13 Brilliant Ways to Make Money Online

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Do You Want to Make Money Online?

More and more people are ditching their day jobs to pursue some of the numerous opportunities that are available to make money online.

When doing online jobs you can make money from home or from anywhere.

Ways you can make money online range from selling on eBay to providing freelance services, selling gigs on Fiverr, running an online business like affiliate marketing, blogging, selling products, creating information products, creating printables, selling ebooks, dropshipping, creating apps, YouTube marketing, selling stock photos, doing online surveys and many more.

I'll discuss some of the best ways to make money online.

Now before I discuss twelve ways to make money online, there are some important things to consider.

The best online job or business for you is the kind of work that suits your own personal talents, interests, and capabilities. When looking at online jobs and ways to make money online, it’s important to look at your skills and experience. Some online jobs require only basic computer skills while some online businesses require more knowledge and skills. Evaluating your skills will help you narrow down the right options for you and help you choose the kind of online work that you will be good at.

The pay for online work varies widely. Some online work has unlimited earning potential while some online jobs will help you make extra money in your spare time.

If you only need to make some extra money, you can make quick and easy money with surveys. Or you can put up a few gigs on Fiverr.

But if you are looking for a business with huge income potential, you should look into affiliate marketing or blogging. You typically won't make money immediately but over time you can make more than with some of the other online jobs.

Some of the methods discussed take hard work, dedication, and commitment. There are no shortcuts and no magic systems. You will not get rich overnight, and “making money while you sleep” is not as simple as it sounds because you have to put in the work first before you can get that passive income.

Have a closer look at some of those work-from-home ventures to see which ones will be most suitable for you.

Providing Freelance Services
Affiliate Marketing
Blogging
Selling on eBay and other auction sites
Dropshipping
Creating Information Products
Creating and Selling Printables
Selling Gigs on Fiverr
Selling eBooks
Creating Apps
YouTube Marketing
Online Surveys
Selling Stock Photos

Each of the methods discussed in this report are legitimate, real methods that can generate anything from some extra pocket change to an unlimited earning potential. While there are overhyped claims and scams online, these methods are very legitimate and viable, and definitely options to consider for anyone who wants freedom from the 9 to 5.

Now let’s dig into the 12 best ways to make money online.

#1 Providing Freelance Services

One way to make money online is by providing freelance services. You can turn many skills into a money-making business. Do you have an eye for design? Do you have writing skills? Can you type fast? Are you good at grammar? Are you good with numbers?

If you're interested in becoming a freelancer and providing services from home, you may want to read my other blog post, 12 Online Jobs – Work from Home or Anywhere where you'll learn more about these services:

Virtual Assistant
Transcription
Freelance Writing
Freelance Proofreading
Bookkeeping
Graphic Design
Web Design
Medical Billing & Coding
Scoping
Coaching
Teaching
Tutoring

Those are all skills you can turn into an online business by providing services online.

In my blog post, 12 Online Jobs – Work from Home or Anywhere, I discuss freelance work in detail.

In this post, I'll discuss online businesses and ways to make money online that have a huge income potential.

#2 Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make money online. Affiliate marketers make money by recommending other people's products and services. When you make a sale through your affiliate link, you’ll earn a commission. Some programs also pay for getting clicks or other actions such as email sign-up.

You sign up for a company's affiliate program, e.g. Amazon, Walmart, or many others. You get a special link and place your affiliate link on your website. When a visitor clicks through that link and buys a product, you make a commission.

Don’t expect to make a fortune overnight with affiliate marketing. There is a learning curve to become successful at it. Your income will increase gradually as you learn more about affiliate marketing and Internet marketing and over time you can do very well.

