If you been looking for how to make money online for beginners, I present to you a list of tested and proven ways to generate some online income.
Keep in mind that there is no such thing as easy or “passive income”. Whichever method you choose, be ready put in the work required to be successful.
Pro Tip: Avoid the “Shiny Object Syndrome”. Stop jumping from this to that, from there to here.
Each one of the make money online methods listed below works. Pick one and focus on it long-term and don’t stop working on it until you become successful.
Go through this list, pick a method that interest you and start researching and learning. But remember, the sooner you start, the sooner you’ll start making money.
Table of Contents
Toggle1. Start a Money Making Blog
Do you know what almost all successful online entrepreneur have in common?
They all have a personal blog. And most of the time, that blog makes them the bulk of their online income. And all they’re doing is writing about a niche/topic that they are knowledgeable about. And guess what?, we all can do the same.
What is a blog?
A blog is a personal website that the owner keeps updated with regular high-quality content. Most of the time, the content is written in an informal or conversational style and is meant to educate or entertain the reader.
Why you should start a blog?
Learning how to start a blog TODAY, could be the best decision you’ll ever make. Starting your own personal blog is by far the easiest way to start making money online and create a business that can bring you the freedom that you’re looking for.
Here is How to Start A Blog
Step 1. Choose your blog’s niche
Remember that passion does not equal profits. Pick a niche that has a high demand and a large audience that is willing to spend money. The great thing is that you don’t need to be an expert in any niche to get started. You can pick a profitable niche and learn as you go.
Top money making niches
There are many more niches than those listed below. You can make money from any niche/topic if monetized correctly. But the niches below will put you in the money a lot faster.
Pro tip: Remember to niche down. For example, instead of “make money online”, go with “make money online as a freelancer”.
- Make Money Online
- Finance
- Travel or Outdoor
- Parenting
- Fitness
- Self Help Or Personal Development
- Beauty and Fashion
- Relationships
- Lifestyle
- Real Estate
Step 2. Create your blog on WordPress and start writing content
You can set up your blog fast and easy using WordPress.
I recommend BlueHost to host your blog. BlueHost offers reliable and affordable web hosting plans, perfect for beginners.
Reasons Why You Should Use Bluehost
- It’s the #1 recommended web hosting company by WordPress.org.
- You get a FREE domain name when you buy a 12-month plan.
- You can install WordPress fast and easy
- It’s the best affordable hosting for beginners that are just starting out and have a limited budget.
2. Become an Online Freelancer
If you have some type of digital skill that you can perform for others, then you can easily start making money online by becoming a high-paid freelancer.
Freelancing is one of the best and fastest ways to start making money online, but you definitely need at least one in-demand skill that people are willing to pay good money for.
High-Income Skills To Consider:
Writing – you can write articles and blog posts for websites owners who are looking to outsource.
You can take it a step further and learn a more specialized writing form which will allow you to make even more money as an online freelancer:
Copywriting
Prepare advertising copy for publications, online, television, and social media.
Work with their clients to develop marketing campaigns.
This is basically writing to sell a product or service, to convince people to buy something or to take a certain action. Ads copy and sales letters are all written by copywriters. If you can master this skill, you’ll be able to earn $10k+ per month easily.
Business Writer
Prepare reports, such as sales proposals, for a business development department.
Write reports about internal projects like re-engineering, parts of annual financial reports, business plans, or strategic plans.
Technical Writers
Prepare technical written content which is easy to understand.
Write maintenance manuals, instructions, and project proposals.
Edit manuals and determine what illustrations, photographs, diagrams, and charts to use.
Graphic & Design
Do you know your way around Photoshop and other design software? Then you can offer anything from logo design to website design and everything in between.
Digital Marketing
Do you know your way around the search engines? Do you know how to get followers on social networks? Digital marketing includes niches such as Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, Content Marketing, basically all the digital services that can help businesses and individuals be found online by their respective target audience.
How To Make Money Online as a Freelancer
If you already have a digital skill under your belt, then you are ready to start your freelancing career and start making money online.
