The Best 20 Ways To Start Making Money Online

Leave a Comment / By / August 17, 2019

There are so many ways to make money online, it can become a bit overwhelming trying to decide what will work for you, what will fit into your lifestyle and what you will actually enjoy doing.

Perhaps you don’t think that you have any skills or knowledge to be able to work from home and make money online.

Or maybe you think that it’s too late to make money online, that you needed to start years ago to be making enough money now to be able to be a work from home mum.

It’s actually easier than ever to make money online. 

Not only are there so many tools available that mean you don’t need any kind of technical knowledge at all, but almost every industry has moved or is moving towards being able to be performed online.

Here are my top 20 ways that anyone can make money online in 2018, without any prior technical knowledge or web or graphic design background.

AFFILIATE MARKETING WITH A BLOG

If you have knowledge in a particular area, are interested in a certain topic or just want to write about life and you can build an audience for your site, then starting a blog is an awesome option!

If you are unfamiliar with affiliate marketing, it is basically where you promote another person’s product or service. If you refer someone to their site and that person makes a purchase, you get a commission or percentage of the sale.

So, to monetize your blog you would include links to affiliate products and services within your posts or placed around your site and it can be an incredible way to generate an income.

In fact, check out my post 10 inspiring income reports that will make you want to start a blog, which features some incredible earnings from mom bloggers.

Want to know how to get your blog up and running today? Learn how to start a blog quickly for beginners now.

OPEN AN ONLINE STORE WITH ETSY, AMAZON, SHOPIFY

This is one of my favorite ways to make money online and I have used most of these platforms!

I prefer building, setting up and hosting my own online stores but if you don’t have that kind of technical knowledge or just want a nice and easy, click and play type of deal then you can sell products through an already established platform.

SHOPIFY

Shopify is great for you if you want to sell your own products, purchase inventory from a wholesaler or dropship products and sell in your own online store, but don’t have the technical web design knowledge to build a store from scratch.

They provide a very simple platform to use to customize the look of your store. They also host the store for you and you have complete control of how you run it.

I have a store running on Shopify and found it very easy to use and they have lots of options to customize the look and functionality of your store.

If you want to give Shopify a try, head over now and this link will give you a 14 Day Free Trial.

ETSY

Etsy is the place to sell hand made goods. They do not allow you to sell products that you purchased from a wholesaler or were not involved in the creation/manufacturing process.

I haven’t had any experience selling on Etsy but have definitely bought some great products from sellers there.

AMAZON

Amazon is an awesome way to sell products and you can sell your own products if you make them or you can purchase products from a wholesaler (or even a retailer) and sell them on Amazon.

Although you have no control over your listings on Amazon or the way the site functions, you do get immediate access to their incredibly large customer base and can pretty much make money right away.

Unfortunately, you never get direct access to your customers though – they will ALWAYS belong to Amazon.

I have sold products on Amazon using their FBA (Fulfilment By Amazon) system but was never comfortable not having any control over my business.

There are some people just killing it on Amazon.com:

BECOME AN AUTHOR WITH KINDLE OR CREATESPACE

If you have always dreamed of being a published author, you can! And it is actually so easy to do.

You can self-publish on Kindle, which is a digital version of your book that people read through their Kindle device or app.

Or, you can publish your book through Amazon’s CreateSpace platform. This is where your book is printed in hard copy format but it is printed on demand.

Meaning, once someone has purchased your book, Amazon will print it and send it out for you. There is no upfront cost for you and you don’t have to purchase your book in bulk prior to selling it.

Or, you can sell your book on both Kindle and CreateSpace!

Just like everything, there is still room to make money on Kindle or CreateSpace. Here are some examples of people making money right now through self-publishing:

CREATE AN ONLINE COURSE

Here’s a secret, you don’t have to be an expert or a guru to build and sell an online course. You just need to know a little bit more about a particular topic than someone else and you can sell that knowledge.

There is a Buddhist quote that I love which goes:

“If you want to learn something, read about it. If you want to understand something, write about it. If you want to master something, teach it.”

Start teaching something and you will eventually become a master at it, but don’t feel that you have to wait until you are a master before you start sharing that knowledge.

I can guarantee that you know something about something that the rest of us doesn’t know. Figure out what that is then package that knowledge up in a course and sell it.

TRANSCRIBING AND CAPTIONING VIDEOS

Basically, get paid to watch videos!

We’ve all seen captions on TV shows and movies. Generally they are for people who are hard of hearing or if you just want the sound off but still want to know what’s being said.