In addition to the huge income potential, affiliate marketing has many other benefits:

Make passive income. It will take plenty of work to get started in affiliate marketing. But once your blog is set up with plenty of content and affiliate links, you can literally make money while you sleep or while you’re on vacation. I love getting affiliate sales while I’m on vacation!
Extreme flexibility. Affiliate marketers can have an amazing lifestyle. You can truly work at your own schedule. For example, Michelle Schroeder is making $100,000/a month from blogging and affiliate marketing. And she does that while traveling full-time. There are many affiliates that make that kind of money and some make even more than that. Read my review of Michele’s course here
Can be extremely profitable. I have personally been making money with affiliate marketing for years and recommend affiliate marketing as one of the best ways to make money online.
Income: Your income will vary depending on the amount of effort you put into it, the products you’re promoting and the commissions they pay. Your affiliate profits can range from very little to multiple six figures.
If you don’t realize the huge income potential of affiliate marketing, I recommend reading some income reports from successful bloggers. Not only will those numbers inspire you, but they can also provide some great information and ideas for your affiliate promotions.
For example, Michelle Schroeder-Gardner makes over $100,000 a month from affiliate marketing. She shares her knowledge in her course, Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing course.
I was intrigued by Michelle’s income reports and bought her course in December, Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing. It’s an excellent course I recommend for new affiliates (that’s my affiliate link – see how easy it can be to make a recommendation for affiliate products?). And even though I have years of experience in affiliate marketing, I still benefited from her course and implemented several of her suggestions. But I especially recommend her course for people who are new to affiliate marketing. You can read my review here.

The truth about affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is often misrepresented as a way to make money fast and easily. But becoming a successful affiliate marketer usually doesn’t happen overnight.
There are people who are able to make affiliate sales almost immediately but those are exceptions. It’s more typical for affiliate income to grow gradually as you learn more about affiliate marketing and internet marketing.
How much money you can make with affiliate marketing (or blogging) is entirely up to you and your ability to act on what you learn. You have to spend time to learn what you need to know to become a successful affiliate marketer. You have to be willing to do what it takes to succeed and implement what you learn. And you have to be persistent enough to stick with affiliate marketing until you become successful.

Click here to get Michelle’s free ebook, Affiliate Marketing Tips for Bloggers, and find out how she is making $50,000 per month in affiliate marketing.

Recommended Reading

If you're interested in learning more about affiliate marketing, read some of my articles below.

#3 Blogging

Blogging is one of the most popular online businesses today. Many people even build several blogs on different subjects.

Blogging is not the fastest way to make money from home. It takes a lot of work to create content, get traffic to your blog, and make a blog profitable. Some people start making money within just a few months but typically, it will take a lot longer to start seeing good results.

But once your blog has been established and you know what you're doing, you can make huge amounts of money blogging.

There are many ways to make money blogging:

Selling services
Selling products
Affiliate marketing
Make money with PLR products
Placing ads from advertising networks
Selling ads on your blog
Sponsored posts
Setting up an affiliate program and have affiliates sell your products
Memberships and recurrent commissions
Get donations
Increase sales by building a list and automating your follow-up

Read more details in my article, 12 Clever Ways to Make Money Blogging

RECOMMENDED READING

#4 Selling On eBay, Amazon, Etsy and Other Sites

Selling items on eBay, Amazon, Etsy, and other sites is one of the hottest ways of making money online. It's a great way to make money from home. You can sell on eBay as a side gig or you can turn it into a very lucrative business.

One of the best things about eBay is that you can make a serious income from home without a website or mailing list.

A big advantage of selling on eBay and other auction sites is that they provide you with a steady stream of traffic and give you easy access to a huge number of buyers all over the world. You don't even have to drive traffic to your listings as eBay generates traffic for you.

Some people are selling on eBay part-time to supplement their income. And many people make a full-time income selling on eBay (including myself). Some are making $5,000-$25,000+ per month.

If you love thrift-store finds, garage sales, and estate sales, selling on eBay can be a fun and profitable side hustle. It's perfect for moms, parents, retired people, students, and just about anyone.

Many people start out selling things they have around the house that they don't need anymore. But to make really good money on eBay, you'll have to sell additional items. You can buy wholesale items to sell. You can buy items on eBay and resell them for a profit. You can buy items from garage sales, thrift stores, and estate sales. The possibilities are endless.

You’ll need to do some research to see what's selling well. The key is to find quality products that are in demand and buy them at the right price so that you can sell them with a good markup. It might take some trial and error before you find the right kind of inventory and before you make the kind of money you want to make.

But if you stick with it until you’ve learned what sells, an eBay business can provide you with a great, full-time income, flexibility, and lifestyle.

