Find Your Online Earning Destiny

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I remember going to see the school career advisor VIVIDLY. I knew I had an easy path to Sixth Form, so may as well do that once my GCSEs were over, but I had never really considered what I was going to do afterwards. I didn’t know what university was. The thought of getting a job was terrifying when I was 15, and I didn’t have much direction at all.

Meeting with the school career advisor was going to open my eyes up to the potential directions I could take in my life. I was finally going to have the insight I needed to create a path to my future.

The meeting went like this:

Him: What do you want to do?

Me: No idea.

Him: Do this survey.

Me: Cool.

After filling out this survey, answering questions about what I was interested in, what I was good at, it suggested that I pursue journalism. The problem with that? My online exposure to journalism as a 15-year-old was The Sun and the WWE’s Raw and SmackDown! magazines I used to steal from Co-Op.

Journalism would mean talking to people. No thanks. Plus, I didn’t choose Media for GCSEs, so I assumed it must be impossible! I really wasn’t into that idea very much, so I ignored the advice completely.

Fast-forward a few years, and after going through a few diversions (including going to uni to study Geography, working at a music studio before accidentally getting a job at a digital marketing agency) I actually ended up with a first-class journalism degree.

My path came as a result of just going along with my interests. At every step along the way, I didn’t know what I was good at, but I knew what I was interested in. I forced myself to go to university – that was the only misstep. By writing my own album reviews online, I learned to get better at writing. (My grammar and spelling was a myth beforehand). I started doing online copywriting courses and whatnot.

If you have artistic tendencies, you share it somewhere online. Invest in tools which allow you to make better artwork, and you will soon find the online earning opportunities that come to people with this skillset.

When you don’t know what you’re good at, just follow with whatever you are interested in. If you really have the desire to monetise it, you will soon learn from others how it’s done. For instance, I completely missed out on the gamer monetisation wave because I gave up when my PS3 broke, and felt like it was wasted time when I could be writing about music for cash instead.

Awareness is the biggest thing here. You need to know what options are available to you and where you can apply your skills to different things. If you simply don’t know what you’re good at, look around at the opportunities where you already have an interest. The chances are that you can carve out a slice of the pie for yourself if you watch what others are doing.

I went from writing for myself to writing to others to realising the potential that blogging about all of this would bring. Plus – I picked up all other types of monetisation skills along the way. I have to boast about it because I know how difficult it is to do, and that it took a lot of hard work to pull it off.