How I Turned One Skill Into 4 Profitable Income Businesses (2024)

I knew I wanted to be super rich but I had other plans

• Become a doctor
• Learn catering and start up a small business
• Or try something more organic like owning a farm

And you bet, I was making good effort to see that my dreams came true

• I applied to Medical school
• Took a 3 month catering course
• And the farming idea was from a class I took in high school.

However, everything took a turn when I met a guy who stayed at home all day and still enjoyed a remarkably comfortable life.

I admired his lifestyle and was forced to ask him how he made a living.

He was a website designer, graphics Designer, and brand expert.

In his words, he wore all the hats and was jack of all trades.

His lifestyle was attractive and I wanted in.

I was upfront and asked him for a course to help me learn all the skills he had.

Thankfully he had one, I was able to enroll and that’s how my entire online income journey started.

At that point, I was a real digital marketer.

So we know the skill I learnt was digital marketing. Now, let’s chat about how I made money in four different ways.

Now before I show you these 4 income streams, I want you to know that my skills have improved a lot and are now in more demand.

So instead of the generic digital marketing, I’ve now laid more focus on

• Copywriting
• Conversion rate optimization
• Medium marketing

So the first thing I did was to create a Fiverr account while I figured other things out.

Now Fiverr had and still has a bad rep.

• It’s a cheap website
• With cheap customers

That’s all people had to say about Fiverr.

But for some reason, I felt I could make it work.

I remember landing my first gig for $10 and screaming like I won the lottery.

It was a keyword research service, and was part of the digital marketing skills I had.

As you’d expect, I got to work and delivered the best service there was.

This led to many 5 star ratings and tips from happy buyers too.

In my prime time, I was making over $400 for every client.

The money was fulfilling but you know the rest right?

• It was way too demanding of my time
• I didn’t make any money if I didn’t take on a new client
• My client’s opinion was much more important than mine

Then something happened that made me question if I should stick to offering services on Fiverr full-time.

It was a joyful day, I remember taking on this client and giving the project my all.

It was a 4 day project and I even kept late nights to make sure I delivered 100% quality to this client.

I also accepted revisions even when the gig offering didn’t allow for one.

Then on that dreadful morning, this client approved the gig but instead of giving me the good review I deserved

Or maybe just letting the sleeping dog lie.

I woke up to a 3 star rating.

I felt like I was going to die.

My Fiverr business was doing great because of all the 5-star reviews, but one client messed it up.

Now, instead of a perfect 5, I was at 4.4, and it was causing problems almostimmediately.

• I stopped getting daily inquiries for my service
• And my monthly $2k income came crumbling down in my face.

Now am I saying Fiverr sucks?

No, definitely not.

My story is proof that Fiverr isn’t just for penny-pinchers – it’s way more than that!

And you can honestly make more than $2k every month on Fiverr.

Now while I was still getting clients from Fiverr, I decided I wanted to diversify my income.

So then came the second income stream.

At this point, I was sort of confident in the skills I had and felt I could sell my knowledge.

I did my research and I found out there were already marketplaces where students went on to buy courses for so many skills.

On these marketplaces, I found courses on literally everything

• Language
• Singing
• Baking
• And even relationship

I knew there was a potential to make passive income on this website and I wanted in.

The course marketplaces I found were Udemy and skillshare.

I also found out that Udemy was getting over 99.2 million visitors every month.

Skillshare also had decent traffic on their website with over 7 million visitors.

There was so much traffic on these marketplaces and I was definitely sold in.

I created my free account and worked towards making courses on digital marketing.

I used just

• My high-quality airpods
• My mediocre screen recorder and that was it

I uploaded my first course and got almost 2000 studentsonUdemy.

Finding screenshots for proof for this story was challenging after all these years, but I found this payout from Udemy.

See Also

How Much Money Can You Earn on YouTube?

It was still that one skill and I was already monetizing it in different ways.

Since I first discovered online businesses in 2020, I’ve watched thousands of side hustle videos on YouTube.

Some videos more than 10 times.

I loved the ideas I got from these videos and I knew I wanted to build something similar.

So I started a marketing YouTube channel and blog.

On those platforms, I shared everything I learnt from Marketing all those years for clients and even for smaller projects.

Soon I evolved the channel into sharing being about the side hustles I had tried throughout the years.

And that’s how this Medium page was birthed.

On my medium page, I share all of my experiences with side hustles I tried all thanks to my marketing skills

And you guys have loved it so far.

Being a creator is super fulfilling and I love every single bit of the journey.

In less than 4 months of trying this creator side hustle, I’ve grown to over 19k followers.

Now I make money from my digital Products with over 175 sales

I also make money from Affiliate Marketing and if I was part of the Medium Partner Program, that would be even more money.

Just because I built an audience around my skills and experience.

The best part of all of this is it’s so fun.

Plus I really love the community I’ve built here on Medium.

Now this is a high level income stream and that’s why it had to be built last.

As a consultant for your chosen skill,

• You are the expert
• And they come to pick your brains

It’s not like freelancing, in fact, it’s the opposite of freelancing.

Freelancing feels like you’re tackling soul sucking tasks, while consulting is like a friendly chat over coffee, sharing how you learned and got good at what you do.

For consulting, I wanted to show clients how I grew so fast on Medium.

Now you might say, this definitely isn’t your digital marketing you’re consulting for.

You’re just being a writing coach!