I like the flexibility of eBay and the income. The disadvantages of an eBay business are that you have to buy inventory, store inventory, and ship. There are also occasional issues with problem buyers and sellers.

If you don’t have an eBay account yet, sign up for a free eBay account and take a test drive! It's not difficult. And eBay's customer service is great to help you out with any questions you may have.

I don't have any personal experience with Etsy but know that many people are doing well selling on Etsy. If that's something you're interested in, it's worth checking out.

#5 Dropshipping

Dropshipping is a popular way to make money online today.

Dropshipping makes it easy to start selling online. Dropshipping makes it possible to sell products without creating, buying, stocking, and shipping inventory. You can have thousands of items for sale without investing in inventory. You only pay for the products after you sell them. You don't have to ship products.

Here's how it works:

You can find dropship items from manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers.
You promote the items you want to sell.
When you get a sale through your site, you'll send the customer's order and shipping information to your supplier's store or app. This can be done automatically through Shopify or WooCommerce.
The supplier ships the sold items directly to your buyers from his location, factory, or warehouse.

Some tips:

Find quality dropship items that you can sell at a good markup.
Make sure that you make a good profit after paying all expenses including merchant/payment transaction fees and shipping costs.
When starting, you'll want to put a large part of your profits back into the business for advertising so you can grow your business quickly.
You need to be willing to work hard to promote and grow a dropshipping business. To market your business, you either have to pay for advertising or spend your time on social media and other free promotions.

Some disadvantages of dropshipping:

You're at the mercy of your suppliers and many situations can affect your brand reputation.
The product may not be as described or the quality may be bad. Returns or exchanges may be a hassle.
The customers may not always receive the product they paid for.
When selling products from China, the delivery time can vary between one week to 60 days.
Because you don't need to buy inventory and it's inexpensive to start, dropshipping is a very competitive business.
You have to set up your own online store.

Dropshipping Suppliers

AliExpress is the best-known drop shipper. It's an online marketplace with mostly Chinese suppliers. It’s owned by Alibaba. You get close to wholesale pricing without buying in bulk, making it perfect for dropshipping. It offers millions of dropshipping products at cheap prices so you can resell them at a higher price and make good profits. It also allows dropshipping companies to sell a product globally with free shipping worldwide, so you don't have to pay or calculate the shipping costs.

This site provides a large list of dropshipping suppliers.

How to set up a dropshipping store

You need to set up an online store.
You need a domain, website, and hosting. I recommend Bluehost for hosting. If you use Shopify, hosting is included. For more information about setting up a website, you can read my article, How to Set up a Money-Making Blog.
You upload products you want to sell to your online store.

Shopify and WooCommerce are two of the most popular ways to set up a dropshipping store. You can read more details about these at my blog post, How to Make Money with Dropshipping.

Shopify offers a 14-day free trial. A basic Shopify plan starts as low as $29/month. Check it out here.

Another way to set up a dropshipping site and automate dropshipping is with WordPress and the free AliExpress WooCommerce WordPress plugin, Ezusy. This article provides more details about setting up a dropshipping store with WordPress.

I have a more detailed blog post about making money with dropshipping here.

#6 Creating Information Products

If you know about a particular topic (or just like to research) and love to write and/or create videos and audio, creating info products might be for you.

Information products sell well. Many bloggers make a large percentage of their income from creating and selling their own digital products.

An information product can come in the form of text, audio, video, or a combination of all.

Here are just a few types of information products you can create:

eBooks
Online courses/workshops
Images, video, or music people can use in their own content
Templates, checklists, worksheets, workbooks, planners, patterns, swipe files.
Apps, plugins, themes and more

If you can create images like Pinterest, Instagram, and Canva templates, clip art, animation, stock photography, or fonts, people will pay good money for them! If you're in the craft niche, you can create and sell sewing, knitting, crocheting, and other patterns.

Some information products are very simple to put together. You can create information products from your existing content.

For example, if you are a successful eBay seller, you probably have collected information for yourself that others might want to buy. You can create an eBook about the mistakes you made when you first started selling on eBay and sell it as an information product. You may have created templates for eBay auctions or a checklist. Maybe you created a checklist that you use to make sure you don’t miss a step. People will pay good money for that checklist to avoid having to do it themselves.

