Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from 2018

Become an Online News Writer or Columnist

You don’t need to have a degree in journalism to make money online as a reporter or columnist these days. Plus, there are many news websites that can always use a bit of help on getting local coverage. Some of them, such as  The Examiner , will compensate contributors based on ad revenue generated per article written.

Start an Online T-Shirt Business

It’s sometimes hard to comprehend just how much people love t-shirts. And with the right niche, marketing, and tools, you can create an online t-shirt business that makes you extra money online while you sleep. (Even  Bloomberg  and  Forbes  feature stories from entrepreneurs who've done just that.) Services like TeeSpring make it easier than ever to create a t-shirt drop-shipping business where they handle the sales, printing, and shipping, and you’re only responsible for design and marketing. For more tips, check out this simple guide to launching and marketing an  online clothing store  by my friends over at Selz.

Sell Your Crafts and Art on Etsy

Etsy is the most popular online marketplace for handmade goods and crafts. From bracelets to phone cases, rings, furniture, and more,  Etsy  is perfect for anyone who is creative and wants to sell their handmade creations. As long as you have the space, this can make for one of the best ways to make money online that can be started with a very limited investment. Consider these  5 steps to starting an Etsy store , from Handmadeology. While Etsy is a great place to get in front of potential customers who wouldn’t have otherwise found you, once you’re up and running and have built a decent audience, you can move your store over to  Shopify  and retain a larger portion of the income you make from selling your goods.

Do Graphic Design for Local Companies

How many email newsletters are you bombarded with every single day? There’s a reason for that. Marketing to an actively interested group of email subscribers is one of the best ways to make money online. There have even been million-dollar businesses built from simple email newsletters like  TheSkimm , or  Mister Spoils . Each newsletter targets a specific type of user with interesting, daily content, while also partnering with relevant companies and affiliates to bring in extra money. If this seems daunting, it’s not. Tools like MailChimp,  Seva (formerly ConvertKit) , AWeber, and ActiveCampaign, make it easier than ever to get started with email 

Sell Your Services on Niche Sites Like 99Designs, Cloudpeeps or TopTal

If you’re a skilled worker in a specific niche, like marketing, design, or software development, there are specialty marketplaces that cater just to you. These are amazing places to make money online as you know that the people visiting them are looking specifically for the skills you have. Check out places like 99Designs or Dribbble for designers, Cloudpeeps for marketing and SEO professionals, and TopTal, Crew, or Gigster for high-level software developers. Once you've built up your development skills, you can begin building a brand for yourself as a higher-value consultant and start charging brands for larger projects like implementing an entire  WordPress security  overhaul or  migrating a website from http to https

Join a Freelance Network (Like Upwork, or Fiverr)

It can take time to build up your personal freelance business. Yet, there is more demand than ever for freelancers. So, if you want to kick start making money online through freelancing you can join one of the top freelance networks, such as UpWork, Fiverr, Guru, Freelancer.com, or PeoplePerHour. Sign up, build your profile, upload some samples of your work and start making extra money by doing small  freelance jobs . Even if you already have experience or freelance clients, these networks can be a great way to supplement your income and keep work coming in without spending too much time on cold outreach.

Do Micro-Jobs on Amazon Mechanical Turk

Amazon Mechanical Turk is a service that lets you make money online through doing paid microtasks. Each task is something simple that requires human interaction like rating search results, checking for the right spelling on search terms, categorizing the tone of an article, or even basic translating. You can do these tasks from anywhere you want and make money online from the world’s largest e-retailer.

Write and Sell an eBook (Amazon Self-Publishing)

So many people dream of writing a book, but never go through with it. Yet no matter what, I’m sure you have experience and value you could give through writing a book. By packaging your skills and knowledge into a downloadable eBook that helps people learn a skill, advance their careers, or start a businesses, you can change someone’s life and even make good money online. Better yet, you can even upload your own book to one of the world’s largest book sellers: Amazon. With Amazon self-publishing, you set the price, retain the rights to your book, and get access to Amazon’s massive audience. For every sale, you keep 70% with Amazon taking the remainder as a fee. If you want to get started, check out Leslie Samuel's great guide to  selling eBooks online  or follow Tara Gentile on CreativeLive as she shows you how to use your existing body of work to  write an eBook  within the next week. Who knows, you might just write one of the  best business books  o...