Well, someone actually sits and watches the show and types up all those captions.

There are two companies that I have found who accept freelance, beginner captioners. You obviously need to have extremely good english, spelling and grammar skills and a fast typing speed will be a big advantage for you.

I personally am signed up as a freelancer with Rev.com and am in the process of signing up with Ai-Media.tv.

With Rev.com you are required to complete a short spelling and grammar test. Then, you are given a quick training on how to use the software that creates the captions and you the have to do a test caption video to see if you understand their training on how to do it.

If you pass this test you have to do two more caption video tests and if you pass these two tests you are invited to join their site. This whole process will take you 2-3 hours to do in total.

When you first join, you are required to complete 80 minutes of captioning where every video you caption is reviewed and graded. These video’s are shorter, not as good quality and you get paid less for doing them.

You also need to meet a certain score and if you do, after the 80 minutes, you are promoted to be able to access the longer videos where you get paid more to complete and you aren’t graded on every one.

To give you an idea of what you get paid during the “training” period – after captioning my 80 minutes as a Rookie I had made $38 USD.

You do have to put in some time at first where you don’t get paid much, but it’s definitely something that is worth it to be able to access the better paying videos. I now have access to videos that are up to 90 minutes long and I can receive $40-$60+USD per video to caption.

I’m currently going through the sign up process with Ai-Media.tv and so far it looks very similar to Rev.com

ADVERTISING WITH A BLOG

If you have a blog or are thinking about setting up a blog, a good way to monetize it is via advertising on your site.

If your blog is new or you don’t have much traffic your first and only option will be to use Google Adsense to display advertising on your blog.

There is no minimum traffic requirement by Adsense – anyone at all can put Adsense advertising on their site no matter what the blog is about or how popular (or not) it is. It is not very well paying though.

So, if you want to go this route to make money, your goal needs to be massive traffic.

The more traffic you have, the more people will click on the ads displaying on your site. But, you will not want to continue using Adsense once your traffic grows.

As I mentioned, Adsense does not pay very much but is your only option when just starting. Once you build your traffic enough you can apply to other advertising networks where you will get paid so much more than Adsense.

  • Adsense – For beginners with little or no blog traffic.
  • Mediavine – When your blog grows, Mediavine requires minimum 25,000 blog sessions per month.
  • AdThrive – When you are a power blogger and receiving a minimum of 100,000 monthly page views.
  • Check out Carly from Mommy on Purpose – her income reports talk about how she jumped from $421.65 to $2,203.31 advertising income in one month, just from switching from Adsense to AdThrive.

SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT

Are you familiar with the majority of social media networks? If you use them for your own personal use there’s a good chance you can get paid to manage someone else’s social media for them.

You don’t have to know how to use every network but being able to use the major ones such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter would be enough.

The great thing about being a social media manager is that you can set your rates and your packages dependant upon how much experience and knowledge you have in each network.

Have no clue how to set up and run a Facebook Ads campaign? No problem, don’t include it in your package.

Generally, the basics you will want to be able to do is create content, post content and be able to reply and interact with the accounts audience. You can start with this and learn more advanced strategies as you go.

And, what about finding potential clients to pitch being their social media manager? LinkedIn is THE perfect place to start.

As a side note, come and connect with me on LinkedIn!

START A PODCAST

Can you talk the back legs off a donkey? Are you more of a talker than a writer?

Maybe a podcast is the way for you to go. To me, a podcast is like an audio version of a blog. You can cover the same topics as a blog, or interview and feature other people on your podcast, just like you would on your blog.

You can even add a podcast as an extension of your blog if you are already blogging – it’s just another way to reach a new audience and provide a different method of interacting with your existing audience.

But how do you make money if there’s no affiliate advertising or adsense? You sell advertising. You have people pay you to sponsor a particular podcast episode.

Not sure you can make much money this way?

  • Check our Entrepreneur On Fire – it might change your mind. Their July 2018 income report is a whopping $161,709 but you can go back and see how their income has grown from day one.

SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCER WITH SPONSORED POSTS

If writing a blog or recording a podcast isn’t for you that’s totally okay. There’s still ways to make money without a blog or website.

If you have a decent and engaged following on a social media platform such as Facebook or Instagram, you are able to make money through sponsored posts on your account.

The great thing about this is you no longer need to have a massive follower base before people will pay you to promote their product or service.

We are in the time of the micro-influencer. A micro-influencer is generally someone with less than 10K followers.