Almost every niche needs information products. People need to know the information you have and will pay good money for it. Here's why: People are lazy. People like someone else to do the work for them. Buying your information saves them time. They will buy information from a reliable source rather than spending hours doing the research themselves. Most people would prefer to pay someone to provide step-by-step instructions on how to do something than trying to figure it out themselves.

Passive income

The best part of selling information products is that it's passive income. Once you have created an information product, you can sell it over and over again. You can automate the process. You can set it a payment button on your website and a download page so that people can buy and download your information product 24/7 without you having to do anything and you can continue to make money over and over again – even while you're sleeping.

Income: Selling information products can be one of the most lucrative methods of making money online. Product creators can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. And you can really skyrocket your profits by setting up an affiliate program for your products and having affiliates sell them.

If you have any doubt about the popularity of information products, check the many products that are for sale at Udemy, Clickbank, Amazon Kindle Store, JVZOO (https://www.jvzoo.com/), and niche-related web forums (e.g. Warrior Forum).

You can sign up for a Clickbank account here.

The money you can make with your own information products is truly unlimited.

Tips To Create Information Products

Research – Do extensive research in various marketplaces to find out what products are selling and what the top niches are. This type of information is essential to understand the trends and demands in the various markets that are available. Typically, fitness, weight loss, relationships, and business are evergreen niches and if you can come up with something unique, and valuable you can outdo your competitors.

Understand Your Target Audience – A big part of research is understanding the audience you will target, consider:

Who they are
What problems do they have and are looking to solve
What they want
What do they need

Great Content – Successful products are loaded with great content, if it is not useful, or badly written the bad reviews will quickly destroy any earning potential. It is critical to compile a product that will impress your target audience, and brand you as an expert in the respective niche.

Outsource – If you are not a good writer or don't have time to write your own content then you can outsource to a ghostwriter on the many online freelance sites.

Figure Out Costs and ROI – It is important to stick to a budget and also investigate the potential earnings of the product you wish to create. Predicting ROI (return on investment) is important as you can quickly spend way more than you will earn.

Engage Affiliates and Joint Venture Partners – Affiliates and joint venture partners are your best asset for sales, they have lists of subscribers in various target markets that they can email your offer to and this can result in hundreds, even, thousands of sales.

Learn All You Can – There are many great detailed online guides to creating successful information products. Do the research, and learn all you can.

Learn From Mistakes – When you launch your first product you are bound to make mistakes, that is part of the process, but, learn from them. Take notes and make sure to tweak and fix those mistakes for the next one.

Recommended Reading:

7 – Create and Sell Printables

Turn your creativity into profit and build a successful business with printables and digital downloads.

Creating and selling printables offer a creative and lucrative way to make money from home. The market for digital products is huge and filled with opportunities.

Printables are digital files that users can download, print, and use for various purposes. They encompass a wide range of products, from art prints and planners to educational materials and templates.

One of the significant advantages of selling printables and digital downloads is the potential for passive income. Once you create your products and set up your online store, you can earn money even while you sleep. Customers can purchase and download your products at any time, making it a source of passive income.

Want to learn more about making money with printables?

Check out this free workshop.

#8 Selling eBooks

eBooks are a multi-million per year market and there is plenty of demand for eBooks on all types of subjects. With the advent and recent explosion in the book reader market, like the Barnes and Noble Nook and Amazon Kindle that are selling like hotcakes, eBooks have seen an influx of sales like never before.

In fact, Amazon sells more digital books than printed ones and Kindle book sales are booming.

Self-publishing has grown tremendously in the last couple of years, and ¼ of the top 100 bestselling Kindle books on Amazon came not from publishing houses, but from self-publishers.

The publishing house Random House reports that 20% of their revenues come from digital books.

Steps To Create an eBook

Research

Research is very important when it comes to creating an eBook that will make real money. And to get the highest earning potential for informational non-fiction books, you should look at market demands.

Spend a few hours at the Amazon Kindle marketplace.

