24 Legitimate Ways to Make Money Online
Making money online is the dreams of many people. There are courses, books and articles available online to teach you – what you need to know in order to succeed but still, 98% of people who try to make money online fail within a year. Why? That is because of laziness and misinformation about online business or making money online.
This post is going break it down when it comes to making money online as creator, freelancer or professional.
There is no magical way to make money online. If you are going to work from home as a business owner or professional you have to also learn – how to market your business various way and beat the competition. Without knowledge of marketing, you are not going to succeed no matter how many times you try.
There are primarily three ways to make money online: Work, Create or Promote. There is no shortcut for making money online, you need to have experience, patience and courage to do the work you need to do.
Work
When you exchange your expertize and time for money then It is called a job. Same goes for an internet-based job. But there are big differences between 9 to 5 regular job and an internet-based job. In a regular job, you have to go to the office every day, follow the office rule and you will have less freedom in your work life.
In other hands, Internet-based job has more freedom and abilities to make more money but the downside is you will have no financial incentive which only comes with a regular job like insurance, paid vacation etc. Here is a list of work you can do to make money online.
1. Freelancing
Freelancing is one of the easiest ways to make money online. You can start making money from today. Only things you need is the expertise on any filed which has demand in the freelance marketplace and time. You can work as a freelancer through a freelance website like Upwork, Freelance.com and Fiverr – and also you can offer your service directly to your clients.
When you are just starting out – I will recommend you to work on freelance website. When you have following of your own outside the freelance website. You can build the following using content marketing or pitching your service to your prospect directly. Then, start offering your services directly to make money online as freelancer.
2. Remote Job
Today many companies are providing their employees flexible remote job. It is because working remotely through the internet is easier than renting an office and it is also a better way of running a business nowadays in terms of productivity. So it is win-win for employer and employees both.
There are many types of remote jobs like an hourly, contract based, project-based etc. It depends on the employer.
3. Virtual Assistant
Many professionals and business owner is turning to a virtual assistant to get things done faster and be more productive. You can find a virtual assistant job through the freelance website or work with a middle man agency like Zirtual.
As a virtual assistant, you don’t have to jump from one project to another as Freelancer do. And, you also don’t have to compete with other virtual assistants. It is the best way to make money online if you just want to make a few bucks or you live in third world countries.
4. Selling Expert Advice
If you have expertise and knowledge in a certain field then you can sell your advice as a consultant. Of course, you have to brand your self and market to attract clients. You can sell your advice as an expert on Clarity.fm or become a coach to offer your service on a platform like Coach.io.
5. Consulting Agency
Ok, I have already covered up on selling advice as an expert but what if you can turn this expert advice into a long terms business. To do that – You have to position your self as a business or agency who provide professional services.
You can hire other freelancer or employees to help you with your business. This is the great way to make money online in the long run. It will take time to build a client base. In start you have to do cold emailing, PPC ads to get clients, later clients will come to you.
Create
You can make a real passive income by creating something and selling online. It could be any physical or digital product. I am not talking about service. I have already covered up about services in the work section.
Think of this way: instead of working on someone else business – invest your time and energy in creating a product which you can sale as your own. The best kinds of product or assets are which required you to create one-time and sale as long as you want.
6. Blogging
Blogging is an old and still relevant way to build your online audience and start making money online. Just like any other skill or knowledge, there are people in the world who is looking to learn something which you already know. And people who want to entertain them self with your content.
You don’t have to be an expert to write a blog post. Usually expert doesn’t write, they sell services. You just have to be one step ahead of your audience. This is it. Go ahead and start blogging now.
7. Creating Video
Marketer says content marketing is king of the information age. If it does then video content is the king of content marketing. Video content is more engaging, earn people trust quickly and drive more traffic than any other content marketing.
Don’t be a shy person, if you do then you will end up working for a regular job or freelancing. Video marketing is going to stay. Start creating tutorial videos, vlogging or an entertainment whatever get your audience attention.
8. Creating Podcast
Radio is now replaced by Podcast. Today’s media company and brand are using the podcast as a communication channel. Advertisers are also jumping to podcast trend to promote their offering.
A podcast is just like Blog but instead of writing, you do audio recording. There are many benefits of having a podcast for your brand. You can connect with a large number of an audience using Podcast and monetize your effort using sponsorship.
9. Write an eBook
Amazon ebook publishing accounts for 80% of ebook publishing market share in the USA and it is growing faster. Selling Ebook online is the best way to start making money.
You can easily start selling an ebook from your website and on a marketplace like Amazon. You don’t need a literary agent or publisher to become a published author, welcome to self-publishing.
10. Selling Graphics
Are you graphics designer or painter or illustrator? Using the Internet you can connect with a buyer and sell your art easily than ever before. There are graphic design marketplaces where you can list your assets and get paid as per download.
11. Membership website
If you are an instructor or someone who own data or anything which has demand in the marketplace? You can turn this idea into a membership website and charge your audience requiring fees for access.
Is this sound make sense to you? If it does then create a WordPress website and use a membership plugin to turn a normal website into a membership income generating hub.
