Start as a side project or make sure you have the financial runway to pay your bills for at least a year. Do things that don’t scale: do everything that it takes to get your first customers and worry about scaling processes later.
Don’t start by seeking cash-making ideas. Start by scratching your own itch by creating something useful for yourself. This will also create a better product as you know what it really needed to work. Then I guarantee you this will also be useful for someone else.
Your first product will most probably fail, make sure to fail early and often! It’s good to inform yourself, but don’t get paralyzed in tutorial/researching hell… Start out and learn by doing, and get more experience.
Find people who need something and get it to them. Most people want more traffic, more sales, more customers, more users, more time. Figure out how to get it to them.
If you are a creator, I would recommend building a second brain, because knowledge is essential: to be able to lock down ideas and notes; to create content constantly
I create the remote job board I would have liked to have when I was first starting out 🙂 and got my first 10 dollars with my premium newsletter!
Keep things very simple and avoid getting distracted with too many tools. It’s possible to make money online simply by using the free version of WordPress, a free theme, and doing keyword research for free on Google.
If you’re trying to create a digital presence for yourself, some sort of online portfolio, I would recommend that you start learning new skills to complement the ones you already have. This, of course, is relative to you.
Start out with content pages. It’s easy and there is not a lot of technical knowledge needed. It’s also an excellent way to get into “making money online”.
Identify what you know that you can give to the world, and start giving it away for free. But truly giving it. That means talking about stuff you know well, not just stuff you want to learn. When you want to learn, you aren’t giving, you are asking.