How to earn more money? If you are an employee, to earn more money, increase the quality of your work, the difficulty of replacing yourself, and make sure there is a high demand for what you do. If you are self-employed or own your own business, serve more customers, sell more to each customer or sell more profitable products.
Earning more money as an employee
Although it may not seem like it, it is possible to earn more money as an employee. To achieve this, you must know the three factors that define your remuneration:
1. To increase the quality of my work
Let’s be honest: most employees make enough to not get fired, and companies pay just enough to keep most employees from quitting.
This is a recipe for failure for both the employee and the company. The employee complains that he never gets a raise, but he doesn’t do much more than the minimum to make the company realize that it should raise his salary.
On the other hand, the company keeps the worst employees: the good ones leave, probably fires the worst ones, and keeps the mediocre ones. The mediocre culture repels great employees.
This whole situation has a positive aspect that an employee with a desire to excel (if you are reading this article it means you want to excel and make more money) can capitalize on: In a mediocre culture, it’s easy to excel.
To excel: you just have to do your job a little better every day. After a few months or a few years, you will do your job better than most employees.
Of toxic beliefs and other demons
I know some employees who openly say “If I work harder it’s to make the owner richer; why work harder“. I say this mentality is not only toxic but self-destructive. There are a few things that happen when you work as a clerk:
- Your job gives you the opportunity to work with many other people: employees, customers, and suppliers, and to improve your ability to interact with and influence others.
- If everything goes wrong in the company, you may lose your job, but you will probably get another one later on. On the other hand, the partners of the company can lose millions: they are more at risk than you.
- When you decide you no longer want to work for the company, you simply quit and leave. Owners often have to go through thick and thin, taking all kinds of risks.
No matter how simple your job is, there are always ways to do it better and grow in the process. Don’t even do it for the company, the owner, or your boss. Do it for yourself. As long as you feel that your work reflects who you are, you will feel the need to do each task in an outstanding manner. Anything less than excellent will not be worthy of you. This is the first step to greatness, whether your job is as basic as cleaning floors or as sophisticated as being the CEO of a multinational corporation.
Always remember: a job exceptionally well done makes you grow and it shows!
2. Increases the difficulty to replace you
The following are very easy-to-replace jobs:
- Watchman
- Waiter
The following are jobs that are difficult to replace:
- General Manager of a large company
- Neurosurgeon
This does not mean that jobs that are easy to replace are less worthy or less important. What it does mean is that labor is subject to the law of supply and demand. Since it is a law, there is little we can do to evade it.
Rather than evading natural laws, we must know how they work:
Jobs in high demand and low supply are highly remunerative.
Jobs with high supply and low demand are poorly remunerated.
What to do if I am in a job with low demand and high supply?
For example, if you work as a waiter in a mid-range restaurant and you quit in the morning, it is very likely that you will have been replaced by the afternoon. Therefore, your remuneration is not likely to be very high.
The first thing you can do is to look at the market. If you want to stay in the same sector, you can ask yourself some questions like:
- How much does a waiter in a top restaurant earn?
- How much does a master earn?
- How much does a waiter who knows English, and French earn?
- How much does a Michelin-starred chef earn?
All of these options are related to your current situation, and all of them have a supply-demand combination such that they produce more remuneration.
Imagine that you choose the first option: to be a waiter in a first-class restaurant. The following are some initiatives you can (should!) undertake to achieve this:
- He understands how a waiter in an expensive restaurant works, talks, walks, and serves.
- Get to know waiters in high-end restaurants and hotels. Ask them. Ask them for advice, even if it requires you to invite them to lunch.
- Find out: What education and skills do the best waiter in the world have? Make a list and start studying.
- Take online courses.
- The most important thing: Start working as the best waiter in the world would do there in your current job. Serve diners as if they were ministers and ambassadors. Walk as if you were coming out of the kitchen of the Arpège restaurant in Paris.
3. Make sure your job is in high demand now and in the future.
I always remember the case of the typewriter repairman Smith Corona. Try to estimate how many typewriters will be repaired in Madrid or Mexico City per year. Then, if you are the best typewriter technician, no matter how well you do your job you are doomed to earn little, at best.
The following are some ways to understand what types of tasks are in high demand:
- He who is able to understand and solve big problems will not lack work.
- People with a large audience have a channel that is highly sought after by companies and brands. This is the case for famous athletes, artists and also YouTubers, and well-known bloggers.
- He/she who prepares in emerging technologies that will be massive in a short time will be very well positioned to serve the thousands of companies or millions of people who will seek this technology in the near future.
What do if I perform a trade that is tending to disappear?
Imagine you work as a secretary in a large company and you see that year after year there are fewer secretaries. Your desire is naturally to earn more money, but before that, you want to at least maintain your income.
My invitation is for you to analyze which positions tend to grow and earn the most. Frequently the positions in sales, finance, and often marketing. If you see salespeople getting a new car every time they get paid a bonus, and it catches your attention, talk to several of them:
- What is the day-to-day life of a salesperson like?
- Why do they earn more money than secretaries?
As you become more immersed in what working in sales entails and it catches your attention, ask yourself the most important question:
How do I migrate from my current position to a sales position?
Make a plan that will take you from your current situation to your desired situation. Some actions that can help you are:
- Try to be the secretary of the sales area.
- Read sales books.
- On your commute to work and home, listen to audiobooks on sale every day.
