Every time they ask me what I do, and I answer that I have a blog, or an online site, the first thing they ask me is if it is possible to earn money online.
The short answer is that yes, it is possible to earn money online, and the objective of this article is to explain how to make money online.
The options that you will find on the web are very varied, in
fact, if you Google how to make money online, you will find hundreds of
articles that explain how to achieve it.
How is this post different from the rest?
On the one hand, I will share with you those ideas that have
worked for me in my process and I will tell you about my personal experience.
Additionally, I will share other options to earn money online that
we have investigated since although we like those that we use a lot, we cannot
deny that there are other very interesting alternatives that we wanted to
include in this list.
Let's get something clear before we begin:
The vast majority of people assume that making money online is
fast, fairly, and easy. They even get the idea that all they have to do is create a blog from scratch, and start
earning income overnight.
The reality is very different, to earn money online you will have to work smart,
try new things, learn constantly, and dedicate yourself, as you would with any
job, so that it begins to bear fruit.
Once this is clear, you will have the right mindset to explore all
the benefits that the web offers you.
To begin with, these ideas to
earn money online do not depend on where you live, your age
or profession, it does not matter where your customers are since your products
become available 24 hours a day, and best of all, you only need two things to
start with:
o A computer
o An internet connection.
As you will realize, the investment for these businesses from home is minimal, since you
don't really need to have a lot of money to access them.
Additionally, it is not necessary that you quit your current job
and dedicate yourself full time to developing this idea, since these give you
the freedom to work on them during your free time.
So you can keep your job, and therefore your income until you can
take the leap and become one of those people who know how to make money online,
no matter where they are in the world.
1. Make money with a blog
There are many ways to generate income with a blog, and
Undertaking Stories is proof of that.
If you are interested in starting to earn
money online with a blog, I have created an online course
that teaches you the methodology to achieve it from scratch.
Before sharing the methods you have to earn money online, I want
to make you a very special invitation.
How to start a blog on the
Internet?
The first thing you should do is choose your web domain, choose a hosting plan that suits your needs, and start generating content.
To be honest, making money from a blog is not something that
happens overnight; Although creating a page is relatively easy (with
services like Bluehost or, which you can do in a
matter of minutes), the key is in the perseverance and dedication that you put
into your digital project.
Now, when you manage to break the inertia, you start to have
traffic, you understand about organic positioning and you have your subscriber
base, that's when the magic begins to happen.
Here are some methods to monetize a website, if you want to know
more about each option, you can review this article on how to make money with a blog.
Methods
to earn money online with your blog:
Here are some alternatives to earn money with your blog.
Google
Adsense:
Google Adsense is perhaps one of the alternatives most used by
bloggers to monetize their websites. This belongs to Google and is
responsible for connecting advertisers with your website.
There are several variables that you must take into account to
estimate how much money you can earn with Adsense.
Keyword
planner: This service offered by Google Adwords allows you to
calculate how much money is paid, on average, for an advertisement on a
specific topic. Additionally, it tells you an estimate of monthly searches.
Here is an example of the keyword "recipes with tuna"
To estimate how much money you can earn with Adsense on your blog,
you must take into account three elements:
The topic
of your blog: In this case, the recipes with tuna would be a food blog,
with healthy, varied recipes, which has a good cost per click that starts from
2 USD (9,923 Colombian pesos).
Blog
traffic: The second factor that determines the amount of income is
the number of visitors your website receives in a month. For this example,
let's say you have 10,000 monthly visits to your blog.
The
click-through rate (CTR) of your blog: This indicator shows
us how many people, or what percentage of your visitors click on the ads on
your website. Let's say you have a 2% CTR, that is, two ad clicks for
every 100 visits to your page.
How much money would you make in a month in this example of recipes with tuna?
Income calculation = 10,000 monthly visits X $ 1.20 ($ 2 - the the percentage that Google stays) X 2% = $ 240.
As you can see, for this alternative to be interesting you must
have a very good number of monthly visits, and have a blog whose theme has a
good cost per click.
Now, as you can see, Google keeps a good portion of the income,
since they facilitate the entire process, you do not have to connect with the
advertisers, manage the charges or define the ads that appear on your site.
If you are willing to do this job, you can sell ad space directly
to advertisers, define a cost per click, and send link reports to them so they
can pay you.
Promoted
content:
This advertising model consists of creating content, either in the article, video, or image formats that seek to promote a brand or a
characteristic of it.