But that’s not true.

The only reason I was able to grow so fast on Medium is because of

• The copywriting skills I’d built over the years
• And the marketing psychology I’ve learnt

Sure consistency coupled with my writing skills might have contributed, but I owe a huge chunk of that growth to my marketing skills.

I got my first consulting clienton October 29th for $150.

And so far I’ve taken on 4 clients for 1 Hour each and I’m loving every bit of the process.

Now that brings us to the end of the 4 income streams I built just from learning how to market.

So here’s the big questions:

• What skill are you going to learn?
• do you even plan on build these 4 income streams for yourself?
• Or should I convince you even more?

People tend to think that making money online is like a magic pill and once you take it, the gods on the other side look down on you.

But that’s a lie.

Money is a product of value in the traditional world and that rule applies even on the internet.

No one is going to throw money at you unless you actually have something meaningful to offerm

And if you’ve noticed, the higher the value you bring, the more money you’ll be able to make.

That’s why income ideas like surveys and games pay less than the minimum wage.

So the formula is simple

• Learn a skill
• And first offer your services, teach others, become a creator and then a consultant.

Now these 4 income streams can be built 101 times irrespective of the skill you choose.

But I’ll be frank with you, if you decide to learn digital marketing as a skill, you’ll probably not make as much

• Because it took me almost 2 years to fine tune my skills
• Only to find out how competitive the industry was when I decided to niche down.

You need to pick a skill that

• Is currently in demand
• And has only minimal competition.

So if you guys don’t already know what skill that is, I’d say AI.

Artificial intelligence is really blowing up. From

• Ai writing tools
• AI chat bots
• And even AI art generators.

Businesses also understand how revolutionary AI is and will do anything to adapt to this age.

But these businesses don’t really have time to figure out how AI works.

They’re busy running their day-to-day operations.

And that means business for

• AI code developers
• AI prompt engineers
• And AI chatbot builders.

Now, I’m not about to advise you to

• Learn coding
• Or become an overnight tech wizz

I’ve already considered your possible objections and selected the perfect skill for beginners.

AI prompt engineering.

Many AI tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney work based on the prompts you give.

It’s like a garbage in, garbage out principle.

And to get the best output from these Ai tools, you need high quality Prompts.

Now ChatGPT prompt engineering skill isn’t as high end as Midjourney’s.

Because with ChatGpt, you’ll still get a decent output even with a wacky prompt.

But that’s nearly impossible with Midjourney, because if you put a weird prompt next to a good one, you can easily see the difference in the picture they create.

Plus Midjourney has way more use cases for businesses than ChatGPT

• Logo design
• Graphics design
• Product ideation
• Packaging design
• Unique branding

So yes, Midjourney is much that just an AI for generating recipes and anime images.

And in my opinion, Midjourney prompt engineering is the perfect new skill to learn to create these 4 income streams.

Remember, You could sell your servicesonFiverr or even Upwork.

In fact I found a very low competition keyword on Fiverr with a lot of demand.

With just 292 search results and a lot of reviews on the services listed, this keyword is definitely profitable once you learn Midjourney prompt engineering.

As for the courses on Udemyandskillshare, once you’ve nurtured your skills, here are some course topics you should definitely sell on these marketplaces

• Midjourney for beginners
• ultimate midjourney
• stable diffusion midjourney
• digital ai art
• ai art
• ai prompt engineering
• Midjourney prompts
• Midjourney for Graphics design

Now, Becoming a creator for Midjourney is easy.

You can

• Start a YouTube channel
• Start writing on Medium
• Start posting your output on Social Media
• Or start networking on LinkedIn

Once you become a thought leader, you’ll be able to

• Sell Digital Products
• And promote relevant affiliate products to your audience

At the peak of your growth as a Creator, you should start getting emails from businesses looking to pick your brain for more high end information and that’s where you make the big bucks.

And that’s basically how you turn one skill into more than 4 income streams m

At least if you do it right.

But before I end the story, I know what you’re thinking.

How the heck are you supposed to get so good with Midjourney and image generation to even be able to make money from it?

Well that’s the part where you learn.

Remember, it’s a Skill you have to build and like I said, making passive income has to be a transaction.

You give something valuable and get paid in return.

By learning how to create high quality Prompts and images with Midjourney, you’ll basically be learning a very high in demand skill that can then go on to make you sustainable income.

You can watch hundreds of videos about Midjourney until you can make prompts buyers would die to get a hold of.

I saw a skill I loved and asked for a course.

So you can spend days or weeks learning how Midjourney works, or just hours, learning from people who have spent the upfront time already.

If you’re willing to invest a few dollars, I highly recommend you check out Ken Bluttman.

He sells an AI Art prompt class specifically for Midjourney.

Remember, you don’t have to buy the class.

But if you value your time and want to launch these passive side hustles a lot faster, then you should check out his Midjourney’s prompting class here.

Looking back, it’s really crazy how far I’ve come.

It feels like it was just yesterday I realized the internet could help me make money.

My hope is that this story inspires you to learn your own skill and grow that into these 4 income streams.

And If you think Midjourney prompt engineering is the skill for you, you should start improving your Midjourney prompting skills on YouTube or with Ken Bluttman’s AI art Prompting Class.

You can check out his Midjourney Prompting class here.

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This content is free, and by using these links, You’ll be supporting my work & that means a whole lot to me.