7 Realistic Ways to Make Money Online
The good news is, you can certainly make money online today whether you are going for the quick income burst or more sustainable long term result. So, don’t believe it if someone tell you, you can’t make money online but…
…truth is, it’s not entirely that easy to make the income you want online either so if you really want to travel a successful journey online, you need discipline or else you won’t be able to make anything may it be online or offline.
If you are looking for realistic way to start earning online now, you only need seven paths to start profiting. Some will give you immediate result so you can take the profit to pay your monthly expenses such as rent, weekly groceries and utilities while others can potentially transform your finance situation in the long run.
Now, regardless which method you choose to generate your online income, there is one very important thing to keep in mind.
Right now, at this moment, there are 7+ billion inhabitants on planet earth actively looking for two recurring things in their life. They either want more money or more time.
The truth?
Time is more valuable than money because you simply can’t recreate or re-earn them. Once time is spent, it is gone forever. Not the case for money.
The point we bring this up?
When you lack time, it is impossible for you to make money online (even offline). Think about it, how are you to sustain the effort needed to build your online career when your life force is being sucked away by your leaching nine-to-five job?
Yes…
The stable full-time employment could cushion your sleep at night but it is not empowering your personal potential to excel in life (which you should be).
Look, we are not talking about anything of get rich quick online here. If you want to do that, you might be able to do it faster offline. Sure, you see it everywhere on Facebook but without the true understanding of how the mechanics work, you are simply wasting gigantic part of your time trying to “get rich quick”.
How to Make Money Online
Many newbies believe that you need to find the best way to make money online and you will strike the jackpot but the real deal is that, you need the correct mindset to empower your new found career as an online entrepreneur. Because when you started on this journey, you are literally exposing yourself to internet cheerleaders who have no shame to slowly sip away your money by (fake) cheering you on.
The solution?
Cancel the noise and go straight to the win…
And to do that, you just need to plant a few basic beacon principles to your mind.
Introducing…
Passive Income.
We have been all accustomed to active income where you work your life away so stay alive. That’s scarcity at play. But it is the passive income that’s going to bring your life back and let you shine at your brightest.
By the way, the rich don’t work for active income, they always have passive income working for them…
They simply work once and get paid repeatedly because they understand the value of time and money.
What they do is that they invest their time at the front end and reap the profits at the back end. Even though they don’t make the income immediately, the rich know that they will be paid handsomely later in the journey.
This is clearly the preferred route yet it is the less travel route.
And there you go, we just reveal the answer to you why there are more broke people than rich people around the world.
So how do you start to cash out your first passive income paycheck?
You start by blogging, building a tsunami of traffic from loyal list of audiences.
Is it easy?
Nope.
Is it worth it?
Absolutely.
But what if you are terrible at writing?
Then there is this non-blogging route…
1. Leverage the app economy.
If you desperately need any fast cash today, app is your oasis in the desert. Because once you join the Google Play Store or Apple App Store, you are practically spoiled by choices to start making money today. There’s almost an app for you in any industry be it the rise sharing, deliveries and quick tasks.
Uber or Lyft: you can easily make a reputable income if these apps or their equivalents (such as China’s Didi) are available at your area. The hours are flexible and you can work whenever you are available, making them perfect for side income even you have a full-time job.
Postmates: Postmates is by far the most popular delivery apps today even though it is a dime a dozen now. The best part? You only need a bike to start making money in some developed major urban metropolises like Manhattan.
iBotta: earn cash back buying featured products at major retailers. You just need to add rebates, shop and snap a photo to earn your cash back. Simple and proven to work because this app has over 50,000 five-star reviews on the App Store.
Task Rabbit: if you can perform simple tasks, you can start making money with this app. Like rabbit that hops around, tasks range from simple repairs to more exhaustive works. This app carefully screens though every service provider to ensure the highest quality which makes it an incredible way to earn extra income when you are good at what you do.
Ebates: hold your horses before you hit that buy button because this app is going to earn you amazing cash backs when you are making your purchase.
