He wanted to build an automatic coffee machine.

My friend Elias looooooved coffee.

So he wanted to perfect the coffee-making-process.

He had a simple 3D printer to print parts for the machine.

But he was not happy with the printed parts.

So he thought:

“I’ll just build my own 3D printer!”

This was about three years ago.

On Monday, Elias launched his second crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter:

http://kck.st/1MbE4va

8 hours later, he had received the funding he asked for.

I’ve been a part of the team and helping out a little bit here and there.

But Elias is the mastermind.

I know many of you are dreaming about building your own idea and selling it.

So I asked Elias: “Do you have any advice for people who would like to build their own prototypes and ideas?”

ELIAS: Keep at it! Even though someone makes something that seems similar, just keep hacking away at your own creation, and people will spontaneously pop out from no where and tell you they love the direction your project is taking! That’s rewarding.

I’ve interviewed Elias previously, check it out:

https://www.build-electronic-circuits.com/interview-with-elias-bakken/

I asked how he got started in electronics, and it was NOT by studying theory. He jumped right into the practical stuff and started building things from the start.

But of course, now he also has a strong theoretical knowledge.

If you want a step-by-step guide to building circuits, even with no experience from before, check out my eBook “Getting Started With Electronics”:

https://www.build-electronic-circuits.com/products/ebook-2nd-edition

Keep on Soldering!
Oyvind

Have an idea you’d like to bring to market? In this series, John Teel walks through the process of scaling up from prototype to production. Follow each installment for a closer look at how to incorporate individual components.

Do you dream of developing a hot, new hardware gadget and bringing it to market? Maybe your goal is to make the world better with your product, or perhaps you just want to get filthy rich selling your product.

Developing a project prototype using an Arduino, Raspberry Pi, or other development platform is a fantastic first step. However, there is still a lot to do if you want to make it into something that can be manufactured and sold to the masses.

In this article I’m going to break down the process into manageable steps so you can get started on making your dream come true!

Step 1: Select the Core Electronic Components

The first step is to select the primary microchips (i.e. integrated circuits), sensors, displays, connectors, and other electronic components based upon the desired functions and your target retail price.

Some of the best places to find and purchase electronic components are the big distributors like Arrow, Digikey, Mouser, and Future. Components can be purchased as singles (for prototyping and initial testing) or up to thousands (for low-volume manufacturing) from any of these suppliers. AdaFruit and SparkFun are two of the best resources for electronic modules, kits, sensors, cameras, and other electronic parts.

Step 2: Design the Circuit Schematic

Once all of the core components are selected, the next step is to connect them all together in a schematic diagram. The schematic diagram is similar to a blueprint for a house.

The schematic shows how all of the components, from microchips to simple resistors, connect together. The schematic is an abstract representation of the electronics design. For many this can be the most difficult step to learn because it requires a fundamental understanding of electronics design engineering.

I suggest starting with a prototype based on an Arduino or Raspberry Pi, then you can copy a lot of their open source schematics once you are ready to migrate to a fully custom design. If you don’t have a good understanding of electronics then you have three choices: find a co-founder who does, teach yourself the fundamentals of electronics, or hire an electronics design engineer to either fully design the circuit or at least to review your design.

Step 3: Create the Bill of Materials

Now it’s time to create a detailed parts list called a Bill of Materials (BOM). The BOM lists the part number, part description, quantity, and possibly the part pricing. You should have already selected the more important components in step #1. So now you must specify all of the secondary components like capacitors, resistors, inductors, connectors, etc.

Note that the BOM can be created after step #4 if desired, but doing it early allows you to more quickly estimate the production cost for your product.

STEP 4: Design the Printed Circuit Board

Now it’s time to take the conceptual schematic diagram and turn it into real world electronics: a Printed Circuit Board (PCB).

A PCB is the physical board that holds and connects all of the electronic components. For many projects creating the PCB layout is more complicated and time-consuming than designing the original schematic.

In most cases, the tighter the components are packed together the longer it will take to create the PCB layout. This means that for really small products, such as wearable technology devices, it will take extra time to create the PCB layout.

If your gadget uses large amounts of power, or offers wireless connectivity, then the PCB layout is even more critical and time consuming.

For wireless communication products you’ll need to pay extra attention to the PCB layout for the RF (Radio-Frequency) circuits which typically means the antenna. Antenna layout is not only critical, but it’s also complicated. Incorrect antenna layout is probably one of the most frequent mistakes on PCB designs. I highly suggest you get either the antenna manufacturer, or an independent engineer to review your antenna layout before prototyping. Just be sure to hire an engineer experienced with antenna PCB layout since most will not have the necessary experience.

Keep in mind that you’ll probably still need to have your antenna tuned to achieve peak efficiency. Many times your antenna manufacturer will provide this tuning service.

Step 5: Order the PCB Prototypes

Producing electronic PCB prototypes is a two step process. The first step is producing the bare printed circuit boards. For this step I use either Sunstone Circuits or San Francisco Circuits, but there are many other choices as well. The second step is having all of the electronic components assembled on to the PCB. For this step I usually use a company called Screaming Circuits.

Assembly is usually the most expensive step and in my experience is about two-thirds of the total PCB cost. To save money you can of course solder components yourself if you are good at soldering. However, many modern components are leadless (the leads are below the part) making them impossible to do by hand.

In most cases it will take a couple of weeks to get completely assembled boards, unless you pay extra for expedited service. I typically start off ordering about 5 assembled boards which will usually cost around $2,000.

If super small size is absolutely critical for your product (think wearable tech and Internet-of-Things devices) then you may need to consider more advanced PCB production methods to achieve the desired size. For example, using buried and/or blind vias will allow you to pack everything incredibly tight. However, these advanced vias can easily triple your prototype cost, so it’s best to only use them if it’s essential for product success.

Step 6: Program the Microcontroller or Microprocessor

Most electronic devices contain a microchip called a Micro-Controller Unit (MCU) or Micro=Processor Unit (MPU) that serve as the core “brains” for the device. As the names imply an MCU is great at controlling things, and an MPU is great at processing data. An MCU is pretty much a slow MPU with less memory and less pins, but with more built-in peripherals for interfacing with the outside world. An MCU doesn’t require an operating system like an MPU based system, making it the much simpler solution.

For example, an Arduino is a microcontroller (MCU) based development system whereas a Raspberry Pi is a more powerful microprocessor (MPU) based platform with a full operating system.

Whether your product uses a microcontroller or a microprocessor it’s going to need to be programmed. This program (called firmware) will most likely be developed using the “C” computer language.

Step 7: Evaluate, Debug, and Repeat

The first version of any new product is never market ready, and any issues will be fixed in the next prototype iteration. There will almost always be some issues, so don’t be unrealistically optimistic when creating your development and funding plans. Plan for reality.

This can be a challenging step to forecast in terms of both cost and time. Any problems found are of course unexpected, so it will take time to figure out the source of the bug and determine how best to fix it. However, any company developing new hardware products has the same obstacle to overcome.

Step 8: Certifications

In order to sell a new electronic product in most countries there are several types of certification required. The exact certifications needed depend on the country/region where the product will be sold.

I’ll warn you that obtaining certifications isn’t cheap and most products will cost at least $10k to $30k to certify. Fortunately, there are ways to reduce this cost such as by using pre-certified wireless modules. Below is a quick overview of the certifications required in the USA, Canada, and Europe.

FCC (Federal Communications Commission) certification is required for all electrical products sold in the USA. Products that don’t purposefully radiate electromagnetic energy (i.e. no wireless functions) are classified as non-radiators. On the other hand, wireless products purposefully transmit electromagnetic energy and are classified as intentional radiators. It is much more expensive to obtain FCC certification for an intentional radiator.

UL (Underwriters Laboratories) or CSA (Canadian Standards Association) certification is required for any electrical product sold in the USA and/or Canada that plugs into an AC electrical outlet. Products running on only batteries with no recharging capabilities do not require UL/CSA certification. However, most retail chains and/or product liability insurance companies will require UL/CSA certification for any electronic product.

CE (Conformité Européene) certification is required for products sold in the European Union (EU). It is similar to the FCC and UL certifications required in the USA.

RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) certification is required for electrical products sold in the European Union (EU). It certifies the electronics are free of lead.

Conclusion

If your product requires electronics it will no doubt increase the complexity of developing the product. This means increased development cost, time, and risk.

To lower your development risk (and usually your cost and time) I highly recommend that you get a second opinion on any design before prototyping it. Second opinions, commonly called design reviews, can greatly reduce the chance of errors. On the bright side, migrating the electronics from prototype to mass production is relatively straightforward.

If you have recently upgraded your phone or one of your other electronic gadgets, don’t just have them sitting in a drawer gathering dust. You can actually get some good money for them if they have been gently used.  If you have no idea who would like to buy them, then read on and find out.

7 Ways to Make Extra Cash By Selling Your Old Stuff

#1 – Swappa

Swappa.com is the place to go if you are looking to sell Android devices.  These include smartphones, tablets, and iPhones.  Founded by Ben Edwards in 2010, it started off a side project with the main purpose of building a marketplace where people could sell quality devices.  They offer safety for both buyers and sellers, simplicity, and offer low fees.

#2 – Glyde

Glyde.com buys and sells gadgets such as kindles, phones, iPads, MacBooks and tablets as well as games.  They guarantee a savings of up to 90% off retail prices of new gadgets.  The buying experience is not complicated and they offer a great service, protection as well as convenience.  Listing your gadget on this website only takes seconds and sending your gadget to them is free since they send you a pre-stamped, pre-addressed shipping kit.

#3 – Gazelle

Gazelle.com sells all kinds of phones including Android and Apple products.  They pay you in cash for your gently used gadget and then sell it to users looking to purchase it.  Gazelle has been in business since 2007 but launched their website the following year.  Quotes are instant, shipping is free and payments are sent as soon as the quality is verified.  They have sold over 2 million devices and bought devices worth $200 million so far.  [adsense468x15]

#4 – Gizmogul

Gizmogul.com allows you not only to sell back your old phone but to donate money to charity while at it.  Quotations are instant and shipping is free.  Once your gadget has been inspected by their technicians you will get your payment via Paypal or by check.  The best part is that for each deal they transact $1 goes to charity.  They build schools both domestically and internationally and also fund afterschool programs.

#5 – Buy Back World

BuyBackWorld.com buys and sells all electronics.  Established in 2009 this business offers cash for old electronics via their online platform and offers its customers a seamless experience.  Quotes are fair, shipping is free and payment is speedy.  They are a green company committed to a zero-landfill policy.

#6 – Buy My Tronics

BuyMyTronics.com (no longer active) buys and sells all electronics including consoles, phones, and games. The brand is owned by GameStop, a global retailer of consumer electronics, wireless services, and video games with over 6,600 outlet stores around the world.  Buy My Tronics is an online trade-in platform offering consumers the choice of trading in electronics that they no longer use.

#7 – Next Worth

NextWorth.com is in the business of recycling and trading in electronics.  You can exchange your electronics either for a discount on a new model or for cash.  This company was found in 2005 by 3 students from Babson College.  They buy used electronics at a fair price and then resell eighty to eighty-five percent of the electronics why recycling the remaining fifteen to twenty percent.  They have partnered with Target where people can simply walk in, have the gadget inspected, and receive their payment on the spot.

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In a bind? Need some fast cash? We're talking here about small bursts of capital, not millions of dollars -- enough to satisfy your monthly obligations or get that nagging creditor to stop calling you.

Shutterstock

None of the 32 strategies listed here to get some money quickly will break the proverbial bank. Some are easier than others, but nearly all require very little to no capital. They are meant to get you through the difficult times.

Related: 2 Ways to Make Money Online This Month

Some of these strategies to make extra money will require you to be in certain locales, while others are location-independent, but it all boils down to being resourceful. We've all found ourselves in a tight spot at one point in our lives or another, but to the person who's committed, anything is possible. 

Much of this has to do with mindset. When you lack money, scarcity thinking sets in. The scarcity mindset is negative and thinks that there's never enough of whatever it is to go around. When you find yourself thinking like that, do everything in your power to move into an abundant mindset. 

Our thoughts are incredibly powerful. We have upwards of 60,000 thoughts per day, many deep within our subconscious mind, much of which are repeated. We have to be stewards of our thoughts. Once you find yourself thinking negatively, you need to jar yourself out of that.

When you're looking to make money fast, you're often in a tough spot financially, even desperate to make ends meet, but everything that we have and everything that we become is partly born from our thoughts. Think and you shall become. Curate and cultivate the right thoughts if you want to live an abundant life.

The psychology of making money. 

Regardless if you need to earn some fast cash or we're just talking about making money in the grand scheme of things, there's an important psychology that needs to be mentioned before getting into the strategies. If you study Freud's model of the mind, you'll discover the Psychic Apparatus. It's the three-part construct in your mind that controls all of your behavior.

Those three are the id, the super-ego and the ego. The id lives deep within the subconscious from birth. It's the source of our sudden and most instinctive urges. When you find yourself doing what you know you shouldn't, blame your id. 

The super-ego is formed later in life to balance the id. It forms and breaks off from the id through our upbringing, parental guidance and our sense of community and beliefs. People who are careful with their money can thank their super-ego.

The ego is the driver making the decisions. It decides between the devil (the id) and the angel (the super-ego) on either shoulder (yes, all those cartoons you've ever seen are partly true). We have voices in our mind, and it's up to the ego to decide which one to fulfill. Its goal is to satisfy the id in some way while also attending to the super-ego.

Get-rich-quick schemes and fad weight-loss diets are naturally popular because they satisfy the id while also attending to the super-ego. The ego's job is complete when it sees something like this. The appeal of "fast'' stems from the innate desire for instant gratification, so beware of what seems too good to be true (they often are) when you're looking to make money quickly. Be wary. Listen to the conversation deep within the confines of your mind and do your best to tame the proverbial beasts.

What are the best ways to make money right away? While a search online when you're in need of some fast cash will produce millions of results, not all will be legitimate. It's up to you to filter through the so-called noise. These 32 strategies will help put you in the black, even if it's in a very small way. Once you are, resume planning and focusing on the bigger picture. 

Related: How to Make a Fortune With $100

1. Money-making strategy: Drive for Uber or Lyft

Companies like Uber and Lyft offer a great opportunity to make some quick cash. You'll need a clean driving record, a fairly new car and the authorization to work wherever it is that you live. If you have all of those things, you can work when it's feasible for you, whether that's in the middle of the day during rush hour, or in the wee hours of the night on a weekend. The choice is yours.

2. Money-making strategy: Become a market research participant

In college I participated in loads of market research. It's fairly quick money for not a lot of work. Companies looking for consumers' opinions on a variety of products and services put you in a room to garner your opinion. That's it.

This often involves writing or stating your opinion, answering polls or surveys, or breaking off in a discussion group. The mechanics don't matter much. The point is that you can rely on it from time to time. Focusgroup.com is just one company that is looking for participants.

Related: 6 Things You Must Quit Doing Now If You Want to Be More Successful

3. Money-making strategy: Sell old books and games on Amazon

Amazon makes it fairly easy to list and sell old books, games and devices on its marketplace. You can make more than just a few bucks If you have pricey textbooks from college. Be sure the books are in good condition. You'll get negative reviews if you attempt to sell books that are falling apart or games that are scratched up. Remember, be upfront about any defects, no matter how small they might be and no matter how few people might readily notice it. 

4. Money-making strategy: Sell, or resell, used tech on Craigslist

The market for used electronics is vast. You can use Craigslist to part ways with your old iPhone or your MacBook. You can grab a premium for these types of electronics. Some people even flip items by buying them and reselling them.

You could also use a website like Gazelle to sell your used phones, no matter what kind you have. Companies like that have made an entire business model out of buying used phones and refurbishing them. Either way, you can expect to get a fair bit of money relatively quickly if you have these items laying around your house.

Related: 4 Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting a Small Business

5. Money-making strategy: Do tasks with TaskRabbit

TaskRabbit lets you tap into an existing marketplace of people looking for help locally with chores. The tasks aren't always small. This platform (along with others) offers bigger tasks, such as home renovations, as well.

Amazon is getting into the task business with Amazon Home Services. The services listed range from very small repairs to larger and more involved tasks that would take considerably more effort.

6. Money-making strategy: Deliver for PostMates

You can earn some cash when you're in dire straits by using PostMates, and you don't even need a car, just a bike for deliveries in busier cities and downtown centers. I've used it often to get food from specialty places that don't deliver themselves, but it can be used for many things. 

PostMates states on their website that you could earn up to $25/hour doing deliveries. You could also earn some tips in the process so it's a great option for people that are looking to do something in their spare time, similar to the big ride-sharing apps that are hogging up app stores everywhere.

Related: 5 Ways to Make Enough Side Money to Eventually Quit Your Job

7. Money-making strategy: Flip real estate contracts

Ir you're thinking this is cost prohibitive, it's not. You can flip real estate contracts without ever taking possession of the property. This isn't a fixer-upper endeavor, just securing a contract and selling it to an interested party. That's it.

You can do this with just a few hundred dollars in most cases to open up escrow. There are companies dedicated to teaching how to do this like REWW. It's good for making a little bit of money, but is also potentially something more long term as well. 

Related: 8 Ways Real Estate Is Your Smartest Investment

8. Money-making strategy: Sell on CafePress or Etsy

If you can design digital items, you can sell them for a share of the profits on a site like CafePress. You can do this with nothing more than some design software. They can include custom logos, inspirational sayings and other topical or trending designs appealing to the masses.

You could hire a designer to assist you with this, but you still need to come up with the ideas. This works best if you understand design yourself but requires no overhead. Items are printed and delivered on-demand. You simply receive a share of the proceeds. Similarly, you could sell items on Etsy as well.

9. Money-making strategy: Answer questions on JustAnswer

People looking for expertise online. JustAnswer (and several sites like it) allow doctors, lawyers, engineers and others with enhanced knowledge to earn a small income merely answering questions from people who would otherwise have to pay a hefty sum for those answers.

This platform is a great resource for people. It's also lucrative (for the time spent) if you're looking to earn a bit of cash in a hurry. Don't expect to get rich answering questions, but you can generate a few bucks here or there if you're in a bind. 

10. Money-making strategy: Grab gigs on Fivver

No matter what type of service you offer, you can likely offer it Fivver. This is terrific for digital services such as graphic design, web design, short audio or video clip creation, editing services, writing and so on.

Fivver has expanded beyond just the $5-per-gig model. Fiverr Pro pools the best talent on its platform. Depending on your skills, you could do considerably well on here.

Related: 5 Ways Fiverr Jump-Started My Life as an Entrepreneur

11. Money-making strategy: Walk dogs

There are networks devoted connecting dog owners with dog walkers. Rover is one of the largest networks of dog walkers out there. Of course, you could also use social media or just knock on neighbors doors to advertise your services, but you can easily use one of these services.

Do a great job if you're serious about building a track record of solid reviews. That will help you make money in the future when you're in desperate need of it.

12. Money-making strategy: Babysitting with Care.com

You can easily do some babysitting when you need to make a few bucks quickly. Parents everywhere are always in need of babysitting and nanny services.

Websites like Care.com connect parents with babysitters. The company does all the background checking and other due diligence to put parents' minds at ease. Of course, you can appeal directly to people in your personal network, but if you're looking to generate recurring revenue sign up with a site marketing to parents looking for child care services.

13. Money-making strategy: Sell your photos

Have an eye for photography? Of course, you need to be good at this to earn any money but it you are, you can sell photos on ShutterStock or iStockPhoto (along with many others) to generate a passive income from something you might be very passionate about.

For a quicker way to earn by taking photos, solicit people looking for photographers to cover their wedding, engagement, child's birthday or any other life event. You'll need a good camera and some experience, but you can definitely earn some must-needed income this way no matter where you live.

14. Money-making strategy: Become a personal training

If you understand fitness, you could be a personal trainer. People pay good money for personal trainers, if only to have someone keep them on track towards their goals. You can add value while also helping yourself financially.

This could also break off into nutrition and assisting people with meal plans, and so on. You could solicit clients in your local gym, but depending on where you live, you might need some certification to do this (not to mention the gym's approval). You could also use a site like FitnessTrainer to advertise your services.

