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7 Realistic Ways To Make Money Online
Whether you're looking
to make some fast cash, or you're after long-term, more sustainable
income-producing results, there are certainly ways you can make money
online today. The truth is that making money online isn't as difficult
as most make it out to seem. It does require some discipline.
However, if you're looking for realistic ways you can start earning
money online now, then it really truly does boil down to seven paths you
can take towards profit. Some will provide you with immediate results,
helping you to address your basic monthly necessities such as rent,
utilities and groceries, while others have the potential to transform
your life by revolutionizing your finances in the long term.
Related: 8 Ways to Make Money Online Without Quitting your Day Job
No matter what method you select for generating your online income,
there's one very important thing to understand. Money can be earned and
spent, saved and pilfered, invested and wasted. Not time. That's why
time is far more valuable than money. You can't recreate time. Once it's
spent, it's gone forever.
When you lack the luxury of time, making money on or offline can seem
like an impossible task. How are you supposed to do that when you're
working at a life-sucking nine-to-five job? While the stability of
full-time employment might allow most to sleep well at night, it doesn't
empower your creative juices to search for new income-producing
strategies.
No matter what method you end up using to generate an income on the
web, you need to adjust your mindset to help empower rather than
discourage you. The truth is, making money online can be fraught with
avoidable pitfalls. Cancel the noise by keeping a few fundamental
guiding principles in mind.
If you're at all serious about generating a full-time income and
possibly more from your online activities, then you need to focus on
passive income as opposed to active income. Sure, the active income will
help you survive. That's the scarcity mentality at play. But it's the
passive income ideas that will help you thrive.
Related: 2 Ways to Make Money Online This Month
Considering that you have a finite amount of time, passive income
should make up a large part of your work. If you're serious about
generating any semblance of income online, then passive income should be
one of your sole goals and ambitions. Why? Wouldn't you prefer to do
the work one time and get paid repeatedly as opposed to relying on your
time to generate that income? Invest the time at the front-end so that
you can reap the benefits on the back-end. This means putting in a bit
of sweat equity and not getting paid today. Rather, you'll get paid
somewhere down the road. And you'll continue getting paid whether you
keep building that passive income stream or you stop.
Anyone interested in making money online should be pursuing passive
income, while also working on active income. There are loads of ways to
generate an income passively on the internet, many of which start at the
foundation of having a blog, generating substantial traffic and
building an audience and a list. It's not easy, but it's worth it.
That
doesn't mean you need to start a blog to make money online today. You
could opt for a non-blog-starting route, but if you're looking for
longevity in your income-producing abilities on the internet, then a
blog should be your primary aim.
1. Leverage the app economy
If you're looking to address some immediate financial needs, then the app economy is likely right for you.
Uber or Lyft: If you're in a locale where you can find Uber or Lyft,
or one of the many competitors around the world such as China's Didi,
the hours are flexible and you can work as you see fit, making it
perfect, even if you currently have full-time employment but are looking
to make some money on the side.
Postmates: You don't even need a car in some locations to make money
with this app. In some major metropolitan areas like Manhattan, a bike
would suffice.
iBotta: Earn cash back rewards by purchasing featured products at
major retailers. All you have to do is add rebates, go shopping, then
snap a photo of your receipt to earn your cashback. Simple and
effective.
Task Rabbit: Another simple and straightforward app for making a bit
of side-hustle income is the Task Rabbit app. Tasks can be anything from
simple repairs to more exhaustive undertakings. The app carefully vets
each service provider to ensure the highest quality, and it's a great
way to make some extra income on the side on your own terms.
Ebates: This app offers a simple way to make money online by buying
whatever you're already buying and then getting a cash-back reward. With
eBates, there is no scanning receipts. Simply click a link in the app
and buy it from the store. You'll automatically be credited with your
cash rewards upon purchase along with receiving an email confirmation.
Swagbucks: With Swagbucks, there are a number of ways you can make
money. You can shop online, watch videos, answer surveys and surf the
web. The app gives you both cashback and gift cards as a reward for your
efforts.
