The following article was sponsored by BADNET
Ok. You got screwed by a bad degree. And you’ve heard it from everywhere by now.
- “Your degree sucks!”
- “Go back and get a real degree!”
- “You’ll never make as much as a doctor!”
You know you’re destined for more than flipping burgers or rotating tires. You’ve got success written all over you. You’ve got to turn those classroom skills into some real dollars. But how?
The answer, my friend is easy. It’s as simple as finding a need, and filling it.
Case 1: The Music Major
Let’s take a professionally trained singer. Rather than spend all your life waiting tables, how about taking the skill you’ve honed over the years and turn it into some cash?
“Oh,” you say, “Nobody wants to learn how to sing opera.”
That’s fine though. Not many people want to sing opera. But opera is not all you can do. In fact, you have a very useful talent that’s not only in demand, but well-paid. That is vocal enhancement.
Instead of selling, “learn how to sing opera,” which nobody wants, you could instead offer a very targeted service that improves a specific domain. Something that gives a result within one session and creates a tangible change in the buyer. How about something like, “Make your voice low, growly, and manly within minutes.”
Plenty of guys out there I know are insecure about their voices and would like to have a more classically manly voice. Or how about something like, “Got an upcoming speech to deliver? Vocal confidence for public speaking within one session.” You’ve just turned your “useless” skill into a business with a functional benefit to thousands of people.
Case 2: The Biology Major
Biology may seem like a pretty strange field to profit from. You’ve got to have a lab and grant money to do anything real with that knowledge, don’t you?
No, you do not.
Better still, biological knowledge meets a fundamental human need (that’s often left out of Maslow’s hierarchy).
The need to connect with nature.
So who is it that most needs to connect with nature? Maybe city dwellers who work round the clock? So here’s an idea: custom-designed plant and flower arrangements for city highrises.
You get contracts with the movers and shakers (who are rarely in their condos,) and design plant arrangements that not only fit their space and personality, but that have functional benefits as well. Ever been in a polluted metropolitan area, and then escaped to the countryside? You know what a difference it makes to your lungs.
So you can not only sell the personalized to your space angle, but also the improve your health angle.
For instance, you might include a few Sansevieria trifasciata, or “mother-in-law’s tongue” plants – one of the best plants for small spaces because it rejuvenates the air and cleans it of toxins. You get one of these contracts, and they’ll start to talk to their friends about that smart young lad who made their air cleaner, and their apartment look like a real urban jungle.
What’s more, you could even sell ongoing contracts and hire out labor to your favorite immigrants to take care of the watering and maintenance while you go sell more.
Case 3: The History Major
By now you’re beginning to see that your degree doesn’t necessarily give you the direct skills required to build a business, but it can give you an interesting angle. Now we’ll go to the last example, a history major.
If this is you, you may think you have no useful skills. But that’s far from the truth. In fact you have one very useful skill.
You have the ability to take lots of information (often from conflicting sources) and turn it into something clear and concise.
That’s all writing an essay is. So what’s a field that’s rife with conflicting (and confusing) advice? Well how about nutrition?
Sure, you could start an everyday nutrition blog. That would use your writing skills, but let’s say you wanted to put a historical slant on it. You could explore topics like “Recipes Your Great-Grandmother Made (That Were Healthier Than Anything Today)”
Could do very well with certain audiences, (such as most of the women cooking in the world).
They want to respect their heritage. You want to make some dough.
So you start digging up ancient recipe books. There are a ton of these old cookbooks available if you peek around for them, but they often need to be translated for modern times. They might call for huge quantities (designed for feeding an army, or a large family). They might require ingredients that are hard to find nowadays (elk liver). Or they might use cooking methods that would seem crude compared to modern methods (such as fermentation in urine… really).
So you write them up for modern times, explaining the nutritional benefits of using ancient methods and ingredients, while offering them in easy-to-use recipes.
That’s easily a 5-figure business right there. Combine the “heritage” angle with your powerful writing skills, and this could be a very profitable business.
Best of all, these are all untapped.
No one has really cornered the market on these niches. In fact, people are just beginning to dig in to some of these more profitable angles. That could be you.
But one thing’s for sure, if you don’t go ahead and get yourself set up with a domain name and a website soon, it might be too late to make these (or other businesses).
It’s a free service where we set you up with a ready-to-use website within 48 hours. You just pay hosting.
That’s less than $5/month to run a real business.
Or do you prefer working for your boss?
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