Related: This Entrepreneur Lives in the Back Room at a Gym While Building His Business

15. Money-making strategy: Tutor students

Parents are always willing to invest in their children's future. If you have a great deal of knowledge in subjects such as math, science or computers, you could tutor for cash.

Both Indeed.com and Care.com offer opportunities for tutoring local students. You could opt for either of these platforms or simply find your clients through your personal network or social media. 

16. Money-making strategy: Advertise for companies with a car wrap

Platforms like Carvertise connect brands and companies with drivers. The process is simple -- agree to turn your car into a roaming billboard for a price. If you qualify, you can earn a set monthly fee for advertising with your car. You won't have to pay anything to do this, but you'll need a clean driving record and a fairly new car.

You'll have to drive the car enough to be worth it for brands paying for your services. If you have all that, then you could make a bit of side-hustle income through this endeavor. 

Related: The 7 Toughest Startup Lessons You Don't Want to Learn the Hard Way

17. Money-making strategy: Help with home gardening

Offering your services as a local gardener could make you enough money quick enough to satisfy some pressing needs. There are loads of options from mowing lawns and pulling weeds to planning gardens and decor. If you pitch to enough neighbors, you'll find at least a few takers. It'll definitely be worth your while.

18. Money-making strategy: Take on housecleaning jobs

There's a variety of platforms online that you could tap into for doing this, or you could simply scour your neighborhood or post on social media. You could use Amazon's Home Services for this as well, or you could create your own simple, one-page website to advertise.

Either way, this is a terrific way to make upwards of $20 per hour or more doing a job that's often in high demand. You could easily make this a long-term gig if you perform well and don't cut corners.

Related: From $100 Million to Broke to Betting It All on Cryptocurrencies

19. Money-making strategy: Become a home organizer

You could easily do home organizing for people, an industry that has gained a lot of popularity since the debut of Netflix's hit series Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. If you're a tidy and organized person yourself, and you're good at organizing spaces, why not offer your services to people around you? You'd be surprised at how many people, even on your own social media feed, might take you up on doing something like this.

Again, a site like Care.com also helps to connect home organizers with people looking for this type of service. It all depends on whether you want to go through a professional company or pitch it yourself to people that are already in your personal or business network.

Related: 8 Ways Any Millennial Can Be a Millionaire in 5 Years

20. Money-making strategy: Wash carpets

Rent a carpet cleaning machine at your local home improvement store, or buy one if you think you can get enough work doing this. You'll likely find lots of people need something like this, but haven't actively looked for the service.

You can wash carpets in the owner's homes, or have them steam-cleaned offsite, depending on the job and the trust you build with the owners.

21. Money-making strategy: Give blood

You can \make around $20 to $50 per donation of blood, depending if your blood type is rare or common. You can also donate plasma. Different states have different minimum requirements that must be paid when people donate plasma.

Plasma donations help people who are fighting Leukemia and other immune disorders. This is a bit more complicated and involved than donating blood but you won't get much more than donating blood.

22. Money-making strategy: Decorate homes for the holidays

Whether it's New Year's, Christmas lighting, Easter, Fourth of July or any other holiday, you can get paid to help decorate homes. This might involve putting up lights inside or outside, decorating trees, setting up games and decor. 

Use the internet and social media to find clients, or simply advertise to your local network. There are loads of options when it comes to doing specialty jobs like this. 

Related: 50 Ideas for a Lucrative Side Hustle

23. Money-making strategy: Participate in medical studies

If you don't mind throwing caution to the wind, consider becoming a participant in medical studies or drug trials. Companies pay a significant amount of money to participants. 

You'll need to find the companies conducting medial studies and expect side effects. If you can live with that, then you can definitely make some money fast without too much effort.

24. Money-making strategy: Rent a spare room on AirBnB

AirBnB can be a terrific platform for renting out a spare room. You can make some good money, especially if you live in a tourist destination. If you don't mind the neighbors, then this is definitely an option. You can crash with friends and family and rent out your entire house if you're really desperate.

Related: What You'll Really Earn on Uber, Airbnb and TaskRabbit Every Month

25. Money-making strategy: Do micro gigs on Mechanical Turk

Mechanical Turk is a platform by Amazon that allows you to do small jobs and get paid for it. But don't expect too much money out of this. These gigs truly are "micro" and range from a few cents to a few dollars at the most. But if you string several of these together, it might be in your benefit. 

You don't need any serious qualification to do this. Usually, this involves clicking on links, taking surveys, giving an opinion, doing some light categorizing or other human-intelligence tasks (HITs as they like to call it).

26. Money-making strategy: Sell vintage clothes at a thrift shop

You'll likely get paid by the pound but it's some money, so if you're in need, then why not -- especially if you have no use for those clothes anymore. This works best for things like maternity clothes, old children's clothes, clothes that you haven't worn in years or are simply out of style. 

27. Money-making strategy: Open a cash-bonus checking account

Check with your local bank to see if they're giving away cash bonuses for opening up accounts. Banks run promotions like this all the time, so grab some real cash quickly if you're in need. It won't break the bank (no pun intended) but it will give you a quick $50 or $100 -- maybe even more -- when you really need it. You might need to deposit a minimum amount of cash (usually in the thousands) in order to qualify for these types of accounts (but not always).

28. Money-making strategy: Get a small microloan

You can get a small business loan (very small) on Fundera, or Prosper if you're looking for a very small personal loan. Depending on your credit and your financial and employment situations, you can secure up to a few thousand dollars like this.

There are loads of platforms that offer these small microloans. You have to pay them back but it can help if you're in a bind.

29. Money-making strategy: Conduct a webinar

Okay, it sounds intimidating but webinars are one of the best ways to earn cash quickly. You're speaking to a highly-engaged audience. If you position yourself and the offer correctly, you can make loads of money in a very short period.

GoToWebinar is by far the biggest platform. Webinar Jam is one of the most feature-rich platforms out there. Whichever you go with comes down to how well you can sell. It takes practice, but this is fast cash at its essence.

Related: 12 Realistic Ways to Make Your First $1 Million

30. Money-making strategy: Wash or detail cars

People are always looking to have their cars washed and detailed. You could be a mobile car washer and detailer without having a permanent location. Reach out to people you know or make some flyers and put it in your neighbors' mailboxes. If you want to get serious about it, prop up a one-page website or give out business cards. You can make money quickly doing this.

31. Money-making strategy: Lead walking tours on Viator

If you live in a tourist locale, consider doing walking tours on Viator, which is one of the largest platforms for tour operators in the world. You'll really need to work hard to get a good reputation. To find clients quickly offer free tours and ask for tips at the end.

This is leveraging the principle of reciprocity with the power of free. People love to get things for free, but they feel obligated at the end to give something in return. That's why supermarkets are always giving away food. They know if you like it, you'll buy it. 

32. Money-making strategy: Pawn your valuables

If you're running on fumes, financially speaking, but you have some money coming your way soon, consider pawning something of value to borrow fast cash. Of course, to get those items back you'll need to pay back the loan with interest. If you don't pay it back in time, that you'll lose the item. If it's really something that has a lot of intrinsic value to you, don't do it. But if it's something that doesn't, you can certainly consider it depending on your situation.

In order to bring your tech product to market successfully, it is vital that you know every single one of your costs, and this article will enable you to plan for all of them. You will also learn why simplifying your electronic product is your best way to save money.

Most entrepreneurs drastically underestimate all of the costs required to develop, scale and manufacture a new electronic hardware product. This is one of the main reasons so many hardware startups ultimately fail.

Don’t make the fatal mistake of underestimating the costs, or worse yet not estimating them at all, because in order to succeed to market it’s necessary to know your costs.

Without knowing all of the costs you’ll either run out of money before your product is market-ready, or you’ll find yourself developing a product that can’t ever be manufactured profitably.

Through my years spent developing my own hardware product and then helping other entrepreneurs develop their products one of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that you need to simplify your product as much as possible.

Most entrepreneurs, and even most engineers, don’t understand all the long-term impacts of various product features. What may seem like a relatively simple feature can often significantly increase your development cost and the time it takes to get the product to market.

For example, something as simple as the position of a button could cost you thousands of dollars extra for the injection molds required for production of the enclosure.

Another example comes from an Academy member who shared his product requirements with myself and the other experts for feedback.

He was very technical and had spent a good amount of time specifying his product in detail. But he didn’t understand all the future impacts of the features he had specified for the product.

We explained to him why one feature of his product was going to drive up all of his costs by about 3 times including: development, prototyping, electrical certifications, and mold costs.

Several more feasible alternative solutions were proposed, likely saving him at least $50,000 in the long run!

The moral of the story is if you want to reduce all of your costs while increasing your chances of reaching the market then nothing is more important than spending some time upfront to simplify your product.

The catch is that unless you understand the entire development and manufacturing process it’s difficult to know the future implications of all of your product decisions.

Be careful asking your primary developer(s) to help simplify your product because it creates a conflict of interest. The more complex the product the more money they get paid. Instead, find someone independent of your primary developers to help you simplify your product.

Part 1 – Development Costs

Development costs for most hardware products are broken down into three categories: the electronics (including programming), the plastic and other mechanical parts, and the retail package.

The electronics does all of the magic, the plastic and mechanical parts hold the product together, and the retail package protects and sells the product.

For more details on how to develop a new electronic product see my Ultimate Guide – How to Develop a New Electronic Hardware Product.

Electronics Cost

The electronics will usually be the most complex and expensive part of your product to develop. It will usually consist of two major parts: PCB design and programming since most products require some level of programming.

Unless you do all of your own product design, your development costs will be a significant expense.

Prototyping the electronics is divided into two steps: production of the blank Printed Circuit Board (PCB) and soldering of all the electronic components onto the PCB. The PCB is what holds and connects all of the individual electronic components.

How much of the development cost is for the electronics PCB design versus the software varies depending on the product. For lots of products it’s a pretty equal split between the two.

But many products can swing either toward being more hardware-complex or software-complex and the costs will follow accordingly.

I usually recommend starting off with about 3 to 5 boards, then potentially increasing the quantity for each iteration.

Once you’ve confirmed functionality and worked out most of the major bugs then you can increase the prototype quantity and begin sharing samples with investors and potential customers.

To learn more about PCB design be sure to watch this free tutorial and check out this in-depth paid course which teaches you every step of PCB design.

Enclosure/Mechanical Development Cost

Unless your product will be marketed strictly to the DIY/maker market it will require some type of enclosure, which is usually made of plastic.

You can expect to spend at least several thousand dollars to develop the 3D models for the enclosure. If appearance and ergonomics are critical for your product then the cost to design the 3D model will be higher.

Nearly all electronic hardware products require a case or enclosure.

Here’s an introductory course on 3D modeling using Fusion 360.

Some products may require additional mechanical parts such as stamped metal components, or perhaps even moving parts. This will add additional costs for mechanical engineering and prototyping.

Prototyping of the plastic enclosure is most commonly done using 3D printing technology. 3D printing builds a custom shaped part by stacking layers of molten plastic.

The popularity of 3D printing has really helped to bring down the cost of creating plastic prototypes. For some startups purchasing your own 3D printer may be the most cost effective strategy.

For a few products a technology called CNC machining may be a better choice than 3D printing. Unlike 3D printing which is considered an additive process, CNC machining is a subtractive process.

Instead of stacking layers, as with 3D printing, CNC machining is similar to sculpting. The process starts with a solid block of plastic and material is removed to form the final shape.

The main advantage of CNC machining is it allows the use of production injection-molded plastic whereas 3D printing uses special prototyping plastics that may have a different look, feel, and strength, compared to the production (injection molded) plastic that will ultimately be used.

My own product required several precise snap fits so it was critical to use the same plastic as used for production. So in my case CNC machining was the better choice. However, for the majority of products 3D printing will be the better technology.

One word of caution when it comes to plastic, what can be prototyped can’t necessarily be manufactured. This is especially true with 3D printing. With 3D printing there are few limitations on the shapes that can be created.

However, with production injection molding technology there are complex limitations on the shapes that can be produced.

So make sure you hire a 3D model designer that understands injection molding.  Otherwise you may find yourself with a prototype that can’t be manufactured in volume without a massive redesign.

To learn more about injection molding see this blog and check out this paid course.

Retail Package Development

Many hardware entrepreneurs neglect the importance of developing the retail package. This is a major oversight with serious consequences.

Unless you plan to only sell your product online, or to industrial customers, the retail package is just as important as the product itself. Sometimes it is even more important.

You can have the greatest product in the world but if your retail package doesn’t quickly convey this to the customer it won’t sell. Always remember, nothing matters without sales!

There are generally two types of retail packages used for electronic products: clamshells or boxes. Smaller products tend to commonly be packaged in clamshells, whereas larger products favor retail boxes.

Retail packaging can be as important as the product itself.

Both clamshells and retail boxes usually consist of two pieces: a custom shaped plastic piece to hold and protect the product, and a cardboard artwork piece to convey your sales message.

Just as with your product’s enclosure, the custom shaped plastic part of the package will require the development of a 3D model. Then an injection molds will need to be purchased.

For clamshells, one cost-saving trick is to use a stock clamshell with a custom molded blister (the part of the clamshell that custom fits over your product). The molds for a custom blister will be much cheaper than molds for a fully custom clamshell.

The clamshell insert card can also initially simply be printed on regular paper prototypes, but eventually you’ll want to upgrade to a thicker card stock which requires stamp printing.

Part 2 – Scaling Costs

Finishing the prototypes of your product is a major accomplishment so congratulations! But don’t get too excited.

It’s a huge step to go from prototypes to large volume production. It’s probably one of the most underestimated steps in launching a new hardware product.

Certification Costs

Most entrepreneurs forget to factor in the cost to get their product certified. This is primarily true if the product is electrical in nature.

Certification costs may range from only a few thousand dollars up to as high as fifty thousand dollars. It really depends on the product and to a large extent how any wireless features are implemented.

Just keep in mind certification isn’t required until you are ready to begin selling the product. In many cases you can also perform small sales tests without the need for certifications.

The main certifications required for electronic hardware products include:

FCC certification is required for all electrical products that will be sold in the United States.

Other countries will require their own similar certification. So if you plan to sell your product in multiple countries be prepared for the costs to certify your product in each country.

All electrical products radiate at least some electromagnetic energy so governments want to ensure they don’t interfere with RF communication.

The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) classifies two types of certification. Wireless products are classified as intentional radiators because they intentionally radiate radio waves.

Electronic products that don’t purposefully radiate electromagnetic energy, or that use pre-certified modules for wireless functionality, are considered non-intentional radiators.

Modules are pre-certified electronic circuits developed to perform a single function and to be incorporated into other designs.

Products classified as intentional radiators will cost about 10 times more to certify than non-intentional radiator products. This is the reason most companies developing products with wireless functions begin by using pre-certified modules.

Later, once the product is a proven success and higher volumes are being manufactured then the design is transitioned from a wireless module to a custom wireless design so as to increase the profit margins.

Underwriters Laboratories (UL) or Canadian Standards Association (CSA) certification is required for any product that will be sold in the USA or Canada that plugs directly into an AC electrical outlet.

Products running only on batteries with no recharging capabilities do not absolutely require UL/CSA certification.

Also if your product is only charged using a USB charger then UL/CSA certification is not required. If you plan to include a custom USB charger with your product then that component will need to be certified.

However, most large retailers and insurance companies do require UL/CSA certification for any electronic product regardless of whether it plugs into an AC outlet. So unless you plan to only sell your product online you will need this certification.

Many electronic hardware startups choose to start with only online sales, then later obtain UL/CSA certification so as to sell to larger retail chains.

This is a smart strategy since there is no point in spending tens of thousands of dollars on certification until you know the product actually sales.

CE certification is necessary for electrical products that will be sold in the EU (European Union). It is similar to a combination of FCC and UL certifications.

RoHS certification guarantees that the product is free of lead and is necessary for any electrical product that will be sold in the European Union (EU) and California.

However, because California is such a huge market, most companies have their product RoHS certified if it will be sold in the USA.

In most cases it doesn’t make sense to stock both a RoHS certified model and a non-certified model. This certification tends to be significantly more affordable than the other certifications.

We’ve covered the certifications required in the USA, Canada, and the European Union. There are numerous other certifications required for all the various other countries and regions.

If you plan to sell your product in a country we’ve not discussed then you should plan on spending some time researching the certification requirements for that country.

For more details about certifications be sure to read this article.

Manufacturing Setup Costs

The transition from prototype to mass manufacturing is a complex process that most people severely underestimate. Realistically, you can expect it to take about a year to make this transition.

Having a finished prototype is a long way from having a mass manufactured product.

I recommend starting with a local manufacturer in your own country (if possible). Later, once your manufacturing volume approaches 10k pieces, then you can migrate to an Asian manufacturer.

This strategy allows you to work out all of the manufacturing bugs before going offshore. Debugging problems with an offshore manufacturer is much more complicated.

Injection molding machines are used to produce plastic parts in high volume.

Although the electronics will likely be the most complex part of your product to develop, the plastic will usually be the most complex part to get setup for mass manufacturing. This is primary due to the need for high-pressure injection molds.

The injection molded parts needed for your product (enclosure, retail package, etc.) will likely be one of your biggest costs. Injection molds, especially those used for high volume manufacturing, are very expensive.

Just about any product will require at least three molds (front and back side of enclosure plus one for the retail package); however, most products require 4-6 molds.

Mold cost is mostly determined by the hardness of the metal used (higher volume molds use harder steel), the number of cavities, and the use of any side actions.

In most cases it’s best to start with a single cavity mold that uses a softer steel, and that is considered a simple pull mold (meaning no side actions are required).

An injection mold consists of two pieces of metal that are pushed together using high pressure to create a cavity in the shape of the desired part. Then, molten plastic is forced into the mold.

The main advantage of injection molding technology is that it’s a fantastically cheap method of producing millions of copies of a plastic part.

There are two big downsides to using injection molding: the high cost of the molds that I’ve already mentioned, and the limitations on the shapes that can be produced.

The high mold cost is mostly due to the fact that the molten plastic is injected over and over at extremely high temperature and pressure. This means the mold must be incredibly durable.

NOTE: Be sure to download your free PDF guide 15 Steps to Develop Your New Electronic Hardware Product.

To tolerate these extreme conditions injection molds are created using a hard metal such as steel. The more injections the mold must tolerate, the harder it must be and the higher it’s cost.

For example, you can use aluminum molds to make a few thousand units. Aluminum is soft so it degrades very quickly.

However, it’s also much easier to machine (i.e. carve) into the desired shape, so it’s cost is significantly lower. As the required volume for the mold increases so does the necessary metal hardness and therefore it’s cost increases.

A single-cavity mold made from a softer metal may cost a couple thousand dollars and be good for a few thousand units.

Whereas, a multi-cavity mold made from a really hard metal can potentially pump out millions of units, but it will cost you tens of thousands of dollars, perhaps as much as $50k.

For more details on injection molding see this blog article.

Part 3 – Landed Production Cost

The landed production cost is the final cost for your product landed in your warehouse.

No doubt about it, the landed production cost is your most important cost. It tells you how much inventory will cost, how much you can sell your product for and how much profit your startup can make!

Also, unlike the development and scaling costs, it’s a cost you’ll continually face for as long as your company exists.

In the video above I show you how to estimate the production cost for your PCB. This video is just a short clip from my full course where I teach you how to estimate the manufacturing cost for your ENTIRE product.

The landed production cost is the total cost to produce and transport a single unit to your warehouse. If you are successful you will have a very long, intimate relationship with this number. You will always be striving to reduce this cost so you can ultimately make more money.

For most products you can estimate that your suggested sales price will be 3-5 times your landed production cost.

Inventory is always one of the biggest costs for hardware companies. Your inventory cost is just your product cost times the quantity. So in order to estimate your inventory costs you need to first know your production unit cost.

Needless to say, you need to know your landed production cost as soon as possible. There’s no point in spending years developing and scaling a product that can’t ever be manufactured and sold at a profit.

Some of the many costs that make up the landed production cost include:

Electronic components

For electronic hardware products the cost of the electronic components will likely be the most difficult to accurately determine.

This is because considerable engineering design work is necessary in order to know which components are required for your product.

Determining the electronic components needed for a new product requires considerable engineering effort.