Unlike others, this app don’t need you to snap receipts to start earning. You just need to click a link in the app and continue to buy from the store. Your cash rewards will be credited along your purchase together with an email confirmation.
Swagbucks: this diverse app allows to make money by shopping online, watching videos, answer surveys and even surf the internet. You can then choose your reward either in cash back or gift cards.
Inbox Dollars: it is unheard of that you can earn money watching television, taking surveys and shopping but most likely not anymore when you have read this far. Inbox Dollars works similar to some of the apps we mentioned here and reward you in the fresh cash offers.
2. Use existing websites.
Maybe you are unaware of this but there are websites that are designed to make you money be it in passive or active income. So, leverage on them 100%.
A gentle reminder is that you will want to devote more of your time to building your passive income source so that you can start earning autopilot income without any extra added income.
Let’s move on with these websites
Craiglist: this is by far one of the most popular website for people who are looking to make money online. You can sell your stuff here like ebay, rent out a spare room line Airbnb and offer your services like Upwork to the world.
Upwork: this is the marketplace where you want to offer your professional service. You just need to register an account and offer your high quality service at a reasonable price. But a note of information, competition is fierce here. So, make sure you bring your A-game in Upwork.
Café Press: if you are good with graphic, this is a great website to churn out your web-based income. You can create your digital design on this site and you can then earn commissions for anything that sells.
You don’t need to deal with printing, warehousing, delivery, customer service and so on.
Fiverr: many service providers are already earning 6 figures on Fiverr so it is a proven channel for you to start make money online. You can start by offering your gig at low as $5 but you earn the real meat when you offer upgrades and add-ons.
Mechanical Turk is a development from Amazon where you can earn money performing simple or human-intelligence tasks (or HITs as they refer to the tasks) such as simple data validation, survey participation, content moderation and more.
But the thing with Mechanical Turk is that you only get paid very small fee for any HIT. This means that you will need to perform a great deal of tasks before you can make any good amount of money but it is still an income source when you have time to trade for income.
Flippa: this is the go to site when you want to flip websites to make money online. However, this is not for any internet newbie to start with because you need to know what you are doing here. But if you have sufficient knowledge, flipping websites can be a very profitable income source.
Etsy: no site can beat Etsy when comes to selling handmade items online. Although its popularity has been taken back quite a fair bit recently, it is still churning good income for its members. Because the company has simplified the whole ecommerce process making it easy for everyone to buy and sell on the platform. The best part is you can even sell digital products such as poster designs on Etsy.
Shutterstock and iStockPhoto: are you a photographer looking to earn passive income? Then look no further because shutterstock and iStockPhoto welcome photographers to sell their work on the sites. All you need is some nicely edited photos to get started.
Threadless: Chicago based Threadless is another comparable site for people with creative designing skills to sell their work in the form of merchandise such as T-shirts, phone cases, beach towels, mugs and etc.
Zazzle: the amazing part of making money online with Zazzle (by Robert Beaver) is that you can practically sell anything on the site ranging from handmade artistic merchandise to customizable products.
3. Sell your own stuff.
Is good that you can leverage on existing websites to sell your products but what if you want to keep 100% of the profits?
Of course you can…
You will need a website and hosting account to begin with. Once you got them set up, you can then need to create a merchant account either with Stripe or PayPal.
After that, you can start design your website, build the sales funnel, create a lead magnet that draws interested buyers in and have an email marketing system to sell to them afterward.
What comes next will be the ecommerce software, fulfillment software, warehousing, delivery, customer service, refund procedures.
Lastly, you will need traffic and you can start with search engine optimization, Facebook or other social media and search engines ads.
Sounds like a lot of heavy lifting? Because it is. Especially if you are doing it all on your own.
Of course you can opt for an easier path by using Amazon platform but remember, this is your business. Your bread and butter to earn money online.
So, you are better to decide either you are all in or you are not.
And if you are all in, below are some of the sites you can leverage on to make money selling your own stuff.
Shopify: this is by far the most popular and fastest way for anyone to get their feet wet with ecommerce. Another option is that you can install WooCommerce (wordpress plugin) and start your ecommerce store from your blog.
