If you are serious about green living, then you need to practice what you preach. If you are looking to make money, then you must find a green way to do so. Fortunately, there are some strategies that are consistent with your sustainable lifestyle.

Green Options to Fatten Your Wallet

There are only two meaningful ways to improve your financial situation: Spend less of your wealth or earn more of it. Unless you’re already earning an impressive paycheck, spending less probably will not make an epic difference in your lifestyle. So, there comes a point when you have to figure out how to earn more. Unfortunately, a lot of money-making opportunities are very wasteful and hurt the environment.

Let’s discuss 4 viable ways to earn more money that are eco-friendly.

1. Learn How to Improve Your Negotiation Skills

Many employees settle for the salary they are offered, even if it is less than what they want to be making. If you learn to negotiate your salary, you can avoid this pitfall and earn more money. You don’t need to leave a carbon footprint with this approach.

Negotiation skills are even more critical for entrepreneurs and freelancers. You’ll need to be able to negotiate successfully with clients and suppliers if you want your business to prosper.

2. Add More Value to Your Employer – Then Ask for a Raise

Alan Collins is a professional author and blogger who used to be the Vice President of Human Resources at PepsiCo. In a recent blog post, Alan explains the science of getting rich in human resources (HR). The principles he shares in his blog post extend well beyond HR and are applicable for professionals in other occupations as well.

The secret is adding value. Give your employer more in terms of value for the work you do than the value of the salary you receive as compensation in return. In other words, make it obvious to your employer that the company is getting a bargain in exchange for the work you do.

If you work in human resources, that would mean you’d have to accomplish things like helping your company retain its best employees, saving thousands or millions of dollars in recruiting and training costs. If you’re a programmer, that means you’d have to accomplish things like creating programs that can be sold for exponentially more than the sum total of your salary.

Once you’ve added significant amounts of value to your employer’s bottom line, you can make a good case that you deserve a raise. So earn it and then ask for it.

You don’t need to hurt the environment here either. There are plenty of add value that are eco-friendly.

3. Switch Jobs

Switching jobs can sometimes be the best way to maximize your income. Perhaps you’ve already tried adding more value for your current employer, requesting a raise and negotiating for your desired salary. If that didn’t yield the results you hoped for, finding a new job might be the best way to achieve the salary you want to earn.

4. Earn an Advanced Degree

An advanced degree might or might not help you to achieve your goal of earning more money. In some cases, an advanced degree is more than worth the initial outlay of time and funds required. In other cases, it isn’t.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has posted an excellent article that explains, with real data to back it up, when an advanced degree could realistically be expected to provide a solid return on the investment. Their data indicates that it is usually worthwhile to obtain an advanced degree in business, healthcare, education and STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math).

If your goal is to work for a corporation, obtaining an advanced degree is one of the most straightforward ways to earn a significantly higher paycheck. This is particularly true if you work in the finance industry. For finance professionals, earning an MBA online can be one of the quickest and most lucrative ways to increase your salary. Experts at the BLS have determined that it is typical for finance industry professionals to boost their paychecks by 90 percent simply by obtaining an MBA.

Of course, there are other possibilities for increasing your earnings – but many of them involve taking on a significantly greater workload. These 4 ideas are beneficial because they don’t necessarily require you to work more in order to earn more. Overall, these are 4 of the most straightforward ways to earn more money (without having to work too much harder).

Find Green Ways to Make Money

There are a lot of ways to make money that are eco-friendly. Make sure that you understand them and protect the environment at all costs.