How to Make Money in a Bad Economy

“I whole heartedly believe things WILL turn around quickly and completely. But the only way to respond to adversity is to learn from it and be better prepared for how to make money in a poor economy moving forward.”

How to Make Money in a Bad Economy

Making money is something few people understand and even fewer have mastered.

The “lucky ones” find themselves on their path to riches by whatever good fortune they tripped over or were born into. It wasn’t so much brilliance or ability as it was being in the right place at the right time. But as soon as something challenging comes in their way, they’re baffled as to why things suddenly stopped working.

Then there are the rest of us; working feverishly, doing all the right things. Early to bed, early to rise. Relentless passion and purpose run through our veins. We hammer and pound to make something out of a great idea. We sacrifice a great deal to make life better for others in some way. But too many of us are not prepared for the unexpected. 

Here is a cold, hard fact: 

Anyone who experiences a situation where the years of hard work in building a successful career or business from the ground up suddenly turns into a drought, just from a shift of the economy, is living/working in a house of cards.

It doesn’t really matter whether this is building a business, real estate investing, running a franchise, working 9 to 5 for the man, an online business … if your money stream can dry up or be shut down by external influences such as the economy, the coronavirus or the government, your investment of time, effort, money, sacrifice … will all be for nought.

This is no way to live or operate. You can’t put so much into something that could be destroyed so easily.

Here’s another way of looking at it:

If a business only works well in a strong economy, one is in for a rude awakening when you least expect it.

We can rationalize how and why it could happen, but wouldn’t it be better to set things up so your money-making source is impervious to unexpected things like the coronavirus?

The present Covid-19 situation is an all too perfect example. Just a few weeks ago, we were in one of the best economies we’ve ever seen. And today, most people are sitting home without work and without pay. 

So how can we learn from this?

Good Money-Making Careers

Good money-making careers that only work under certain circumstances and not in others are very dangerous. But what can you do about it? Most of the time, no one really knows whether they have a strong business or not.

Most money-making careers have to prove themselves during tough times. But then it’s too late.

A number of very successful friends—multi-millionaires, all of them—crashed and burned during the 2007 recession. I was just as shocked as they were.

I had to figure out why, after the dust cleared, only myself and a few others were still standing; really unaffected by what had destroyed most careers and businesses. There were two main factors I found that made the difference between success and failure when it comes to making money.

How to Make Money in a Poor Economy

As this article is being written, the business world suffers from this very issue. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a nine-to-fiver or entrepreneur. We face an economy where consumers, afraid of their future survival, grip their dollars as a crashing world economy looms. But it’s even worse than that. The age-old belief that it’s “safer to have a job” has gone right out the window.

As a result, once-successful entrepreneurs and hard-working employees alike are fighting to pay their bills, and thriving businesses are scrambling to stay afloat.  

As things start to come back, the scale will tip in favor of a few areas such as credit repair companies and collection agencies—which only really flourish in down economies—come in like vultures and “temporarily” enjoy the rotting fruits of others’ failures.

I whole heartedly believe things WILL turn around quickly and completely. But the only way to respond to adversity is to learn from it and be better prepared for how to make money in a poor economy moving forward.

In the search for good money-making careers, the entrepreneur has to recognize that the ideal solution doesn’t only lie in an idea or niche. And the employee’s solution isn’t working for a great company. A money-making solution relies on something even more basic.

The reason for its “stealthness” is likely its simplicity combined with a misconceived notion of meagerness. Yet, this very thing possesses the true potential of millions for those who pursue it with zest and vigor—without a doubt.

Economic Change

With things changing more rapidly on the planet, picking up pace year after year, the knowledge decreases on how to make good money; the amount of money needed to retire or that most people only dream about or envy in others.

It is because so-called gurus who claimed “riches for all” are suddenly applying for unemployment or standing in food lines because Google changed their algorithm or any number of simple changes that wipe out a career overnight. It’s not to say that some of them, many of them, didn’t have something worthwhile.

My point is that their technologies do not work all the time! In other words, they are not prepared for the “what ifs”. And again, that is a house of cards; it is short-lived success if success at all.

Long Term Success

I don’t know about you, but I would actually want to always have been poor than to have been rich and lost it all. At least I wouldn’t know what I was missing. But to be a huge success and then lose it all … that’s got to be a terrible thing. 

This type of condition is what is known as volatile: ever-changing, unpredictable, dangerous, unstable. And the need to recession-proof oneself has never been more real and necessary than it is right now.

With an economy where things never stay the same, it becomes vital to move toward opportunities that can withstand ANY scenario, any economy. It must be far-reaching in a nationwide or global sense.

My heart aches for local businesses right now. I used to own a mom & pop fishing tackle store. We were limited by things such as locale, weather, the economy of the town, the condition of Main Street. I had it for 18 years.

The first half was incredible, but then came the big box giant, undercutting all competition to the point of wiping out Main Street U.S.A. We struggled and ended up destitute. Repo’ed cars, kicked out of our condo … it was ugly and degrading.

It’s not fair that someone can work so hard and yet end up homeless. But life is not forgiving, and we need to be prepared for change. 