Step one is to register and create your profile on Flexjobs to get access to remote freelance jobs that you can apply to.
On Flexjobs, you can find freelance jobs across all niches and all can be done remotely.
You also want to create your freelance profile on Upwork and Fiverr. Remember that businesses and individuals are already looking for freelancers, so all you have to do is put yourself out there. Focus on delivering a high quality service and soon you’ll have more work than you can handle.
Becoming a high-paid freelancer is now easier than ever with all the freelancing websites available and Flexjobs is one of the best places to start.
Flexjobs does come with a flat monthly fee, but you definitely get your money’s worth. First, they screen all employers to make sure they’re offering real, high quality jobs. Not only that, but you also have the opportunity of landing a full-time remote job with a top company.
Start your freelancing career with Flexjobs and start making money online today.
3. Start a Fulfilled By Amazon Business
If you’ve been searching for how to make money online, then chances are that you have already seen the ads of people promoting their FBA business course. But what is this all about?
There are basically two types of sellers on Amazon: well three, if you count Amazon itself, because Amazon does sell products directly.
So, you got Amazon itself selling products, then you got Fulfilled By Amazon [FBA] sellers, and then there are the Fulfilled By Merchant sellers.
Amazon: they sell their own line of products and also many of the name brand products as well. These products qualify for all the Amazon services including Prime shipping.
Fulfilled By Amazon: these sellers offer white labeled products and name brand products, but they do not warehouse any inventory themselves, they instead ship the products to Amazon. Amazon warehouses the products and takes care of everything from customer service to fulfillment. These products also qualify for the Amazon services, including Prime shipping.
Fulfilled By Merchant: these sellers offer the same types of products, white label and name brand products, but they do their own warehousing and fulfillment. The difference here is that these products do not qualify for the Amazon services, there is no Prime shipping for these sellers.
Those three are in direct competition with each other in the Amazon marketplace. Since the house always wins, when a product is also being sold by Amazon, they will most likely get the sale every single time. And The FBA seller will most likely win against the FBM seller.
How to make money online as an FBA seller:
Step 1: Register and set up your Amazon Seller Account.
Step 2: Head over to amazon and find a product that has a healthy amount of sales per day and that has no more than 7 FBA sellers.
To figure out how much sales a product gets, you need that product’s Best Seller Rank.
Copy the BSR for your product and paste into Jungle Scout Estimator to get an estimate of how many monthly sales the product is currently getting.
Step 3: Once you have a product, you then need to find a way to source your product. If the product is a generic name brand product that you can find in the big box stores, then you can source the product that way and add it to your Amazon seller account and ship out to Amazon and wait for sales.
If not, then you’ll need to find wholesalers and distributors who carry your product and you will most likely need to register your retail business as an LLC with your state/country in order to get the necessary permits to place orders with the wholesalers and distributors.
All in all, starting an FBA business is not hard, there is just many steps to take. But its a business that you can scale and sell later on for a nice chunk of change.
4. Start a Dropshipping Business with Shopify
If you’ve been searching for how to make money online, then you most likely heard or read about dropshipping already.
Dropshipping is an eCommerce business model that allows you to sell products online without having to purchase inventory upfront. When you get a sale, you then purchase from your supplier and the supplier ships directly to the customer.
In a traditional eCommerce store, you’ll at least need to purchase and warehouse your inventory and you also need to handle order fulfillment and customer service as well.
But with dropshipping, all of that is removed. Your main jobs as a dropshipper will be customer service and marketing your products to get sales.
Here is how dropshipping works:
Do some product research and pick a product/niche that people actually buy. I recommend creating a niche store rather than a general store. A niche store will allow you to build more trust with your customers.
A niche can be something like outdoors furniture or pet products such as toys or crates/kennels
Create an online store using Shopify or any other platform you prefer and list your products with their prices and descriptions and all of that.
When a customer places an order on your store, you keep a percentage of the sale and forward the order to your supplier.
The supplier ships the product to your customer in a timely manner.