This model is quite famous worldwide and is used by major media
such as the New York Times, Buzzfeed, among others.
This is an example from the New York Times, where the advertiser
Netflix paid him to do an investigation of the current situation of female
prisoners in the United States, to promote the launch of a new season
of his series Orange is
the New Black.
Even due to the legislation in the United States, the medium must
indicate if it is sponsored content, as it does in the URL and in the content
(see the red boxes in the image).
If you want to make money online by creating sponsored content,
you can register on platforms that connect you with advertisers interested in
publishing content on your blog. Here are some:
o Publisuites
o Corbis
o Fluvip
Other ways to make money with a blog:
When you position yourself on the web as an expert or someone who
masters a specific topic, you can offer services around your knowledge.
You can offer personalized
advice, which you can do through Skype and Hangout. Here's an
example:
Another alternative is seminars and events, thanks to the creation of so many tools to offer digital events, or webinars, you can monetize your knowledge, and even invite other experts, to create robust events around a theme.
2. Paid Surveys
Surely you are thinking, "another site that recommends these
surveys. "
Do paid surveys work? Can you make
money online with them?
Let's be clear: The problem with surveys, as with other methods of making money online is that frauds and scams have been created around them.
What you
should know is that companies need to do market research to evaluate and test
their products or services, and thanks to the emergence of the internet, paid
surveys have become a powerful tool to achieve this.
So, as long as you use reliable platforms that have a track record
and have a good reputation, it is
possible to make money online with surveys.
Pages to earn money online with surveys:
To begin you must register on the following pages, usually you
receive an email where they ask you to confirm that it is you, and then you
start receiving surveys.
These pages are not exclusive, that is, you can subscribe to all
of them and earn more money depending on the number of surveys you fill out. The
most important thing is that you subscribe in your country of residence,
otherwise the page will not work for you.
3. Affiliate Marketing, a
6-figure business
Recently, in an entrepreneurship talk, I asked attendees if they
believed that it was possible to earn amounts over the internet that exceeded 6
figures, that is, to invoice at least $ 100,000 in a year.
You think it's possible? I tell you that today there are
blogs and people who not only know how to make money online but are building online business ideas that bill hundreds of
thousands, and even millions of dollars a year.
Here's the example of Patt Flynn, whose Smart
Passive Income blog had a turnover of more than $ 2
million in 2017, primarily through Affiliate Marketing.
Personally, we use various affiliate programs at Undertaking
Stories, which leave us commissions for every sale, lead, or conversion that is
generated on the merchant site.
However, before I tell you which affiliate marketing programs you can use
to earn
money online, first I want to explain what it is and
where you can learn in-depth about the subject.
Affiliate Marketing consists of selling a product belonging to a
third person and taking a commission for it. It is something like the work
of commercial 2.0.
If you want to learn more about the subject, there are several programs
that explain how to create automatic systems, which includes courses, videos,
guides and training to start billing thousands of dollars a month.
Below
we will share some of the programs with which you can earn money online by
recommending third-party products.
One
of the most famous is the Amazon Affiliate program.
In
our case, we use the affiliate program to recommend books to our community that
we feel add value.
For
every book sale on Amazon, we receive a commission. If you want to learn
more about this program, we have created an Amazon Affiliate guide. For
example:
Another of the most famous and used affiliate networks is ClickBank. Here are some of its advantages:
o Wide
variety of products, both physical and digital.
o Their
commissions are quite attractive, you could earn up to 70% commission with a large number of products.
o Payments
are relatively fast (the payment is sent every month) and,
o You can
receive your commissions through Payoneer anywhere in the world.
Other Affiliate Marketing networks that work very well, and that
you could explore to find products to recommend and earn money online are:
o LinkShare
o The eBay
Affiliate Program
o ShareASale
o MaxBounty
4. Offer your services as an independent worker or freelance
Thanks to globalization and the internet, today there is a wide
range of online jobs that you can do from any
corner of the planet.
Where can you offer these services?
There are a good number of pages where you can offer your services
as a freelancer. Some of the most prominent are:
o Fiverr
o Workana
Freelancer
Upwork
These types of platforms open the doors to new opportunities and
clients around the world, to which you would not have access otherwise and that
can help you earn extra money.
To start, here I explain the steps to become self-employed.
Here are some jobs that you can do from home to earn money online
working for third parties.
