How to Make Money When You Don't Have a Job

There it is in black and white. We got laid off along with about 6 million other Americans who are all coping with job loss as best they can.

What I want to share with you is a few of the things I've learned in the 4 months since I got "separated due to lack of work". The letter they handed me was so pretty I have decided to keep it as the only souvenir of my eleven years with the company. The caption underneath will read: My Declaration of Independence

The pundits and newscasters all act as if we are living in unique times. The reality is that our nation has undergone economic collapse many times and much worse than what we face today. I won't go into the plitics of it as that isn't really germane to the issue at hand.

The truth is that each time our nation faced disaster from whatever source the resilience and hard work of our people turned those depressions and hard times around and came back stronger and more vital than ever before. We will do so again in spite of Wall Street and the Governments best efforts at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Just because you lost your job does not mean you lost your earning power. There are a lot of things that you can do to earn money. You have talents and skills that you use every day which can be used to make money. Here is a list I'd like you to try.

1. write a list of your skills, hobbies and personal assets
2. make a list of the things you really enjoy doing
3. compare your lists and start thinking creatively

Are you getting some ideas? Many of your hobbies can be turned into money making activities. For example, I love to write. I signed up with websites that sell artcles written by their contributing authors. Guess what? I got an email yesterday from Creative Content (creativecontent.com) that one of my articles had sold! Now I didn't make enough to retire on but it's a start as well as an example of creating streams of income.

FreeLancing & Consulting

If you like to write there are lots of ways to sell your work. Many other skills can be sold in the same way. For example,maybe your job was in IT or engineering. Perhaps you were an efficiency expert at XYZ Corp for years before they laid you off. My point is that the skills that made you a valuable employee all those years also make you a valuable freelancer or consultant and there are companies who really need just your kind of expertise.

picture courtesy of Flikr

Earnings are what you get paid for your work and offer only temporary security from the dangers of life. Wealth is money you get to keep and provides long term security. The Internet is a good place to do both. The key to security is having streams of income from several ( or many) sources. Wouldn't it be nice to never have to worry about losing your job ever again?

Now you must understand that I'm not talking about the thousands of get rich quick sites on the net that promise fantastic results and the only work you need do is to buy their program or ebook. The only people who get rich there are the owners of those sites when they con some poor sucker into buying what they are shoveling. (Bovine Scatology)

Im talking about legitimate affiliate relationships with companies like Amazon.com .

There are several ways to make money with Amazon right away.

Do you have a lot of books that you have collected or maybe CDs or DVDs? Sign up as an Amazon.com seller and sell them. It costs nothing to sign up as an affiliate and your books are listed in the Amazon.com system. Whenone of your items sell then Amazon collects the money, takes out a small percentage (usually not over 15%) and deposits the remainder in your account.

Another great way to set up a stream of income is with what you are reading right now. Become a Hub Pager and start writing content rich hubs and you can have three streams of income right away from Google AdSense, EBay and Amazon. It will take some time to build but there are hubbers right now earning thousands of dollars each month from their hubs. A great way to promote your Hubs and earn more Adsense revenue is with  Traffic Digger.

Finally, I'd like to mention online stores where you promote your own products or other companies products and collect a percentage of sales in return for your efforts.

Amazon Web Stores

There are two ways to work with Amazon stores to create income. If you are an Amazon affiliate you can have aStores. It costs nothing to open an Amazon aStore and you literally have thousands of competitively priced quality products to promote.

If you have some products of your own or would like to have a more powerful presence as an online store owner there are two good ways to go. First I reccomend Amazon WebStore because they offer great support and Secure Shopping and payment tools. Second as a great way of earning some money is to open an Ebay Store. You can sell with Buy IT Now or Ebay Auctions.Either way the support is good and I would use PayPal as the secure shopping and payment tool.

In conclusion I just wish every one wh reads this a happy and prosperous life. Don't get depresed because times are a little tough right now. Look at adversity as an opprtunity to excel and you can make your dreams come true.