A lot of startups wait until their product is completely designed and prototyped before they try to determine their components cost and ultimately the production cost.

This is a mistake because you really need to have an estimate of this cost BEFORE you spend tens of thousands of dollars developing the product.

There may be some desired features for your product that you determine are too expensive to include in your first version. By estimating your components cost upfront you can avoid developing a feature that isn’t profitable or necessary initially.

PCB production and assembly

Just as with your prototypes, producing the electronics is a two step procedure. First the blank PCB is produced, and then all of the electronic components are soldered on to the board.

The cost of the blank PCB is mostly determined by its size and the number of routing layers. At a bare minimum two routing layers (top and bottom) are required; however, most designs will require from 4 to 6 layers.

More complex designs may require 8 layers or more. Increasing the number of layers generally allows you to reduce the overall size of the PCB.

The cost to assemble the PCB (i.e. solder down all the electronic components) is primarily determined by the total number of components, the minimum pin pitch, the use of leadless packages such as QFN or BGA, and whether components are soldered on both sides of the PCB.

Assembly of the PCB is performed by automated placement machines.

Keep in mind that the cost to produce your assembled PCB in volume will be many times cheaper than the per unit cost of the prototypes. Much of the cost is the initial setup so as the volume increases the setup cost becomes minimal.

That being said the setup costs for the electronics pale in comparison to the setup costs for the plastic (i.e. the injection molds).

Injection molded plastic parts

The cost you’ll pay per unit for any production plastic pieces is primarily determined by the weight, size, mold time, and type of plastic used.

The size and weight for each piece is dependent upon your design so there isn’t much you can do to control those variables short of making your product smaller or less durable (thinner plastic).

You can eventually increase your production speed, and reduce the part cost, by using multiple cavity molds. A multi-cavity injection mold allows you to produce multiple copies of your part with a single injection of plastic. But having multiple cavities also significantly increases the mold cost.

Don’t jump into buying multiple cavity molds until you have worked through any tweaks or changes to your initial molds. It is wise to run at least several thousand units before upgrading to multiple cavity molds.

Increasing the number of mold cavities is usually the best method for reducing the plastic part cost since size, weight, and the type of plastic directly impact the end product.

Other mechanical parts

Some products will require various other parts such as stamped metal pieces (for internal shields, etc.), springs, gears, screws, motors, and etc. In many cases, stock components can be used which will eliminate any scaling costs.

Final product assembly

Once the various individual components are ready the next step is to assemble them to form your final product. The cost of this step is almost entirely labor costs.

This means eventually you’re likely to need to have final assembly completed at a location with low wages such as Asia.

The cost for final product assembly is mostly labor costs.

Testing

Once the final product has been assembled it needs to be tested to confirm it is fully functional and meets all of the quality specifications.

Some testing of the electronics may also be done before final assembly so as to prevent wasting the cost of final assembly for a unit that has problems with the electronics. As your scrap rate decreases you’ll likely perform all testing after the final assembly is completed.

Improper testing, and ultimately shipping bad units to customers is a common mistake and one that can spell death for your startup.

Many entrepreneurs tend to rush their new product to customers but shipping bad units will start your company off with a bad reputation which can spread quickly online.

Scrap Rate

No manufacturing process is ever perfect and you are guaranteed to have some faulty units. Initially this may be 10% or more, but as time goes on and you optimize your manufacturing process you should be able to reduce this number to only 1-3%.

Packaging

Packaging costs depends on whether your product will be selling in retail stores, or primarily online. For products sold in retail outlets having optimal retail packaging is a critical priority so packaging costs will be significantly higher.

The packaging cost can be greatly reduced if you plan to only sell your product online, via TV, or to industrial customers.

High-end retail packaging (i.e. full color boxes with custom plastic inserts) can be really expensive (costing as much as $5 to $10 each) so in most cases it’s best to start off with more simple packaging to minimize your costs. This is one reason it may be best to focus initially on online sales.

Don’t forget to include the cost of the master carton that will be used to ship your packaged product. The master carton cost is typically quite low since it usually just a cardboard box and the cost gets split between multiple units. Nonetheless, it’s important to include it in your cost calculations.

If your product requires a retail display stand then that can add another cost to your package cost calculations.

Returns

Just like you are guaranteed to have some faulty units that must be scraped you’re also guaranteed to have at least a small percentage of unhappy customers that wish to return their purchase. So be sure to include this in your final production cost.

Just as with the scrap rate your return rate should decrease as you optimize your product, packaging, and customer service.

Freight

Most products will ultimately be manufactured in Asia. This means your finished product will first need to be trucked from the factory to the local sea port. Then it will be loaded on a cargo boat for shipment to your target country.

Then, once the boat arrives in your country you’ll need to truck it from the port to your warehouse or directly to your customer.

Most products coming from Asia are shipped by sea on huge container boats.

In rare cases you may wish to ship via air cargo, but the cost will be significantly higher than shipping via sea.

For shipping via truck it’s the weight that primarily determines the shipping cost, and for shipping via boat it’s the volume that determines the cost.

Duties

Don’t forget the taxes. Both the country of manufacture and the country of import will charge duties which need to be included in the final landed cost. Although, some product categories may be exempt from export and/or import taxes.

Each product classification has a number known as a Harmonized Tariff Schedule (or HS code). Once you’ve determined the HS code for your product then you can look up the export and import duty rates.

Conclusion

The cost to launch a new electronic product can be overwhelming, especially for entrepreneurs and startups. Development costs will be your first financial obstacle to surpass, and scaling costs will be your largest cost.

However, the landed production cost will definitely be your most important cost since it determines your profit, sales price and inventory cost.

You’ll eventually move beyond the development and scaling costs, but you’ll have to live with the production cost indefinitely.

Finally, don’t forget to prioritize from the start simplifying your product so all of these costs will be reduced and you’ll get your product to market much faster.

Other content you may like:

Hello guys, welcome back to my blog. In this article, I will discuss the top 05 ways to make money for students, how students can earn money while studying in a college, and I will also discuss how to manage both studying and earning money.

If you have any doubts related to electrical, electronics, and computer science, then ask question. You can also catch me @ Instagram – Chetan Shidling.

Also, read:

1. Roadmap To Become A Power Electronics Engineer, Responsibilities, Skills.
2. Roadmap To Become A Big Data And Analytics Engineer.
3. Top 10 MATLAB Projects For Electrical And Electronics Engineers.

Top 05 Ways To Make Money For Students

Hey guys are you suffering from a financial problem while studying in a college or want to earn some money to pay your monthly bills, then read this article till the end. Make sure you also manage your studies while earning money. The ways which I share you use it when your exams or internals are not there. If your exams and internals are near then don’t focus on these things otherwise you will not perform well in exams and internals. Well, let’s come to the topic. The top 05 ways to make ways for students are:

01. Blog post

The article which you are reading now is also a blog post. You can select your niche, then create a blog with the help of a blogger or WordPress, and then start writing blogs. After six months you can apply for Google AdSense and from there you can start earning money.

02. Creating YouTube videos

You also earn money by creating a YouTube channel and regularly uploading videos on a particular niche. Make sure that you make quality videos and each video should add value to your viewers.

03. Freelancing

This is also the best way to make money but you should have skills in a particular field. Suppose you are good at web development then you can develop websites for companies. If you want to go into the freelancing industry then you need to work on your skills first and then enter into the freelancing industry. You can do freelancing on engineering projects.

04. Affiliate Marketing

In affiliate marketing, you will get a commission on the product you sell. Suppose if you are doing affiliate marketing of amazon products and if you sell any phone will get a 3 – 4% commission. It is possible only when you are an influencer or if you have many followers on social media.

05. Digital Marketing

This is very trending nowadays because every company wants to do marketing of their product online. If you want to go into this field, then you need to learn some topics such as SEO, SEM, Google AdSense, email marketing, Facebook advertisement, etc then later you can start doing digital marketing for companies.

Well, guys, these are the five ways to make money for students. I hope this article may help you all a lot. Thank you for reading.

Also, read:

In a bind? Need some fast cash? We're talking here about small bursts of capital, not millions of dollars -- enough to satisfy your monthly obligations or get that nagging money making electronic projects to stop calling you.

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None of the 32 strategies listed here to get some money quickly will break the proverbial bank. Some are easier than others, but nearly all require very little to no capital. They are meant to get you through the difficult times.

Related: 2 Ways to Make Money Online This Month

Some of these strategies to make extra money will require you to be in certain locales, while others are location-independent, but it all boils down to being resourceful. We've all found ourselves in a tight spot at one point in our lives or another, but to the person who's committed, anything is possible. 

Much of this has to do with mindset. When you lack money, scarcity thinking sets in. The scarcity mindset is negative and thinks that there's never enough of whatever it is to go around. When you find yourself thinking like that, do everything in your power to move into an abundant mindset. 

Our thoughts are incredibly powerful. We have upwards of 60,000 thoughts per day, many deep within our subconscious mind, much of which are repeated. We have to be stewards of our thoughts. Once you find yourself thinking negatively, money making electronic projects, you need to jar yourself out of that.

When you're looking to make money fast, you're often in a tough spot financially, money making electronic projects, even desperate to make ends meet, but everything that we have and everything that we become is partly born from our thoughts. Think and you shall become. Curate and cultivate the right thoughts if you want to live an abundant life.

The psychology of making money. 

Regardless if you need to earn some fast cash or we're just talking about making money in the grand scheme of things, there's an important psychology that needs to be mentioned before getting into the strategies. If you study Freud's model of the mind, you'll discover the Psychic Apparatus. It's the three-part construct in your mind that controls all of your behavior.

Those three are the id, the super-ego and the ego. The id lives deep within the subconscious from birth. It's the source of our sudden and most instinctive urges. When you find yourself doing what you know you shouldn't, blame your id. 

The super-ego is formed later in life to balance the id. It forms and breaks off from the id through our upbringing, parental guidance and our sense of community and beliefs. People who are careful with their money can thank their super-ego.

The ego is the driver making the decisions. It decides between the devil (the id) and the angel (the super-ego) on either shoulder (yes, all those cartoons you've ever seen are partly true). We have voices in our mind, and it's up to the ego to decide which one to fulfill. Its goal is to satisfy the id in some way while also attending to best cryptocurrency to invest in 2022 august super-ego.

Get-rich-quick schemes and fad weight-loss diets are naturally popular because they satisfy the id while also attending to the super-ego. The ego's job is complete when it sees something like this. The appeal of "fast'' stems from the innate desire for instant gratification, so beware of what seems too good to be true (they often are) when you're looking to make money quickly. Be wary. Listen to the conversation deep within the confines of your mind and do your best to tame the proverbial beasts.

What are the best ways to make money right away? While a search online when you're in need of some fast cash will produce millions money making electronic projects results, not all will be legitimate. It's up to you to filter through the so-called noise. These 32 strategies will help put you in the black, even if it's in a very small way. Once you are, money making electronic projects, resume planning and focusing on the bigger picture. 

Related: How to Make a Fortune With $100

1. Money-making strategy: Drive for Uber or Lyft

Companies like Uber and Lyft offer a great opportunity to make some quick cash. You'll need a clean driving record, a fairly new car and the authorization to work wherever it is that you live. If you have all of those things, you can work when it's feasible for you, whether that's in the middle of the day during rush hour, or in the wee hours of the night on a weekend. The choice is yours.

2. Money-making strategy: Become a market research participant

In college I participated in loads of market research. It's fairly quick money for not a lot of work, money making electronic projects. Companies looking for consumers' opinions on a variety of products and services put you in a room to garner your opinion. That's it.

This often involves writing or stating your opinion, answering polls or surveys, or breaking off in a discussion group. The mechanics don't matter much. The point is that you can rely on it from time to time. Focusgroup.com is just one company that is looking for participants.

Related: 6 Things You Must Quit Doing Now If You Want to Be More Successful

3. Money-making strategy: Sell old books and games on Amazon

Amazon makes it fairly easy to list and sell old books, games and devices on its marketplace. You can make more than just a few bucks If you have pricey textbooks from college. Be sure the books are in good condition. You'll get negative reviews if you attempt to sell books that are falling apart or games that are scratched up. Remember, be upfront about any defects, no matter how small they might be and no matter how few people might readily notice it. 

4. Money-making strategy: Sell, or resell, used tech on Craigslist

The market for used electronics is vast. You can use Craigslist to part ways with your old iPhone or your MacBook. You can grab a premium for these types of electronics. Some people even flip items by buying them and reselling them.

You could also use a website like Gazelle to sell your used phones, no matter what kind you have. Companies like that have made an entire business model out of buying used phones and refurbishing them. Either way, you can expect to get a fair bit of money relatively quickly if you have these items laying around your house.

Related: 4 Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting a Small Business

5. Money-making strategy: Do tasks with TaskRabbit

TaskRabbit lets you tap into an existing marketplace of people looking for help locally with chores, money making electronic projects. The tasks aren't always small. This platform (along with others) offers bigger tasks, money making electronic projects, such as home renovations, as well.

Amazon is getting into the task business with Amazon Home Services. The services listed range from very small repairs to larger and more involved tasks that would take considerably more effort.

6. Money-making strategy: Deliver for PostMates

You can earn some cash when you're in dire straits by using PostMates, and you don't even need a car, money making electronic projects, just a bike for deliveries in busier cities and downtown centers. I've used it often to get food from specialty places that don't deliver themselves, but it can be used for many things. 

PostMates states on their website that you could earn up to $25/hour doing deliveries. You could also earn some tips in the process so it's a great option for people that are looking to do something in their spare time, similar to the big ride-sharing apps that are hogging up app stores everywhere.

Related: 5 Ways to Make Enough Side Money to Eventually Quit Your Job

7. Money-making strategy: Flip real estate contracts

Ir you're thinking this is cost prohibitive, it's not. You can flip real estate contracts without ever taking possession of the property. This isn't a fixer-upper endeavor, just securing a contract and selling it to an interested party. That's it.

You can do this with just a few hundred dollars in money making electronic projects cases to open up escrow. There are companies dedicated to teaching how to do this like REWW. It's good for making a little bit of money, but is also potentially something more long term as well. 

Related: 8 Ways Real Estate Is Your Smartest Investment

8. Money-making strategy: Sell on CafePress or Etsy

If you can design digital items, you can sell them for a share of the profits on a site like How to invest in bitcoin canada. You can do this with nothing more than some design software. They can include custom logos, inspirational sayings and other topical or trending designs appealing to the masses.

You could hire a designer to assist you with this, money making electronic projects, but you still need to come up with the ideas. This works best if you understand design yourself but requires no overhead. Items are printed and delivered on-demand. You simply receive a share of the proceeds. Money making electronic projects, you could sell items on Etsy as well.

9. Money-making strategy: Answer questions on JustAnswer

People looking for expertise online. JustAnswer (and several sites like it) allow doctors, lawyers, engineers and others with enhanced knowledge to earn a small income merely answering questions from people who would otherwise have to pay a hefty sum for those answers.

This platform is a great resource for people. It's also lucrative (for the time spent) if you're looking to earn a bit of cash in a hurry. Don't expect to get rich answering questions, but you can generate a few bucks here or there if you're in a bind. 

10. Money-making strategy: Grab gigs on Fivver

No matter what type of service you offer, you can likely offer it Fivver. This is terrific for digital services such as graphic design, web design, short audio or video clip creation, editing services, writing and so on.

Fivver has expanded beyond just the $5-per-gig model. Fiverr Pro pools the best talent on its platform. Depending on your skills, you could do considerably well on here.

Related: 5 Ways Fiverr Jump-Started My Life as an Entrepreneur

11. Money-making strategy: Walk dogs

There are networks devoted connecting dog owners with dog walkers. Rover is one of the largest networks of dog walkers out there. Of course, money making electronic projects, you could also use social media or just knock on neighbors doors to advertise your services, but you can easily use one of these services.

Do a great job if you're serious about building a track record of solid reviews. That will help you make money in the future when you're in desperate need of it.

12. Money-making strategy: Babysitting with Care.com

You can easily do some babysitting when you need to make a few bucks quickly. Parents everywhere are always in need of babysitting and nanny services.

Websites like Care.com connect parents with babysitters. The company does all bitcoin investing canada 62 background checking and other due diligence to put parents' minds at ease. Of course, you can appeal directly to people in your personal network, but if you're looking to generate recurring revenue sign up with a site marketing to parents looking for child care services.

13. Money-making strategy: Sell your photos

Have an eye for photography? Of course, you need to be good at this to earn any money but money making electronic projects you are, money making electronic projects, you can sell photos on ShutterStock or iStockPhoto (along with many others) to generate a passive income from something you might be very passionate about.

For a quicker way to earn by taking photos, money making electronic projects, solicit people looking for photographers to cover their wedding, money making electronic projects, engagement, child's birthday or any other life event. You'll need a good camera and some experience, but you can definitely earn some must-needed income this way no matter where you live.

14. Money-making strategy: Become a personal training

If you understand fitness, you could be a personal trainer. People pay good money for personal trainers, if only to have someone keep them on track towards their goals. You can add value while also helping yourself financially.

This could also break off into nutrition and assisting people with meal plans, and so on. You could solicit clients in your local gym, but depending on where you live, you might need some certification to do this (not to mention the gym's approval). You could also use a site like FitnessTrainer to advertise your services.

Related: This Entrepreneur Lives in the Back Room at a Gym While Building His Business

15. Money-making strategy: Tutor students

Parents are always willing to invest in their children's future. If you have a great deal of knowledge in subjects such as math, science or computers, you could tutor for cash.

Both Indeed.com and Care.com offer opportunities for tutoring local students, money making electronic projects. You could opt for either of these platforms or simply find your clients through your personal network or social media. 

16. Money-making strategy: Advertise for companies with a car wrap

Platforms like Carvertise connect money making electronic projects and companies with drivers. The process is simple -- agree to turn your car into a roaming billboard for a price. If you qualify, you can earn a set monthly fee for advertising with your car. You won't have to pay anything to do this, but you'll need a clean driving record and a fairly new car.

You'll have to drive the car enough to be worth it for brands paying for your services. If you have all that, then you could make a bit of side-hustle income through this endeavor. 

Related: The 7 Toughest Startup Lessons You Don't Want to Learn the Hard Way

17. Money-making strategy: Help with home gardening

Offering your services as a local gardener could make you enough money quick enough to satisfy some pressing needs. There are loads money making electronic projects options from mowing lawns and pulling weeds to planning gardens and decor, money making electronic projects. If you pitch to enough neighbors, you'll find at least a few takers. It'll definitely be worth your while.

18. Money-making strategy: Take on housecleaning jobs

There's a variety of platforms online that you could tap into for doing this, or you could simply scour best blog topics that make money neighborhood or post on social media. You could use Amazon's Home Services for this as well, or you could create your own simple, one-page website to advertise.

Either way, this is a terrific way to make upwards of $20 per hour or more doing free list of real bitcoin address job that's often in high demand. You could easily make this a long-term gig if you perform well and don't cut corners.

Related: From $100 Million to Broke to Betting It All on Cryptocurrencies

19. Money-making strategy: Become a home organizer

You could easily do home organizing for people, an industry that has gained a lot of popularity since the debut of Netflix's hit series Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. If you're a tidy and organized person yourself, money making electronic projects, and you're good at organizing spaces, why not offer your services to people around you? You'd be surprised at how many people, even on your own social media feed, might take you up on doing something like this.

Again, money making electronic projects, a site like Care.com also helps to connect home organizers with people looking for this type of service. It all depends on whether you want to go through a professional company or pitch it yourself to people that are already in your personal or business network.

Related: 8 Ways Any Millennial Can Be money making electronic projects Millionaire in 5 Years

20. Money-making strategy: Wash carpets

Rent a carpet cleaning machine at your local home improvement store, or buy one if you think you can get enough work doing this. You'll likely find lots of people need something like this, but haven't actively looked for the service.

You can wash carpets in the owner's homes, or have them steam-cleaned offsite, depending on the job and the trust you build with the owners.

21. Money-making strategy: Give blood

You can \make around $20 to $50 per donation of blood, depending if your blood type is rare or common. You can also donate plasma. Different states have different minimum requirements that must be paid when people donate plasma.

Plasma donations help people who are fighting Leukemia and other immune disorders, money making electronic projects. This is a bit more complicated and involved than donating blood but you won't get much more than donating blood.