Write
articles on-demand:
People who find it easy to write, especially journalists and
people involved in social communication, have a very good opportunity to earn
money.
Content has become a fundamental pillar of the internet, so many
possibilities have opened up for freelancers who know how to write.
We have created a guide with four easy steps explaining how to earn money writing; it does
not matter if it is for a personal blog or selling articles for companies.
In the case that you are fluent in English, several
pages pay you up to $ 100 to write articles in this language. Here
are two sites you can explore:
Listverse: This
platform pays you $ 100 per approved article. The content must be a list
of 10 points, at least 1,500 words.
Matador
Network: This platform pays you up to $ 60 for each approved article. The
most common payments are between $ 20 and $ 25 and there is no minimum number
of words. It alone cannot be more than 1,500 words.
You should know that the internet has changed the way of writing,
and it is key that you learn not only to create optimized content for the
internet, but also how to get your first customers, how to present articles and
know how to add value to whoever buys your content.
Become a virtual assistant:
The work as a virtual assistant covers different functions that
depend on what your client requires. Your activities can range from
answering emails and scheduling agendas to creating articles, making calls,
and managing clients.
The attractive thing about this way of making money online is
that, to learn how to be a virtual assistant, you do
not require extensive previous knowledge or experience.
Of course, you must learn how to attract new clients,
know the tricks to differentiate yourself from the competition and offer added
value to the companies that hire you.
In addition, the work as a virtual assistant is quite flexible and
adapts to your commitments, so you can work in parallel for different companies
or entrepreneurs, and thus increase your income.
If you are interested in turning your skills, experience and
knowledge into a career as a virtual assistant, we leave you a course to learn
how to achieve it.
This course also includes notions to manage your online identity
as a personal brand, position yourself on the Internet as a professional in
virtual assistance and how to find your clients, all explained step by step and
from scratch.
Transcribe audios:
If you are fast with the keyboard, then transcribing audio will be
a good idea to earn money online. In Atexto you
can receive up to € 315 per month for transcribing an hour of audio per day,
from Monday to Friday.
However, you must take care of your spelling
because the transcripts must not have errors.
In addition, you must comply with the transcription guidelines
that are detailed on the page so that no points are taken away from you, nor
money is deducted from your payment.
Translate articles and content on the web:
If you master two languages, be it Spanish along with English,
French, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, or any other language, you can offer your
translation services and earn money online.
This service has become an interesting source of income for those
who learn how to get clients, know the most important aspects of the business,
and understand what clients are looking for through translations.
5. Sale of products and services
over the Internet
here are a wide variety of products and services that you can
offer on the Internet.
At Undertaking Stories we sell, for example, our ebook about
personal finance that we mentioned earlier.
If you have a blog, you can sell physical or digital
products depending on the theme of your website; for example, you can
create books, courses, mugs, or
some product that you see that fits your community.
If you want to sell your products online, the most natural thing
would be for you to have an online store. Today there are very robust
tools like Shopify, which allow you to create
online stores in a matter of minutes.
As we have seen that this is a topic of interest to our community,
we created a guide where we explain how to create an online store in
a few steps.
So what can you sell online and how to do it? Here are some
ideas to start making money online.
Write and sell books:
If you find it easy to write, you have good spelling and you have
the ability to connect with the people who read you, you can learn to write and sell an ebook and start
making money online.
Although there is a saturation of the market with so much supply
of digital books, the key is to create valuable content that meets a goal, or
that helps your audience in some way.
What should
you look for with your book? Teach something, solve a problem or
make life much easier for those who read to you. The power of voice to
voice and the spread of social networks will help you make sales very
interesting.
One of the advantages of ebooks is that you have to do the work
only once, that is, the work of sitting down to write it, edit it and publish
it is done once, and from then on, you must dedicate yourself to promoting it
in your communities.
Where can you sell your ebooks?
In addition to having it published on your website, you can use
these five complementary platforms to sell your books and have exposure to a
much larger audience.
o Amazon Kindle
o Apple iTunes
o Free Ebooks
o Blurb
o Lulu
The attractiveness of selling books online is that it is one of
those businesses that require little investment and the barriers to entry are
minimal. However, this does not mean that it is easy, since you need to
invest time writing and promoting it.
Sell
audiobooks:
Like ebooks, audiobooks have been growing in popularity due to the
ease of listening, the new platforms available, and their prices that have
become very affordable.
An example of this is Amazon's Audible program, which gives
you a free 30-day trial to listen to two audiobooks of your choice.
