth and easy. Still, of course, not everyone is doing this. So let's move on to part two, where we will explore the most overlooked and most important ingredients. That is the reason why not more people are capable of doing what Felix did.

[00:08:40] Sounds great. Let's dive into it.

[00:08:47] Most businesses fail.

[00:08:51] Most people quit and never reaches their goals. Did you know that the vast majority of all podcasts being started? Tom Friedman reaches the seventh episode.

[00:09:04] You told me before this episode and I didn't know that. Why do you think that is so?

[00:09:10] Personally, I believe that it it's a lot harder to start a podcast than people think, and it's easy to get stuck in. The outside validation, like, I need to see the results to keep going because I actually don't really enjoy the process. I need the listeners to keep going. So what's about a way of doing it?

[00:09:34] A way that we did it when we started our podcast, which is obviously better. Of course, it's our superduper process that we call the pyramid of success. And this is not just for podcasting. This process both me and Eric use and pretty much all creative projects that we're trying to start. And this is a force, that process where the first step, we focus on having fun to enjoy the process. The second step, we focus on learning so that we are developing the third step. We're focusing on giving value to other people. And the fourth and final step, that is where we're looking at scaling a project and scaling could be making money, making money, getting more viewers. What a marketing, all of that stuff. And now you listening might be thinking, having fun. That sounds kind of fluffy. I want the results. Right. But why is it important to have having fun as a foundation.

[00:10:34] When starting a project. So if we if we take podcasting, for example. If if you enjoy podcasting, if you start going from an energy like this is really fun. And that's the most important thing for you. There isn't really a reason to give up early on. And any skill takes energy to develop any skills. Takes time to develop. And if you choose something that you enjoy doing that you feel like a natural drive towards doing. It's so much more likely that you will continue doing it. I mean, think of think of every professional football player in the world. They probably loved playing football when they grow up. And that's why they got good at it. So if you spend time trying lots of different skills early on to know which ones you naturally you think is fun. I believe that the chances of you succeeding is 100 times bigger because you will be able to give it more energy. You will be able to think about it outside of work. I mean, you're going to start, I think, about podcasting when I'm in the shower because I'm so excited about doing the podcast. And that will make me naturally better. And I think that this is the joy part. Is so easy to forget because. I mean, if you're looking at videos like how to become a podcast or have you ever seen a video about how to actually enjoy podcasting? No, no, no. What are they about?

[00:12:04] I haven't looked in podcasting specifically, but I did it for creating my YouTube channel and all videos are about how can you get more viewers? How can you have a bigger reach? How to market your channel? And all of that stuff is the fourth step in our pyramid, like the scaling. But that's come comes first in instruction videos.

[00:12:22] Yeah, that's so what's interesting with that is all of those things are obviously important, but they're not important until you are good and you become good by enjoying something, you get good about spending a lot of time and energy into doing something. And it's easy when you develop the skill to think. I just want to make money. I want to get to this and that. Yeah, but in pretty much any skill you will competing against people who do enjoy it, which means that, let's say podcasting. I mean, if you don't have fun podcasting and you're competing as people who love podcasting, you're never gonna win.

[00:12:57] If you're trying to become good at football and you don't like football. You're never gonna beat the people who love football. So I think this is why it's so crucial to start with trying lots of different tasks to find what do you naturally enjoy, because it's so much easier to get good at something if you enjoy it than if you don't enjoy it.

[00:13:17] Right. And that is even a tricky part of the title of this episode, How to make a thousand dollars per Month. We would like to put how to enjoy making a thousand dollars per month, but that would have been good marketing versus on stopwork. We're all that for our older ideal stuff. How do you what do you think it is that many people are not even sure of what they enjoy and what they would enjoy making money from?

[00:13:41] We don't often ask ourselves, how can we enjoy making money? It's not the way. Money making looks in media and stuff like that. And they just school in school. It's supposed to be hard work. We're not supposed to have fun in school. We're not being taught that joy is important. And yet I believe that everyone who's the best in the world at anything loves what they're doing or at least loved what they're doing on their way there. Otherwise, they wouldn't be the best in the world. So I think that this is a common trap, that it's easy to not think up. And especially if you're on social media and you see these business accounting like work hard, sleepless, consistency, motivation. I was like, yeah, but Joy, then if you have fun, you're gonna make. You're gonna get there so much easier.

[00:14:29] Yeah. And without fun, you have to use real power and then you run out and then you're gonna quit. But with joy, you consistency's easy. Yeah. So now that we know I summarize this episode. Have fun knowing that.

[00:14:44] Let's dive into part three of this podcast, which is how to find a skill that is most suitable for you. What if I told you that you can attend the best university in the entire world for free? Not only can you attend. You can also choose which teacher in the university that you could learn from.