22. Money-making strategy: Decorate homes for the holidays

Whether it's New Year's, Christmas lighting, Easter, Fourth of July or any other holiday, you can get paid to help decorate homes. This might involve putting up lights inside or money making electronic projects, decorating trees, setting up games and decor. 

Use the internet and social media to find clients, or simply advertise to your local network. There are loads of options when it comes to doing specialty jobs like this. 

Related: 50 Ideas for a Lucrative Side Hustle

23. Money-making strategy: Participate in medical studies

If you don't mind throwing caution money making electronic projects the wind, consider becoming a participant in medical studies or drug trials. Companies pay a significant amount of money to participants. 

You'll need to find the companies conducting medial studies and expect side effects. If you can live with that, then you can definitely make some money fast without too much effort.

24. Money-making strategy: Rent a spare room on AirBnB

AirBnB can be a terrific platform for renting out a spare room. You can make some good money, especially if you live in a tourist destination. If you don't mind the neighbors, then this is definitely an option. You can crash with friends and family and rent out your entire house if you're really desperate.

Related: What You'll Really Earn on Uber, Airbnb and TaskRabbit Every Month

25. Money-making strategy: Do micro gigs on Mechanical Turk

Mechanical Turk is a platform by Amazon that allows you to do small jobs and get paid for it. But don't expect too much money out of this. These gigs truly are "micro" and range from a few cents to a few dollars at the most, money making electronic projects. But if you string several of these together, it might be in your benefit. 

You don't need any serious qualification to do this. Usually, this involves clicking on links, taking surveys, giving an opinion, doing some light categorizing or other human-intelligence tasks (HITs as they like to call it).

26. Money-making strategy: Sell vintage clothes at a thrift shop

You'll likely get paid by the pound but it's some money, so if you're in need, then why not -- especially if you have no use for those clothes anymore. This works best for things like maternity clothes, old children's clothes, clothes that you haven't worn in years or are simply out of style. 

27. Money-making strategy: Open a cash-bonus checking account

Check with your local bank to money making electronic projects if they're giving away cash bonuses for opening up accounts. Banks run promotions like this money making focus the time, so grab some real cash quickly if you're in need. It won't break the bank (no pun intended) but it will give you a quick $50 or $100 -- maybe even more -- when you really need it. You might need to deposit a minimum amount of cash (usually in the thousands) in order to qualify for these types of accounts (but not always).

28. Money-making strategy: Get a small microloan

You can get a small business loan (very small) on Fundera, or Prosper if you're looking for a very small personal loan. Depending on your credit and your financial and employment situations, you can secure up to a few thousand dollars like this.

There are loads of platforms that offer these small microloans. You have to pay them back but it can help if you're in a bind.

29, money making electronic projects. Money-making strategy: Conduct a webinar

Okay, it sounds intimidating but webinars are one of the best ways to earn cash quickly. You're speaking to a highly-engaged audience. If you position yourself and the offer correctly, you can make loads of money in a very short period.

GoToWebinar is by far the biggest platform. Money making electronic projects Jam is one of the most feature-rich platforms out there. Whichever you go with comes down to how well you can sell. It takes practice, but this is fast cash at its essence.

Related: 12 Realistic Ways to Make Your First $1 Million

30. Money-making strategy: Wash or detail cars

People are always looking to have their cars washed and detailed. You could be a mobile car washer and detailer without having a permanent location. Reach out to people you know or make some flyers and put it in your neighbors' mailboxes. If you want to get serious about it, prop up a one-page website or give out business cards. You can make money quickly doing this.

31. Money-making strategy: Lead walking tours on Viator

If you live in a tourist locale, consider doing walking tours on Viator, which is one of the largest platforms for tour operators in the world. You'll really need to work hard to get a good reputation. To find clients quickly offer free tours and ask for tips at the end.

This is leveraging the principle of reciprocity with the power of free. People love to get things for free, but they feel obligated money making electronic projects the end to give something in return. That's why supermarkets are always giving away food. They know if you like it, you'll buy it. 

32. Money-making strategy: Pawn your valuables

If you're running on fumes, financially speaking, but you have some money coming your way soon, money making electronic projects, consider pawning something of value to borrow fast cash. Time consuming ways to make money course, to get those items back you'll need to pay back the loan with interest. If you don't pay it back in time, that you'll lose the item. If it's really something that has a lot of intrinsic value to you, don't do it. But if it's something that doesn't, you can certainly consider it depending on your situation.

Have an idea you’d like to bring to market? In this series, John Teel walks through the process of scaling up from prototype to production. Follow each installment for a closer look at how to incorporate individual components.

Do you dream of developing a hot, new hardware gadget and bringing it to market? Maybe your goal is to make the world better with your product, or perhaps you just want to get filthy rich selling your product.

Developing a project prototype using an Arduino, Raspberry Pi, or other development platform is a fantastic first step. However, there is still a lot to do if you want to make it into something that can be manufactured and sold to the masses.

In this article I’m going to break down the process into manageable steps so you can get started on making your dream come true!

Step 1: Select the Core Electronic Components

The first step is to select the primary microchips (i.e. integrated circuits), sensors, displays, connectors, and other electronic components based upon the desired functions and your target retail price.

Some of the best places to find and purchase electronic components are the big distributors like Arrow, Digikey, Mouser, and Future, money making electronic projects. Components can be purchased as singles (for prototyping and initial testing) or up to thousands (for low-volume manufacturing) from any of these suppliers. AdaFruit and SparkFun are two of the best resources for electronic modules, kits, sensors, cameras, and other electronic parts.

Step 2: Design the Circuit Schematic

Once all of the core components are selected, the next step is to connect them all together in a schematic diagram. The schematic diagram is similar to a blueprint for a house.

The schematic shows how all of the components, from microchips to simple resistors, connect together. The schematic is an abstract representation of the electronics design. For many this can be the most difficult step to learn because it requires a fundamental understanding of electronics design engineering.

I suggest starting with a prototype based on an Arduino or Raspberry Pi, then you can copy a lot of their open source schematics once you are ready to migrate to a fully custom design. If you don’t have a good understanding of electronics then you money making electronic projects three choices: find a co-founder who does, teach yourself the fundamentals of electronics, or hire an electronics design engineer to either fully design the circuit or at least to review your design.

Step 3: Create the Bill of Materials

Now it’s time to create a detailed parts list called a Bill of Materials (BOM). The BOM lists the part number, part description, quantity, money making electronic projects, and possibly the part pricing. You should have already selected the more important components in step #1. So now you must specify all of the secondary components like capacitors, resistors, inductors, connectors, etc.

Note that the BOM can be created after step #4 if desired, but doing it early allows you to more quickly estimate the production cost for your product.

STEP 4: Design the Printed Circuit Board

Now it’s time to take the conceptual schematic diagram and turn it into real world electronics: a Printed Circuit Board (PCB).

A PCB is the physical board that holds and connects all of the electronic components. For many projects creating the PCB layout is more complicated and time-consuming than designing the original schematic.

In most cases, the tighter the components are packed together the longer it will take to create the PCB layout. This means that for really small products, such as wearable technology devices, it will take extra time to create the PCB layout.

If your gadget uses large amounts of power, or offers wireless connectivity, then the PCB layout is even more critical and time consuming.

For wireless communication products you’ll need to pay extra attention to the PCB layout for the RF (Radio-Frequency) circuits which typically means the antenna. Antenna layout is not only critical, but it’s also complicated, money making electronic projects. Incorrect antenna layout is probably one of the most frequent mistakes on PCB designs. I highly suggest you get either the antenna manufacturer, or an independent engineer to review your antenna layout before prototyping. Just be sure to hire an engineer experienced with antenna PCB layout since most will not have the necessary experience.

Keep in mind that you’ll probably still need to have your antenna tuned to achieve peak efficiency, money making electronic projects. Many times your antenna manufacturer will provide this tuning service.

Step 5: Order the PCB Prototypes

Producing electronic PCB prototypes is a two step process. The first step is producing the bare printed circuit boards. For this step I use either Sunstone Circuits or San Francisco Circuits, but there are many other choices as well. The second step is having all of the electronic components assembled on to the PCB. For this step I usually use a company called Screaming Circuits.

Assembly is usually the most expensive step and in my experience is about two-thirds of the total PCB cost. To save money you can of course solder components yourself if you are good at soldering. However, many modern components are leadless (the leads are below the part) making them impossible to do by hand.

In most cases it will take a couple of weeks to get completely assembled boards, unless you pay extra for expedited service. I typically start off ordering about 5 assembled boards which will usually cost around $2,000.

If super small size is absolutely critical for your product (think wearable tech and Internet-of-Things devices) then you may need to consider more advanced PCB production methods to achieve the desired size. For example, using buried and/or blind vias will allow you to pack everything incredibly tight. However, these advanced vias can easily triple your prototype cost, so it’s best to only use them if it’s essential for product success.

Step 6: Program the Microcontroller or Microprocessor

Most electronic devices contain a microchip called a Micro-Controller Unit (MCU) or Micro=Processor Unit (MPU) that serve as the core “brains” for the device. As the names imply an MCU is great at controlling things, and an MPU is great at processing data. An MCU is pretty much a slow MPU with less memory and less pins, but with more built-in peripherals for interfacing with the outside world, money making electronic projects. An MCU doesn’t require an operating system like an MPU based system, making it the much simpler solution.

For example, an Arduino is a microcontroller (MCU) based development system whereas a Raspberry Pi is a more powerful microprocessor (MPU) based platform with a full operating system.

Whether your product uses a money making electronic projects or a microprocessor it’s going to need to be programmed. This program (called firmware) will most likely be developed using the “C” computer language.

Step 7: Evaluate, Debug, and Repeat

The first version of any new how to post links and make money is never market ready, and any issues will be fixed in the next prototype iteration. There will almost always be some issues, so don’t be unrealistically optimistic when creating your development and funding plans. Plan for reality.

This can be a challenging step to forecast in terms of both cost and time, money making electronic projects. Any problems found are of course unexpected, so it will take time to figure out the source of the bug and determine how best to fix it. However, any company developing new hardware products has the same obstacle to overcome.

Step 8: Certifications

In order to sell a new electronic product in most countries there are several types of certification required. The exact certifications needed depend on the country/region where the product will be sold.

I’ll warn you that obtaining certifications isn’t cheap and most products money making electronic projects cost at least $10k to $30k money making electronic projects certify. Fortunately, there are ways to reduce this cost such as by using pre-certified wireless modules. Below is a quick overview of the certifications required in the USA, Canada, and Europe.

FCC (Federal Communications Commission) certification is required for all electrical products sold in the USA. Products that don’t purposefully radiate electromagnetic energy (i.e. no wireless functions) are classified as non-radiators. On the other hand, wireless products purposefully transmit electromagnetic energy and are classified as intentional radiators. It is much more expensive to obtain FCC certification for an intentional radiator.

UL (Underwriters Laboratories) or CSA (Canadian Standards Association) certification is required for any electrical product sold in the USA and/or Canada that plugs into an AC electrical outlet. Products running on only batteries with no recharging capabilities do not require UL/CSA certification. However, most retail chains and/or product liability insurance companies will require UL/CSA certification for any electronic product.

CE (Conformité Européene) certification is required for products sold in money making electronic projects European Union (EU), money making electronic projects. It is similar to the FCC and UL certifications required in the USA.

RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) certification is required for electrical products sold in the European Union (EU). It certifies the electronics are free of lead.

Conclusion

If your product requires electronics it will no doubt increase the complexity of developing the product. This means increased development cost, time, and risk.

To lower your development risk (and usually your cost and time) I highly recommend that you get a second opinion on any design before prototyping it. Second opinions, commonly called design reviews, can greatly reduce the chance of making money from home blog. On the bright side, migrating the electronics from prototype to mass production is relatively straightforward.

Many makers out there have a project they’ve been working on that they could take to the next level — and they just don’t know it yet. If you’re playing around with an idea you think could make it big, and you just don’t have the business plan, here’s a rough sketch of what to do with your arduino project.

1. First, you want to see if there is a need for your product.

Reach out to people with different ideas — friends and family, coworkers and acquaintances. Get a fresh perspective from people who have no assumptions about your idea beforehand. Ask questions that are unbiased. For example, instead of saying, “Isn’t this pen idea great?” you could ask, “What do you think of this pen idea?” And don’t be afraid to talk about your idea and put yourself out there.

2. Save on costs by doing the initial prototyping yourself.

Look online on how to connect sensors to your Arduino project. Start by looking for highly-rated tutorials. An example of places to look canadian value investing stocks tutorials would be Instructables.com or on Make. Then see how your hardware and software are coming together. Look for bugs in your code. Cover every base and leave nothing untouched. For example, consider a code being stuck in a loop, driving the battery down. Consider the size, range, and every specification in the project.

3. Now it’s time to show off your prototype to the world.

Get feedback from the people around you on your prototype. Since it’s a low-fidelity or medium-fidelity prototype, test with different circles available — industry experts, friends and family, coworkers, customers, users, money making electronic projects, etc. Make sure to ask the right questions to your audience. Is the purpose money making electronic projects the product clear?

4. Know when your prototype is good enough that you now have to take it to the next level professionally for a more polished prototype.

After doing research, you’ll learn about the next steps ahead: costs, processes and timeline requirements. It’s important to get a fresh perspective on how to approach your project. We all overlook important aspects of our projects from time to time after working on them for so long.

5. After iterating, get a professional prototype made to gather real feedback.

Take your prototype to events and trade shows related to the industry where they will be used.

This is the part where you try to get a sale with your product. The objective of trying to sell your first prototype is to get validation and real-world knowledge that there is a need for your product. This is also the testing phase where you do simulations and try to figure out if there are any holes, such as in the battery life.

After the prototyping steps, there is the manufacturing phase. During this money making electronic projects, it’s important to have a business plan in place or some type of outline so your arduino project is more likely to take off.

With these prototyping steps, you should be ready for manufacturing in no time and ready to make money with your Arduino project.

This article was published by the Jaycon team. Learn more about how we can take your product design and hardware idea to the next level here.

TutorialsJaycon SystemsTips & Tricks, Prototyping, Electronics, Product Design, money making electronic projects, Product Development, Product Launch, Funding

Hello guys, welcome back to my blog. In this article, I will discuss the top 05 ways to make money for students, how students can earn money while studying in a college, and I will also discuss how to manage both studying and earning money.

If you have any doubts related to electrical, electronics, and computer science, then ask question. You can also catch me @ Instagram – Chetan Shidling.

Also, read:

1. Roadmap To Become A Power Electronics Money making electronic projects, Responsibilities, Skills.
2. Roadmap To Become A Big Data And Analytics Engineer.
3. Top 10 MATLAB Projects For Electrical And Electronics Engineers.

Top 05 Ways To Make Money For Students

Hey guys are you suffering from a financial problem while studying in a college or want to earn some money to pay your monthly bills, then read this article till the end. Make sure you also manage your studies while earning money. The ways which I share you use it when your exams or internals are not there. If your exams and best mutual funds to invest 2022 usa are near then don’t focus on these things otherwise you will not perform well in exams and internals. Well, let’s come to the topic. The top 05 ways to make ways for students are:

01. Blog post

The article which you are reading now money making electronic projects also a blog post. You can select your niche, then create a blog with the help of a blogger or WordPress, and then start writing blogs. After six months you can apply for Google AdSense and from there you can start earning money.

02. Creating YouTube videos

You also earn money by creating a YouTube channel and regularly uploading videos on a particular niche. Make sure that you make quality videos and each video should add value to your viewers.

03. Freelancing

This is also the best way to make money but you should have skills in a particular field. Suppose you are good at web development then you can develop websites for companies. If you want to go into the freelancing industry then you need to work on your skills first and then enter into the earn free bitcoin every 10 minutes industry. You can do freelancing on engineering projects.

04. Affiliate Marketing

In affiliate marketing, you will get a commission on the product you sell. Suppose if you are doing affiliate marketing of amazon products and if you sell any phone will get a 3 – 4% commission. It is possible only when you are an influencer or if you have many followers on social media.

05. Digital Marketing

This is very trending nowadays because every company wants to do marketing of their product online. If you want to go into this field, then you need to learn some topics such as SEO, SEM, Google AdSense, email marketing, Facebook advertisement, etc then later you can start doing digital marketing for companies.

Well, guys, these are the five ways to make money for students. I hope this article may help you all a lot. Thank you for reading.

Also, read:

Currency stored on electronic systems

"E-cash" and "Internet money" redirect here. For the 20th century brand, see Ecash. For the record label, see Internet Money.

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Taxonomy of money, based on "Central bank cryptocurrencies" by Morten Linnemann Bech and Rodney Garratt

Digital currency (digital money, electronic money or electronic currency) is any currency, money, or money-like asset that is primarily managed, stored or exchanged on digital computer systems, especially over the internet. Types of digital currencies include cryptocurrency, virtual currency now factory investors central bank digital currency. Digital currency may be recorded on a distributed database on the internet, a centralized electronic computer database owned by a company or bank, within digital files or even on a stored-value card.^[1]

Digital currencies exhibit properties similar to traditional currencies, money making electronic projects, but generally do not have a physical form, unlike currencies with printed money making electronic projects or minted coins. This lack of physical form allows nearly instantaneous transactions over the internet and removes the cost associated with distributing notes and coins. Usually not issued by a governmental body, virtual currencies are not considered a legal tender and they enable ownership transfer across governmental borders.^[2]

This type of currency may be used to buy physical goods and services, money making electronic projects, but may also be restricted to certain communities such as for use inside an online game.^[3]

Digital money can either be centralized, where there is a central point of control over the money supply (for instance, a bank), or decentralized, money making electronic projects the control over the money supply is predetermined or agreed upon democratically.

History

In 1983, a research money making electronic projects by David Chaum introduced the idea of digital cash.^[4] In 1989, he founded DigiCash, an electronic cash company, in Amsterdam to commercialize the ideas in his research.^[5] It filed for bankruptcy in 1998.^[6][5]

e-gold was the first widely used Internet money, introduced in 1996, and grew to several million users before the US Government shut it down in 2008. e-gold has been referenced to as "digital currency" by both US officials and academia.^{[7][8][9][10][11]} In 1997, Coca-Cola offered buying from vending machines using mobile payments.^[12]PayPal launched its USD-denominated service in 1998. In 2009, bitcoin was launched, which marked the start of decentralized blockchain-based digital currencies with no central server, and no tangible assets held in reserve. Also known as cryptocurrencies, blockchain-based digital currencies proved resistant to attempt by government to regulate them, because there was no central organization or person with the power to turn them off.^[13]

Origins of digital currencies date back to the 1990s Dot-com bubble. Another known digital currency service was Liberty Reserve, founded in 2006; it lets users convert dollars or euros to Liberty Reserve Dollars or Euros, and exchange them freely with one another at a 1% fee. Several digital currency operations were reputed to be used for Ponzi schemes and money laundering, and were prosecuted by the U.S. government for operating without MSB licenses.^[14] Q coins or QQ coins, were used as a type of commodity-based digital currency on Tencent QQ's messaging platform and emerged in early 2005. Q coins were so effective in China that they were said to have had a destabilizing effect on the Chinese Yuan currency due to speculation.^[15] Recent interest in cryptocurrencies has prompted renewed interest in money making electronic projects currencies, with bitcoin, introduced in 2008, becoming the most widely used and accepted digital currency.

Sub-types of digital currency and comparisons

Digital currency as a specific type and as a meta-group name

Digital Currency is a term that refers to a specific type of electronic currency with specific properties. Digital Currency is also a term used to include the meta-group of sub-types of digital currency, the specific meaning can only be determined within the specific legal or contextual case. Legally and technically, there already are a myriad of legal definitions of digital currency and the many digital currency sub-types. Combining different possible properties, there exists an extensive number of implementations creating many and numerous sub-types of Digital Currency. Many governmental jurisdictions have implemented their own unique definition for digital currency, virtual currency, cryptocurrency, e-money, network money, e-cash, and other types of digital currency. Within any specific government jurisdiction, different agencies and regulators define different and often conflicting meanings for the different types of digital currency based on the specific properties of a specific currency type or sub-type.

