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• Ways to Make Extra Money
• Hustle Finder

Customer service and sales gigs. Check out Mythical Games, Blooms Today (US only), and Segwick (US only). 

• Job Search

Creating a free Photoshop alternative as a solo founder, making $100k/month. Absolutely love this story. I’ve looked for free Photoshop alternatives in the past, but none of the ones I tried provided a great experience. 

Well, Ivan Kutskir has changed that with his creation: Photopea. This web-based Photoshop alternative started out as a PSD (Photoshop’s file format) file viewer, and slowly but surely, Ivan invested thousands of hours to turn it into the feature-filled editor it is today. 

He now ranks #1 on Google for the term “free photoshop” and the tool brings in millions of users each month. Monetization is done solely via display ads. 

Takeaways:

• You don’t need a completely unique idea to find success. What tool that exists today could you create your own spin-off of?
• You can do some insane things as a solo founder. While Ivan says he's "afraid of getting a business partner or investor" due to not being comfortable with it and admits that could be causing him to miss opportunities, it's still extremely impressive to see what he's built on his own. Proves that you shouldn't feel held back if you don't have a co-founder or team to help build your vision.

No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees. An interesting read from the creator of Gumroad on how they’ve designed a work environment where everyone essentially works on what they want, when they want. 

The work model makes me think of micro-tasking -- pick a task, finish it, submit it. It requires some self-motivation and discipline, but it gives workers who fit that type of environment a ton of flexibility and free time to work on side projects. 

This is how I’d like to run and grow Swift Salary in the future.

21 lessons from the founder of Dell, Michael Dell, who started the company at age 19 with only $1,000. At the age of 15, Michael purchased an early Apple computer in order to take it apart to see how it worked. In college, he started building computers and selling them directly to people, focusing on strong customer support and cheaper prices. (source: Biography.com) 

Here are my favorites from his lessons:

• 1. Curiosity. It’s so important to always be learning. You want to have big ears. To lis­ten, to learn, and to be curious. To be open to ambiguity. Design your product from the customer back.
• 8. Ideas are a commodity. Execution of them is not. Coming up with a great idea or strategy is necessary but, not sufficient for success. You must execute. This requires detailed operational discipline and understanding.
• 14. Everybody gets angry. But don’t stay angry. Anger is counterpro­ductive. Instead, be motivated by a desire to help others.

Be sure to check them all out here.

Hvae you checked your credit score recently? It's a good idea to check it over every now and then (at least once a year) to see how you're doing and to ensure there are no errors (or fraud) on your credit report.

Checking your credit score and report these days is simple and free too. You can get your report from Credit Karma or Borrowell quite easily and quickly. 

And no, using either of these services won't affect your credit score. They conduct what is called a soft inquiry to get your score, and this has no effect on your credit rating.

As a heads up though: they will recommend new credit card options to you that they believe you qualify for. This is how they make money. You can ignore their suggestions if you don't need a new card! 

Start making your list and checking it twice. Supply chain issues might be affecting retailers more than usual this year, and it seems like shoppers know it. 40% said they're going to start shopping earlier this year, with 22% having already started (including my mom).

Some retailers have started sales early too, but don't wait out for discounts. If you found something good, get it before it's gone.

To save money, use these 3 tools:

• Drop
  
• Honey
• Rakuten

Go here for more alternatives.

⚡ Summary: It was another strong week for crypto, with the total crypto market cap up from ~$2.1 trillion to ~$2.3 trillion since last Friday. 

NFT sales hit $10.7 billion in Q3. (Reuters) 

First cryptocurrency fund approved in Switzerland. The fund will track the performance of the 10 largest cryptocurrencies from SIX Swiss Exchange’s Crypto Market Index 10.

The US justice department is launching a crypto enforcement team to tackle cybercrime and money laundering. (Cointelegraph)

US SEC may approve as many as four Bitcoin futures ETFs this month. This would be big news as it would open up crypto to a lot of new investors. The ETFs would hold contracts that represent Bitcoin -- not the asset itself. (Business Insider)

⚡ Summary: Markets have not yet completely recovered from last week's slump, but they did end slightly positive for the week.

The US temporarily raised their debt ceiling until December (AP News)

Fourth-quarter gains incoming? The S&P 500 has historically returned average gains of 3.9% in the 4th quarter.

Diversify your information sources. This article caught my eye because it talks about something I’ve noticed a lot recently, especially since joining the financial side of Twitter: a lot of people make predictions about the markets, and a lot of those predictions are wrong. 

But, once they make one right prediction (even just by chance -- hence “the broken clock is right twice a day” saying, as mentioned in the article) they wave it in peoples’ faces. 

Then, of course, some people think “Wow, this person is an investing genius, they predicted this!” and they start to follow their advice religiously -- which can end up being pretty harmful if that persons track record is one right prediction out of 50 failed ones. 

The point? Get your information from multiple sources and always make your own conclusions. Don’t follow others’ predictions blindly.