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Investing into stocks can be profitable in more ways than one. In fact there are 3 different ways which someone who buys a stock can make money off of that investment.

1. Appreciation

One way that stocks make money for investors is through appreciation. If you can buy a stock at $20 and sell it for $40 you have doubled your money. In general stocks tend to go up over the long term, which is why the idea of buy and hold has become so popular. But if you look for stocks that are both technically and fundamentally strong you are likely to make a higher return then the rest of the market.

2. Dividend Income

Dividends can be a nice way to make a little extra income in the stock market. When a stock pays out a dividend everyone who is investing into that stock gets paid. This can become a nice cash flow as the dividends keep coming.

If a company has a dividend yield ratio of 10% then an investor would expect to make 10% of their investment back every year in dividends alone. That means after 10 years or so they should break even just on dividends. Not bad considering that they are only an extra perk.

3. Selling Call Options

Another way to make money off of stock market investments is by selling options. These are just contracts which give the buyer the right to buy a stock at a specific price on or before a specific date. For example if you own stock XYZ and it is trading at $50 you can sell the $55 call option on it and make a premium from that, by doing so you actually risk getting called out of the position at $55.

If the stock goes above $55 and you get called out you might miss a huge profit. But if it stays below $55 you will not only profit from what the stock did do, but you will also make money from the option premium you collected.

By selling an option you take on some additional risks, but the idea is that the option premium you take in might make it all worth it.