The problem with having a large social media following is that the more followers you have, the less engagement you get. That’s just the way it is. But, engagement is what advertisers are interested in.

Advertisers are finding that although someone may have a smaller following, their engagement is higher – and that’s what they are after. They would rather have more people engage with their brand than trying to get it in front of more people who might never click on their site.

It’s the classic quality over quantity.

Here’s where you can start to get yourself out there as an influencer and connect with brands:

START A YOUTUBE CHANNEL

Not camera shy? Start a YouTube channel! It might seem that YouTube is already saturated and that there’s no point in starting a new channel. I mean, there are already so many beauty YouTubers and health and fitness YouTubers, right?

But, honestly, isn’t every social media or money making channel already oversaturated?

It’s never too late to start, YouTube isn’t going anywhere and people are always looking for someone new and fresh to watch.

The good thing about YouTube is there are a few ways to make money from your channel. These include:

  • Displaying advertising on your videos
  • Sponsored videos – being paid to promote a product or service
  • Selling your own product or service

BUILD A MEMBERSHIP SITE

I love membership sites. A membership site can take a little bit of work at the beginning to get set up but it’s a great way to create income month after month.

Your membership site can contain anything – think of it similarly to creating an online course. Use your membership site to share your knowledge about a particular topic each week or month.

People like membership sites because they usually get access to the person who created the site. For example, if you have a blog people can go and read your posts, look at your photos on Instagram etc and that’s usually the extent of it.

If you also created a membership site, people (or your subscribers) would likely get to work more closely with you. You might offer monthly live chats to answer their questions or access to a private Facebook group where they can interact with you.

WRITE FOR GREETING CARDS

Have you ever been searching for a birthday, baby or valentine’s day card and thought “I could write better messages than this!”?

Did you know that you can get paid to write those greeting card messages? Did you know that most greeting card companies accept freelance writers?

And this isn’t just for writers. Some of them also accept freelance illustrators, so if you are a graphic designer who could make graphics for greeting cards this could be a suitable way for you to make money as well.

If this sounds like fun to you, have a read through this post by Real Ways To Make Money Online. They have a list of 47 different greeting card companies that accept freelance writers and how to get accepted.

BE A VIRTUAL ASSISTANT

Have you done some kind of office assistant or reception work in your 9-5 job? Being a virtual assistant might be your cup of tea.

A virtual assistant, or a VA, generally does administrative work for businesses. So, you might be typing up documents, doing data entry, answering emails or they might ask you to help manage their Facebook group or post to their social media channels.

The great thing is that you set what tasks you can and want to do as part of your package.

BE A COACH

I love a good statistic, so here goes! The self-improvement and personal development industry is just absolutely massive, worth around $9.9 billion. What!?

Customers are mainly rich baby boomers and females who are especially interested in programs related to relationships, weight loss, exercise and spirituality.

The personal coaching industry is currently a $1 billion industry and is rapidly growing.

Sometimes people need a bit of help with the direction of their life, or maybe they need some health and fitness coaching. Perhaps someone needs a bit of coaching somewhere within their business or sometimes people just want somebody to talk to, get some advice and have someone hold their hand through a particular situation. .

Examples of coaches I have come across include:

  • Health and fitness
  • Life
  • Mindset
  • Money Mindset
  • Relationship

Coaching is a great and fulfilling way to make money online and don’t feel that you will be restricted to only being able to coach people local to you.

The majority of coaches these days do their coaching session via Skype from anywhere in the world. You also have the choice of doing group coaching sessions with multiple people at once, who are all trying to solve the same problem.

Or you can coach one-on-one for a more intimate, personal experience.

START AN ONLINE T-SHIRT OR MERCH STORE

How cool would it be to have your own merch store!? If you like doing a bit of graphic design this is a such a fun way to let out your creative streak.

Do you love tank tops with cute little sayings and quotes on them? Or maybe you have a brand or business and you want to display it on products to help promote your brand.

And you don’t need to be a superstar graphic designer to do this.

But, Caroline, I don’t know how to use Photoshop to create designs! No problem! With sites such as Canva and PicMonkey it is easier than ever to create professional designs.

Here’s some ideas to get your creative juices flowing:

T-shirts are a great start but there are so many other products you can print your designs on such as tote bags, baby onesies, towels, yoga mats, cosmetic bags and so much more.

You also have many options on how you actually sell your merchandise. There are platforms like Teespring.com, where you just upload your design and they take care of the inventory, printing and shipping of your products.

