There are different ways to get money. Here are some obvious ones, but this list is not complete!
Revenue Zone
Employment – trade your time and effort for money. You have limited time and energy, and therefore there’s a limit on how much money you can make in a job. Try find the job that will pay the most or have the best benefits. But it’s something that most people can and have to do while they work on better ways to get money. For that reason, and also because some of the skills and habits of being employed are also important to be an employer, we have a special section on employment.
Freelance – also called “self-employment”, where you trade your time and effort for money but for a predefined period of time or until some predefined work is complete, in contrast to employment which is continuous. However, you have more freedom to do tshe work as you see fit, which means freelance work can be a good stepping stone to running a business. Some people also call this “contracting” or “consulting”.
Arbitrage – this is making money with transactions where you buy something for a low price, sell it for a high price, and keep the difference as profit. The main efforts in arbitrage are finding the opportunities and, in the case of very high-priced items, securing temporary funding needed to buy and hold the item until you can sell it. This form of making money is also called “flipping”. You might even be able to skip the finance if you sell the item before you buy it, but this also has risks. Also, in some markets like real estate it’s possible to improve an item between buying and selling to get a higher price, but in other markets like antiques or collectibles any modifications to the item generally decrease value instead, and in other markets like currencies it’s not possible to improve the item at all.
Business – this is where you set up a system of people and processes that converts resources to a product that other people want to buy. There are many forms of businesses. Some businesses stay small, barely more than freelancing, and others grow to be very large.
Investment – this requires some money to start with. You can invest money obtained from any other method and if you invest wisely for a long enough period of time, you’ll have lots of money at the end.
Not at Revenue Zone
The following ways of making money are not covered at Revenue Zone because they’re unreliable, unethical, or criminal:
Find money – this happens, but is rare, and for most people finding money is not reliable enough to be a good plan. Some people do spend their lives looking for treasure, and some even find it. To live while looking for treasure you need to either already have plenty of money or be able to live off the land.
Gigs – this is like freelancing but with small tasks and small dollar amounts. Gig workers usually get the small jobs through word of mouth or by using a platform where many people go to advertise their availability to do gigs or to find someone to do a gig for them. If you are trying to turn your gig into a business, you can find help with that part at Revenue Zone. But we don’t spend any time here trying to help people find gigs, there are other sites for that.
Divorce – marry someone rich, use their money while you’re married, then divorce them and use their money without being married.
Gambling – in pure form where people gamble against each other on an even playing field, gambling relies on luck and it’s not a reliable way to make money. More often players are gambling against the house and in that case there’s an information asymmetry and a power asymmetry because the house makes the rules and is able to influence the game to ensure that on average it makes more money than it loses, which means on average players lose more money than they make, so it’s an even less reliable way to make money.
Theft – steal someone else’s money while they’re not looking. This is criminal behavior.
Robbery – take someone else’s money with violence or threat of violence. This is criminal behavior.
Fraud – trick or deceive someone into giving you their money. This is criminal behavior. Also called a scam.