[00:15:13] That sounds pretty cool. Hi, Eric. Sounds pretty good. Yeah. So what am I talking about? We're talking about the YouTube university, the place where you can learn any skill for free and where you can easily jump between different skills to kind of get an insight. Like, if you're in, what's the process? You want to learn something in school? I have to commit for six months without knowing if I enjoy something. Exactly. And what's the process? If you want to try something on YouTube? You press a video. You watched it three seconds before you click off. Exactly. So this is the thing. Like on YouTube, you can get a good insight into pretty much any topic. And you can see, does this spark my curiosity? If you feel like I want to keep watching. Then you're on the right track. If you're feeling this sounds boring, then you're on the wrong track. And that's the beauty of YouTube. Like, let's say you want to be a pilot for your entire life. You dreamed about becoming a pilot and now you can easily, like, find what is it like to be a pilot and then have an interview with a pilot or whatever it is. But before you needed to do all these different things to get there. So you want to look for before you had to become a pilots, before you could talk to pilots. Exactly. And now you can get this so easily so you can try lots of different skills by just getting an insight into that.

[00:16:41] But is a quadrillion skills? Which one? Where should I start? There's actually a quadrillion in two skills. Wow. That's two to me.

[00:16:51] Yeah. Well, okay, so let's look at it this way to find what you enjoy. What what did you enjoy in school? What topics did you enjoy? I'm kind of a geek, so I really enjoyed math and physics. OK. So when it comes to skills that are similar to like math and physics, I would say programming programming is a lot about math and numbers. So it's likely that if you enjoyed programming in school, it's not as if you enjoyed math in school, you would enjoy programming now. And that would be a great way for you to start. All right. I would go to YouTube and I would search beginner guide programming.

[00:17:33] And then start looking there. Right.

[00:17:36] So let's say that my interest instead was art. Let's say I was drawing the whole lessons. And the reason I didn't drawing class was because I couldn't draw like a draw. I'm really bad at it. Well, let's say it was good. What could be a good skill for me to. Okay, so let's let's quickly go over some different topics here.

[00:17:57] So let's start with math. If you're. Do you like math? I would start with programming. If I didn't like programming, I would go to like accounting and research. Beginner guide programming, beginner guide accounting. If I was into arts and music or something like that, I would start with Beginner Guide Photoshop or Beginner Guide podcast editing or something like that. Start in those areas. If I preferred.

[00:18:25] Like, if I did enjoy the social parts about being in school, maybe not so much any other specific topic, I would looked into beginner guides sales or beginner guide recruitments, which is about talking to people. Or maybe you didn't really enjoy school at all. You could still, like, look at how to learn carpentry, how to learn woodwork, and you could still see. Do I find passion looking at these videos? Do I want to keep watching the next video and the next video and the next video? And if you find yourself just staying on this topic and you feel like energized from doing this, that's a great sign that you're on the right path.

[00:19:09] Right. So. Let's say you find something that you really like. Let's say that you want to learn programming and you're still in school.

[00:19:18] What can you do to even enhance that learning curve more slowly? Watching videos would get you a bit away a bit, a little bit on the way. And then you want to start playing around with this programming, for example. So downloads on programs go to Google and search like beginner programs, programming, start playing around with it. And you want to find other people who do the same thing. And a great way of doing that is to start asking questions on YouTube videos, just like people on these questions. What are they learning? How could you learn more? You could go to Facebook groups to her like Facebook groups about everything like beginner programmers or learning programming or whatever. And you want to find other people who are on the same journey as you are because, well, everything is more fun. If you're two people, you can share your best videos or tips with the other person. They can share it with you and suddenly learning becomes so much more fun. And it's amazing that the Internet is that there are millions of people trying to learn exactly the same things that you want to learn right now. And if you talk to them, everything gets easier and it gets more fun.

[00:20:31] Right. And I guess you can do this in school as well. Putting up a poster. I want to learn programming. Is there anyone else?

[00:20:38] Definitely. And there might even be a club for it in school if you're still in school. And there might be for programming. I think like that there's probably classes you could take on top of this once you know that I'm actually interested in this. So the key here is to start by testing lots and lots of different skills, by just watching videos. And once you find I just want to keep watching this, then you know that. OK. Could take a class with us. I could join some kind of club. I could start trying it out. But then you know that you have an like an energy a will from. Comes from within to do that. You don't need fast results. If you feel I really want to learn and then you want to stay on it.

[00:21:17] So there is an exploration phase and an exploitation phase where you start focusing. Exactly right. So so far we have learned that you should have fun and you should find a skill that suits your natural interests that is going to make you become really good, really fast. But now, when you are good, the next step comes to getting paid. Right? Getting those dollars. So let's move on to the fourth and final part of this podcast and look at how can you sell the skills you're beginning to master.

