You can monetise your existing skills by turning your knowledge and experience into services, workshops, consulting, online content, courses or physical and digital products. Start by identifying the problems you know how to solve, then test different ways of delivering that value to people who are willing to pay for it.
If you have ever thought about starting a side hustle or becoming self-employed, one question probably comes up quite quickly: what could I actually sell?
For many people, this is where the idea of starting a business stops.
You might assume that you need to invent a new product, develop a completely new skill or come up with an original business idea. But there is a good chance that you already have something people would be willing to pay for.
It could be knowledge you have gained during your career. It might be a technical skill, your ability to explain complicated subjects, organise projects, manage people, create content, fix things or solve particular problems.
The challenge is recognising its value.
As Jon puts it, many of us are effectively sitting on a “mountain of value” without realising it. Years of work and life experience can leave you with a unique combination of knowledge and skills that somebody else may find extremely valuable.
The question is how you turn that value into income.
Start by taking an inventory of what you know
The first step is not deciding whether you should start a YouTube channel, write a book or become a consultant.
It is working out what you actually know.
That sounds straightforward, but it can be surprisingly difficult.
When you have been doing something for years, it starts to feel ordinary. You forget how much you have learnt along the way.
Perhaps you have spent ten years managing sales teams. You might describe yourself simply as a sales manager. But underneath that job title could be dozens of valuable skills.
You might know how to recruit salespeople, design commission plans, run effective sales meetings, coach underperforming staff, build a sales pipeline, negotiate contracts or introduce a customer relationship management system.
Each of those could potentially become a service, workshop, training course, piece of content or product.
The same applies outside an office environment.
A plumber might know how to diagnose common household problems. A keen gardener may have learnt exactly how to grow vegetables in a small garden. Someone who restores furniture as a hobby might understand techniques that beginners are desperate to learn.
The important question is not simply:
“What is my job?”
Instead, ask:
“What do I know how to do that somebody else wants to know or wants done for them?”
Ask someone else to help identify your value
One of the most useful things you can do is have this conversation with somebody you trust.
Why?
Because another person may recognise valuable skills that you completely overlook.
Ask them to question you about your career, hobbies, projects and experiences.
- What problems have you solved?
- What do colleagues regularly ask you for help with?
- What have you learnt to do yourself?
- What have you become particularly good at?
- What subjects could you comfortably explain to a beginner?
You may discover that some of your most valuable skills are not the ones written on your CV.
Andrew, for example, describes learning how to create videos, produce podcasts and use AI tools while carrying out other roles. None of these necessarily formed part of his original professional identity.
Yet once other people saw the work, they started asking questions such as:
“How much would you charge to make a video for us?”
“Could you create the music for our corporate video?”
“Could you help us set up our podcast?”
A skill does not have to be your main profession before somebody will pay you for it.
Turn your knowledge into a service
Once you have identified something useful, one of the simplest ways to monetise it is by providing a service.
This could include:
- consulting
- advisory work
- mentoring
- coaching
- training
- design
- technical services
- freelance work
- workshops
- public speaking
The advantage of services is that they are relatively easy to start.
You do not necessarily need to manufacture anything or invest large amounts of money. Your main assets are your knowledge and your time.
Jon, for example, realised that his experience could be turned into mentoring, business support, talks and workshops. Initially, some talks could be delivered free of charge or at relatively low cost. This provided an opportunity to practise, refine the material and become more visible. Over time, that same expertise could be delivered as paid presentations, specialist training, mentoring or advisory work.
This highlights an important lesson for first-time entrepreneurs.
You do not have to get everything perfect before you start.
- Test your idea.
- Deliver it to a small audience.
- See what people find useful.
Then improve it.
Use content to demonstrate what you can do
There is another route that has become increasingly accessible: show people what you know.
YouTube is a good example.
People sometimes think of becoming a YouTuber as a career reserved for entertainers, influencers or teenagers chasing millions of views. But YouTube is also somewhere millions of people go when they want to solve a problem.
Imagine that you are a plumber who publishes videos explaining how to fix common plumbing problems. The video itself might eventually generate advertising income, but that does not have to be the main objective. A viewer might watch the video and decide:
“I understand the problem now, but I would still rather pay somebody to fix it.”
If that plumber works locally, the video has effectively become a marketing tool. It demonstrates knowledge, builds confidence and helps potential customers discover the business.
Content can work the same way for almost any skill.
- A furniture restorer can demonstrate how to repair old furniture.
- A gardener can explain how to grow herbs.
- An accountant can explain basic bookkeeping to new businesses.
- A designer can demonstrate how to improve a website.
- A business adviser can answer common questions faced by first-time entrepreneurs.
Your content demonstrates that you understand the problem before the potential customer ever speaks to you.
You do not need millions of followers
This is an important point.
People often assume that online content only becomes valuable when you have thousands or even millions of followers. That is not necessarily true. If 200 people watch a highly specialised video and three of them become customers, that video may be far more commercially useful than something watched by 100,000 people who have no intention of buying anything.
Your content can create income in several different ways.
- You might attract customers for your main service.
- You could include affiliate links to useful products and receive a small commission when somebody purchases through the link.