The problem with dropshipping is that many people have come to believe, maybe because of all the “gurus” out there, that it is a fast and easy way to make money online. But it is not!!
Dropshipping is easy in the sense that you don’t have many of the obstacles that come with a traditional eCommerce business and you don’t need a large upfront capital to get started, but the challenging parts remain the same, which are marketing and customer service.
If you are not willing to spend the money and time to market your product, then you will most likely fail.
If you’re not willing to put in the time and effort to provide top notch customer service, then you will most likely fail.
All in all, dropshipping is definitely a good online business to start, but remember that it is a real business and you must treat it as such or you won’t get very far. Focus on marketing and customer service for a better chance at being a successful dropshipper.
5. Make Money Online With Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is the art of selling other people’s products. These can be physical or digital products.
Amazon has one of the most popular affiliate programs. Have you ever been on a website/blog and clicked on a link that sends you to Amazon? Yeap, that’s affiliate marketing. If you make a purchase within the next couple of weeks the owner of that website makes some money. Amazon doesn’t pay a lot, but it has a higher conversion rate, so you can start seeing some money faster.
Another popular affiliate marketplace is Clickbank. Here you can find many digital and physical products to promote.
How to make money online with Affiliate Marketing:
The best way to start making money online with affiliate marketing is to create a niche website.
A niche can be, for example, weight loss. You will create a website where you will write articles about anything and everything related to losing weight and you’ll recommend products and services along the way that can help your readers achieve their weight goals.
The best type of niches are Evergreen Niches. These are topics that people will always be searching for. Take the weight loss niche for example, people are always going to be looking for how to lose weight, how to get in shape.
An Evergreen Niche will allow you to create content that will always be relevant, thus bringing in passive income for a long time.
So first, choose your niche. Use tools such as Google Keyword Planner to see potential traffic and to get different keyword ideas for your content.
After you have chosen your niche, your next step is to create your website. Bluehost offers affordable and reliable hosting where you can set up your Wordpress affiliate website quickly and easily.
Then, you only need to start writing great quality blog posts that give the readers the answer that they are looking for.
Types of Articles/Blog Posts to Write:
Product Reviews
With this type of article you’ll be reviewing a particular product. You’ll go into everything about the product, the pros, the cons, everything. Think of possible questions a reader may have and answer them.
Product Comparisons
Here you’ll be comparing two or more similar products. Talk about the cons, pros, similarities and differences. Remember, you want your readers to make an informed decision, so write everything you think a reader should know about before purchasing the product (the same goes for product reviews and everything else).
List Type Articles
For example, Best Weight Loss Products or Top 21 Products To Lose Weight Fast. These types of articles will most likely form the bulk of your website.
How To Guides (Ultimate Guides)
These are huge articles that dive deep into a particular topic. For example, Ultimate Guide To Losing 10 Pounds in 15 Days. Think of these articles as information so valuable, that you could actually sell it.
The content is what is going to make or break your affiliate website. There is no such thing as a 300/500 word article.
You need to make sure that you’re publishing super high quality content. We’re talking 2000 words or more. Don’t leave anything out, answer all questions, give tips, advice. Don’t fill it with fluff, give real, tangible information that will help your reader make an informed decision.
All in all, affiliate marketing is an easy way to start making money online, but it does take time. You have to spend time writing great content, promoting and sharing your content, building quality backlinks in order to rank higher on search engines.
If you have the means, consider outsourcing the writing and focus on scaling your backlinks outreach so that you can rank higher on search engines faster and thus earn your first affiliate commissions that much quicker.
6. Start Selling on Etsy
Etsy is a popular marketplace where you can sell anything and everything that is handmade.
When you visit the Etsy marketplace you’ll see that there are a lot of handmade products for sale and if you or someone you know is able to create handmade products, then you can start selling on Etsy.
But, Etsy is not only for physical handmade products, it is also a thriving digital products marketplace as well.
If you search for Digital Downloads on Etsy, you’ll see that there are a lot of different digital items that have a lot of sales. There are stores selling just digital items that buyers can download and print, like wall art or digital planners and stuff like that.