[00:21:55] Do you know what the difference is between buying something and being sold something? What's the difference? Well, that was quick reply. Well, if you leave the store and you feel that I really want this. That means that you've been sold something. Someone kind of got you to buy something without you really knowing that you wanted to buy it. And you probably didn't want to buy it. And when you leave the store, I feel how I feel. You want this thing and you feel like you make a good decision. It means that you've bought something. The difference is you have made the decision to buy or you kind of been tricked to buy by someone selling.

[00:22:38] And this is a crucial part in sales, because when you're buying someone something, you kind of come in with some information, you know what you want. And the seller is really good at just giving you information. Always feel like you are making the decision, but a seller is someone who kind of is a bit pushy, kind of tricks you into getting something you might not even wanted and taking advantage of you making quick decisions. And would we want to be good at when we start making money online? Is getting people to want to buy. And this is something that Felix did really well to start with. He already had developed the skill of writing by loving writing, as we touched upon earlier. And he reached out to me very specifically, told me, do you need help with something about writing? Which made it easy for me to say yes. And he wanted to do it for free, which obviously wasn't selling anything at that time. And then he proved himself doing a really good jobs. I felt all time and I have a lot of information here. I know that he's doing a good job. And he started just generously doing things for me because he wanted experience. He wanted to show what he could do. So already here is a good way to start laying a foundation for making someone want to buy this kind of.

[00:23:55] The first step, understanding the difference between buying and trying to sell something. So let's say you started there and you can either get the person you're helping to want to start buying. You could reach out to more people. You don't just need to reach out to one and. If you want to give them so much information and so much value that they want to come back to you and just simply make the decision themselves. The other way of looking at this, let's say this person don't want to start buying from you. Something that Felix did that I think are really inspiring is that he started adding a lot of value to other people online. People in different forums who wanted to start writing or were looking for writers or asking how can I find writers? He started being very involved in Facebook groups and YouTube videos and everywhere where he could find people asking questions. No. One, he had learned a lot more by working with me. He started answering all of these questions. He became a magnet to became something, someone who people came to for information. I was here where people have a lot of information. They feel that they are buying. So after a while, he started making money with me and working with me.

[00:25:09] But he also started finding a lot of people who wanted to buy things from him because he gave them answers to kind of by giving answers publicly on the forums, Facebook groups, on YouTube videos, wherever other people will see that you will become an authority and people will come to you to buy, not because you're reaching out and trying to sell that because it's clear that you know things. So you create a reputation for yourself. Exactly. Exactly. You're slowly building may not know about start magnetizing opportunities and money. Yeah. I mean, people will see this. So if you're selling, you're reaching out to people. You can only sell while you are awake. In a sense, if you're calling people, you can only call when you're awake. But if you have created lots of different answers to questions on different forums online, you have a selling machine that was kind of find your customers while you were sleeping. It's a big, big difference from how these two things are done and everyone who comes to you will come with an interest of buying something. They will not feel that you tricked them into buying something. You will not have to convince them because they feel like this guy knows what he's talking about. I've seen that already.

[00:26:18] I want to work with him.

[00:26:20] I really liked that approach of becoming a person with a magnetizing effect. So is there something more you want to add on sales before we start wrapping up this episode?

[00:26:31] No, I think that covers start by reaching out and add value to others and then ask them. Yeah, one thing that is important here as well.

[00:26:39] One thing that Felix also did is that he asked me if I know other people who needed help and I had lots of people that need help and I were happy to recommend him because he did a good job for me. So he reached out to other people that I knew and that did similar business and had similar needs. So he started both making money from me after a while. He asked me, hey, I want to get paid. And I started paying him. He has one made money from people I knew because he had given value to me. I wanted to give value to him. And he found lots of other people online because he started answering questions. So kind of created three different selling machines for himself pretty easily by just being active online.

[00:27:21] Hmm. So what happened with Felix? In the end.

[00:27:25] I think this is the best part about this story is that once he had gotten all these clients, he was still in university and he started putting up notes in school like, hey, do you love writing? I have work for you. And he started hiring students. And I think after a few years, he had like 20 people working for him.

[00:27:46] And in the beginning, he made like a thousand dollars per month. And I don't know how much he made by the end, but it was a lot more. And I think that's the crucial part of this episode, is that this is how you get two thousand dollars per month. But that's not where it necessarily stops, because to get to ten thousand dollars a month, you still need to get to 1000 dollars a month. And this is definitely a strategy that applies up to 10000 or even 100000 per month as well. It's all about building that skill. Learning how to get people to buy it from you. Once you know that the sky's the limit starts to limit.

[00:28:28] Ok. That's it for today's episode. We hope you have a clear overview of how you can start making a thousand dollars per month. And if you enjoy this and you want to find really cool people online line to learn from. I recommend that you check out number six to one of our podcast that is called How to Find Inspiring People Online. That episode is pretty much a big list of people that have influenced us the most. And you can learn from them as well. And we see you there. We're in the next episode or whatever you want. Have a good.