Digital versus virtual currency

Main article: Virtual currency

A virtual currency has been defined in 2012 by money making electronic projects European Central Bank as "a type of unregulated, digital money, which is issued and usually controlled by its developers, money making electronic projects, and used and accepted among the members of a specific virtual community".^[16] The US Department of Treasury in 2013 defined it more tersely as "a medium of exchange that operates like a currency in some environments, but money making electronic projects not have all the attributes of real currency".^[17] The US Department of Treasury money making electronic projects stated that, "Virtual currency does not have legal-tender status in any jurisdiction."^[17]

According to the European Central Bank's 2015 "Virtual currency schemes – a further analysis" report, virtual currency is a digital representation of value, not issued by a central bank, credit institution or e-money institution, which, in some circumstances, can be used as an alternative to money.^[18] In the previous report of October 2012, the virtual currency was defined as a type of unregulated, digital money, which is issued and usually controlled by its developers, and used and accepted among the members of a specific virtual community.^[16]

According to the Bank for International Settlements' November 2015 "Digital currencies" report, it is an asset represented in digital form and having some monetary characteristics.^[19] Digital currency can be denominated to a sovereign currency and issued by the issuer responsible to redeem digital money for cash. In that case, digital currency represents electronic money (e-money). Digital currency denominated in its own units of value or with decentralized or automatic issuance will be considered as a virtual money making electronic projects. As such, bitcoin is a digital currency but also a type of virtual currency. Bitcoin and its alternatives are based on cryptographic algorithms, so these kinds of virtual currencies are also called cryptocurrencies.

Digital versus cryptocurrency

Cryptocurrency is a sub-type of digital currency and a digital asset that relies on cryptography to chain together digital signatures of asset transfers, peer-to-peer networking and decentralization. In some cases a proof-of-work or proof-of-stake scheme is used to create and manage the currency.^{[20][21][22][23]} Cryptocurrencies can allow electronic money systems to be decentralized. When implemented with a blockchain, the digital ledger system or record keeping system uses cryptography to edit separate shards of database entries that are distributed across many separate servers. The first and most popular system is bitcoin, money making electronic projects, a peer-to-peer electronic monetary system based on cryptography.

Digital versus traditional currency

Most of the traditional money supply is bank money held on computers. They are considered digital currency in some cases. One could argue that our increasingly cashless society means that all currencies are becoming digital currencies, but they are not presented to us as such.^[24]

Types of systems

Centralized systems

Main article: Electronic funds transfer

Currency can be exchanged electronically money making electronic projects debit cards and credit cards using electronic funds transfer at point of sale.

Mobile digital wallets

A number of electronic money systems use contactless payment transfer in order to facilitate easy payment and give the payee more money making electronic projects in not letting go of their electronic wallet money making electronic projects the transaction.

• In 1994 Mondex and National Westminster Bank provided an "electronic purse" to residents of Swindon
• In about 2005 Telefónica and BBVA Bank launched a payment system in Spain called Mobipay^[25] which used simple short message service facilities of feature phones intended for pay-as-you-go services including taxis and pre-pay phone recharges via a BBVA current bank account debit.
• In January 2010, Venmo launched as a mobile payment system through SMS, which transformed into a social app where friends can pay each other for minor expenses like a cup of coffee, rent and pay a share of the restaurant bill when one has forgotten their wallet.^[26] It is popular with college students, but has some security issues.^[27] It can be linked to a bank account, credit/debit card or have a loaded value to limit the amount of loss in case of a security breach. Credit cards and non-major debit cards incur a 3% processing fee.^[28]
• On 19 September 2011, Google Wallet released in the United States to make it easy to carry all one's credit/debit cards on a phone.^[29]
• In 2012 Ireland's O2 (owned by Telefónica) launched Easytrip to pay road tolls which were charged to the mobile phone account or prepay credit.^[30]
• The UK's O2 invented O2 Wallet^[31] at about the same time. The wallet can be charged with regular bank accounts or cards and discharged by participating retailers using a technique known as 'money messages'. The service closed in 2014.
• On 9 September 2014, Apple Pay was announced at the iPhone 6 event. In October 2014 it was released as an update to work on iPhone 6 and Apple Watch. It is very similar to Google Wallet, but for Apple devices only.^[32]

Decentralized systems

Main article: Cryptocurrency

See also: List of cryptocurrencies

Digital Currency has been implemented in some cases as a decentralized system of any combination of currency issuance, ownership record, ownership transfer authorization and validation, and currency storage.

Per the Bank for Money making electronic projects Settlements (BIS), "These schemes do not distinguish between users based on location, and therefore allow value to be transferred between users across borders. Moreover, money making electronic projects, the speed of a transaction is not conditional on the location of the payer and payee."^[2]

Law

Since 2001, the European Union has implemented the E-Money Directive "on the taking up, pursuit and prudential supervision of the business of electronic making money from home blog institutions" last amended in 2009.^[33] Doubts on the real nature of EU electronic money have arisen, since calls have been made in connection with the 2007 EU Payment Services Directive in favor of merging payment institutions and electronic money institutions. Such a merger could mean that electronic money is of the same nature as bank money or scriptural money.

In the United States, electronic money is governed by Article 4A of the Uniform Commercial Code for wholesale transactions and the Electronic Fund Transfer Act for consumer transactions. Provider's responsibility and consumer's liability are regulated under Regulation E.^[34][35]

Regulation

Virtual currencies pose challenges for central banks, financial regulators, departments or ministries of finance, as well as fiscal authorities and statistical authorities.

Adoption by governments

As of 2016, over 24 countries are investing in distributed ledger technologies (DLT) with $1.4bn in investments. In addition, over 90 central banks are engaged in DLT discussions, including implications of a central bank issued digital currency.^[36]

• Hong Kong's Octopus card system: Launched in 1997 as an electronic purse for public transportation, is the most successful and mature implementation of contactless smart cards used for mass transit payments. After only 5 years, 25 percent of Octopus card transactions are unrelated to transit, and accepted by more than 160 merchants.^[37]
• London Transport’s Oyster card system: Oyster is a plastic smartcard that can hold pay-as-you-go credit, Travelcards and Bus & Tram season tickets. An Oyster card can be used to travel on bus, Tube, tram, DLR, London Overground and most National Rail services in London.^[38]
• Japan's FeliCa: A contactless RFID smart card, used in a variety of ways such as in ticketing systems for public transportation, e-money, and residence door keys.^[39]
• The Netherlands' Chipknip: As an electronic cash system used in the Netherlands, all ATM money making electronic projects issued by the Dutch banks had value that could be loaded via Chipknip loading stations. For people without a bank, pre-paid Chipknip cards could be purchased at various locations in the Netherlands. As of 1 January 2015, payment can no longer be made with Chipknip.^[40]
• Belgium's Proton: An electronic purse application for debit cards in Belgium. Introduced in February 1995, as a means to replace cash for small transactions. The system was retired on 31 December 2014.^[41]

In March 2018, the Marshall Islands money making electronic projects the first country to issue their own cryptocurrency and certify it as legal tender; the currency is called the "sovereign".^[42]

United States of America

US Commodity Futures Trading Commission guidance

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has determined virtual currencies are properly defined as commodities in 2015.^[43] The CFTC warned investors against pump and dump schemes that use virtual currencies.^[44]

US Internal Revenue Service guidance

The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) ruling Notice 2014-21^[45] defines any virtual currency, cryptocurrency and digital currency as property; gains and losses are taxable within standard property policies.

US Treasury guidance

On 20 March 2013, money making electronic projects, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued a guidance to clarify how the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act applied to persons creating, exchanging, and transmitting virtual currencies.^[46]

US Securities and Exchange Commission guidance

In May 2014 the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) "warned about the hazards of bitcoin and other virtual currencies".^[47][48]

New York state regulation

In July 2014, the New York State Department of Financial Services proposed the most comprehensive regulation of virtual currencies to date, commonly called BitLicense. It has gathered input from bitcoin supporters and the financial industry through public hearings and a comment period until 21 October 2014 to customize the rules. The proposal per NY DFS press release "sought to strike an appropriate balance that helps protect consumers and root out illegal activity".^{[citation needed]} It has been criticized by smaller companies to favor established institutions, and Chinese bitcoin exchanges have complained that the rules are "overly broad in its application outside the United States".^[49]

Canada

The Bank of Canada have explored the possibility of creating a version of its currency on the blockchain.^[50]

The Bank of Canada teamed up with the nation’s five largest banks – and the blockchain consulting firm R3 – for what was known as Project Jasper. In a simulation run in 2016, the central bank issued CAD-Coins onto a blockchain similar Ethereum.^[51] Black money earned by ias officers banks used the CAD-Coins to exchange money the way they do at the end of each best ethereum investment platform to settle their master accounts.^[51]

China

Main article: Digital RMB

In 2016, Fan Yifei, a deputy governor of China's central bank, the People's Bank of China (PBOC), wrote that "the conditions are ripe for digital currencies, which can reduce operating costs, increase efficiency and enable a wide range of new applications".^[51] According to Fan Yifei, the best way to take advantage of the situation is for central banks to take the lead, both in supervising private digital currencies and in developing digital legal tender of their own.^[52]

In October 2019, the PBOC announced that a digital renminbi would be released after years of preparation.^[53] The version of the currency, known as DCEP (Digital Currency Electronic Payment),^[54] is based on cryptocurrency which can be "decoupled" from the banking system.^[55] The announcement received a variety of responses: some regard it as an attempt of the Chinese government to circumvent US dollars in international banking and settlement of payments, thereby disrupting or weakening America's ability to leverage the dollar as the world currency to pursue its broader geopolitical interests,^[56] while others believe it is more about domestic control and surveillance.^[57][58]

In December 2020, the PBOC distributed CN¥20 million worth of digital renminbi to the residents of Suzhou through a lottery program to further promote the government-backed digital currency. Recipients of the currency could make both offline and online purchases, expanding on an earlier trial that did not require internet connection through the inclusion of online stores in the program. Around 20,000 transactions were reported by the e-commerce company JD.com in the first 24 hours of the trial. Contrary to other online payment platforms such as Alipay or WeChat Pay, the digital currency does not have transaction fees.^[59]

Denmark

The Danish government proposed getting rid of the obligation for selected retailers to accept payment in cash, moving the country closer to a "cashless" economy.^[60] The Danish Chamber of Commerce is backing the move.^[61] Nearly a third of the Danish population uses MobilePay, money making electronic projects, a smartphone application for transferring money.^[60]

Ecuador

A law passed by the National Assembly of Ecuador gives the government permission to make payments in money making electronic projects currency and proposes the creation of a national digital currency. "Electronic money will stimulate the economy; it will be possible to attract more Ecuadorian citizens, especially those who do not have checking or savings accounts and credit cards alone, money making electronic projects. The electronic currency will be money making electronic projects by the assets of the Central Bank of Ecuador", the National Assembly said in a statement.^[62] In December 2015, Sistema why you should invest in ethereum Dinero Electrónico ("electronic money system") was launched, making Ecuador the first country with a state-run electronic payment system.^[63]

El Salvador

On Jun 9, 2021, the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador has become the first country in the world to officially classify Bitcoin as legal currency. Starting 90 days after approval, every business must accept Bitcoin as legal tender for goods or services, unless it is unable to provide the technology needed to do the transaction.^[64]

Netherlands

The Dutch central bank is experimenting with a blockchain-based virtual currency called "DNBCoin".^[51][65]

India

The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is a real-time payment system for instant money transfers between any two bank accounts held in participating banks in India. The interface has been developed by the National Payments Corporation of India and is regulated by the Reserve Bank of India. This digital payment system is available 24*7*365. UPI is agnostic to the type of user and is used for person to person, person to business, business to person and business to business transactions.

Transactions can be initiated by the payer or the payee. To identify a bank account it uses a unique Virtual Payment Address (VPA) of the type 'accountID@bankID'. The VPA can be assigned by the bank, but can also be self specified just like an email address. The simplest and most common form of VPA is 'mobilenumber@upi'. Money can be transferred from one VPA to another or from one VPA to any bank account in a participating bank using account number and bank branch details. Transfers can be inter-bank or intra-bank.

UPI has no intermediate holding pond for money. It withdraws funds directly from the bank account of the sender and deposits them directly into the recipient's bank account whenever a transaction is requested. A sender can initiate and authorise a transfer using a two step secure process: login using a pass code → initiate → verify using a passcode. A receiver can initiate a payment request on the system to send the payer a notification or by presenting a QR code. On receiving the request, the payer can decline or confirm the payment using the same two step process: login → confirm → verify. The system is extraordinarily user friendly to the extent that even technophobes and barely literate users are adopting it in huge numbers.

Russia

Government-controlled Sberbank of How to make counterfeit canadian money owns Yandex.Money – electronic payment service and digital currency of the same name.^[66]

Sweden

Sweden is in the process of replacing all of its physical banknotes, and most of its coins by mid-2017.^{[needs update]} However, the new banknotes and coins of the Swedish krona will probably be circulating at about half the 2007 peak of 12,494 kronor per capita. The Riksbank is planning to begin discussions of an electronic currency issued by the central bank to which "is not to replace cash, but to act as complement to it".^[67] Deputy Governor Cecilia Skingsley states that cash will continue to spiral out of use in Sweden, and while it is currently fairly easy to get cash in Sweden, it is often very difficult to deposit it into bank accounts, especially in rural areas. No decision has been currently made about the decision to create "e-krona".

In her speech,^[when?] Skingsley states: "The first question is whether e-krona should be booked in accounts or whether the ekrona should be some form of a digitally transferable unit that does not need an underlying account structure, roughly like cash." Skingsley also states: "Another important question is whether the Riksbank should issue e-krona directly to the general public or go via the banks, as we do now with banknotes and coins." Other questions will be addressed like interest rates, should they be positive, negative, or zero?^{[citation needed]}

Switzerland

In 2016, a city government first accepted digital currency in payment of city fees. Zug, Switzerland, added bitcoin as a means of paying small amounts, up to CHF 200, in a test and an attempt to advance Zug as a region that is advancing future technologies. In order to reduce risk, Zug immediately converts any bitcoin received into the Swiss currency.^[68]Swiss Federal Railways, government-owned railway company of Switzerland, sells bitcoins at its ticket machines.^[69]

UK

In 2016, the UK's chief scientific adviser, Sir Money making electronic projects Walport, advised the government to consider using a blockchain-based digital currency.^[70]

The chief economist of Bank of England, the central bank of the United Kingdom, proposed the abolition of paper currency, money making electronic projects. The Bank has also taken an interest in blockchain.^[51][71] In 2016 it has embarked on a multi-year research programme to explore the implications of a central bank issued digital currency.^[36] The Bank of England has produced several research papers on the topic. One suggests that the economic benefits of issuing a digital currency on a distributed ledger could add as much as 3 percent to a country's economic output.^[51] The Bank said that it wanted the next version of the bank’s basic software infrastructure to be compatible with distributed ledgers.^[51]

Adoption by financial actors

Government attitude dictates the tendency among established heavy financial actors that both are risk-averse and conservative. None of these offered services around cryptocurrencies and much of the criticism came from them. "The first mover among these has been Fidelity Investments, Boston based Fidelity Digital Assets LLC will provide enterprise-grade custody solutions, a cryptocurrency trading execution platform and institutional advising services 24 hours a day, money making electronic projects, seven days a week designed to align with blockchain's always-on trading cycle".^[72] It will work with Bitcoin and Ethereum with general availability scheduled for 2019.^{[needs update]}

Hard vs. soft digital currencies

Hard electronic currency does not have the ability to be disputed or reversed when used. It is nearly impossible to reverse a transaction, justified or not. It is very similar to cash.

Soft electronic currencies are the opposite of hard electronic currencies. Payments can be reversed. Usually, when a payment is reversed there is a "clearing time." Bitcoin investment sites 401k hard currency can be "softened" with a third-party service.

Criticism

Many existing digital money making electronic projects have not yet seen widespread usage, and may not be easily used or exchanged. Banks generally do not accept or offer services for them.^[73] There are concerns that cryptocurrencies are extremely risky due to their very high volatility^[74] and potential for pump and dump schemes.^[75] Regulators in several countries have warned against their use and some have taken concrete regulatory measures to dissuade users.^[76] The non-cryptocurrencies are all centralized, money making electronic projects. As such, they may be shut down or seized by a government at any time.^[77] The more anonymous a currency is, the more attractive it is to criminals, regardless of the intentions of its creators.^[77] Bitcoin has also been criticised for its energy money making electronic projects SHA-256-based proof of work.^[78]

According to Barry Eichengreen, an economist known for his work on monetary and financial economics, "cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are too volatile to possess the essential money making electronic projects of money. Stablecoins have fragile currency pegs that diminish their utility in transactions. And central bank digital currencies are a solution in search of a problem."^[79]

List

Non-cryptocurrencies

See also

References

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In a bind? Need some fast cash? We're talking here about small bursts of capital, not millions of dollars -- enough to satisfy your monthly obligations or get that nagging creditor to stop calling you.

Shutterstock

None of the 32 strategies listed here to get some money quickly will break the proverbial bank. Some are easier than others, but nearly all require very little to no capital. They are meant to get you through the difficult times.

Related: 2 Ways to Make Money Online This Month

Some of these strategies to make extra money will require you to be in certain locales, while others are location-independent, but it all boils down to being resourceful. We've all found ourselves in a tight spot at one point in our lives or another, but to the person who's committed, anything is possible. 

Much of this has to do with mindset. When you lack money, scarcity thinking sets in. The scarcity mindset is negative and thinks that there's never enough of whatever it is to go around. When you find yourself thinking like that, do everything in your power to move into an abundant mindset. 

Our thoughts are incredibly powerful. We have upwards of 60,000 thoughts per day, many deep within our subconscious mind, much of which are repeated. We have to be stewards of our thoughts. Once you find yourself thinking negatively, you need to jar yourself out of that.

When you're looking to make money fast, you're often in a tough spot financially, even desperate to make ends meet, but everything that we have and everything that we become is partly born from our thoughts. Think and you shall become. Curate and cultivate the right thoughts if you want to live an abundant life.

The psychology of making money. 

Regardless if you need to earn some fast cash or we're just talking about making money in the grand scheme of things, there's an important psychology that needs to be mentioned before getting into the strategies. If you study Freud's model of the mind, you'll discover the Psychic Apparatus. It's the three-part construct in your mind that controls all of your behavior.

Those three are the id, the super-ego and the ego. The id lives deep within the subconscious from birth. It's the source of our sudden and most instinctive urges. When you find yourself doing what you know you shouldn't, blame your id. 

The super-ego is formed later in life to balance the id. It forms and breaks off from the id through our upbringing, parental guidance and our sense of community and beliefs. People who are careful with their money can thank their super-ego.

The ego is the driver making the decisions. It decides between the devil (the id) and the angel (the super-ego) on either shoulder (yes, all those cartoons you've ever seen are partly true). We have voices in our mind, and it's up to the ego to decide which one to fulfill. Its goal is to satisfy the id in some way while also attending to the super-ego.

Get-rich-quick schemes and fad weight-loss diets are naturally popular because they satisfy the id while also attending to the super-ego. The ego's job is complete when it sees something like this. The appeal of "fast'' stems from the innate desire for instant gratification, so beware of what seems too good to be true (they often are) when you're looking to make money quickly. Be wary. Listen to the conversation deep within the confines of your mind and do your best to tame the proverbial beasts.

What are the best ways to make money right away? While a search online when you're in need of some fast cash will produce millions of results, not all will be legitimate. It's up to you to filter through the so-called noise. These 32 strategies will help put you in the black, even if it's in a very small way. Once you are, resume planning and focusing on the bigger picture. 

Related: How to Make a Fortune With $100

1. Money-making strategy: Drive for Uber or Lyft

Companies like Uber and Lyft offer a great opportunity to make some quick cash. You'll need a clean driving record, a fairly new car and the authorization to work wherever it is that you live. If you have all of those things, you can work when it's feasible for you, whether that's in the middle of the day during rush hour, or in the wee hours of the night on a weekend. The choice is yours.

2. Money-making strategy: Become a market research participant

In college I participated in loads of market research. It's fairly quick money for not a lot of work. Companies looking for consumers' opinions on a variety of products and services put you in a room to garner your opinion. That's it.

