Whether you are looking to make some quick cash, or want to create a long-term sustainable source of income, there are several ways to earn money online nowadays. The Internet is evolving, people’s mindset is changing, and new methodologies are on the rise to get monetary gains from the World Wide Web.
Most of the online revenue strategies are not as complicated as you might think, but they do require some solid knowledge and discipline, especially if your goal is just to earn passive income in the beginning, while maintaining your full-time job to keep yourself floating.
I have been making money online for a while now, and I often get asked how I got here. Some people think there’s some kind of secret formula I used that helped me start getting dollars into my bank account, right after I started doing something on the Internet. The truth is, it takes time to get to the point where money actually starts flowing in, and then starts growing. No matter how tempting it might seem to always have extra cash coming in for you, if you need sincere advice, you’ll have to digest the fact that it’s a slow journey that doesn’t offer any magical tricks in it. But if you’re able to sustain yourself in the beginning phase of the journey, what you’ll get is as fantastic as having your biggest dream come true.
Reason why I’m sharing all this is to let you know the importance of being persistent along the way. When it takes time to get your idea off the ground, you shouldn’t lose hope and stop halfway, but rather stick to your plan with patience and struggle your way through. The good news is, in monetary terms, it will require minimal investment. Most of the investment you’ll need to put in will only be in the form of your time and effort.
1. Google Adsense
You must have noticed that any website you visit nowadays has ads running on it. The ads are just everywhere on the Internet, and mostly for good reasons. Due to the rise of so many ad networks, and particularly Google Adsense, it has become very easy to set up ads on a website.
Signing up for a Google Adsense account is free of charge. You don’t even have to pay any fee for the maintenance or upgrading, once your website is approved for a Google Adsense account. Google will keep track of your page, its views, traffic, earnings and other stats.
In the beginning, you can expect only a few bucks coming in every month. But in time, if you are able to drive large volumes of traffic to your site on a daily basis, the money you get from Google through the ads can become quite lucrative.
2. Affiliate Marketing
Are you a marketer at heart who keeps looking for ways to promote your own or other people’s products and services? If yes, affiliate marketing is just the thing for you! Affiliate marketing is when you promote anybody’s product (software, website, physical product, app, services or anything else someone is selling) over the Internet, by mentioning it in any kind of content that you produce and publish online.
If you have a website, a blog or a Youtube channel, it’s very easy for you to get started with affiliate marketing. Even if you have none of these so far, you can begin by commenting on other people’s blogs, promoting the products or services of your clients.
To land your first few clients, you’ll need to sign up for affiliate programs. Some of these programs function as an affiliate ad network, where you can interact with tons of other affiliates and learn what’s been working for them the most.
In this way, affiliate marketing will also help you grow your online network, and partner with other brands or businesses that are looking to increase their revenue in similar ways as yours. Once you have a solid footing in the online marketing regime, you can start charging higher from your clients to increase your income.
3. Ghostwriting
Many successful bloggers started off with ghostwriting. Ghostwriting is when you write original and valuable content for other people’s websites or blogs. However, only some of these blog owners would pay you for the service, while others would only give you author attribution.
Getting author attribution instead of monetary compensation has its own benefits. Any content that you produce can be included into your portfolio as a copywriter. If you are not able to make money via ghostwriting alone, try out freelance copywriting services. Many companies outsource their web content, marketing content and blog articles to freelancers, who can do volume writing in good speed. Sometimes they pay per hour of your work, while other times, you can charge them a fixed rate per 100 or 1000 words.
For those who enjoy writing, ghostwriting or freelance copywriting can become an enjoyable source of generating passive income.
4. Online Courses
If you are really good at something, you can teach it to others as well. Taking some knowledge that you have in any specific field of your interest, and converting it into an online course or an online mastermind class can establish an enormous source of income for you. Imagine making money by doing what you love.
The biggest breakthroughs in life are made when one of the biggest problems is solved. Maybe you have a skill in you that has the potential to solve something that big, but you’re not able to fully utilize it at your job due to limitations of your job scope, friction from your colleagues, or resistance from your boss. It’s like deep down you have an urge to perform at the best of your ability, and the fact that you’re not able to do that at your job suffocates you.
If you are suffering from this kind of situation, like many others, the good news is that the digital world has a solution for you. There are fantastic websites or online platforms out there that make it extremely easy for you to offer your courses online, share your knowledge, display your skills and let others benefit by learning from you. And what do you get in return? You get paid! Yes, it’s as simple as that!
A rising platform that many people who are seeking financial freedom are turning to nowadays is Yibbia. At Yibbia, you can upload your course materials and manage your customers (or students), as well as accept payments via the built-in mechanism of the site. It doesn’t require any coding skills or any other troublesome effort from your side.
The best thing about Yibbia is that it’s completely free of cost to create an account and promote your courses there. Yes, subscription is free! And it’s not just a ‘free trial’, it’s permanently free! You won’t be asked to key in your credit card details to be annoyingly and surprisingly charged a certain amount at a predetermined date to let you continue using it.
5. Other Freelance Work
There’s a wide range of services that anyone with a skill can offer as a freelancer. Whether you are a web developer, a content writer, a video maker, an illustrator or a social media marketer, you can create a profile at a freelancing site like Upwork or Fiverr, and offer your services online.
Most of the startup firms look for freelancers to handle most part of their operations, until they start generating sufficient amounts of revenue to be able to hire and sustain full-time employees.
Another great platform for offering your freelancing services is Airtasker. This is the place where businesses find skilled people to outsource different tasks. Signing up as a ‘tasker’ on Airtasker is a great way to utilize your skills and earn some extra cash.
There are tons of other ways to make money online. The ones covered in this article are just the tip of the iceberg. If you can spare some extra time and have a passion or skill that you really want to pursue, you have a high chance to be able to successfully build an online income stream.