- You might promote workshops, courses or other products.
Eventually, the platform itself may also generate advertising revenue.
Think of content as a way of allowing people to discover your expertise.
Package your expertise into workshops
Selling your time is often the quickest way to start earning money, but it has an obvious limitation. There are only so many hours in the day. That is where packaging your knowledge becomes interesting.
Instead of creating something from scratch for every customer, you can develop a repeatable workshop.
For example, Andrew created his own framework for solving a particular business problem and turned that framework into a structured workshop.
This meant that the knowledge was no longer simply something in his head. It had become a repeatable product.
The workshop could be delivered multiple times to different groups.
That is an important step for any small business owner.
Ask yourself:
Can I turn what I currently do into something I can sell repeatedly?
Create products that do not depend entirely on your time
You can take this idea further by turning your knowledge into something that can be sold without you being present every time.
Andrew created a workbook to accompany his workshops and published it so that participants could purchase additional copies. He also experimented with writing books, creating a card game and selling merchandise.
Not every experiment became a major commercial success. That matters because there is sometimes a misleading impression that every side hustle must immediately turn into a thriving business.
It probably will not.
- Some ideas will make money.
- Others may generate a little revenue.
- Some will go nowhere.
But each experiment can teach you something about what customers value.
A product might include:
- a book
- a workbook
- templates
- a card game
- physical merchandise
- a toolkit
- downloadable resources
- a digital guide
The aim is to gradually separate at least part of your income from the hours you personally work.
Create an online course
Online courses provide another way of doing this.
If you know how to achieve something that other people want to learn, you can potentially create a structured course around it. It does not have to be an academic subject.
Perhaps you know how to grow a successful herb garden. Instead of simply creating a ten-minute video, you could build a programme that takes somebody from choosing the right plants through to planting, maintenance and harvesting.
Perhaps you are experienced at presenting. You could create a course helping nervous first-time speakers prepare for a presentation.
If you understand a particular piece of software, you could teach beginners how to use it.
Customers pay for the structure, experience and convenience you provide.
Once the course has been created, multiple people can purchase it without requiring you to personally deliver every lesson again.
This creates the possibility of generating income that is less directly linked to your time.
Look for opportunities beyond your main profession
Perhaps the biggest mistake is limiting yourself to what appears on your business card.
During your working life you accumulate skills from all sorts of places. You might have learnt to edit videos because somebody needed a promotional clip. Perhaps you learnt to build spreadsheets because nobody else knew how. Maybe you became good at organising events, designing presentations, using AI tools or managing social media.
You may regard these things as small additional tasks.
Somebody else may regard them as difficult problems worth paying you to solve.
This is why regularly reviewing your skills matters. Your personal “inventory” of valuable knowledge is constantly changing. The skills you have today may be different from the skills you had six months ago. New technology can also create completely new opportunities.
Artificial intelligence is a good example. People learning how to use AI assistants and other emerging tools today may discover that businesses soon need help understanding, implementing or managing exactly those technologies.
Research what your skills are worth
Identifying a skill people value does not automatically tell you what to charge. This can be uncomfortable when you first start working independently.
- How much should you charge for an hour of consulting?
- What should a workshop cost?
- How much is a presentation worth?
There is no single answer.
Start by researching what other people offering comparable services are charging.
Look at people with similar levels of experience and consider the type of customer you are targeting.
More importantly, think about the value you create.
If your advice saves a company thousands of pounds, pricing yourself purely according to the number of hours involved may not reflect the real value of the work.
Whatever pricing model you choose, you need to be able to explain it confidently.
A potential customer should not ask what something costs and receive a nervous answer beginning with:
“Well, I’m not really sure…”
- Know what you offer.
- Know approximately what it costs.
- Know what the customer receives in return.
Experiment before trying to build the perfect business
One theme runs through all of these approaches.
Try things.
- Your first workshop will probably not be your best workshop.
- Your first YouTube video will probably not be your best video.
- Your first attempt at pricing a service may turn out to be too cheap or too expensive.
That is normal.
You learn by putting ideas into the marketplace and seeing what happens.
- You could start with one presentation.
- Publish one useful video.
- Run a small workshop.
- Create one downloadable guide.
- Offer one advisory service.
Then pay attention to the reaction.
- What are people willing to pay for?
- What questions keep appearing?
- Which content receives interest?
- What do customers ask you to do next?
Those signals can point towards your next opportunity.
Keep reassessing what you have to offer
Perhaps the most useful habit is to regularly repeat the entire exercise. Do not create a list of your skills once and assume the job is finished. Come back to it every few months.
Ask yourself:
- What have I learnt recently?
- What am I better at now than I was six months ago?
- What problems have I solved?
- What are people asking me for help with?
- Has new technology made one of my skills more valuable?
- Could I deliver that value as a service, product, course, workshop or piece of content?
The answer may surprise you.
Starting a side hustle or a whole new business does not always require you to discover the next big idea.
Sometimes the opportunity is already there.
You simply need to recognise the value of what you know, find the people who need it and work out the most practical way of delivering it.
Your next business idea might not be something you have to invent; it might be something you already know how to do.
(If watching or listening is more your thing, this article is based on the discussion you can see below.)