Inbox Dollars: Another app you can use to make money online is Inbox
Dollars, which pays you for watching television, taking surveys and
shopping. There are cash offers here and it's relatively similar to some
of the other apps in this arena.
Related: What You'll Really Earn on Uber, Airbnb and TaskRabbit Every Month
2. Use existing websites
You could also opt to use existing websites for making money. These
include both active income and passive income methods. For example, you
could sell some used items or invest in creating some digital designs
that then can be sold on merchandise. Again, devote a sizable portion of
your time to passive income so that you can slowly build up earnings
that will arrive on autopilot without any extra added effort.
Of course, a large portion of these sites do have their own
respective apps. But these are certainly less involved in the gig
economy, and more so in the longer-term projects that exist in the
fields of photography, online marketing, graphic design and web
development, for example.
Craigslist: This site has been the go-to resource for over a decade
now for people that are looking to make a bit of extra money online. You
can easily sell your used stuff, rent out a spare room in your home or
apartment, and offer up your services to the world.
Upwork: This website offers a great marketplace for selling just
about any professional service. You don't need a merchant account, a
website of your own or anything else for that matter. All you need to do
is be able to provide a high-quality service at a reasonable price. But
be informed, you will have to compete with many others that are
constantly bidding on open jobs.
Cafe Press: This website allows you to create digital designs that
can then be sold on the platform. You'll earn a commission for
everything that sells and you'll never have to deal with logistics like
printing, warehousing and customer service. If you have some graphic
design skills, then this is a great potential source for your
web-based income.
Fiverr: Israeli-based Fivver was started in 2010 by Shal Wininger and
Micha Kaufam. You can offer gigs as low as $5 but also get paid much
more for upgrades and add-ons.
Mechanical Turk: Amazon's Mechanical Turk is a resource for doing
human-intelligence tasks, or as the site commonly refers to them, HITs.
You get paid a very small fee for any given HIT and you'll need a good
deal of volume to make a substantial amount of money. But it is a
resource you can use in your spare time to generate a small income
online.
Flippa: If you have a penchant for buying and selling, you could use
Flippa, and its higher-end counterpart, Deal Flow Brokerage to buy and
sell websites for a profit. You'll need to know what you're doing here,
but you could easily make a sizable income by flipping income-generating
websites for profit.
Etsy: While Etsy's popularity has declined recently, it's still a
great resource for selling handmade items online. No need for complex
ecommerce sites or merchant accounts or any sort of automation. The
company takes a commission of every sale and charges a small listing fee
per item. But many still use Etsy as their primary source of income.
The best part is that you can also sell digital products such as poster
designs.
Shutterstock and iStockPhoto: Have a keen eye for photography? Why
not sell photos on some of the leading photography sites. You'll need
some design software skills to tag along. But if you do have skill in
this arena, it's a great potential source for passive income.
Threadless: Similar to CafePress, Chicago-based Threadless also
allows you to sell digital designs in the form of t-shirts and other
merchandise such as phone cases, mugs, beach towels and so on.
Zazzle: Another great resource for selling online is to use Robert
Beaver's Zazzle. The site is somewhat similar to Etsy and virtually
anyone can make money online selling a variety of items here. From art
to handmade items and customizable products, you can pretty much sell
anything here.
Related: 5 Ways to Make Enough Side Money to Eventually Quit Your Job
3. Sell your own stuff
If you're ready to enter the ecommerce fray, you could sell your own
stuff. Of course, along with selling your own stuff on your own website
comes a whole slew of both responsibilities and technical configuration
and requirements. For starters, you'll need a website and a hosting
account. You'll also need a merchant account like ones offered by Stripe
or PayPal. Then you'll need to design that site, build a sales funnel,
create a lead magnet and do some email marketing.
You'll also need ecommerce software, fulfillment software, worry
about warehousing, customer service and refunds. But that's not all.
You'll also need traffic. Think search engine optimization, Facebook
ads, and other social media campaigns. It is hard work, especially on
your own. You could opt for Amazon's platform, which might be an easier
route. But, then again, at the end of the day, this is a serious
business, which could produce significant profits. So you're either all
in or you're not.