Check out the top sellers and pay attention to:

User reviews, number of reviews, and average ratings.
Is there a correlation between rating and current ranking?
What niches are at the top?
Read book descriptions.
Read editorial reviews from Amazon.
See what books are it the top 10 for both fiction and nonfiction.
What genres stand out?
Note the average price of Kindle bestsellers.
What cover designs are used?

Writing The eBook

Title: It is important to consider the title carefully. The cover and title provide the first impression and are essential in engaging buyers. Go to the bestseller list on Amazon and check out the titles carefully.

Content: Is your content unique? Does it bring something fresh and new to the table to distinguish it from the competition? What value does it bring? Is it interesting? Useful? Captivating?

Outline: Make sure to create a very detailed outline, from the introduction to the last paragraph. Look at other books for inspiration, and the best organizational methods.

Hire a ghostwriter: if you are not comfortable with writing, hire a ghostwriter but make sure to do the required research to facilitate the highest return on investment.

Top eBook Marketplaces

#9 Selling Gigs On Fiverr

Fiverr is a marketplace that connects sellers and buyers with gigs that initially started at just $5 per gig. But today, many people are charging hundreds of dollars for their gigs. If you want to make money from the site you can post a gig where people will pay you $5 for some type of task.

The possibilities are endless as there are more than 2 million gigs on Fiverr and it has grown into a huge marketplace with thousands upon thousands of members.

The gigs range from the very weird, like people who will dress up like a monkey to record your marketing message, to article writing and everything in between.

If you have any type of skill, you can likely create a gig that will make you money.

Popular gigs include Article writing, creating YouTube channels, various marketing tasks, designing logos and other graphic design, making eBook covers, providing weight loss information, video creation, voiceovers, commercial messages, consulting guides, selling products, and much much more.

As you become a trusted seller in the community and get positive ratings you rank higher in the marketplace search results, which, in turn, opens up more opportunities to get more sales.

The other perk of Fiverr is that it can go way beyond $5 per job with what are known as gig extras. Gig extras are add-on tasks that sellers create to go with their $5 main gig.

This can be increasing word size in article work, for example, the main gig will be: “I Will Write A 200 Word Article for $5”, and then the gig extra might be: ”I Will Write A 400 Word Article +$10.” A popular upsell is for rush jobs. You can charge double for the same article if people want it within 1 or 2 days.

These gig extras allow the opportunity to increase income levels quite a bit. Some people are making $300-$500 or more per week on Fiverr.

To get started, head over to Fiverr.com and take a look around, look through some gigs and see what’s selling. This is the best way to ascertain the market and come up with some gig ideas for yourself.

#10 Creating Apps

Apps for Android, iPhone, Blackberry, and Windows devices are big business. App download sites are multi-million-person marketplaces, and even $1 or $2 apps can provide a nice revenue stream.

You don't have to be a programmer. If you have an idea for an app, you can outsource the work and find a coder on one of the freelance sites.

It’s important to do extensive research into what is selling, what is highly rated, and what gaps exist in the market for apps you can create. Get creative and make something better than the competitors.

#11 YouTube Marketing

You may have heard numerous success stories of people making a full-time income on YouTube.

YouTube has 1 billion plus unique visits every month.
People watch more than 6 billion hours of video each month.
There are millions of new subscribers to the thousands of channels on YouTube.
YouTube's reach is larger than cable television with US adults ages 18-34.

As you can see, video marketing is a very viable way to make an online living, especially when those videos go viral or are truly useful and interesting, as this increases the chances of them getting shared. Thousands of channels are making six figures per year.

YouTube Partner Program

The YouTube partner program is how you can earn money through various monetization methods for video creators.

These Include:

Advertisements
Paid subscriptions
Merchandise

There are also various resources and programs run by YouTube that help newbies build an audience and develop their channels.

How To Start

It’s all about creating videos that provide value regularly. If you like fitness start a fitness channel. If you like to cook start a cooking channel. Look at existing videos to see what is being viewed most and what is in demand.

Make it a point to post as many videos as you can. The more videos you have up the more views you will get. And the more views you get the more money you will make.

Many have affiliate marketing websites or blogs and they use YouTube to drive traffic to those. The possibilities with video are unlimited.