This shows that people have much broader access to these types of
materials, so if you like to tell stories, short stories, or novels, you can
create your own audiobook and sell it through different digital platforms.
Sell
your photos in image banks:
On the internet, there are many image banks that, in exchange for a
small fee or under the royalty business
model, allow you to upload your photos to their libraries so
that their users can buy them and you receive a commission. Among the most
popular image banks are Shutterstock, iStock, and Depositphotos.
Sell your crafts:
If you like creating arts and crafts, you can sell your products
and earn money online. It's totally free to open an Etsy. shop,
you just have to create your account, take good quality photos of your products
and start selling.
The costs are variable and depend on your sales, generally, they
charge you 3.5% for each sale plus a fixed cost for displaying your products. Regarding
payment, there are several alternatives including Paypal.
Unlike the face-to-face or physical sale of your products, when
you sell through this type of virtual store, you have access to customers
around the world, you do not need to be present to generate a sale and you can
develop business relationships beyond your city.
This idea represents a very good opportunity if you are looking
for jobs from home that make your life
easier.
Buying
and selling web domains:
Buying and selling domains are some of the most common practices to earn
money online.
What is this idea about? Basically, a person can buy a domain
at low cost, make it have a special added value, and then sell it for a higher
price.
To measure the size of this business, here is a list of the 20
most expensive domains that have been sold.
You must bear in mind that it is complicated and expensive the process to carry out since contacts and a lot of time is needed to correctly
position a domain.
If you want to start this business online you can use platforms
such as Sedo and Whois.
Sale of used products:
Do you have college or school books kept in a closet? Normally
when we finish the year of study we usually keep the books that we will no
longer use in the future.
A practical way to earn money online is to sell these used books
to people who will need them next year and who are interested in paying less
for the book you already used.
You can use Amazon that gives you gift cards in exchange for your
books and other products, or search for clients through OLX, Mercado Libre and
social networks.
Now, not only can you sell your books, but you can also offer
clothing, accessories, appliances, technological devices, among others. This
is also an invitation for you to stop accumulating things and opt for a minimalist lifestyle.
Dropshipping,
sell without inventory:
Dropshipping is a practice that consists of selling products
without having inventory to make money online. The person functions as an
intermediary between the customer and the seller, who sends the purchase
directly.
The principle of Dropshipping is simple. It is about opening
an e-commerce store in Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix, or PrestaShop,
for example, where people will get various products of their interest.
Here we leave you a guide so that you understand and start making money with Dropshipping.
Salehoo:
If you want to start with this business you can check Salehoo, one of the best platforms to
start your dropshipping business. It is basically a supplier directory
that allows you to find suppliers, prices, and online stores in a matter of
minutes.
It can even tell you the profit margins, comparing your suppliers
and other useful information to start importing from China.
Some
of the platforms to start in this business are (Dropshipping):
o AliExpress,
o DHgate,
o SheInside,
o Tmart,
o DealExtreme,
o MiniInTheBox,
o BigBuy,
o BangGood.
The good thing about this idea to make money online is that you can dropship from
practically any country; It is easy to start, requires little investment
and few expenses, it is managed from anywhere and you can sell the type of the product you want.
6. Create online courses and
monetize your knowledge
Another very good idea to earn money online is through online courses.
Currently, people are looking to deepen their knowledge, learn new
skills or develop a hobby, and with the ease of access to knowledge, online
courses have become a very good option.
With tools like Skype, Google Hangouts, or FaceTime, you can offer
your personalized classes to students around the world.
You can even explore platforms like Superprof to
offer your services.
Now, the other option you have is to create an online course and
sell it on educational platforms such as Udemy, where you access more than 30
million students in more than 190 countries in the world.
Depending on the price of the course, the type of client that
comes to the platform, and if there are promotions, the commission that Udemy
charges may vary. Here you can review their instructor payment policies.
7. Create
a channel on YouTube and generate income
YouTube is
one of the fastest-growing platforms in both users and people who generate
income there. And this is largely due to video consumption by online
users.
Before explaining how the platform works, you should review the income policies to start making
money online with YouTube, you must comply with certain parameters and numbers.
This platform also works with Google Adsense, and the income will
depend on the number of visits you have and the number of subscribers.
Some channels sell advertising directly to brands; many times
using the products in the videos or making them part of the natural environment of the video.