This often involves writing or stating your opinion, answering polls or surveys, or breaking off in a discussion group. The mechanics don't matter much. The point is that you can rely on it from time to time. Focusgroup.com is just one company that is looking for participants.

Related: 6 Things You Must Quit Doing Now If You Want to Be More Successful

3. Money-making strategy: Sell old books and games on Amazon

Amazon makes it fairly easy to list and sell old books, games and devices on its marketplace. You can make more than just a few bucks If you have pricey textbooks from college. Be sure the books are in good condition. You'll get negative reviews if you attempt to sell books that are falling apart or games that are scratched up. Remember, be upfront about any defects, no matter how small they might be and no matter how few people might readily notice it. 

4. Money-making strategy: Sell, or resell, used tech on Craigslist

The market for used electronics is vast. You can use Craigslist to part ways with your old iPhone or your MacBook. You can grab a premium for these types of electronics. Some people even flip items by buying them and reselling them.

You could also use a website like Gazelle to sell your used phones, no matter what kind you have. Companies like that have made an entire business model out of buying used phones and refurbishing them. Either way, you can expect to get a fair bit of money relatively quickly if you have these items laying around your house.

Related: 4 Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting a Small Business

5. Money-making strategy: Do tasks with TaskRabbit

TaskRabbit lets you tap into an existing marketplace of people looking for help locally with chores. The tasks aren't always small. This platform (along with others) offers bigger tasks, such as home renovations, as well.

Amazon is getting into the task business with Amazon Home Services. The services listed range from very small repairs to larger and more involved tasks that would take considerably more effort.

6. Money-making strategy: Deliver for PostMates

You can earn some cash when you're in dire straits by using PostMates, and you don't even need a car, just a bike for deliveries in busier cities and downtown centers. I've used it often to get food from specialty places that don't deliver themselves, but it can be used for many things. 

PostMates states on their website that you could earn up to $25/hour doing deliveries. You could also earn some tips in the process so it's a great option for people that are looking to do something in their spare time, similar to the big ride-sharing apps that are hogging up app stores everywhere.

Related: 5 Ways to Make Enough Side Money to Eventually Quit Your Job

7. Money-making strategy: Flip real estate contracts

Ir you're thinking this is cost prohibitive, it's not. You can flip real estate contracts without ever taking possession of the property. This isn't a fixer-upper endeavor, just securing a contract and selling it to an interested party. That's it.

You can do this with just a few hundred dollars in most cases to open up escrow. There are companies dedicated to teaching how to do this like REWW. It's good for making a little bit of money, but is also potentially something more long term as well. 

Related: 8 Ways Real Estate Is Your Smartest Investment

8. Money-making strategy: Sell on CafePress or Etsy

If you can design digital items, you can sell them for a share of the profits on a site like CafePress. You can do this with nothing more than some design software. They can include custom logos, inspirational sayings and other topical or trending designs appealing to the masses.

You could hire a designer to assist you with this, but you still need to come up with the ideas. This works best if you understand design yourself but requires no overhead. Items are printed and delivered on-demand. You simply receive a share of the proceeds. Similarly, you could sell items on Etsy as well.

9. Money-making strategy: Answer questions on JustAnswer

People looking for expertise online. JustAnswer (and several sites like it) allow doctors, lawyers, engineers and others with enhanced knowledge to earn a small income merely answering questions from people who would otherwise have to pay a hefty sum for those answers.

This platform is a great resource for people. It's also lucrative (for the time spent) if you're looking to earn a bit of cash in a hurry. Don't expect to get rich answering questions, but you can generate a few bucks here or there if you're in a bind. 

10. Money-making strategy: Grab gigs on Fivver

No matter what type of service you offer, you can likely offer it Fivver. This is terrific for digital services such as graphic design, web design, short audio or video clip creation, editing services, writing and so on.

Fivver has expanded beyond just the $5-per-gig model. Fiverr Pro pools the best talent on its platform. Depending on your skills, you could do considerably well on here.

Related: 5 Ways Fiverr Jump-Started My Life as an Entrepreneur

11. Money-making strategy: Walk dogs

There are networks devoted connecting dog owners with dog walkers. Rover is one of the largest networks of dog walkers out there. Of course, you could also use social media or just knock on neighbors doors to advertise your services, but you can easily use one of these services.

Do a great job if you're serious about building a track record of solid reviews. That will help you make money in the future when you're in desperate need of it.

12. Money-making strategy: Babysitting with Care.com

You can easily do some babysitting when you need to make a few bucks quickly. Parents everywhere are always in need of babysitting and nanny services.

Websites like Care.com connect parents with babysitters. The company does all the background checking and other due diligence to put parents' minds at ease. Of course, you can appeal directly to people in your personal network, but if you're looking to generate recurring revenue sign up with a site marketing to parents looking for child care services.

13. Money-making strategy: Sell your photos

Have an eye for photography? Of course, you need to be good at this to earn any money but it you are, you can sell photos on ShutterStock or iStockPhoto (along with many others) to generate a passive income from something you might be very passionate about.

For a quicker way to earn by taking photos, solicit people looking for photographers to cover their wedding, engagement, child's birthday or any other life event. You'll need a good camera and some experience, but you can definitely earn some must-needed income this way no matter where you live.

14. Money-making strategy: Become a personal training

If you understand fitness, you could be a personal trainer. People pay good money for personal trainers, if only to have someone keep them on track towards their goals. You can add value while also helping yourself financially.

This could also break off into nutrition and assisting people with meal plans, and so on. You could solicit clients in your local gym, but depending on where you live, you might need some certification to do this (not to mention the gym's approval). You could also use a site like FitnessTrainer to advertise your services.

Related: This Entrepreneur Lives in the Back Room at a Gym While Building His Business

15. Money-making strategy: Tutor students

Parents are always willing to invest in their children's future. If you have a great deal of knowledge in subjects such as math, science or computers, you could tutor for cash.

Both Indeed.com and Care.com offer opportunities for tutoring local students. You could opt for either of these platforms or simply find your clients through your personal network or social media. 

16. Money-making strategy: Advertise for companies with a car wrap

Platforms like Carvertise connect brands and companies with drivers. The process is simple -- agree to turn your car into a roaming billboard for a price. If you qualify, you can earn a set monthly fee for advertising with your car. You won't have to pay anything to do this, but you'll need a clean driving record and a fairly new car.

You'll have to drive the car enough to be worth it for brands paying for your services. If you have all that, then you could make a bit of side-hustle income through this endeavor. 

Related: The 7 Toughest Startup Lessons You Don't Want to Learn the Hard Way

17. Money-making strategy: Help with home gardening

Offering your services as a local gardener could make you enough money quick enough to satisfy some pressing needs. There are loads of options from mowing lawns and pulling weeds to planning gardens and decor. If you pitch to enough neighbors, you'll find at least a few takers. It'll definitely be worth your while.

18. Money-making strategy: Take on housecleaning jobs

There's a variety of platforms online that you could tap into for doing this, or you could simply scour your neighborhood or post on social media. You could use Amazon's Home Services for this as well, or you could create your own simple, one-page website to advertise.

Either way, this is a terrific way to make upwards of $20 per hour or more doing a job that's often in high demand. You could easily make this a long-term gig if you perform well and don't cut corners.

Related: From $100 Million to Broke to Betting It All on Cryptocurrencies

19. Money-making strategy: Become a home organizer

You could easily do home organizing for people, an industry that has gained a lot of popularity since the debut of Netflix's hit series Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. If you're a tidy and organized person yourself, and you're good at organizing spaces, why not offer your services to people around you? You'd be surprised at how many people, even on your own social media feed, might take you up on doing something like this.

Again, a site like Care.com also helps to connect home organizers with people looking for this type of service. It all depends on whether you want to go through a professional company or pitch it yourself to people that are already in your personal or business network.

Related: 8 Ways Any Millennial Can Be a Millionaire in 5 Years

20. Money-making strategy: Wash carpets

Rent a carpet cleaning machine at your local home improvement store, or buy one if you think you can get enough work doing this. You'll likely find lots of people need something like this, but haven't actively looked for the service.

You can wash carpets in the owner's homes, or have them steam-cleaned offsite, depending on the job and the trust you build with the owners.

21. Money-making strategy: Give blood

You can \make around $20 to $50 per donation of blood, depending if your blood type is rare or common. You can also donate plasma. Different states have different minimum requirements that must be paid when people donate plasma.

Plasma donations help people who are fighting Leukemia and other immune disorders. This is a bit more complicated and involved than donating blood but you won't get much more than donating blood.

22. Money-making strategy: Decorate homes for the holidays

Whether it's New Year's, Christmas lighting, Easter, Fourth of July or any other holiday, you can get paid to help decorate homes. This might involve putting up lights inside or outside, decorating trees, setting up games and decor. 

Use the internet and social media to find clients, or simply advertise to your local network. There are loads of options when it comes to doing specialty jobs like this. 

Related: 50 Ideas for a Lucrative Side Hustle

23. Money-making strategy: Participate in medical studies

If you don't mind throwing caution to the wind, consider becoming a participant in medical studies or drug trials. Companies pay a significant amount of money to participants. 

You'll need to find the companies conducting medial studies and expect side effects. If you can live with that, then you can definitely make some money fast without too much effort.

24. Money-making strategy: Rent a spare room on AirBnB

AirBnB can be a terrific platform for renting out a spare room. You can make some good money, especially if you live in a tourist destination. If you don't mind the neighbors, then this is definitely an option. You can crash with friends and family and rent out your entire house if you're really desperate.

Related: What You'll Really Earn on Uber, Airbnb and TaskRabbit Every Month

25. Money-making strategy: Do micro gigs on Mechanical Turk

Mechanical Turk is a platform by Amazon that allows you to do small jobs and get paid for it. But don't expect too much money out of this. These gigs truly are "micro" and range from a few cents to a few dollars at the most. But if you string several of these together, it might be in your benefit. 

You don't need any serious qualification to do this. Usually, this involves clicking on links, taking surveys, giving an opinion, doing some light categorizing or other human-intelligence tasks (HITs as they like to call it).

26. Money-making strategy: Sell vintage clothes at a thrift shop

You'll likely get paid by the pound but it's some money, so if you're in need, then why not -- especially if you have no use for those clothes anymore. This works best for things like maternity clothes, old children's clothes, clothes that you haven't worn in years or are simply out of style. 

27. Money-making strategy: Open a cash-bonus checking account

Check with your local bank to see if they're giving away cash bonuses for opening up accounts. Banks run promotions like this all the time, so grab some real cash quickly if you're in need. It won't break the bank (no pun intended) but it will give you a quick $50 or $100 -- maybe even more -- when you really need it. You might need to deposit a minimum amount of cash (usually in the thousands) in order to qualify for these types of accounts (but not always).

28. Money-making strategy: Get a small microloan

You can get a small business loan (very small) on Fundera, or Prosper if you're looking for a very small personal loan. Depending on your credit and your financial and employment situations, you can secure up to a few thousand dollars like this.

There are loads of platforms that offer these small microloans. You have to pay them back but it can help if you're in a bind.

29. Money-making strategy: Conduct a webinar

Okay, it sounds intimidating but webinars are one of the best ways to earn cash quickly. You're speaking to a highly-engaged audience. If you position yourself and the offer correctly, you can make loads of money in a very short period.

GoToWebinar is by far the biggest platform. Webinar Jam is one of the most feature-rich platforms out there. Whichever you go with comes down to how well you can sell. It takes practice, but this is fast cash at its essence.

Related: 12 Realistic Ways to Make Your First $1 Million

30. Money-making strategy: Wash or detail cars

People are always looking to have their cars washed and detailed. You could be a mobile car washer and detailer without having a permanent location. Reach out to people you know or make some flyers and put it in your neighbors' mailboxes. If you want to get serious about it, prop up a one-page website or give out business cards. You can make money quickly doing this.

31. Money-making strategy: Lead walking tours on Viator

If you live in a tourist locale, consider doing walking tours on Viator, which is one of the largest platforms for tour operators in the world. You'll really need to work hard to get a good reputation. To find clients quickly offer free tours and ask for tips at the end.

This is leveraging the principle of reciprocity with the power of free. People love to get things for free, but they feel obligated at the end to give something in return. That's why supermarkets are always giving away food. They know if you like it, you'll buy it. 

32. Money-making strategy: Pawn your valuables

If you're running on fumes, financially speaking, but you have some money coming your way soon, consider pawning something of value to borrow fast cash. Of course, to get those items back you'll need to pay back the loan with interest. If you don't pay it back in time, that you'll lose the item. If it's really something that has a lot of intrinsic value to you, don't do it. But if it's something that doesn't, you can certainly consider it depending on your situation.

How Adafruit grew over 700% for 3 years in a row making open source hardware.

Today I’m going to show you exactly how Adafruit became one of the fastest growing hardware manufacturers in the US for 3 years in a row. You can copy this EXACT strategy to make money with open source hardware and create a community of contributors who will help you develop and promote your project faster than you ever dreamed of.

Limor Fried, Adafruit’s founder, is a force of nature among open hardware pioneers.

You might have already heard about her, but if you haven’t

• Adafruit was founded in 2005 by MIT hacker & engineer, Limor “Ladyada” Fried.
• Her goal with Adafruit was to create the best place online for learning electronics and making the best designed products for makers of all ages and skill levels.
• She’s grown her manufacturing company by by 742% between 2013 and 2015 to over $33 million.
• Adafruit has grown to over 100+ employees in the heart of NYC with a 50,000+ sq ft. factory.
• She’s rubbed shoulders with other figures of the maker movement like Massimo Banzi and David Cuartielles (Arduino’s founders), Mitch Altman, the creator of TV-B-Gone, among many more.
• Her company’s website has over 1 million unique visitors per month, and its YouTube Channel has more than 250,000 subscribers.

So she’s clearly doing something right…

The following sections will elaborate on how she did it.

Step 0 - Find out What People Want… Then Validate it

Before Limor Fried sold electronic kits, she was a student at MIT. While she was studying for a Master’s degree in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, she learned how to draw her own schematics.

She went to school, like thousands of other students at MIT each year. But unlike most of the other students, she didn’t just take notes in class, or learn her lines and then continue with her life.

What made the difference for her was that she put into practice the skills she learned in class. She did it by building functional objects like MP3 players, synthesizers and light toys from scratch using custom-ordered parts.

And that’s how she became original. Through practice. By applying what she learned.

This was before YouTube and smartphones. So she posted DIY tutorials for her projects on her personal website. Soon, a crowd of viewers bombarded her via email with requests to sell pre-assembled kits.

At first she says that she was like, “No dude, I’m really busy, leave me alone”. But after a few months, her fans wore her down and “forced” her to open Adafruit to sell kits that people were asking for.

What Limor didn’t realize at the time is that she was validating a business idea for free. And this is the best way to start a business. Before you spend money and time on a business idea, that’s the kind of validation you want to get before you start anything.

So if you want to start a business, before you worry about selling anything, learn a skill that’s useful to you and to other people. But don’t just learn it. Practice it until you find your originality. And then share how you do it.

Even if you can’t get into the MIT, there are loads of free or cheap courses where you can learn really cool and valuable skills. There are hundreds of free or cheap courses in places like Coursera, Free Code Camp, Udemy, Udacity, Instructables, but also many amazing open source resources you can find in Github, Wevolver and pretty much all over the internet.

If you are learning or know how to design electronic boards, robots, computers, cars, drones, shoes, bamboo bikes, clothing, indoor aquaponic systems, 3D printers, make your own versions, with your own flavor. Then go organize a Meetup or post some YouTube videos to teach others around you how they can do it themselves.

Once you’ve found something to teach that other people rave about, you’ll be able to build pretty much any business around it. That could be a starter kit, a curation of products you used to build something, or custom consulting for people who want you to hand-hold them. Here are a few moreideas of how to find valuable ideas.

Today there is more noise and competition than ever on YouTube and other social media, so it might be easier to invite some friends, coworkers or to start a Meetup or some offline event where you share your practice. Once you are confident enough, you can go online. There is still plenty of content taught by people who have never put them into practice.

Once you start teaching, whether online or offline, if people like your content or way of presenting, they’ll let you know what they want, and you’ll find what you need to offer. If they don’t, just listen to the problems they have and see how you can help them.

Takeaways:

• Learn a new skill, practice your skill and get cool results for yourself or for other people
• Teach other people how to get the results you got

Step 1 - Starting Simple with the 3 fundamentals

So to build her business, she just needed three super simple things:

1. A product - Kits for people who wanted to learn how to create their own electronics with her tutorials.
2. A marketing channel - Free tutorials and the Open Source blueprints of her kits, so that anyone could study, modify, distribute, make and sell the design or hardware based on that design. This way she would teach people how to assemble electronics, how to improve their skills, and eventually, how to create a business on top of her idea. A pretty compelling idea for everybody.
3. A selling channel - A simple e-commerce website where people could order her kits.

That’s how simple an open source hardware business should be at the beginning. So if you are going to create an open source project, don’t over-complicate it and stick to these basics.

For example, if you sell kits, you can probably start creating them manually at your closest FabLab, or assemble some custom parts you can order on the Internet.

With YouTube and WordPress you have everything you need to start your own tutorial channel.

And with PrestaShop, WooCommerce or any other E-commerce website, you can start a free or low-cost selling site very quickly.

But be warned, there is a condition if you want your open project to really work. There must be no previous tutorials on how to do what you want to share. As Limor Fried puts it in her own words,

I think the company took off because, before these kits, there wasn’t a learning project out there that you would actually use or wanted to keep - Limor Fried

Takeaway:

• Make sure your idea or skill has not been widely taught elsewhere. Teach your skills online or offline. This will help you find one product or idea that people crave. Create free tutorials and open source your blueprints to market your idea.
• Set up a way of selling it, like a simple E-commerce website.

For Adafruit, people were craving her pre-assembled electronic kits. She marketed them by creating and sharing unique web-tutorials on how to put kits together that she sold through her website.

Step 2 - Open Source your technology to create a community of co-creators and … save time

To get the community to innovate with Adafruit, Limor Fried open sourced its designs and allowed everybody to build on top of it by giving access to it on GitHub.

Adafruit also created online tutorials for each and every one of their kits. The link for the instructions is on every product page. Here’s an example of a tutorial they created to reverse engineer a Kinnect with their parts.

Having the documentation online allows Adafruit to update the instructions easily and get people to work with their products quickly and easily.

It sure looks like a lot of work to document each step of the process. But once you’ve done the whole documentation for a product, it will become a resource thousands of users can reuse without you having to explain it over and over again, saving you hundreds of hours and multiplying your effort by a thousand fold.

“Everything is designed to be painless,” Fried says. “I spend a lot of time thinking about how customers will interact with products so they won’t break them. And when we sell something, we always give good documentation to get (them) going in a couple minutes.”

And this is not only useful for electronic products. Other open source hardware companies, like Aquapioneers, who sell aquaponic kits, Afforestt, who grow urban forests 10 times faster, or Myfood, who sell connected greenhouses, have also documented their processes for their community, helping attract a lot of initial interest, and millions of views from communities of users, media and partners.

Takeaway:

• Open Source your designs and tutorials, so you build a community of people who can freely build on top of your products and create new use cases and innovations.
• Always stay on top of copycats by updating your products by including your community’s innovations and feedback.

Step 3 - How To Find Funding, Shipping, and Ramp Up Operations

With $10,000 Fried’s parents had allocated for her tuition, she bought a bulk quantity of parts and began assembling and selling her kits, making about $10 on each unit.

Once she found a way to fund her first orders, the running of the company consisted of shipping a couple of packages a day from the 24-hour post office next door to her dorm.

As orders increased, she hired friends, and before she knew it, she was designing a new project every week around newfangled components like gyrometric sensors, solar panels and thermal printers.

If you don’t have a family that can afford to help you fund your first batch of orders, you should take extra care at step 1 and 2 above to gather a tight community that wants to support you. This way you’ll be able to crowdfund your first batches of products.

And when you can’t keep up with the pace of demand, ask your friends to help. And also ask your open source network if they know great people you can hire to help you increase this pace.