Record a Podcast and Share Inspiring Stories

Podcasts are super hot right now, and for good reason. With how busy our lives are getting, more and more people are looking for passive ways to take in content. Which makes them both a great opportunity to build an audience and to make money online. And while it will take time to build up a big-enough audience to attract advertisers and other ways to make extra income from your podcast, the opportunity is there. John Lee Dumas interviews entrepreneurs seven days a week for his podcast  Entrepreneur on Fire  and now  makes more than $200,000 a month  from it. In fact, John publishes all his income online and showed that he’s made almost $13 million since launching in 2012. The podcast market is constantly looking for new, quality content. And luckily for anyone trying to get started, it’s now easier than ever. Starting a podcast, like making a YouTube channel or blog, comes down to telling interesting stories and building an engaged audience. I’m probably s...

Launch a YouTube Channel to Entertain and Educate

While YouTube  recently changed its monetization program , if you’re able to hit their new minimum bar of 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of view time in the past 12 months, it’s still an incredible place to make extra money online. YouTube is arguably  the world’s second largest search engine  (after Google) and is the third most-visited site in the world. In 2017, almost 5 billion videos were watched on YouTube  every single day! Rather than making money through subscriptions, YouTube channels are based on a traditional advertising system. Meaning the more viewers you get, the more you make. Once you’re approved for the  YouTube Partner Program  and can start including ads on your videos, with every 1,000 views, you will make approximately $2-$4. Which might not seem like a lot, but if you have 100 videos with 5,000 views a month each, that would be $1,000–$2,000 already. Just imagine if your videos start hitting millions of views! Building a ...

Create Online Courses to Productize Your Knowledge

If you’re already an expert in a topic—either through your current job, freelance business, or coaching—you can package that knowledge into a high-value course and sell it for years to come. And while building, launching, and marketing an online course does take a considerable amount of upfront effort, their earning potential is through the roof (especially compared to a lot of the other online ways to make money we’re talking about). Courses and other knowledge products like e-books, are what’s called passive income. That simply means that once the upfront time and effort is put in, with just a bit of regular upkeep and marketing you’ll be able to continue to sell and make money from them for months and years. So, how do you go about putting together your course? One of my favorite online course success stories comes from  Bryan Harris of Videofruit , who built and launched an online course  in just 10 days that made him $220,750 ! To hit this awesome goal, Bryan ...

Start Online Coaching and Sell Your Advice

Similar to selling your freelance services, you can also start selling your knowledge and advice in an area you specialize in as a coach or consultant. If you can bill yourself as an expert, there are tons of people out there willing to pay for your time. Being an online coach or consultant is a great way to make money online, as instead of giving your client ongoing deliverables (like when you’re a freelancer), you’re teaching them to be better, faster, stronger than the competition. Your  expertise  becomes the product you’re selling. Even better, if you can find ways to package your experience and coaching skills into an easily digestible program, you have the potential to significantly scale this business model. Now, if you don’t know people who might want your coaching services, there are a number of online tools and communities that make it incredibly easy to find clients and teach, on just about any topic area you can think of. Community driven platforms like...

Find Freelance Clients and Sell Your Services

If you have a marketable skill—like writing, designing, web development, marketing, project management, or anything else—one of the easiest ways to make sustainable extra money online is to start freelancing. And while freelancing might not be as scalable as some of the other ideas we’ve spoken about, it’s not uncommon for solopreneurs to build healthy  six-figure freelance businesses  for themselves. (In fact, I’ve interviewed tons of them on my podcast!) Today, over  54 million Americans  are opting to forego traditional careers and start a freelance business. There’s plenty of work and clients to be found. If you know where to look. To start, you need to know if there is enough demand for your skill to make it worth the effort to go out looking for work. Start by searching freelancer job boards on  UpWork ,  Freelancer ,  Guru  or one of the dozens of other  skill-specific freelance job boards . How many postings are there for ...

Start an eCommerce Site and Sell Physical Products

If finding a better solution to a problem hundreds or thousands of people have doesn’t seem like an option right now, you might be better off setting up a virtual shop and selling physical items. These days, this couldn’t be easier. Sites like  Shopify  have made it easier than ever to build a customizable, powerful eCommerce site in a weekend and start selling products now. This is probably one of the oldest and most time-tested ways of making money online. Plenty of digital entrepreneurs have created sustainable businesses by either: Creating physical products they know people in their niche will love Purchasing low cost goods manufactured in foreign countries, repackaging or combining them with other products, and selling them for higher prices on domestic online marketplaces While you’ll certainly have higher levels of success if you can nail creating and marketing your own unique product, from my own experience (and that of many other entrepreneurs), I know ...