Hey!

Hey everyone,

I made this account last year, but haven't done anything yet or been around on the site, so I figured this would be a good place to start.

My name's Sarah and I just turned 19 last month. I'm an Australian, but this year I decided to move to South America to pursue a photojournalism internship (unpaid) and teach English for money (even if I was making $350/month and working 30 hours a week). Now, I'm down to less than $100 and I just moved cities... and since the teacher hiring season is over, I'm finding it hard to get work again. SO YEAH, now I'm here. I'm probably gonna borrow money from my parents to survive the following month to pay for rent and stuff, but yeah, it's not something that I'm comfortable doing and hope to make enough from IM to survive from then on whilst looking for a job...

My goal is to make $500/month, just enough to pay rent and get by. I understand that it'll probably be difficult to get to this point, but I'm gonna try really hard. The thing is, though, I'm scared since I have absolutely no knowledge about this stuff. I've been reading bits and pieces around on the website, and have been inspired by a lot of the My Journey stories, but when people start using terms that I'm not familiar with, I feel really discouraged, haha. It seems like even the absolute noobs here have some kind of knowledge or project established, so I guess I'm at a sub-noob level. Please tell me there's someone that was as clueless as me when they were first starting out!

Anyway, my skills are photography, photoshop, lightroom, graphic design, writing, and translation (Spanish -> English). Hopefully they can help me in some way. For now, I guess I'll just keep reading around the website and trying to absorb the information.

Nice meeting you all

Welcome to BHW. I would get started with Fiverr and see where that goes. For any motivated person, making $500/monthly online is very reachable quickly. Read, read and keep reading and you will quickly come across methods of making money.

JK2005 said:

Welcome to BHW. I would get started with Fiverr and see where that goes. For any motivated person, making $500/monthly online is very reachable quickly. Read, read and keep reading and you will quickly come across methods of making money.

Click to expand...

Thanks! I've tried Fiverr maybe 2 years ago or so, but I found it really difficult/competitive... Perhaps because I didn't have time/patience to invest in it at that point. So I'll definitely give it a go again, as well as maybe oDesk or something. But cheers, your words are encouraging, haha.

You went to the other side of the planet at 18 and the thought of learning some IM skills scares you? You sell yourself short.

One thing you could do is start a travel blog - the skills you listed are perfect for it. It wouldn't necessarily make money straight away but it would be a good way to pick up some of the skills you want to learn.

If you are going to be based in the same city for a while you could then drum up some advertising or commission deals with the local tourism businesses.

Sarahdactyl said:

Thanks! I've tried Fiverr maybe 2 years ago or so, but I found it really difficult/competitive... Perhaps because I didn't have time/patience to invest in it at that point. So I'll definitely give it a go again, as well as maybe oDesk or something. But cheers, your words are encouraging, haha.

Click to expand...

Don't think that way.. Nothing is too competitive. You being a female, you can make BANK in a short period of time on fiverr if you sell video testimonials.

Having that kind of mindset enables many IMers to keep profiting conveniently because others believe it may be "too competitive/difficult" so they never even try.

Good luck

Trepanated said:

You went to the other side of the planet at 18 and the thought of learning some IM skills scares you? You sell yourself short.

One thing you could do is start a travel blog - the skills you listed are perfect for it. It wouldn't necessarily make money straight away but it would be a good way to pick up some of the skills you want to learn.

If you are going to be based in the same city for a while you could then drum up some advertising or commission deals with the local tourism businesses.

Click to expand...

A lot of the terms I see people using and the things they're doing just seem really overwhelming. I guess we all have to start somewhere, though

But that's a really good idea. I'm actually in a tourist hotspot (only full of tourists in the summer), and there are a lot of people interested in moving/retiring here, as well as the Trump Tower which is being built. So I could probably generate a bit of traffic from retirees and such. Thanks for the idea!

Yes, everyone is a noob when they started IM. You have some pretty good writing skills too. You might want to try generating income from that too. Good luck!

Cratos said:

Don't think that way.. Nothing is too competitive. You being a female, you can make BANK in a short period of time on fiverr if you sell video testimonials.

Having that kind of mindset enables many IMers to keep profiting conveniently because others believe it may be "too competitive/difficult" so they never even try.

Good luck

Click to expand...

I'm definitely out of that mindset now, and have 24 hours available each day that I'm able to devote to this. But thanks for the video testimonial idea, it'd be perfect for me with a DSLR! I had originally just thought of looking into articles and such, but this sounds good.

Welcome to BHW officially then

I agree with Trepanated's suggestion for a travel blog. Make something of good quality, and then be creative when you monetise it. I would normally suggest Adsense, but for earning a living, it can be unreliable.

You could also sell some services, or even do a bit of offline marketing and do event photography or something like that. If you go that route, you could even offer the whole package to "Aspiring Models", do the photography, make them a website, edit their pictures, etc.

Good luck!

Treeofl1 said:

Welcome to BHW officially then

I agree with Trepanated's suggestion for a travel blog. Make something of good quality, and then be creative when you monetise it. I would normally suggest Adsense, but for earning a living, it can be unreliable.

You could also sell some services, or even do a bit of offline marketing and do event photography or something like that. If you go that route, you could even offer the whole package to "Aspiring Models", do the photography, make them a website, edit their pictures, etc.

Good luck!

Click to expand...

Thanks for the model suggestion, that could be really good here (although, I'd have to scope it out and see if there are willing people around). I also have no idea about how I'd go about monetising the blog apart from that, haha. I guess I'll take a look at different things that people have used for blogs. Thanks guys, I'll definitely stick with the travel blog thing.

Welcome to BHW Community. If you're thinking designing part very talent. You can go linkedin profile and analyse your target industry.

Linkedin Network of professionals 120+ million. Europe 26+ million. 62.9M monthly.
Quality, Targeted Linkedin groups. Carefully crafted message. (Sending messages to target members on groups.
Finding Open Groups.
Site: LinkedIn.com "Your Keyword" "Is now an open group" - Search on Google.


Using right kind of message. That will get a direct response or action.


This is linkedin loophole.
Linkedin puts a limit on how many messages you send out daily. But these rules do not apply if you are sening someone a message directly from within a group.

So, try it and make more than $500+/monthly.

Welcome to BHW , I myself have been a "lurking" member since 2012. Just never registered my account or knew what I wanted to do in IM world. Hope all turns out well.

welcome once again after an year sarah on this forum

Hey Sarah -

Im curious how things are going for you?

Any success?