Shopify: Want to build your own storefront? You could opt to create a
Shopify store. You could also install WooCommerce as a plugin and run
your ecommerce store from your blog. You'll need an SSL certificate and a
way to process payments, but you might find this easier to get up and
running fast to start selling immediately.
Fulfilled-by-Amazon (FBA): You could start selling on the largest
online store in the world and not spend the time to build out your own
infrastructure or worry about traffic. You will need to pay a
commission, but most of the other processes will be automated for you.
Drop-shipping: Amazon offers one form of drop-shipping, but there are
other resources for drop-shipping products that you'll never actually
have to see or handle yourself. You'll simply need to close the sale.
Providers like SaleHoo, Worldwide Brands, and many others, offer you
a resource for drop-shipping your products.
High-ticket consulting or coaching: You could sell your own
high-ticket consulting or coaching products from your website. You'll
still need a website, merchant account, sales funnel, lead magnet and
many other items. But you can easily earn a substantial amount of money
from each individual customer, making it well worth the arduous setup
required.
Related: Making Money Online: 5 Major Online Selling Opportunities for Any Entrepreneur
4. Sell as an affiliate
There are loads of resources for making money online as an affiliate.
You could source products from ClickBank, Commission Junction, Rakuten
Marketing, Share-a-Sale, Impact Radius and many others. Plus, many of
the larger companies have their own affiliate programs as well. Do your
due diligence and find the right company with a relevant product or
service to your audience that you can sell as an affiliate.
In some cases, you will need an active website with substantial
traffic to get approved. Selling as an affiliate isn't easy by any
means, but if you do have the audience, it can definitely amount to a
substantial amount of income.
Related: Why Affiliate Networks Are So Important to Online Affiliate Marketing
5. Start a blog
If you're serious about making money online, start a blog. Blogging
is one of the easiest and most sustainable income sources. As long as
the blog is setup the right way, in the right niche, with the right
content targeted at the right audience, and the offer is complementary
to the content, you could make a tremendous amount of passive income
from a blog.
While some might think that starting a blog is an arduous effort,
when you understand the precise steps you need to take, it becomes far
easier. It all starts in the decision of choosing a profitable niche and
picking the right domain name. From there, you need to build your
offers. You can easily sell things like mini-email courses, training
sessions and ebooks.
Related: 6 Ways to Turn Your Blog Into a Money Maker
6. Email marketing
If you're interested in online marketing, setup email software and
create a lead magnet that you can use in your sales funnel. Then, build
up that list. It's often said that you can expect to earn about $1 per
subscriber per month. If you have a list of 10,000 subscribers, that
means you can earn roughly around $10,000 per month. You will need to
deliver value and not pitch them on every email, but it is a very
achievable goal in a short period.
There are many ways to get people onto your list. Lead magnets are
one such resource. For example, you can build ebooks, checklists and
cheat sheets. But you can also do content upgrades, such as PDF versions
of an article with added resources in them, four-part video training
series, and more. Think about your audience and what you can offer them
to better serve them, then treat them with some respect and you'll
eventually reap the rewards.
Related: One of Facebook's First Employees Explains Why Email Marketing Is Better Than Social Media Marketing
7. Webinars training
Webinars are quite possibly one of the most potent ways you can make
an exorbitant amount of money online. You'll need an audience to train
and you'll need to know what you're talking about. Of course, this
usually requires having a website and some semblance of an online
presence. However, people can still do webinars without all of that. For
example, you might have a sizable social media following and you train
them every week on something to do with social media. But you will need a
product to embed and sell at some point. Don't worry about it in the
beginning. In my experience, the best webinar platform out there
is GoToWebinar.
No matter what method you choose to make money online, understand
that you might be able to make some money fast, but for the sizable
returns, you'll need significant sweat equity. However, a year from now,
you'll be happy you started today. Remember, time is far more valuable
than money. Focus on creating passive income streams that will free up
your time so that you can quit the rat race and focus on the things that
matter.
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