Don’t forget to install the SSL certificate and a reliable payment processor on your blog when you start your ecommerce journey.
Drop-shipping: to keep it simple, drop-shipping is where you fulfill a customer purchase without keeping the inventory. You make money online by being the closer and get the merchant to deliver the product once the sale is confirmed. You can start a drop-shipping business with SaleHoo, Worldwide Brands and many other similar providers.
Fulfilled-by-Amazon (FBA): this a proven option to sell your own stuff when you are confuse about the traffic and technical setup to do it yourself. Yes, you will need to pay a commission to Amazon but you get an automated solution to start selling online.
High-ticket consulting or coaching: high-ticket consulting and coaching products have proven to bring in big money for the seller. To start selling these lucrative products, you will need a website, sales funnel, merchant account, lead magnet and other necessary items.
Once you get all these in place, you will easily earn a substantial income from each customer, making it well worth the painful setup process.
4. Selling as an affiliate.
There are lot of helpful resources to help you make money online as an affiliate. Many new affiliate marketers source their products from ClickBank, JVZoo, Commission Junction, Share-a-Sale, Impact Radius, Rakuten Marketing, WarriorPlus and many more.
Also, many big companies offer affiliate programs that you can join too.
Amidst all these available options, you will still need to do your due diligence to find the right company to offer the right product or service to your audience.
A gentle note that for some companies and affiliate networks, they will only approve your application when you have an active website.
So you see, it can be challenging sometimes to sell as an affiliate but if you can muster a sizable audience, it is still source for substantial online income.
5. Start a blog.
Blogging is by far the easiest and most substantial source to earn your online income. But why some are complaining that you no longer can make money through blogging?
Because they have been blogging with the wrong manner.
You see, for blogging to be successful, you need to setup the blog in the right way, present to the right niche, blog with the right content targeting the right audience and complement your product to the content.
Too many bloggers have been blogging missing that formula and that’s why they fail terribly when to blog for money.
We know what you are thinking.
You think that the formula is too complicated and too labor intensive right?
It all starts from choosing the profitable niche and the right domain name.
You can then build your offers to easily sell things like mini email courses, ebooks and lucrative high-ticket consulting and coaching products as we mentioned above.
6. Email marketing
Time and time again, the money has proven to be in the list.
And countless case studies supported that you can earn about $1 per subscriber per month.
That means, if you have 10,000 subscribers, that means you are expected to earn $10,000 every month.
If we got your attention, you can start by setting up your email software, create a lead magnet to bring potential buyers into your sales funnel and your list.
The key here is to deliver value in your emails instead of hard selling to your subscribers and you will achieve your online income goal in short period.
There are many ways to get potential buyers to join your list and lead magnets such as ebooks, cheat sheets and checklists being the most popular of them all.
All in all, you want to keep the best interest of your audience in mind and think about what you can offer them and better serve them, then treat them with respect and you will reap the rewards you are aiming at.
7. Webinars trainings.
Of late, webinars have been rated to be one of the most potent ways to make incredible amount of money online. It was quoted to Russel Brunson that if you are able to do a webinar every single week for a year, you’ll be a millionaire at the end of the year.
Needless to say, you will need a crowd that you can train and you will need to know what you are delivering in the webinar training. It will also be easier if you have a website and some traction of online presence.
During your webinar training, you will want to embed a product that you can sell. That’s how you make money online with webinar trainings.
If that seems confusing to you, never mind.
Get started with your first webinar training first. You will get better with selling along the way.
And you can get started with the best webinar platform, GoToWebinar. It is by far the best webinar platform out there.
Now that you have seen all the 7 realistic ways to make money online, it is obvious that regardless which way you choose, you will be able to make some quick money online but if you are looking for long term and sizable return, you will need to put in some sweat for it.
The good news is that, a year from now, you will be glad that you started today.
As we mentioned at the beginning of this post, time is way more valuable than money.
You should focus on creating your passive income streams so that you can quit the rat race and have all the time you need to enjoy on things that matter most to you.
And that’s the ultimate goal to why you want to make money online.