- Discuss your intention with people who may lead you to sales positions in the near future (be tactful, but intentional). Ask sales managers or account managers for advice on the most assertive steps you can take.
- Start selling products in parallel to your job. You will start gaining practice before you have your new job responsibility.
Earning more money as an independent, self-employed, or small business owner
The key variables are different from those of the employee:
- Number of customers
- Average ticket: Average value of each sales invoice
Your business income is given by the following relationship:
Sales = (number of customers) * (average ticket)
Therefore, if you want to increase your sales there are only two ways to do it:
- Increasing the number of customers
- Selling more to each customer
How to increase the number of customers
At this point, there is a big difference if you are self-employed or self-employed (you sell services performed by yourself), as is the case of a dentist or a psychologist, or if you sell products.
Earning more money as a freelancer
If you are self-employed, your limit is the number of services you can do per day or per month. For example, if the average dental consultation takes 1 hour, it is difficult to do more than 8 to 10 consultations per day.
In this case, the easiest variable to modify is the average ticket. The following are some ways to do it:
- Raising the price of your services. This is the action that will make you increase your sales the fastest. You must make sure that the perception of value is close to your price, otherwise, you will lose customers, thus lowering sales.
- Increasing the value your customers receive. If you offer differentiated services: (following the case of the dentist) therapies that prevent cavities, keep teeth white, reduce pain, and even the noise of the drill during the procedure.
- Dramatically increase the quality of your work. Using the best materials and equipment, using the most advanced technology that allows your patients (or clients) to have the best possible experience. Make every person you treat feel like a VIP.
- As your prices go up, fewer customers will hire you for simple services and more people will hire you for more complex, higher-billed services. That’s good for them and good for you.
To increase the number of sales you make per day or per month, there are also ways:
- Implement methods, processes, and technologies that allow you to perform the same or higher-quality procedures in less time. If you manage to serve 10 people a day instead of 8 in the same amount of time, that’s a 25% increase!
- Hire people to do the less specialized tasks and focus on the work that adds the most value. For example, your assistant can do all the administrative tasks, such as confirming appointments, receiving payment, scheduling the next procedures, etc. Your dental assistant can anesthetize the patient and do the cleaning while you finish with other patients. By the time they come to you they are fully prepared and your procedure is shorter.
Earning more money as a small business owner
In this section, we will analyze the case of a business that sells products, as opposed to services.
A great advantage that products have over services is that they are more scalable. A disadvantage is that they often have higher costs (manufacturing, distribution, warehousing, etc.).
However, the relationship is the same:
Total sales = (quantity of products sold) * (average price of the products)
So, to sell more with a business there are three ways:
- Sell more products
- Highest average price
- 1. and 2. Simultaneously
How to earn more money by increasing the number of products sold
At this point, you have to start from the premise that you are selling a good product. In the case of a small business, it is generally easier to sell to companies than to individuals because with single management you can obtain contracts for large volumes. This is called b2b( business to business.)
While reaching a large number of individuals (or natural persons) requires a very solid and often costly marketing strategy.
Business with the state
One source of large contracts is the state. Today, governments in many countries centralize their purchases on an online portal that almost any company can access.
It is interesting: the state buys everything from seats, computers, or uniforms to large infrastructure works, submarines, and armaments.
I have friends who are engineers and architects who are 100% dedicated to bidding with the state.
The mechanics of some of these government procurement portals are very interesting. For the simplest deals, maybe $500 or $1,000, you probably don’t need prior experience. But to win a thousand-dollar business you need to demonstrate past business for another $1,000.
To win a business for $10,000, you need to demonstrate accumulated experience of $10,000. The advantage is that, if you have it, by signing this new contract, you will be able to access the 20,000 contracts.
That is, to start with, you can “invest” in many small businesses, until you build up a capital of experience that allows you to participate in larger and larger processes, like a snowball.
Business with companies
You can also seek business with companies and corporations. Be aware that the process to join these organizations can be very slow and bureaucratic.
When I worked for a large German company, I remember an elderly man who tried unsuccessfully for years to sell small suction pumps. He left sample pumps, handed out catalogs, and kept on insisting relentlessly.
One fine day we had an emergency and required about 20 small pumps. We immediately called the gentleman of great perseverance and bought all the inventory he had. That’s how it usually happens with this type of sale. The day you least expect them to blow up.
Doing business with people
Today, thanks to search engines and social networks, it is possible for a small business to reach a critical mass of individuals without advertising in mass media, generally inaccessible.
This is the strategy we use in our blog income-blog.com. We use search engines like Google, Youtube, and Pinterest so that many people know our content. Chances are you got to this page by typing “How to make more money” or something similar in the Google search bar.
Hundreds of thousands of people read our blog every year.
It is different if your product is groceries that you sell to the neighbors on your block or neighborhood. In this case, you can also expand your target market using the Internet. With Google My Business you can increase the visibility of your local business. Also, with the pandemic, home shopping has skyrocketed; we all expect to be able to buy everything and have it delivered to our homes in a matter of hours.
Conclusion on how to earn more money
Remuneration depends on the employees depends on:
- The quality of the work
- Demand for the type of work the employee performs
- Ease of replacement
The sales of a small business depend on:
- The number of customers
- The average price of the products
A small business can generate a higher turnover if it sells to companies than if it sells to individuals.
Also can sell to individual customers locally, nationally, or globally using the power of the Internet; especially search engines and social media.