I learned early on that if you don’t have a plan B, C and D in place, you are one hiccup away from total failure.

Financial Preparedness

Financial Crisis Preparedness is one of the most overlooked things of business owners. They are busy meeting payroll and so forth, so I get it. I was there once myself, as you now know a brief history of one of the many businesses I’ve had. Oh yes, there are other adventurous stories I could share, all just as exciting.

It wasn’t until I smartened up and started to ask some important questions for my new or existing venture: 

• Will it work in a bearish economy?
• Will it thrive during a bullish economy?
• Will it perish in a downtrend?
• Will it still work in some locations during times when it’s not working in other places?

These very questions, and more, must stand up to anything that you might consider becoming involved with. That includes the company you would consider being employed by or, believe it or not, the person whom you choose as a spouse. Do you doubt this?

Though it’s about as romantic as a prenuptial agreement, no one ever said that practicality was disallowed from the equation for pairing up lovers. And perhaps the “one out of every two marriages end in divorce” statistic should scream for a more practical approach in today’s world of fairy tale relationship building.

If you think I’m being silly, ask yourself this:

Would your significant other leave you during the tough financial times of your life?

You may be one of the “lucky ones” whose spouse stays to weather the storm. But know that just as many have walked out. The pressure is just too great to withstand.

So how do we recession-proof our money-making abilities and save our marriages if we were unfortunate enough to have chosen a fair-weather spouse? How do we flourish when the economy causes everything to crash?

The answer is to have something that people want in “any” economy.

People won’t set it aside as a “luxury that we can’t afford right now” kind of thing. That’s why many of my friends’ businesses died.

But it also has to hold steady its price, where people will still want it and buy it and “need” it. And if things were to become so bad that people just could not afford it (remember the Great Depression), it would have to still possess appeal and selling power somewhere else in the country or world where there would be a completely different economy. There’s a hint to the value of having a business that’s global, or at least national. 

So what could this possibly be?

Information Products

One of the most ideal, effective, sustainable, and viable money-making businesses can be established through books and other information products. More specifically, books and other information products that you are the author of.

There is a brilliant sequence in how you should proceed. First, to quickly establish yourself as an expert/authority, you have a book made. From there, the sky’s the limit on what you can offer people that will enhance their lives.

You don’t even have to be a book writer because you can hire a pro to write it for you. The important point is that you must have a book written well enough that people will:

• need it
• want it
• buy it
• benefit from it.  

This is where having a qualified professional book writer is key. Besides WriterServices, LLC (www.WriterServices.net), which is indisputably one of the most reputable literary services companies in the world and has the best array of literary personnel (best-selling book writers, award winning editors, and so on), my years of researching the industry came up with scores of individual writers and numerous “buyer-beware” warnings of fraud and theft.

But I also found a few legitimate establishments of repute and/or possessing some form of acceptable track record: The Penn Group, (which seems to compare with Writer Services insofar as the services they do provide) and Writers for Hire, Inc. (although I was unable to check them in detail). Out of all companies that I have ever found, only Writer Services proudly posts the prestigious Better Business Bureau link with an A+ Rating, which, in my book, gives substantial points and more kudos to the awardee than their competition in any industry.

How to Make Money Writing

Even during bad times, people look to books for comfort, for pleasure, and most of all for information that is going to help them survive better. Of course, books sell in strong economies as well. Once you’re a published author, you can create all kinds of information products; each one can be an additional income stream.

We work with clients all the time on developing a strategy of the best information products to create. The smart entrepreneur has products in different niches so that if some were to suddenly crash, the others would still thrive. 

The way to do this is figure what information people want in good times and what they need in bad times. This will make it so your products are in demand no matter what’s happening in the world or the country.

A high-quality book and information products is the best source for earning income in any economy. A book should be first on your list for building multiple income streams, and you should not be satisfied with just one or two information products.

Know that you should have three or more different sources of income generation.

Weekend Job Work From Home

Books and information products are an ideal, stable way of making money.

Best of all, creating more streams of income can simply be made by having more books written and developing more information products. With the right setup, these can be passive money-making streams. In other words, books and info products can be automatic money makers while you work your business or 9-to-5 job!

Are you starting to see the brilliance and simplicity in how you can increase stability in your life by adding more income streams? This is something you can start out doing on weekends or a few hours a week.

When you make an information product, you make it once and can sell it a million times. Once created, it’s more valuable than gold.

Anyone can have one or more books as additional sources of income while pursuing other ventures of money making or holding a 9-to-5 job.

The point is that YOU MUST HAVE MULTIPLE STREAMS OF INCOME, AND YOU MUST HAVE AT LEAST ONE BOOK AS ONE OF THOSE MONEY-MAKING STREAMS.

So there you have it: the most stable stream of income you could ever want is from books—whether self-published or traditionally published—and information products.

The possibilities of making money by being an author are truly limitless as history has proven over the centuries. By themselves, books can sell millions of copies. With info products, you can make big profits on what you know or have to share with others.

Your book(s) can also be the launching pad for other more expensive products, like study courses, lecture CDs, systems, and programs that sell for thousands of dollars. And people will buy them because they came to know you through your book. Truly, the sky is the limit once you have a professionally written book under your belt.