Takeaway:

• Hardware is expensive to start, so secure funding for your first orders, either through your family and friends, either through crowdfunding with your community. Make a profit on each kit or product you sell to fund the next batches.
• When demand becomes too big for you to handle, find friends to help you scale your operations.
• Keep updating your products by including the innovations and feedback of your community.

In Adafruit’s case, Limor Fried got $10,000 in funding to buy parts and turn them into kits from her family. And as orders grew she hired friends.

Step 4 - The open source circle of awesome: Fostering innovation, talent and sharing among the community

To encourage people to stick around and really be proud of their projects, the company fostered a community, both online and offline.

Adafruit scaled the open source tutorials and the customer support, by inviting every user to post their DIY projects on their hardware platform, filling their website with third party tutorials.

Indeed, everyone is invited to the DIY party, from elementary-school students building robotic arms to grandmothers sewing jackets with working LED movie displays using Flora, a wearable electronics platform with conductive threads and washable hardware.

The web is full of third-party tutorials for Adafruit’s open-source projects, but Adafruit also has three full-time engineers dedicated to troubleshooting.

Involving the community in the creation of content and innovation create an awesome virtuous circle.

Imagine you start with 1000 people following you through Facebook, YouTube or your Newsletter, and a 100 people buy products from you.

Well, among these 1000 people, you might be getting 10 people who submit new tutorials and product ideas of their own, like prosthetics, children’s toys, TV controllers, 3D printers and whatnot. And this in turn attracts and enables more people to create new ideas, and on and on.

That’s when the fun really begins. The open-source designs lend themselves to a culture of sharing, and tens of thousands of Adafruit customers are feeding off each other’s creativity, tinkering with more powerful MintyBoosts and iNecklaces that flash at different speeds and cycle through bright colors.

People learn and come back with fixes, send us weird Halloween costumes based off our kits, Fried says.

I read blog posts and tweets from customers, and I definitely get ideas from them that I personally might not have thought of - Limor Fried

Little by little the power of this virtuous circle is what helped attract millions of people every month to Adafruit’s website and what led it to grow over 700% over 3 years in a row and get 1 million unique visitors per month to their website.

Takeaway:

• Create open channels for your community to interact with you, listen to what they are saying and creating, and promote their own innovations on your blog. This will create additional content to create buzz around yourself, and it gives back to your community by showcasing their work on a platform that they wouldn’t otherwise have access to.

More on other open channels you can create have been listed below.

Step 5 - An old school forum to do support 10 times easier

The forum is only for Adafruit customers who need assistance with their purchases. But even if it’s not for “everybody”, it’s an open and transparent door for the customers to interact with the the company, and search for solutions that might already have been answered.

People ask their questions, and once they are answered in public, it’s far easier to redirect to that thread than to serve each individual request for support.

In fact, sometimes the community of users will spontaneously help other users, helping the staff cover more ground.

A word of caution: Don’t open a forum if you are completely swamped with production. Depending on the number of customers you have, answering and moderating questions can take a quarter to half of your working time.

But again, investing a little time here would go a long way, and you should consider customer support just as important as selling or marketing.

Takeaways:

• Open a forum and reply to support questions if you or someone in your staff can devote 1 to 2 hours a day to customer support.

Show & Tell is Adafruit’s live show where makers from all around the world come in and share the electronic projects that they are currently working on.

The show runs on Hangouts for 30 minutes every week and is the place where they invite 8 to 10 makers from their community to showcase the projects they’ve been working on.

Instead of doing typical market research to learn what their customers want, Show & Tell is a great way for Adafruit to get insight into not only how people use its products but also what they might want in new ones.

Over the four years that it has been running, Show & Tell has been produced more than 200 times, collecting more than 2.8 million minutes watched and an astounding half a million video views.

To find some examples of the Show & Tell broadcasts you can go here.

Takeaways:

• Host and broadcast a weekly Hangout with up to 10 people where makers showcase their own creations and get feedback from the rest of the community, it will give you great input on new innovations you can take over, and potentially discover makers with whom you could create new partnerships.

Step 7 - Promote by teaching with $0 tools

Limor Fried started the Ask an Engineer weekly show in 2010 in her living room. And since that day she’s gotten over a half million video views to add to the ones of Show and Tell.

To get these results, she uses free tools like YouTube and Periscope to broadcast interesting or useful behind the scenes content every week about:

• The week’s product that appeared in the shop
• Time Travel - the hosts look back on the world of makers, hackers, artists and engineers and highlight a special person or event
• 3D Printing - they showcase a special project or product related to the industry
• A Q&A session and a trivia question, where the first viewer with the correct answer wins a product
• A section dedicated to Raspberry Pi and Arduino news and a section where the hosts read a positive email that they have received from a satisfied customer.
• Every week, a coupon code for a 10% rebate on everything in the store is issued and is valid only for the night.

To find some examples of their broadcasts you can go to their YouTube playlist.

Adafruit also produces the YouTube series Circuit Playground, meant for children. Each episode covers an electrical engineering concept. For example, one episode is titled “F is for Frequency”. Fried says she wants electronics to be “just as enjoyable for kids as watching their favorite movies”.

So as you can see, this is not super complex, it’s just a matter of being regular and making a list of interesting content that you can share with your audience. And if you fear you’ll run out of topics to talk about, your community is full of interesting people that you can invite to talk about cool things they’re doing.

As you’ve probably realized by now, Adafruit’s main way of growing is by teaching. So teach, teach, teach!

Takeaway:

• Make a list of things useful and interesting to your community, like the latest news of your products, or personalities in your industry, or a section about complementary products to your product. Plan a regular moment each week to broadcast this content. If you feel good in front of the camera, you can launch a live YouTube channel where you talk with your community about all of this content. If you are camera-shy, do a live podcast, write a blog post, or whatever you can think of to get the word out.
• Consider rewarding your viewers with a coupon at the end of the broadcast.

Once you’ve reached hyper growth as Adafruit has, it becomes essential to hire people with high potential who can help lead the company to keep up with this pace.

Adafruit doesn’t do unpaid internships, only paid ones, but as they report themselves “most of our recent hires at Adafruit have been because the maker was sharing what they do online. We actively seek out amazing people sharing and publishing online, if you want a paid position at Adafruit, this is the best way to go about it for sure!”

Nurturing an open source community of makers made it possible for Adafruit to find people who built on top of their products. This has the added benefit of making it super easy to spot capable people who fit their sharing culture, taking away the daunting risk of hiring untested prospects who might not be a good fit.

Takeaways:

• Invite your community to submit their work on your platform, and in exchange promote their work.
• Once you need to hire talent, you can go to the community you’ve nurtured to hire the right people who are already familiar with the company and who you know do great work.

Step 9 - Open Source Prize: Pick an “open fight” with a big player

In response to the launch of Microsoft’s Kinect for the Xbox 360 in 2010, Adafruit organized a $3,000 challenge to create an open source driver of the motion control system.

Microsoft responded by condemning the challenge to modify their product, but after significant advancements in the open source drivers, Microsoft backed off and corrected themselves by saying that they did not condemn it. They were in fact excited to see what the community developed.

So not only was it a great PR campaign for Adafruit, but it helped Microsoft understand and embrace the benefits of open source and a community of makers.

Takeaways:

• Find a product from a big player that you and your community would love to see in open source.
• Sponsor and launch a challenge prize to get the community to develop an open source alternative.

9+1 Key Takeaways from Adafruit’s Open Source Multi-Million Growth Strategy

As Matt Weinberg reports, compared with the hockey-stick growth of some Silicon Valley startups, taking 10 years to get to $33 million in sales revenue may seem slow.

But Fried prides herself on never taking a dime of venture-capital funding for Adafruit Industries, meaning the company can pay its bills and focus on its main mission of helping people understand and build technology, without having to panic about whether it’s growing fast enough.

So yes, Adafruit has become a small giant in the electronics world, but as you can see you don’t need a huge marketing team or venture capital to get similar results.

You just need a smart plan to build your community of users and contributors.

Here are the 9+1 key takeaways you can borrow, modify and adopt to your own business based on Adafruit’s real-life marketing tactics:

• Step 0 - Learn something useful. But don’t just learn it. Apply your learnings and practice it until you find your originality.
• Step 1 - Teach for free. Teach what you practiced for free online or offline. When you find something that people crave, then you can sell kits or consulting through your website or offline.
• Step 2 - Open Source your designs and tutorials. This way you’ll find a community that can freely build on top of your products and create new use cases and innovations.
• Step 3 - Find funding. Either ask friends or family to help fund your first batches, or, if you’ve gathered an audience large enough, crowdfund your first orders with your community.
• Step 4 - Create open channels to interact with the community. Listen to what your community of makers are saying and creating, and promote back their inventions. This will create additional content to create buzz around yourself, and it gives back to your community by giving them a platform than they wouldn’t have otherwise.
• Step 5 - Use a forum to provide customer support. Devote 1 to 2 hours a day to reply to support questions on the forum.
• Step 6 - Discover and showcase the communities innovations. Host and broadcast a weekly Hangout with up to 10 people where makers can showcase their own creations and get feedback from the rest of the community.
• Step 7 - Create content useful to your community. You can launch a live YouTube channel where you talk with your community about a number of things useful and interesting to your community, like the latest news of your products, or personalities in your industry, or a section about complementary products to your product.
• Step 8 - Hire your community of makers. Whenever you need to hire someone, you can find the most talented prospects among those who contribute on your platform.
• Step 9 - Launch a challenge to invite makers to create open source alternatives to big player products. Sponsor and launch a “Challenge Prize” to get the community to develop an open source alternative to a product you’d love to see open. This will offer great PR, and show other companies of the benefits of open source. And don’t skip steps. Launch a Challenge Prize only once you’re making cash!

Much information was shared through this article.

Originally published at boldandopen.com on March 1, 2018.

Many makers out there have a project they’ve been working on that they could take to the next level — and they just don’t know it yet. If you’re playing around with an idea you think could make it big, and you just don’t have the business plan, here’s a rough sketch of what to do with your arduino project.

1. First, you want to see if there is a need for your product.

Reach out to people with different ideas — friends and family, coworkers and acquaintances. Get a fresh perspective from people who have no assumptions about your idea beforehand. Ask questions that are unbiased. For example, instead of saying, “Isn’t this pen idea great?” you could ask, “What do you think of this pen idea?” And don’t be afraid to talk about your idea and put yourself out there.

2. Save on costs by doing the initial prototyping yourself.

Look online on how to connect sensors to your Arduino project. Start by looking for highly-rated tutorials. An example of places to look for tutorials would be Instructables.com or on Make. Then see how your hardware and software are coming together. Look for bugs in your code. Cover every base and leave nothing untouched. For example, consider a code being stuck in a loop, driving the battery down. Consider the size, range, and every specification in the project.

3. Now it’s time to show off your prototype to the world.

Get feedback from the people around you on your prototype. Since it’s a low-fidelity or medium-fidelity prototype, test with different circles available — industry experts, friends and family, coworkers, customers, users, etc. Make sure to ask the right questions to your audience. Is the purpose of the product clear?

4. Know when your prototype is good enough that you now have to take it to the next level professionally for a more polished prototype.

After doing research, you’ll learn about the next steps ahead: costs, processes and timeline requirements. It’s important to get a fresh perspective on how to approach your project. We all overlook important aspects of our projects from time to time after working on them for so long.

5. After iterating, get a professional prototype made to gather real feedback.

Take your prototype to events and trade shows related to the industry where they will be used.

This is the part where you try to get a sale with your product. The objective of trying to sell your first prototype is to get validation and real-world knowledge that there is a need for your product. This is also the testing phase where you do simulations and try to figure out if there are any holes, such as in the battery life.

After the prototyping steps, there is the manufacturing phase. During this time, it’s important to have a business plan in place or some type of outline so your arduino project is more likely to take off.

With these prototyping steps, you should be ready for manufacturing in no time and ready to make money with your Arduino project.

This article was published by the Jaycon team. Learn more about how we can take your product design and hardware idea to the next level here.

TutorialsJaycon SystemsTips & Tricks, Prototyping, Electronics, Product Design, Product Development, Product Launch, Funding

In order to bring your tech product to market successfully, it is vital that you know every single one of your costs, and this article will enable you to plan for all of them. You will also learn why simplifying your electronic product is your best way to save money.

Most entrepreneurs drastically underestimate all of the costs required to develop, scale and manufacture a new electronic hardware product. This is one of the main reasons so many hardware startups ultimately fail.

Don’t make the fatal mistake of underestimating the costs, or worse yet not estimating them at all, because in order to succeed to market it’s necessary to know your costs.

Without knowing all of the costs you’ll either run out of money before your product is market-ready, or you’ll find yourself developing a product that can’t ever be manufactured profitably.

Through my years spent developing my own hardware product and then helping other entrepreneurs develop their products one of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that you need to simplify your product as much as possible.

Most entrepreneurs, and even most engineers, don’t understand all the long-term impacts of various product features. What may seem like a relatively simple feature can often significantly increase your development cost and the time it takes to get the product to market.

For example, something as simple as the position of a button could cost you thousands of dollars extra for the injection molds required for production of the enclosure.

Another example comes from an Academy member who shared his product requirements with myself and the other experts for feedback.

He was very technical and had spent a good amount of time specifying his product in detail. But he didn’t understand all the future impacts of the features he had specified for the product.

We explained to him why one feature of his product was going to drive up all of his costs by about 3 times including: development, prototyping, electrical certifications, and mold costs.

Several more feasible alternative solutions were proposed, likely saving him at least $50,000 in the long run!

The moral of the story is if you want to reduce all of your costs while increasing your chances of reaching the market then nothing is more important than spending some time upfront to simplify your product.

The catch is that unless you understand the entire development and manufacturing process it’s difficult to know the future implications of all of your product decisions.

Be careful asking your primary developer(s) to help simplify your product because it creates a conflict of interest. The more complex the product the more money they get paid. Instead, find someone independent of your primary developers to help you simplify your product.

Part 1 – Development Costs

Development costs for most hardware products are broken down into three categories: the electronics (including programming), the plastic and other mechanical parts, and the retail package.

The electronics does all of the magic, the plastic and mechanical parts hold the product together, and the retail package protects and sells the product.

For more details on how to develop a new electronic product see my Ultimate Guide – How to Develop a New Electronic Hardware Product.

Electronics Cost

The electronics will usually be the most complex and expensive part of your product to develop. It will usually consist of two major parts: PCB design and programming since most products require some level of programming.

Unless you do all of your own product design, your development costs will be a significant expense.

Prototyping the electronics is divided into two steps: production of the blank Printed Circuit Board (PCB) and soldering of all the electronic components onto the PCB. The PCB is what holds and connects all of the individual electronic components.

How much of the development cost is for the electronics PCB design versus the software varies depending on the product. For lots of products it’s a pretty equal split between the two.

But many products can swing either toward being more hardware-complex or software-complex and the costs will follow accordingly.

I usually recommend starting off with about 3 to 5 boards, then potentially increasing the quantity for each iteration.

Once you’ve confirmed functionality and worked out most of the major bugs then you can increase the prototype quantity and begin sharing samples with investors and potential customers.

To learn more about PCB design be sure to watch this free tutorial and check out this in-depth paid course which teaches you every step of PCB design.

Enclosure/Mechanical Development Cost

Unless your product will be marketed strictly to the DIY/maker market it will require some type of enclosure, which is usually made of plastic.

You can expect to spend at least several thousand dollars to develop the 3D models for the enclosure. If appearance and ergonomics are critical for your product then the cost to design the 3D model will be higher.

Nearly all electronic hardware products require a case or enclosure.

Here’s an introductory course on 3D modeling using Fusion 360.

Some products may require additional mechanical parts such as stamped metal components, or perhaps even moving parts. This will add additional costs for mechanical engineering and prototyping.

Prototyping of the plastic enclosure is most commonly done using 3D printing technology. 3D printing builds a custom shaped part by stacking layers of molten plastic.

The popularity of 3D printing has really helped to bring down the cost of creating plastic prototypes. For some startups purchasing your own 3D printer may be the most cost effective strategy.

For a few products a technology called CNC machining may be a better choice than 3D printing. Unlike 3D printing which is considered an additive process, CNC machining is a subtractive process.

Instead of stacking layers, as with 3D printing, CNC machining is similar to sculpting. The process starts with a solid block of plastic and material is removed to form the final shape.

The main advantage of CNC machining is it allows the use of production injection-molded plastic whereas 3D printing uses special prototyping plastics that may have a different look, feel, and strength, compared to the production (injection molded) plastic that will ultimately be used.

My own product required several precise snap fits so it was critical to use the same plastic as used for production. So in my case CNC machining was the better choice. However, for the majority of products 3D printing will be the better technology.

One word of caution when it comes to plastic, what can be prototyped can’t necessarily be manufactured. This is especially true with 3D printing. With 3D printing there are few limitations on the shapes that can be created.

However, with production injection molding technology there are complex limitations on the shapes that can be produced.

So make sure you hire a 3D model designer that understands injection molding.  Otherwise you may find yourself with a prototype that can’t be manufactured in volume without a massive redesign.

To learn more about injection molding see this blog and check out this paid course.

Retail Package Development

Many hardware entrepreneurs neglect the importance of developing the retail package. This is a major oversight with serious consequences.

Unless you plan to only sell your product online, or to industrial customers, the retail package is just as important as the product itself. Sometimes it is even more important.

You can have the greatest product in the world but if your retail package doesn’t quickly convey this to the customer it won’t sell. Always remember, nothing matters without sales!

There are generally two types of retail packages used for electronic products: clamshells or boxes. Smaller products tend to commonly be packaged in clamshells, whereas larger products favor retail boxes.

Retail packaging can be as important as the product itself.

Both clamshells and retail boxes usually consist of two pieces: a custom shaped plastic piece to hold and protect the product, and a cardboard artwork piece to convey your sales message.

Just as with your product’s enclosure, the custom shaped plastic part of the package will require the development of a 3D model. Then an injection molds will need to be purchased.

For clamshells, one cost-saving trick is to use a stock clamshell with a custom molded blister (the part of the clamshell that custom fits over your product). The molds for a custom blister will be much cheaper than molds for a fully custom clamshell.

The clamshell insert card can also initially simply be printed on regular paper prototypes, but eventually you’ll want to upgrade to a thicker card stock which requires stamp printing.

Part 2 – Scaling Costs

Finishing the prototypes of your product is a major accomplishment so congratulations! But don’t get too excited.

It’s a huge step to go from prototypes to large volume production. It’s probably one of the most underestimated steps in launching a new hardware product.

Certification Costs

Most entrepreneurs forget to factor in the cost to get their product certified. This is primarily true if the product is electrical in nature.

Certification costs may range from only a few thousand dollars up to as high as fifty thousand dollars. It really depends on the product and to a large extent how any wireless features are implemented.

Just keep in mind certification isn’t required until you are ready to begin selling the product. In many cases you can also perform small sales tests without the need for certifications.

The main certifications required for electronic hardware products include:

FCC certification is required for all electrical products that will be sold in the United States.

Other countries will require their own similar certification. So if you plan to sell your product in multiple countries be prepared for the costs to certify your product in each country.

All electrical products radiate at least some electromagnetic energy so governments want to ensure they don’t interfere with RF communication.

The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) classifies two types of certification. Wireless products are classified as intentional radiators because they intentionally radiate radio waves.

Electronic products that don’t purposefully radiate electromagnetic energy, or that use pre-certified modules for wireless functionality, are considered non-intentional radiators.

Modules are pre-certified electronic circuits developed to perform a single function and to be incorporated into other designs.

Products classified as intentional radiators will cost about 10 times more to certify than non-intentional radiator products. This is the reason most companies developing products with wireless functions begin by using pre-certified modules.

Later, once the product is a proven success and higher volumes are being manufactured then the design is transitioned from a wireless module to a custom wireless design so as to increase the profit margins.

Underwriters Laboratories (UL) or Canadian Standards Association (CSA) certification is required for any product that will be sold in the USA or Canada that plugs directly into an AC electrical outlet.

Products running only on batteries with no recharging capabilities do not absolutely require UL/CSA certification.

Also if your product is only charged using a USB charger then UL/CSA certification is not required. If you plan to include a custom USB charger with your product then that component will need to be certified.

However, most large retailers and insurance companies do require UL/CSA certification for any electronic product regardless of whether it plugs into an AC outlet. So unless you plan to only sell your product online you will need this certification.

