 When I began my writing business some years ago, I was oblivious to how I would gain writing clients let alone increase my income. Of course, like every newbie writer, I only dreamed of writing books and novels and anthologies hoping for goodness sake they would serve. But if you ask any new writer out there who's worth his salt, you will soon learn that making a big break with your first book is not only a big deal. It has a slim chance, so I switched to building a business around my skill instead and it paid off in the long run coupled with the good income I make off of writing now, I write books too. If you manage your own business as a young person or you're looking for ways to either increase your income or earn money from a side business in your 20s, these strategies will certainly help you. 1. Learn a New Skill At the time, I was determined only to write books and create short stories no one would likely buy and even if they did, I was unsure I could sell enough of them to save me from begging for daily meals or paying my rent. So I picked up a new skill, email copywriting and started to learn all I could about it. I started all the free content I could on it and soon I was earning enough money off email copywriting even to make me begin a game to work on my book writing dreams. What skill can you learn today to augment your present income? As I often say, there is arguably no skill you would like to learn today whose teachings and materials aren't available for free on the internet. You'll be paid for what you know and even better for knowing so much about it. But even after doing this, you may want to follow the next step. 2. What of Mouth Marketing? If you've been taking piano lessons, for example, online, watching YouTube videos and studying websites, then you are set to start to take your new skill to the next level, make money off it. But what better way to do that than to start to talk to friends about what you do? Tell your friends what you can do now. Post about it on Facebook, share it on Twitter, publish it on WhatsApp. Tell your friends to tell their friends and their friends to tell their friends. I started to rave and rant to close friends about my email copywriting skill and in less than 14 days, I started writing emails. I got my first client. You can do it too. But just as an addition, the next step is equally important to building this new small business. 3. Demonstrate Your Scale? Days after I knew I wanted to start to write email for a leave-in, I waited so long for clients to approach me. They didn't. So I grabbed a few emails of friends and began to email them daily, teaching them a thing or two about business and introducing my email copywriting service below each mail. Less than two weeks later, I got a call from a prospective email copywriting client. Although the job didn't pull through then, we have become the best of friends doing great businesses together now. Moreover, the singular act of demonstrating my skill not only proved to clients that I could do this, I soon learned what I could and couldn't do well in the business. Which brings me to the next step. 4. Specialize This reads short and straightforward but it's the greatest lesson I learned as a beginning email copywriter. While reading an interview transcript of world-renowned copywriter Bob Bly, he advised that the best way for new freelance writers to make headway is to specialize and not generalize their skill. Here's an analogy to prove that. Who would you instead allow to treat you for a disease? A doctor who is a specialist in that particular disease or a general doctor who does all? I bet you'll prefer a specialist. While there is the mind-boggling temptation to always want to do a lot, you are safe to do only one thing and do it well. If you picked a skill like cake making, for example, there are probably a thousand things attached to it but you could decide to specialize in making wedding cakes only. If you're a writer wanna be, what if you write only children books for a start? If you're a fashion enthusiast, what if you create a tiny fashion house for female children only? If you love to cook, what if you cooked only continental dishes delivered only to office executives while orders are placed via phone calls? I'm just saying, it is safer and saner to be the best at one thing than to be good at so many things. Good doesn't save the world and make your life far better than you will ever expect but best will. Strive to be the best As much as you must specialize, you must equally strive to be the best in your feud. You won't always be the only fish ruling your pond. There would likely be orders in your feud but the difference between you and the orders is your differentiation. What differentiates you from the others? How can you become the best at what you do? Those who go the extra mile are those who always get the best results for their clients and often always get the best results. Brand Tracey said that the top 10% of people in a particular feud are those who are the best at what they do. If you do excellently what your mates do sharply, you will soon become sought after in your feud. To earn more than your mates earn, be the best at what you do by always learning to go the extra mile. Excellence is habit so practice excellence. In conclusion, if you own a business or manage another person's business, it's not bad if you start the day to create other opportunities to earn more income by using the tips of both. Thanks to the internet, you can learn a new skill in one week or one day and start immediately to use the same skill to grow your income. Entrepreneurship doesn't begin with owning a million dollar business. No, instead it begins with launching the small sized businesses you can easily manage without great risk to them. And by the way, there's no limit to how many small businesses you can start today. Thanks again to the internet. If this video inspired you, like this video, we love you.