12. Online Forums
If you dream of having your own Facebook, I mean your own social media platform – Think of Online forum is your own Reddit. It is the best way to build online communities and create content without creating content, I mean user-generated content. Just like Facebook doesn’t create content, their users do.
You can monetize your online forums by selling ads, Affiliate marketing, selling your own product/services etc. The best part is You own your social media platform and the audience.
13. Create and Sell Mobile App
If you know a programming language like Android development or any other mobile app development programming language. This is for you. You can create an app and monetize through selling Ads or sell subscription service.
You don’t have to create next What’s App to make money using mobile app development. Just start with creating a small tool which makes people life easier. Tools like Bar code scanner, Ebook reader, notepad, Audio player etc.
14. SaaS Business
Saas stands for “software as a service”. It is the most popular way of starting your own online business or say Startup. You get the idea which has demand in the marketplace then hire developers to turn an idea into the software business. There are many examples of Saas business think of social media management tools, productivity tools etc.
Promote
Now you have learned the way of making money through working online and creating something. Next is promoting or marketing. Well before you start promoting you need to have something to promote. If you already have your own product/services then this section is not for you, It is for those you don’t have their own product.
15. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is the most popular way of making money online. You don’t need any experience other than sales and marketing. As an affiliate marketer, you are going to act as a broker or sales guy. Sales and marketing is the only profession which doesn’t require you to have a qualification. I mean anyone can start making money through affiliating marketing.
If you curious about affiliate marketing and want to learn how to make money through affiliate marketing then take a look at this.
16. CPA Marketing
CPA stands for Cost per action. It is a form of marketing where a business owner or product creator pay their sales partner based on leads, download of software, or any other action. CPA marketing is very similar to affiliate marketing but marketer gets paid on a certain action instead of sales commission.
17. Selling Banner Ads
If you have a website or blog with a good amount of page view then selling ad space on your website is the best way to make money online. You get paid when someone clicks on your ads and per thousand-page view.
There are online ads networks like Google Adsense and Buysellads.com which is the best way to monetize your website selling ads.
18. Selling Solo Ads
If you have direct contact information of your audience like email address, phone number etc then you can partner with the marketer to sell ad space in your newsletter or send promo email to your subscribers. This way you can monetize your leads without selling your subscriber data.
19. Influencer Marketing
An influencer is a person who has access to a large amount of audience via an online platform like social media or offline like TV or Radio. Influencer marketing is popular nowadays because of the rise of social media. It is now easier than ever before to build an online audience and fan base. The most popular Influencer marketing platform is YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.
If you have a fan base on any social media then it is easy to monetize your audience through Influencer marketing. You can get your profile list on various Influencer listing platforms like Influence.co to attract clients and get sponsors deal.
20. Dropshipping
Dropshipping is also known as an arbitrage e-commerce business. When you sell products online which you don’t own but you act as you do. I mean you collect the order from your customer then you use those data to order a product on someone else website.
This way your customer pays you $ but the product actually cost is $, you made $ in profit. You don’t touch the product because you are a middleman between a real e-commerce website and your customers.
Invest
When people talk about making money online they usually talk about working and promoting. But there is a whole new level of making money online. It is called investing.
Investing is a great way to double your money. If you have money then use it to buy and sell assets. Buy low and sell high. Did you get my point right? Do you – keep reading.
21. Domaining
Domain name buying and selling is called domaining. It is also known as digital real estate. The process of buying and selling a domain name is simple. You buy a valuable domain name at low cost then list your offer on domain name marketplace and wait for the offer to come in.
This is my favourite way to make money online. I have bought and sold domain name many times through Godaddy premium domain name listing. It is an easy way to make money online, you can always start with a low investment.
22. Buying and Selling Website
A website represents an online business, not just a presence. Flippa is a domain name, website, mobile app and any digital assets marketplace where you can list your offer for sales and run auction.
You can make money by buying a low-cost website with great value then sell it through Flippa or any other marketplace. You can also build a website from scratch to sell on Flippa.
23. Forex Trading
There are bunch trading you can do online from stock market trading to binary options trading. The Internet has also an open door for fraudulent, make sure you know what you are doing when it comes to trading online.
My favourite trading is Forex trading, you buy one currency against another and hope that the value of the currency increase in your favour. That is the quickest way to make and lose money online.
24. Cryptocurrency Investment
Cryptocurrency is lucrative market, value of currency goes up and goes down quickly. If you have extra money in your pocket and want to have more freedom with your money or extra saving for you when things doesn’t goes right. Get you hand on crypto currency like Bitcoin etc.
I will not advice investing ICO and stupid cryptoshit, because there is lot of scam activity going on in crypto world. Make sure you stay alert and curious.
I hope I have made my point clear. Now go ahead hustle and stops looking for secret ingredients of making money online. Marketers like me uses secret words to get your attention other than that there is no secret.
When I started searching for a way to make money online – I was blown up for a certain time, that there is a secret which only my Bizz guru knows. I started freelancing and then later I position myself as a brand (Consulting agency). I didn’t make any money from the consulting agency I thought it will cool say “Now I own my business bitch”.
After a long way, I started blogging, I am still blogging.
It was a long article. Thanks for reading to last, now go ahead and join my email list, this is where the real magic happens.