Go look at some of the top YouTube channels for inspiration. Look at what they are doing to see what's working. Start putting up videos on YouTube and you'll become a master at it in no time.

Learn More About YouTube Marketing Directly From YouTube

#12 Online Surveys

Yes, you can make money online by taking surveys. However, you do have to be careful. There are a lot of scams out there when it comes to making money with surveys.

About Survey Sites

You do not have to pay to have access to legitimate survey companies. The honest research companies are always free to join and they pay you.

You will not become rich from online surveys but you can make some nice money to supplement your day job or to save up for something special and have fun at the same time.

The best part of this type of online earning is that you can work from home on your own time. You can take surveys in between household chores while watching television, waiting in line at a store, or even on your lunch break!

The only requirements for this online work is to have a computer, or cell phone, an Internet connection, an email account, and be willing to answer various questions about your life, products, and other research topics.

How Survey Sites Work

Once you register, you will get regular invitations to submit various types of surveys for specific research.
Qualification is typically determined with the first few questions, and you may not qualify for some surveys as they are based on certain demographics.
Once you complete the survey you will be credited with the respective award.
The majority of surveys take about 10 to 30 minutes to complete.
Some survey companies also conduct surveys via telephone, cell phone texting, and in-person focus groups, and these usually pay more.

How Survey Sites Pay

The majority of survey sites pay in cash, which is credited to your account and then sent out via check or PayPal as requested. Some, however, pay in points that accrue over time and you can spend them on various products or gift cards.

Make sure to read their rewards information page to find out how they pay and if it suits your needs.

Survey Junkie pays for surveys, product testing, and focus groups. Get paid up to $75 per survey with one of the highest-rated survey sites. Choose from many easy, short surveys. Get PayPal cash or gift cards. Join Survey Junkie here.

Need Money Fast?

#13 Sell Stock Photos

There is a huge demand for stock photography. There is a big demand for images online that marketers and websites use. Marketers and bloggers need constant images and content for their sites and social media marketing.

If you love photography and are good at it, there are several ways to make money with your stock photos. Here are some of them:

Submit photos to stock photo agencies.
Set up your own stock photography website.
Set photos on Etsy, Creative Market, or other marketplaces.
Submit photos to specialized membership sites.

You can earn royalty fees each time your image is downloaded from royalty-free image sites under certain circumstances. The more images you upload to those sites, the more money you can make.

After uploading your images, the income you’re making from your photos is totally passive income! Below are some stock photo agencies that accept photo submissions:

The pay for photos can range from $0.25 to $120 per sale depending on the site, the license the customer buys, and more. From some sites, the majority of sales will pay $0.25 while others pay around $1.00 per image download.

You need a decent camera like the Canon Rebel Camera and it's good to have some editing software.

If you enjoy photography, this can be a good way to make extra money online.

Taking a class will speed up your learning curve.

Photography Masterclass: A Complete Guide to Photography.

How to Be a Professional Photographer.

As you can see, there are many ways to make money online. Have a closer look at some of those work-from-home ventures that are most suitable for you. And try out one or more of those that fit in with your skills and preferences.

RESOURCES

CreativeLive has thousands of affordable classes from photography, music, design, arts, crafts and everything in between that can help you become a profitable creator.

See my article and a listing of the best freelance sites.

FREE mini-course, Intro to Voice Overs.
FREE Introductory workshop for proofreaders by Caitlin Pyle.
FREE writing workshop by Holly Johnson, How to Build a Six-Figure Writing Career.
Recommended writing course: Earn More Writing by Holly Johnson.
FREE General Transcription Mini-Course. Free Legal Transcription Mini Course.
Janet Shaughnessy from Transcribe Anywhere has an excellent multi-media transcription course.
Free bookkeeping workshop.
Free ebook, Affiliate Marketing Tips for Bloggers by Michelle.
FREE Scoping Intro Course by Linda Evenson.
Gina's course “Fully Booked VA” can help you to become a successful virtual assistant.

Disclaimer: If you purchase a product through a referral link, I will get a commission at NO extra cost to you and it helps me to keep providing you with quality information.

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