How I Made an Extra $1,000 This Weekend (And How You Can Do the Same)

This weekend, I made an extra grand using skills I learned as an undergrad. I'm still surprised at how easy it was.

Remember a few posts ago when I said there are myths about English majors holding you back?

Well, there are myths about other majors holding you back, too.

For example, there’s a scary myth that you have to be great at math to be a programmer or web developer. The truth is, you don’t need to be amazing at math to build the kind of website most people want. Modern dev tools have almost eliminated the need to actually do any “hard,” math-heavy programming. It’s actually just a matter of knowing a *little* bit of code and understanding how to use the tools.

Once you learn some basics (which you can do in your spare time), there are plenty of people willing to pay for your expertise. Plus, if you’re an English Major, you’ve got a secret weapon that will help your sites perform better than your competition: audience analysis.

We English Majors seems to have a sixth sense for being able to read into what an audience really wants, even if it’s not what they think they want. This is invaluable to business owners who need a better web presence.

That’s why earned an extra $1,000 this weekend (on top of my normal high salary from my day job). In only a few hours, I created a website for a client using simple templates and no math (other than simple addition).

My audience analysis skills mean the websites I create are better than my competitors’ because I know exactly what readers want. My sites are designed to help readers find exactly what they’re looking for.

As you can imagine, this leads to a lot of happy readers and, thus, very happy clients.

In Get an Awesome Job, I actually show you how you can do this, too. I break down the technical skills everyone should know (that aren’t so technical after all). I also explain how to learn web development in a matter of weeks so you can begin finding your own clients that will happily pay you $1,000 or more for a weekend’s work.

PS: I mentioned in the header I learned these skills as an undergrad. That's true. In a professional/technical writing course, I decided to learn CSS and some HTML so I could customize my personal class blog. It only took a few days to learn the basics I needed. Those skills have served me (and my family's finances) very well since then.