Over the last 12 years since I first became a student, I learned loads of high-income skills that have helped me personally make millions of dollars on the internet. While I was at University studying medicine, I started my own business helping people get into med school and then I went on to start this YouTube channel, which led to me starting lots of other businesses. Now I'm in the ridiculously privileged position to be making life-changing amounts of money every year and I have quite a good understanding of what skills I would recommend to my former self if he wanted to make that sort of money at some point. In this blog post, I want to break down five high-income skills with examples of other people who are literally doing this, so you can hopefully use them to get inspired, learn one of them yourself, and make some money either while you're a student or further down the line. If you happen to be new to the channel, then hello! My name is Ali, I'm a doctor turned entrepreneur and I'm also the author of The New York Times bestselling book "Feelgood Productivity," which is about how to be more productive in a way that's actually enjoyable, meaningful, and sustainable. I've been making videos on this channel for the last 7 years documenting my journey from broke medical student to entrepreneur to author, and I've documented and shared all of the learnings, failures, and experiences along the way. I hope you'll get some value out of this post, and if you're new to the channel, you might like to consider subscribing as well. Understanding the Philosophy of Making Money Before we get into the specific skills, I want to zoom out a little bit and talk through how I would think about making money: what's the philosophy of actually making money if, for example, you're a student and you want to actually make money someday? Here's kind of how I think about it. Let's say you are a student. This was, for example, me when I was a 19-year-old medical student. In the world of capitalism that we live in today, everyone has above their head a personal stock price. This is essentially your worth to the market. I don't like the system any more than you do; I think this is a bad system, it's just unfortunately the world that we live in. If we want to thrive in this world, we need to appreciate that this is a thing: everyone you meet has above them a personal stock price, much like how every company has a particular value. Back when I was a medical student, my personal stock price was zero. No one was going to hire me to do anything. In fact, maybe they would have; when I was a medical student, I was able to earn £450 an hour by working at the local library. When I graduated medical school and started working as a doctor, suddenly my personal stock price became around £450 per hour. That's how much doctors earn in the UK when you are just starting out, and that's how much residents earn in the US when you're just starting out. This is the personal stock price. Increasing Your Personal Stock Price If you're a student and you have high-income skills, those skills are skills that increase your personal stock price. Let's say you might have a student next to you whose personal stock price is £50 an hour, or it might be £100 an hour, or it might even be £500 an hour. This is how much that particular person can command in the marketplace of commerce. Now, let's say you are a student. By learning high-income skills, you can increase your personal stock price. Everyone is already an entrepreneur; you already run your own business. Even me, back when I was a medical student and working full-time as a doctor, I was actually running my own business. It was just that my business was hired out to one employer, which was the National Health Service here in the UK, and the rate that I was charging my employer was £450 per hour. Five High-Income Skills to Learn So, with all of that in mind, let's dive into the five high-income skills we're going to be talking about. There will be time stamps in the video description, so please skip around if you feel like it. But one thing I would say is that you might be like, "Oh, you know, web design, I don't need to think about that." Throughout this post, as I talk about these different high-income skills, I'm going to be sharing literal real-life examples of people who have made money using these skills. Even if right now you might be thinking, "I suck at arts, I'll never be a designer," or "I hate the idea of learning to code," I would still recommend you potentially read on because it might give you insights and ideas that could be beneficial in the long run. 1. Being a Software Consultant for Businesses This sounds boring, but it's really not. This is super cool. Basically, businesses all use different software, and often businesses are run and manned by people who are way less tech-savvy than you are as a student. You're a student, so you have grown up on the internet and you know how to use software. For example, you might be familiar with the app Notion. I've made dozens of videos about Notion. You might be using Notion at school; you might know people who use Notion. Notion is an app that a lot of students will use for their personal lives, but actually, Notion is also an app that a lot of businesses, including mine, use to manage their business operations. If you can get good at using that software, you can become a consultant where you help businesses and train them in how to use the software. It sounds dumb, but businesses will hire a lot of consultants to teach them basic stuff that they could just teach themselves based on the internet. The reason they do that is because business owners don't have time. I am now a business owner. I know how to learn stuff on the internet; I could teach myself any skill I want to because I've been doing this for like 15 years. But at this point in my life, it's just not worth my own time to teach myself the skill. I would pay $500 an hour to hire someone to teach the skill to me because my time is worth more than $500 an hour. Businesses will pay to learn something that you as an individual can absolutely just teach yourself. 2. Copywriting Copywriting is another high-income skill. The difference between a good copywritten sales page and a bad copywritten sales page might just be a few percentage points of conversion. Let's say you've got a website with a "Buy Now" button at the bottom. For example, my own course, Part-Time YouTuber Academy, has a sales page where the button is for $997. Every time someone clicks "Buy," I am earning $997. If the conversion rate on our sales page is currently 0.5%, that means of every 200 people that visit, we get one sale, making us $997 for every 200 visitors. If we manage to increase our conversion rate to 2%, for 200 people, we now get four sales, making us $4,000 instead of $1,000. This is the power of copywriting. Copywriting is not hard to learn; there are books and loads of YouTube videos about it. For example, "Copywriting Secrets" by Jim Edwards is my personal favorite. A good copywriter can add millions of dollars to the bottom line of a business just by improving the conversion rate of a sales page. 3. Being a Designer Being a designer, whether a web designer or a general graphic designer, is another high-income skill. Businesses need design skills for various assets, such as websites, apps, Instagram carousels, ads, and more. Finding good designers is hard, and design is a skill that every business needs. If you have a reasonable aesthetic sense and can learn tools like Figma, Canva, and Photoshop, you can become a high-income designer. Back when I was a medical student, I worked as a freelance designer for medical tech companies. I was being paid $100 an hour to do freelance app and web design. This was because I targeted med tech companies, who preferred to work with someone with a little bit of industry experience. 4. Being a Website Builder Being a website builder is another high-income skill. Every business needs a website, and if you can do both web design and development, you are a valuable asset. Tools like Webflow and Framer can help you build websites, and there are loads of tutorials available online. For example, my friend Henry taught himself web design in about six months and now charges thousands to tens of thousands of dollars to businesses for designing websites. We paid Henry $15,000 for designing the website for my book "Feelgood Productivity" and $10,000 for some of our sales pages. This might seem like a lot, but for a business doing multiple seven figures a year, it's a bargain if it boosts conversion rates. 5. Coding Coding is a high-income skill that is surprisingly accessible. There are loads of free YouTube tutorials that teach you the basics of coding, and AI tools like GitHub Copilot and GPT can help you out. US-based tech companies pay $400,000 starting salaries for coders. Learning to code can also help you create your own products. For example, my friend Sahel built an AI tool called Firecut and now earns $35,000 a month from it. The website Indie Hackers is a great resource for learning how to code and build cool stuff. They interview individuals who have coded products from their bedrooms and turned them into successful businesses. If you've gotten to this point in the post, there's a pretty high chance that you are on the path to financial freedom and would love to live a life where you can do what you want without worrying about money. If you're interested, check out my video on my honest advice for someone seeking financial freedom. Thank you very much for reading, and I'll see you next time. Bye! Watch Video Here
