28-year-old Noora Kuisma quit her job and decided to try if you can make money doing nothing.
As a teenager, Noora Kuisma thought she only had one chance.
He has to go to high school, then business school, and then work at a big company. He thought this was the only way to become a decent member of society.
The plans came true.
After graduation, Kuisma went to a large company to analyze data. Based on the information, he made recommendations to the company’s management. The salary was good and the co-workers were also good.
However, this was not enough.
Kuisma wanted to decide his own work. He wanted more personal freedom and responsibility.
He says that he recognizes a new attitude towards work in himself and other representatives of his generation.
– Not everyone wants to work long hours as ants in a big anthill anymore. Perhaps nowadays more importance is given to free time and lifestyle.
– What has been great and respected is beginning to change.
Noora Kuisma says that the everyday life of an entrepreneur is not as good as it seems for example on social media. Photo: Alexey Jalava/IS
After resigning, Kuisma became an entrepreneur. He is founding two startup companies. He is also a real estate investor.
However, with freedom also came anxiety.
– The life of an entrepreneur is not good. I have never been as unwell as I am now.
In recent years, Kuisma has been living on his savings from apartment investments, as he barely received a salary from start-up companies.
However, construction and renovation company Proppu and Ailene.ai, which focuses on artificial intelligence, have taught Kuima a lot.
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I wouldn’t do anything different, but it bothers me that I’m eating up my savings.
According to Kuisma, working for pay was much less stressful. Work lasted from eight o’clock to four o’clock and after that you could do whatever you wanted.
Now he has to think whether the money is enough and whether he can pay salaries to the people.
– Still, I want to be an entrepreneur. It cannot be measured by money how good it is and how much you learn here. I wouldn’t do anything different, but it bothers me that I’m eating up my savings.
Kuisma says he is not afraid of risks. The most important thing for him is to create something new.
He wondered why no one suggested him other options than going from high school to business university when he was younger.
Now he tries to encourage other youth by his example.
– Especially for those for whom school is not a thing, it is good to come up with different ways to do meaningful work in the society.
Noora Kuisma decided to prove to herself and others that making money is not as easy as many social media videos make it out to be. Photo: Alexey Jalava/IS
“This is how you quit your day job and earn 10,000 euros per month.”
“This way you get 100,000 euros of passive income per month.”
When Kuisma went on TikTok in the spring, he found a number of videos in a short period of time that offered advice on making money without doing anything.
It seemed strange, too good to be true.
– I began to feel irritated that such a message was being conveyed to the youth. Starting a company is not that easy.
So Kuisma decided to try if he could get a source of so-called passive income by doing the things mentioned in the video. He first tested three methods:
Kuisma was the first to try to take photographs. He uploaded the photos he took of the city’s homes to four different photo services. Till now he has not earned anything from the pictures. There are not enough downloads and views.
Next, he created an account in an online store where you can make canvas bags and T-shirts. He set up the shop in 15 minutes, but to earn even a little money he would have to sell at least a thousand bags a month.
Kuisma created a digital guide where he described 237 business ideas. Two guides have been purchased online and Kuisma has earned 9.8 euros. – This took probably 30 hours of work time, which means I reached an hourly wage of 0.24 cents.
So at least the results weren’t immediately shocking.
Kuisma is currently planning partnership marketing. In this respect he was lucky. He got in touch with a person on TikTok who has set up such a website.
Kuisma says that, for example, many price comparison websites offer partnership marketing opportunities.
– For example, the website may contain a link to an airline’s website and the airline pays for each click.
In practice, marketing works this way so that Kuisma can publish the link on his social media account or website and the company pays him for the traffic that is directed to the company’s website through the link.
Since a click pays a few cents, the traffic has to be very large to actually generate money.
During his experiment, Kuisma noticed that it is not easy to get passive income, at least by selling cloth bags. Photo: Alexey Jalava/IS
Based on his observations, Kuisma believes that selling online courses may be the easiest way to make money without doing anything. It would be most convenient if the curriculum was prepared by someone else.
Kuisma says that he often saw this on Facebook. In practice, the courses give exactly the same advice that they have tested, i.e. how to get rich by doing various things on the Internet and social media.
Kuisma criticizes the online course business.
– If there were no ethical guidelines and you just wanted to make money as easily as possible, you could make money with it.
Kuisma is troubled by the fact that the people selling the courses have never made money themselves using the methods they advertise with big speeches.
He believes that such courses are not in as much demand in Finland as, for example, in the United States.
– In Finland, we are quite careful, he reflects.
Read more: Saara Aalto and Marie Aalto are asking for a huge sum of money for their education – “Millionaire Course” takes social media by storm
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Most of the videos feel like selling a dream that doesn’t exist.
Kuisma believes that a passive income source has always been sought, but it is being discussed more now than ever. In social media, influence spreads rapidly from one continent to another. The generation thirsty for less work and more free time is a welcome audience.
– It’s a good idea that you can do anything.
However, Kuisma is skeptical of videos promising easy money and advises others to do the same. According to him, there are also videos on TikTok that entice people to join, for example, a stock trading group.
The video shows scenarios of luxurious foreign trips, nice cars and branded clothes.
– I don’t know if it’s necessarily a pyramid scheme, but pretty close to it.
She is particularly concerned about this phenomenon from the perspective of young people.
– If someone claims that with a little money you can achieve financial freedom, then the youth easily fall into such things.
– Most videos feel like they sell a dream that doesn’t exist. It is ideal that you can work from anywhere, be on the go and meanwhile the money will come into your account.
Ilta-Sanomat previously reported on TikTok videos in which young beautiful women promise luxurious lives and even wealth worth millions. At the time, IT expert and non-fiction author Petteri Järvinen speculated that it might be a pyramid scheme if no concrete products were sold through the network and the money circulating in the system came from the members themselves.
Read more: Finnish “hustler babes” are confusing on TikTok – “a cult has formed around them”
Noora Kuisma has noticed that people need concise and well-structured information. Photo: Alexey Jalava/IS
Kuisma says his passive income streams come from housing investments.
Still, not everything went according to plan.
There have been difficulties with both apartment sales and tenants. In social media, housing investing is sometimes given a very rosy picture.
Kuisma says he has half the apartments in his name and the other half in his company’s name. Their share in the rental income is currently around 2,500 euros. If a tenant is found in one apartment, the income will be 3,000 euros.
However, he only has about a hundred euros per month.
– There are loans and collateral on all apartments. If the cabins are full year-round, it works, but if they aren’t, I have to pay out of pocket.
There are so many providers offering all kinds of money advice in image and video streams of some that Kuisma fears reliable information will be drowned out in the crowd of excessive promises and hype.
They are asked if the most important information about starting a company can be gathered together, condensed and put in order.
– Something as simple as starting a company. There are thousands of YouTube videos about it on the internet. People go crazy about all this.
In Noora Kuisma’s opinion, excessive promises of “easy money” made by some people should be viewed with skepticism. Photo: Alexey Jalava/IS
Kuisma still continues to create his own content for social media. They still saw in the abundant use of social media its dark side, i.e. in addition to the problems of separating reliable and unreliable information.
Kuisma has also noticed changes in herself: Her ability to concentrate has weakened.
This is how we come back to working life.
– I don’t know if it affects the fact that working careers have become shorter and people no longer want to stay in one place for a long time, he said, echoing a sentiment shared by many other colleagues about the difficulty of concentrating. Let us reflect on our past experiences.