This option is quite good since you will avoid intermediaries, so
the money derived from advertising is almost full for the user.
To give you an idea of the income that can be generated on
YouTube, the CNBC medium revealed that the top 10
YouTubers generated more than 180 million dollars in income during 2018.
And to surprise you, 8-year-old Ryan
ToysReview has the channel that generated the most revenue
with a total of $ 22 million in 2018.
8. Podcasts, the new wave of content
Podcasts are audio recordings that can be downloaded on the
Internet, or listened to on certain platforms such as iTunes, iVoox, Stitcher,
Spreaker, AllPodcasts, Spotify, among others.
Currently, podcasts also include videos, but the original concept is that they are audio recordings on various topics,
distributed in different episodes.
It is like having a radio program saved on your smart device, and
being such a popular format, it is being used to earn money online.
To start making money online with podcasts, you must create interesting
content that attracts the attention of your users and manages to attract a good
subscriber base.
Once you learn how to make a podcast, you can monetize it in
several ways:
o You can
offer them your own products or services.
o Use
affiliate marketing to recommend third-party products
o Sell
advertising so that brands have mentioned or exposure in front of your
subscribers.
o Lastly, you
can charge your subscribers a small fee to receive your podcasts.
To finish, I would like to share the different options you have to earn
money online through social networks.
There are several quite profitable alternatives to make money with Facebook and other networks, if
you manage it well while investing in the different channels.
Manage social networks for third parties:
If you like social networks, you are an expert in the digital
world or have taken digital marketing courses, you could create a digital-based business where you manage the social networks of other people or
businesses.
Due to the boom that social networks are taking, and the
importance of the digital presence for the growth of companies, this has become
a great business opportunity that does not require a
considerable investment.
To start this business you can offer plans to your clients where
you charge for the number of published pieces, number of followers gained or
handling of complaints and claims.
Another alternative is to charge a fixed fee or monthly payment
for developing certain key activities for the business. These activities
will depend on the client's objectives and must be defined jointly.
How to get your first clients:
To get your first clients you can publish an offer on the
freelance platforms mentioned above.
Another faster way would be to work with people you already know
and are interested in creating a personal brand, or small business in your city that does not have a digital presence.
Visit several of the businesses that are close to your home and
check if they have communities on social networks; If you cannot find
them, you could offer your services and if they do, explore what improvements
you could implement with these networks to increase their sales or number of
clients.
Remember that the key is to offer a service, through social
networks, that allows your client to earn more money, obtain higher profits, or
reduce their costs.
Become
an influencer:
Thanks to the rise of Instagram, a new way to earn money from home has appeared very
profitable: to become an influencer for
different brands.
This work consists of advertising products of companies in
exchange for financial remuneration or, in exchange for products of the same
company.
The important thing here is to promote products that you agree
with, since promoting anything simply to make money will make your audience
stop trusting you.
So to begin with, the most important thing to learn how to get followers on Instagram is about being
original, developing a style, and starting to build an audience that is
attractive to brands.
Many people think that being an influencer is an "easy"
way to earn money online, however, to make your social media account a business
you must be consistent and have a long-term vision.
10. Web programming services
Thanks to the growth, and the diversity of ways to earn money
online, the knowledge regarding web programming, mobile development,
application creation, among others, have become highly demanded services.
This is why today there are so many programming courses since these skills are
becoming a source of considerable income due to the demand for these services.
So if you have this programming knowledge or skill you could have
a very lucrative chance of making money online.
From freelance services for companies around the world to
creating your own applications to earn money, you have various
possibilities to monetize your knowledge. Among the options you have:
o, Create an
online programming course to train other people.
o, Work
remotely for businesses from home.
o On-demand
programming services for entrepreneurs, businesses, or companies.
o Develop
your own products and services and then sell them.
Conclusions
The options to earn money online are very varied. In fact, we
can continue this list and keep mentioning other ideas such as:
o Make money
checking websites
o Making
sports bets
o Trading on the stock market, currencies,
stocks, derivatives, among others.
o Play video
games that pay you money
o View
advertising ads on websites.
However, in this article, I wanted to share with you the ideas to
earn money online that I know work. Some you can pay more than others, but
everything will depend on the perseverance, dedication, and effort that you put
into it.
As I mentioned at the beginning, making money online is possible,
however, it is not something that happens immediately.
You must work, try new ideas, and build knowledge that allows you
to work intelligently and allows you to earn money online no matter where you
are in the world.