With a base price higher than my genius friend’s SAT score, buying an iPad, a Magic Keyboard, and an Apple Pencil is expensive.
I can’t fix that problem.
What I can do is share a few ways you can make money with your iPad (to hopefully recoup some of your investment).
And don’t worry - this isn’t just a generic “make money online” list. I’ve included multiple ideas where having an iPad gives you an unfair advantage.
The Fundamental Idea
Before I get into specific examples, let’s understand the fundamental idea behind making money online. Quick note - this idea is from this video by Ali Abdaal.
To make money online, you need to provide value.
There are three levels of providing value online:
Services - learn a skill and use this skill to help other people
Products - create something of value and sell it
Audience - build a loyal audience by providing value, which you can then use to accelerate sales of services and products
Level 1: Services
Selling services can be a great starting point.
In my journey of providing value over the internet, I started by offering marketing services (albeit free) to local nonprofits.
It was a little tricky to find services where owning an iPad gives you an unfair advantage, but I was eventually able to come up with two.
Tutoring
This has been the go-to side hustle for students for decades.
From what I’ve seen, tutoring becomes especially lucrative when you focus on a very specific niche. For example, I have a friend who teaches debate and makes $40 per hour of coaching (as a high school student).
With an iPad and an Apple Pencil, tutors can show how to solve math or science problems. This can be useful in both an in-person and online context - tutors can use the iPad as a whiteboard and send notes to students for future reference.
Custom Drawings
I wasn’t sure whether to include this in the services or products category.
I’ve seen quite a few listings on Fiverr for custom drawings of people. If you’re a good enough artist, you could put up a listing on Fiverr or even go for the full Shopify + Facebook Ads approach (that’s where this turns into more of a product than a service).
You could also add these drawings onto a print-on-demand product like a poster or a t-shirt.
Level 2: Products
The next level of providing value is selling products. Ideally, these would be digital products that you can make once and sell as many times as possible.
Wallpapers
The great thing about selling wallpapers is that you don’t even have to be that great of an artist.
Following this video from DailyTekk, I learned how to create my own wallpapers on my iPad. While they aren’t anything special, they were pretty easy to make.
If you’re new to drawing, you could learn the basics within a few hours. After some practice, you could master the tools to create whatever wallpaper you (and your customers) could possibly want.
Courses
I was debating whether or not to include this on the list. I know the reputation they have.
But for online instructors, having an iPad can be a game-changer - being able to sketch out your idea on an iPad makes it easier to communicate with virtual students. The added visual aspect can boost the quality of your course, improving the experience for students.
Sell Notes
I recently took a look at this potential opportunity.
Through Nexus Notes, I listed some old class notes I took on my iPad. I haven’t received any sales, but it’s only been a week.
From what I’ve read online, you probably won’t make too much money with this. Regardless, it’s pretty easy to upload your notes and list them for sale.
Worst case scenario, you waste 10-15 minutes of your time.
Level 3: Audience
This level is usually the hardest and most time-consuming level, but also has the potential to provide the most value. In other words, it can be the most lucrative.
If you’re focused on using your iPad as an unfair advantage to increase your success potential, there are two directions you can take:
using your iPad to create content
creating content about your iPad
Writing
With writing, I’ve seen both directions used.
For instance, I’ve seen blogs and newsletters that use illustrations to explain concepts. This can easily be done with an iPad with a note-taking or drawing app.
I’ve also seen examples of the second direction with writing (hint: me).
YouTube
I’ve also seen both directions used with YouTube.
With the first direction, I’ve seen creators use Keynote to create drawing animations. For example, take a look at the 60 Second Finance YouTube channel. All videos on the channel were made using an iPad.
I know because I’m the one who ran the channel when it was active.
The second direction is very common on YouTube. Even in this post, I’ve listed two prominent channels with videos about iPads: DailyTekk and Ali Abdaal.
Final Thoughts
If you read this post to apply this information in your life, pick one idea and focus on it. Don’t give up.
If you didn’t - thanks for reading!
Hope this helped,
Adi