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. Sure.
Without discipline, you'll find it tough to make a buck both online or offline.
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.
No matter what method you select for generating your online
income, there's one very important thing to understand. Today, across this
globe, with its 7+ billion inhabitants, there are two recurring things that
people are looking for more of. Either people want more time or they want more money.
The truth? Time is far more valuable than money. You can't recreate time. Once
it's spent, it's gone forever. Not money.
Money can be earned and spent, saved and pilfered, invested and
wasted. Not time. That's why time is far more valuable than money. The point?
When you lack the luxury of time, making money online (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.
Now, this isn't about some get-rich-quick method here. If you
want to get rich quick, forget about trying to do it on the internet. Sure,
Facebook ads are all the craze, but without a serious understanding of the
mechanics behind sales funnels andconversion optimizations, which only comes
after years and years of in-the-trenches work in the internet marketing field,
you're largely wasting your time trying to "get rich quick."
How to Make Money Online
No matter what method you end up using to generate an income on
the web, you need to adjust your mindset to help empower you rather than
discourage you. The truth? Making money online can be fraught with avoidable
pitfalls. There's no shortage to the rah-rah cheers of internet marketers
looking to find ways to ensure they part you from your hard-earned cash. The
trick? Cancel the noise and get to the real meat and potatoes, so to speak.
To do that, you have to harbor a few fundamental guiding
principles in your mind. Today, if you're at all serious about generating a
full-time income (and 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.
Considering that you have a finite amount of time, passive
income should make up a large part of your work. And if you're serious about
generating any semblance of income online, then passive income should be one of
your sole goals and ambitions. Why? Simply this. 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?
Since time is the most precious commodity on this earth, 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. It's obvious
that this is the preferred route, but clearly the road less traveled.
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. Is it easy? Nope. Is it worth it? It sure is. But that
doesn't mean you need to start a blog to make money online today.
You could opt for a non-blog-starting route. Sure. 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. Thanks to the global sharing phenomenon, launched in part
by our smartphones and ever-burgeoning global connectivity, you could easily
opt for some quick active income by using well-known apps. From ride sharing to
deliveries and even quick tasks, there's an app for that today, as the saying
goes.
Drive for Uber or Lyft: If you're in a locale where you can find
Uber or Lyft (or even one of the many competitors around the world such as
China's Didi), you could easily make a respectable income. 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.
Deliver for Postmates: Apps like Postmates are a dime a dozen
today. Still, Postmates is by far the most popular, and you don't even need a
car in some locations to make money with this app. In some urban developments
and major metropolises 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 cash back. Simple and effective. Plus this app has over 50,000
five-star reviews on the App Store.
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's no scanning receipts. Simply click a link in the app and buy
from the store. You'll automatically be credited 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 cash back 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.
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, 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 printing, warehousing, customer
service and so on. The site has over 2 million independent designers that have
created products being sold online here. 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. It's a great resource for selling just about any
service online. You can offer gigs as low as $5 but also get paid much more for
upgrades and add-ons. There are plenty of providers earning 6 figures on Fiverr
so it's definitely a worthwhile cause for generating a healthy income. Just
ensure that you provide some serious value.
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 on here 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.
3. Sell your own stuff.
Ready to enter
the ecommerce fray? Why not 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 (sure you
can use 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, refunds and so on. But that's not all.
You'll also need traffic. Thinksearch engine optimization, Facebook ads, and
other social media campaigns. Sound like a lot of work? Sure, it is. Especially
if you do it all on your own. You could opt for Amazon's platform, which might
be the 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 Ecommerce: 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 easily start selling on the
largest online store in the world and forget all the muss and fuss about
building out your own infrastructure and worrying 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 great 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.
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.
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-emailcourses, full-blown trainings, ebooks,
and so on.
6. Email marketing.
The money is
most certainly in the list. If you're at all 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.
7. Webinars trainings.
Webinars are
quite possibly one of the most potent ways you can make an exorbitant amount of
money online. Russell Brunson often says that if you do a webinar every single
week for a year, you'll be a millionaire at the end of it. 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. And by
far, the best webinar platform out there is certainly GoToWebinar. Hands down,
there isn't even another platform that comes close.
However, not 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. That's the
important thing here.