You can sell your designs on an already existing platform such as Etsy, Ebay or Amazon where you get access to an instant customer base.

Or you can create your own online store and sell your products to your own customer base and take care of you own customer service. This method is a little more work than the others but the only option where you have complete and absolute control over your business.

BE A VIRTUAL TUTOR

Being a tutor is a great way to earn money from home. Depending on the skills that you have, you can choose to teach specialized subjects or, if it’s your first language, simply teach English.

It’s a great, flexible way to work online from home as it can all be done with face-to-face video conferencing.

To get a list of the top 15 companies that hire freelance online tutors, check out this article at dreamhomebasedwork.com.

SELL A DIGITAL PRODUCT

A digital product is something that is downloadable and that the customer can print themselves or view on their laptop, tablet or phone.

This could be:

  • An e-book
  • A fitness program
  • Printable artwork
  • Printable lists
  • Checklists
  • Printable invitations

I’m sure you’ve seen or even purchased yourself a fitness ebook like Kayla Itsines Bikini Body Guide, or Sarah Titus’ printable binders. These are exactly the kind of printable, downloadable product I’m talking about.

What I love about digital products and printables is that it’s something that you create once and you can sell it over and over.

Once you have created the product, it almost becomes passive income for you and you can move onto creating more products (if you want).

COMPLETE SURVEYS

Yes, getting paid to complete surveys is still a thing!

Back in the day, when surveys sites first started it was almost impossible to make more than a few bucks completing surveys but things have really changed and you can make some decent cash these days with surveys.

I know I gave it ago, maybe 10 years ago, and quickly lost interest in making $2 per survey that took an hour to complete!

There are a few well known surveys sites now that have a great reputation for paying out decent amounts for completing their surveys.

SELL YOUR STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY

Whether you are a professional or hobby photographer, people are ALWAYS searching for new and fresh stock photos for their blog, website and social media.

When you don’t have a customer base of your own to sell your photos to, you can list your photos on stock photography websites who already have a massive customer base.

Join up and offer your photographs on websites such as iStock Photo or Shutterstock and every time someone purchases or downloads your photo, you get paid.

BECOME A FREELANCE WRITER

If you like writing but don’t want to deal with ALL the other things that come with running a blog such as the monetization, the marketing and promotion, dealing with technical issues etc then you should look at freelance writing.

There are lots of places and ways to sell your writing. You can contact publications or websites and blogs directly to pitch yourself or your article or you can join freelance network websites such as Upwork.com and promote yourself as well as bid for jobs.

Another option is to submit your articles to websites who pay for articles that suit their site. The slight downside to this is that you do the work without even knowing if your article will get accepted and you’ll get paid.

Some places you can check out are:

LISTVERSE.COM

Listverse.com posts articles that are (surprise) lists. Such as: 10 Ways To Travel The World For Free. If they decide to publish your article you get paid $100.

INTERNATIONALLIVING.COM

This site looks for articles related to living overseas. You can be paid $75 if your article is published.

ALISTAPART.COM

Publishes articles related to web design and coding so if this is your jam, go check them out.

TEXTBROKER.COM

A website that connects authors with publishers. Quality is key here as your articles are rated by the sites editors and you are paid in relation to the quality of your articles.

FUNDSFORWRITERS.COM

Will accept submissions of articles related to earning a living as a writer. If they choose your article you are paid $50 for an original unpublished article or $15 for a reprint article.

SELL YOUR GRAPHIC DESIGNS

If you love graphic design and getting creative in Photoshop or lllustrator but don’t want the hassle of setting up an online store to try to sell products, then you might want to take a look at Society6.com.

This site is for graphic designers who want to sell their designs to be printed on products. All you do is upload your design and specify the price and what type of products it can be printed on.

You can decide you only want your design printed on a t-shirt, a tote bag and a throw rug. But there a so many other products to choose to have your design printed on too.

When someone purchases your design, Society6.com will produce it, package it and ship it off to the customer.

  • Marc Johns is an artist who posted on his blog about making $1,000 a month from selling his designs on Society6.com.

There are some really great ways to make money online listed here and you can even pick more than one of them to do if you have interest in a few different ways to be able to work from home.

The other great thing about all these options is that it’s totally up to you how much time you want to spend working and how much you earn.

If you are looking to just make a little bit extra each month to help pay bills or to have a nice date night once a month then that’s perfectly doable.

If you want to scale it into something massive that earns you five or six figures a month, there’s the potential for that too.

Do you make money online doing something other than I’ve listed above? Let me know in the comments!

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