Many electronic hardware startups choose to start with only online sales, then later obtain UL/CSA certification so as to sell to larger retail chains.

This is a smart strategy since there is no point in spending tens of thousands of dollars on certification until you know the product actually sales.

CE certification is necessary for electrical products that will be sold in the EU (European Union). It is similar to a combination of FCC and UL certifications.

RoHS certification guarantees that the product is free of lead and is necessary for any electrical product that will be sold in the European Union (EU) and California.

However, because California is such a huge market, most companies have their product RoHS certified if it will be sold in the USA.

In most cases it doesn’t make sense to stock both a RoHS certified model and a non-certified model. This certification tends to be significantly more affordable than the other certifications.

We’ve covered the certifications required in the USA, Canada, and the European Union. There are numerous other certifications required for all the various other countries and regions.

If you plan to sell your product in a country we’ve not discussed then you should plan on spending some time researching the certification requirements for that country.

For more details about certifications be sure to read this article.

Manufacturing Setup Costs

The transition from prototype to mass manufacturing is a complex process that most people severely underestimate. Realistically, you can expect it to take about a year to make this transition.

Having a finished prototype is a long way from having a mass manufactured product.

I recommend starting with a local manufacturer in your own country (if possible). Later, once your manufacturing volume approaches 10k pieces, then you can migrate to an Asian manufacturer.

This strategy allows you to work out all of the manufacturing bugs before going offshore. Debugging problems with an offshore manufacturer is much more complicated.

Injection molding machines are used to produce plastic parts in high volume.

Although the electronics will likely be the most complex part of your product to develop, the plastic will usually be the most complex part to get setup for mass manufacturing. This is primary due to the need for high-pressure injection molds.

The injection molded parts needed for your product (enclosure, retail package, etc.) will likely be one of your biggest costs. Injection molds, especially those used for high volume manufacturing, are very expensive.

Just about any product will require at least three molds (front and back side of enclosure plus one for the retail package); however, most products require 4-6 molds.

Mold cost is mostly determined by the hardness of the metal used (higher volume molds use harder steel), the number of cavities, and the use of any side actions.

In most cases it’s best to start with a single cavity mold that uses a softer steel, and that is considered a simple pull mold (meaning no side actions are required).

An injection mold consists of two pieces of metal that are pushed together using high pressure to create a cavity in the shape of the desired part. Then, molten plastic is forced into the mold.

The main advantage of injection molding technology is that it’s a fantastically cheap method of producing millions of copies of a plastic part.

There are two big downsides to using injection molding: the high cost of the molds that I’ve already mentioned, and the limitations on the shapes that can be produced.

The high mold cost is mostly due to the fact that the molten plastic is injected over and over at extremely high temperature and pressure. This means the mold must be incredibly durable.

NOTE: Be sure to download your free PDF guide 15 Steps to Develop Your New Electronic Hardware Product.

To tolerate these extreme conditions injection molds are created using a hard metal such as steel. The more injections the mold must tolerate, the harder it must be and the higher it’s cost.

For example, you can use aluminum molds to make a few thousand units. Aluminum is soft so it degrades very quickly.

However, it’s also much easier to machine (i.e. carve) into the desired shape, so it’s cost is significantly lower. As the required volume for the mold increases so does the necessary metal hardness and therefore it’s cost increases.

A single-cavity mold made from a softer metal may cost a couple thousand dollars and be good for a few thousand units.

Whereas, a multi-cavity mold made from a really hard metal can potentially pump out millions of units, but it will cost you tens of thousands of dollars, perhaps as much as $50k.

For more details on injection molding see this blog article.

Part 3 – Landed Production Cost

The landed production cost is the final cost for your product landed in your warehouse.

No doubt about it, the landed production cost is your most important cost. It tells you how much inventory will cost, how much you can sell your product for and how much profit your startup can make!

Also, unlike the development and scaling costs, it’s a cost you’ll continually face for as long as your company exists.

In the video above I show you how to estimate the production cost for your PCB. This video is just a short clip from my full course where I teach you how to estimate the manufacturing cost for your ENTIRE product.

The landed production cost is the total cost to produce and transport a single unit to your warehouse. If you are successful you will have a very long, intimate relationship with this number. You will always be striving to reduce this cost so you can ultimately make more money.

For most products you can estimate that your suggested sales price will be 3-5 times your landed production cost.

Inventory is always one of the biggest costs for hardware companies. Your inventory cost is just your product cost times the quantity. So in order to estimate your inventory costs you need to first know your production unit cost.

Needless to say, you need to know your landed production cost as soon as possible. There’s no point in spending years developing and scaling a product that can’t ever be manufactured and sold at a profit.

Some of the many costs that make up the landed production cost include:

Electronic components

For electronic hardware products the cost of the electronic components will likely be the most difficult to accurately determine.

This is because considerable engineering design work is necessary in order to know which components are required for your product.

Determining the electronic components needed for a new product requires considerable engineering effort.

A lot of startups wait until their product is completely designed and prototyped before they try to determine their components cost and ultimately the production cost.

This is a mistake because you really need to have an estimate of this cost BEFORE you spend tens of thousands of dollars developing the product.

There may be some desired features for your product that you determine are too expensive to include in your first version. By estimating your components cost upfront you can avoid developing a feature that isn’t profitable or necessary initially.

PCB production and assembly

Just as with your prototypes, producing the electronics is a two step procedure. First the blank PCB is produced, and then all of the electronic components are soldered on to the board.

The cost of the blank PCB is mostly determined by its size and the number of routing layers. At a bare minimum two routing layers (top and bottom) are required; however, most designs will require from 4 to 6 layers.

More complex designs may require 8 layers or more. Increasing the number of layers generally allows you to reduce the overall size of the PCB.

The cost to assemble the PCB (i.e. solder down all the electronic components) is primarily determined by the total number of components, the minimum pin pitch, the use of leadless packages such as QFN or BGA, and whether components are soldered on both sides of the PCB.

Assembly of the PCB is performed by automated placement machines.

Keep in mind that the cost to produce your assembled PCB in volume will be many times cheaper than the per unit cost of the prototypes. Much of the cost is the initial setup so as the volume increases the setup cost becomes minimal.

That being said the setup costs for the electronics pale in comparison to the setup costs for the plastic (i.e. the injection molds).

Injection molded plastic parts

The cost you’ll pay per unit for any production plastic pieces is primarily determined by the weight, size, mold time, and type of plastic used.

The size and weight for each piece is dependent upon your design so there isn’t much you can do to control those variables short of making your product smaller or less durable (thinner plastic).

You can eventually increase your production speed, and reduce the part cost, by using multiple cavity molds. A multi-cavity injection mold allows you to produce multiple copies of your part with a single injection of plastic. But having multiple cavities also significantly increases the mold cost.

Don’t jump into buying multiple cavity molds until you have worked through any tweaks or changes to your initial molds. It is wise to run at least several thousand units before upgrading to multiple cavity molds.

Increasing the number of mold cavities is usually the best method for reducing the plastic part cost since size, weight, and the type of plastic directly impact the end product.

Other mechanical parts

Some products will require various other parts such as stamped metal pieces (for internal shields, etc.), springs, gears, screws, motors, and etc. In many cases, stock components can be used which will eliminate any scaling costs.

Final product assembly

Once the various individual components are ready the next step is to assemble them to form your final product. The cost of this step is almost entirely labor costs.

This means eventually you’re likely to need to have final assembly completed at a location with low wages such as Asia.

The cost for final product assembly is mostly labor costs.

Testing

Once the final product has been assembled it needs to be tested to confirm it is fully functional and meets all of the quality specifications.

Some testing of the electronics may also be done before final assembly so as to prevent wasting the cost of final assembly for a unit that has problems with the electronics. As your scrap rate decreases you’ll likely perform all testing after the final assembly is completed.

Improper testing, and ultimately shipping bad units to customers is a common mistake and one that can spell death for your startup.

Many entrepreneurs tend to rush their new product to customers but shipping bad units will start your company off with a bad reputation which can spread quickly online.

Scrap Rate

No manufacturing process is ever perfect and you are guaranteed to have some faulty units. Initially this may be 10% or more, but as time goes on and you optimize your manufacturing process you should be able to reduce this number to only 1-3%.

Packaging

Packaging costs depends on whether your product will be selling in retail stores, or primarily online. For products sold in retail outlets having optimal retail packaging is a critical priority so packaging costs will be significantly higher.

The packaging cost can be greatly reduced if you plan to only sell your product online, via TV, or to industrial customers.

High-end retail packaging (i.e. full color boxes with custom plastic inserts) can be really expensive (costing as much as $5 to $10 each) so in most cases it’s best to start off with more simple packaging to minimize your costs. This is one reason it may be best to focus initially on online sales.

Don’t forget to include the cost of the master carton that will be used to ship your packaged product. The master carton cost is typically quite low since it usually just a cardboard box and the cost gets split between multiple units. Nonetheless, it’s important to include it in your cost calculations.

If your product requires a retail display stand then that can add another cost to your package cost calculations.

Returns

Just like you are guaranteed to have some faulty units that must be scraped you’re also guaranteed to have at least a small percentage of unhappy customers that wish to return their purchase. So be sure to include this in your final production cost.

Just as with the scrap rate your return rate should decrease as you optimize your product, packaging, and customer service.

Freight

Most products will ultimately be manufactured in Asia. This means your finished product will first need to be trucked from the factory to the local sea port. Then it will be loaded on a cargo boat for shipment to your target country.

Then, once the boat arrives in your country you’ll need to truck it from the port to your warehouse or directly to your customer.

Most products coming from Asia are shipped by sea on huge container boats.

In rare cases you may wish to ship via air cargo, but the cost will be significantly higher than shipping via sea.

For shipping via truck it’s the weight that primarily determines the shipping cost, and for shipping via boat it’s the volume that determines the cost.

Duties

Don’t forget the taxes. Both the country of manufacture and the country of import will charge duties which need to be included in the final landed cost. Although, some product categories may be exempt from export and/or import taxes.

Each product classification has a number known as a Harmonized Tariff Schedule (or HS code). Once you’ve determined the HS code for your product then you can look up the export and import duty rates.

Conclusion

The cost to launch a new electronic product can be overwhelming, especially for entrepreneurs and startups. Development costs will be your first financial obstacle to surpass, and scaling costs will be your largest cost.

However, the landed production cost will definitely be your most important cost since it determines your profit, sales price and inventory cost.

You’ll eventually move beyond the development and scaling costs, but you’ll have to live with the production cost indefinitely.

Finally, don’t forget to prioritize from the start simplifying your product so all of these costs will be reduced and you’ll get your product to market much faster.

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Simple Electronics Projects for Beginners

This article is a collection of simple electronics circuits we have published over a span of 3 years, which can be used as simple electronics projects for students, beginners, engineering students and other hobbyists. The following circuits listed below can also be used for your mini project needs. But we won’t recommend any of these circuits for your final year or main project requirements.

While selecting the circuits for this article, we have taken care to serve you with popular circuits on our website which are easy to implement.

We suggest you go through all the comments before practically testing any of these circuits which will save you a lot of troubleshooting time.

All of these circuits fall into the basic or small or hobby category and that’s why we used simple electronics projects as the title. And all these circuits are free of any patents and any other legal stuff; you can experiment with them at your own free will and creativity.

So here begins the list:-

1. Simple Water Level Indicator

Objective:- To measure the level of any conductive non-corrosive liquid.

We selected this circuit first because of its simple nature. This water level indicator circuit is easy to implement and is composed of the least components. You only need 5 transistors, 5 resistors and 5 LEDs to implement this circuit; which makes it an ideal simple electronics project for beginners and students.

2. Automatic LED Emergency Light

Objective:- Implement a Lighting system/device using LED’s

This is another popular circuit that can be used for simple project development. There are 3 versions available. One is developed by the CircuitsToday team and the other by Seetharaman Subrahmanian (a great contributor of CircuitsToday). Links are given to other similar circuit applications like LED ramp circuit, street light circuit, flashing led circuit etc.

3. Infrared Motion detector

Objective:- Detect Infrared rays. This circuit idea can be modified to design simple projects like Intruder alarm, Anti-theft systems etc.

A circuit application that everyone must try out. This circuit will teach you how to deal with infrared detection (transmitting and receiving), usage of 555 IC as a monostable multivibrator inside an application, usage of ICs like LM 1458 etc.

4. 7 segment counter project

Objective:- Learn the application of 7 segment display. (This circuit will teach you how to use 7 segment display for your future applications)

A simple electronic circuit that uses two ICs – NE 555 (as an astable multivibrator to trigger CD 4033 IC) and CD 4033 for counting purposes. Apart from two ICs and a 7 segment display (LT 543), the circuit uses a minimal set of components, 4 resistors, 1 capacitor and a diode.

5. Fire Alarm Project

Objective:- Detect fire in a given area and warn using an alarm system.

Though simple in nature this circuit will help you to understand how real-world electronics systems are built. This circuit is a basic one that senses smoke to detect fire and hence produce an alarm to warn people around. It uses an LDR to detect smoke (By default LDR is kept active by a light fall; smoke will mask the light and hence LDR resistance will increase), IC UM 66 as a tone generator, IC 7805 to drive tone generator IC and TDA 2003 IC as an amplifier to drive the speakers (alarm system).

6. Lead-acid battery charger

Objective:- To charge a battery.

So why not try your hands at charging a lead-acid battery? Here is a simple electronics project that will let you charge your battery. This circuit is very simple in nature which consists of an LM317 IC (which provides correct charging voltage), a couple of resistors, capacitors and a potentiometer.

7.  Simple 10 Watt Audio Amplifier

Objective:- To design a 10-watt audio amplifier.

How can we avoid audio electronics projects? So let’s start our audio electronics journey with a simple audio amplifier project. As written in the objective, our aim is to design and implement a simple audio amplifier using IC TL081 (as a preamplifier). A much advanced audio amplifier project is given below.

8.  150 Watt Amplifier circuit

Objective:- To design an amplifier circuit and deliver 150 watt RMS to a 4-ohm speaker.

The first thing to mention is; above given project is the most popular circuit on CircuitsToday with live discussions going on (so far 563+ comments). We recommend you to g through all comments section to understand various problems faced by our readers while implementing this circuit. This will help you in your troubleshooting phase. So let us talk a little about this circuit. This is the cheapest 150-watt amplifier you can make using a pair of Darlington transistors TIP 142 and 147.  You have to go through the circuit design and description carefully as it will take a little bit of effort to get the desired output.

9. Simple Inverter Project

Objective:- To design a  simple 100-watt Inverter.

This is a simple low-cost inverter circuit that comprises IC CD 4047 and two MOSFET’s IR540 as its main components. This circuit will teach you the basics of the common application we always use in building electronics devices.

10. FM Transmitter project

Objective:- To design an FM transmitter circuit that can transmit signals up to 2 kilometres.

How about designing a local FM station for your college? A station where students can air their programs (songs, speeches, solos) and all your college mates can receive them? Here is such an interesting project.  This is a low-cost project which can be assembled using basic components.

So far we have covered 10 simple electronics projects for beginners, students and hobbyists. We will keep on expanding this article in the future with other interesting small and basic projects.

Latest Projects

1.Water Level Controller using 8051 Microcontroller 

Well, this is a fully functional water level controller made using an AT89S51 (8051 compliant IC from Atmel) microcontroller from Atmel. This water level controller monitors the level of the overhead tank and automatically switches on the water pump whenever the level goes below a preset limit.

2.Voltmeter using 8051 Microcontroller

This is another simple project using 8051 microcontrollers, made using the same AT89S51 IC from Atmel. With this circuit, you can measure voltages in the range of 0 to 5 volts.

3. 250W PWM inverter circuit 

The objective of this project is to build a 250W inverter circuit using the IC SG3524. You have already seen above our project for creating a 100W inverter but this one is more difficult.

4. Simple function generator

A function generator is used to generate electrical waveforms of different frequencies. The most common waves this generated are sine waves, square waves and triangular waves.

5. Digital Thermometer

You know the function of a digital thermometer, it measures the temperature of a body and displays the output in a human-readable form. This circuit uses a 3 digit display to show the output. The temperature is sensed via contact using the LM35 temperature sensor.

6. DC Motor Speed Control Using Arduino & PWM

This project is about how you can control the speed of a DC motor using an Arduino UNO board. You will also learn, what is Pulse Width Modulation(PWM) and how you can use PWM on the Arduino UNO board. 

7.Water Level Indicator Using Arduino & Ultrasonic Sensor

This is another project based on Arduino. In this project, you will learn, how you can make a simple water level indicator using an ultrasonic sensor, LCD and Arduino UNO boards. 

8.Interface common anode and common cathode RGB LEDs with Arduino

You all must have seen RGB LEDs at some point in your life. Have you ever wondered how these RGB LEDs works and how you can generate different colours using a single RGB LED? In this project, you will be learning all this. You will create a circuit using an Arduino UNO board that will control the RGB LED.

9.Arduino and BMP180 Pressure Sensor Interfacing

This is a very simple project. This project is all about how to interface a BMP180 pressure sensor with Arduino. You will also learn its working and find out the atmospheric pressure around you. Based on that atmospheric pressure you will be able to find your altitude. 

10.How to make a Digital Watch using an 0.96 inch OLED Display

An OLED is a display that can be used to display anything. You can use this display in any kind of project. Not only your projects will look cool by using this display but also you will be able to display a lot more information on it as compared to 16×2 LCD. In this project, you will be building a simple digital clock that will display the date, day and time.

If you have recently upgraded your phone or one of your other electronic gadgets, don’t just have them sitting in a drawer gathering dust. You can actually get some good money for them if they have been gently used.  If you have no idea who would like to buy them, then read on and find out.

7 Ways to Make Extra Cash By Selling Your Old Stuff

#1 – Swappa

Swappa.com is the place to go if you are looking to sell Android devices.  These include smartphones, tablets, and iPhones.  Founded by Ben Edwards in 2010, it started off a side project with the main purpose of building a marketplace where people could sell quality devices.  They offer safety for both buyers and sellers, simplicity, and offer low fees.

#2 – Glyde

Glyde.com buys and sells gadgets such as kindles, phones, iPads, MacBooks and tablets as well as games.  They guarantee a savings of up to 90% off retail prices of new gadgets.  The buying experience is not complicated and they offer a great service, protection as well as convenience.  Listing your gadget on this website only takes seconds and sending your gadget to them is free since they send you a pre-stamped, pre-addressed shipping kit.

#3 – Gazelle

Gazelle.com sells all kinds of phones including Android and Apple products.  They pay you in cash for your gently used gadget and then sell it to users looking to purchase it.  Gazelle has been in business since 2007 but launched their website the following year.  Quotes are instant, shipping is free and payments are sent as soon as the quality is verified.  They have sold over 2 million devices and bought devices worth $200 million so far.  [adsense468x15]

#4 – Gizmogul

Gizmogul.com allows you not only to sell back your old phone but to donate money to charity while at it.  Quotations are instant and shipping is free.  Once your gadget has been inspected by their technicians you will get your payment via Paypal or by check.  The best part is that for each deal they transact $1 goes to charity.  They build schools both domestically and internationally and also fund afterschool programs.

#5 – Buy Back World

BuyBackWorld.com buys and sells all electronics.  Established in 2009 this business offers cash for old electronics via their online platform and offers its customers a seamless experience.  Quotes are fair, shipping is free and payment is speedy.  They are a green company committed to a zero-landfill policy.

#6 – Buy My Tronics

BuyMyTronics.com (no longer active) buys and sells all electronics including consoles, phones, and games. The brand is owned by GameStop, a global retailer of consumer electronics, wireless services, and video games with over 6,600 outlet stores around the world.  Buy My Tronics is an online trade-in platform offering consumers the choice of trading in electronics that they no longer use.

#7 – Next Worth

NextWorth.com is in the business of recycling and trading in electronics.  You can exchange your electronics either for a discount on a new model or for cash.  This company was found in 2005 by 3 students from Babson College.  They buy used electronics at a fair price and then resell eighty to eighty-five percent of the electronics why recycling the remaining fifteen to twenty percent.  They have partnered with Target where people can simply walk in, have the gadget inspected, and receive their payment on the spot.

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