Take a look at these digital items being sold on Etsy: Patent Prints.
As you can see, those people are selling the patent blueprints/drawings that you can easily find on google patent search, as digital downloads that people can buy to decorate their walls with.
And when it comes to creating those types of digital products, you don’t even need to create them yourself. You can always hire somebody on Fiverr or Upwork to create the items for you.
Another great way to start selling on Etsy is with Print-on-Demand. This is when you have a product, like a t-shirt, that has a design on it and when somebody buys it, the printing company, like Printify, takes care of printing and shipping the t-shirt to your customer.
Your main job will be creating the designs for your products. Remember that your designs need to be high quality and professional, so if you’re not a graphics designer, then head over to Fiverr or Upwork to find a professional designer who can bring your ideas to life.
With this method you can start selling all the different print on demand items, such as t-shirts, sweaters, mugs, phone cases, etc.
The awesome thing about selling digital downloads or print on demand on Etsy is that it’s all passive income or semi-passive.
Once you have a digital product, you only need to list it once and the item keeps selling forever. The same happens with print on demand, list your products and that’s it. No creating, no packaging, no shipping, no nothing!
7. Start a Membership Site
If you already have a good amount of knowledge on a particular topic or niche, then, you can start a membership site.
A membership site is a website where you post exclusive, members only content for a monthly fee.
How much can you make from a membership site?
This is a simple example. The value your content can be a lot higher. But this simple math shows how lucrative membership sites can be.
- 10 members @ $10 /month = $100 every month
- 50 members @ $10 /month = $500 every month
- 100 members @ $10 /month = $1,000 every month
- 300 members @ $10 /month = $3,000 every month
- 1,000 members @ $10 /month = $10,000 every month
What type of content can you offer on a membership site?
Depending on your niche, you can offer a variety of content to keep your members subscribed for longer.
You can offer templates, DFY content, checklists, guides and courses.
Here are some niche specific examples:
- Affiliate Marketing: List of new hot-selling affiliate products, advertising techniques. You can also get super affiliates to create tutorials for your members.
- SEO Niche: The latest techniques and tips to rank higher on search engines. There is always something new happening around seo and if you can help others stay on top, they will pay you for it.
- Advertising/Ads: Best and latest advertising strategies, ad templates, ad swipe files. Think of people running Shopify stores. They need to run ads and having the tools to create great ads fast is a gold mine.
- Health and Fitness: Monthly meal plans, exercise routines, grocery buying guides. You can also offer one on one follow ups for members who get a higher tiered membership.
How to make money online with your own Membership Site
Step 1. Pick your niche and create your content.
You want to have at least the first month worth of content ready for your members.
Step 2. Set up a WordPress Site.
WordPress lets you create a membership site fast by utilizing a membership plugin.
I recommend BlueHost to host your membership site. BlueHost offers reliable and affordable web hosting plans.
Some of the benefits and features:
Unlimited storage
cPanel Control Panel
From $4.95 /month
Fast and secure servers
1-Click installation of WordPress and other scripts
One year FREE domain registration
Click here to host your membership site with BlueHost.
All in all, running a membership site is not hard. If you can create content that your readers can’t live without, then, you’re already in the money.
8. Start a Print on Demand Store
A Print-on-Demand (POD) store lets you sell your own designs on physical products. You can sell your designs on products such as t-shirts, mugs, hats, posters and many other products.
How does Print-on-Demand works?
With Print-on-Demand you work with a print on demand service provider, such us Printify. Every time you get an order, the print provider will print and ship the item to your customer.
You main job will be creating designs, adding them to your store and marketing to get sales.
How to Make Money Online with a Print-On-Demand Store in 2023?
Step 1. Decide What You Want To Sell
If you’re interested in starting a print on demand store, I recommend that you start with one type of product to begin with. For example, instead of adding t-shirts and mugs to your store, go with mugs only.
Once you have found winning designs and are getting consistent sales, you can start adding different products using those same winning designs.
Step 2. Start Creating Your Designs
When it comes to creating your designs, you might think you need to pick a niche. But instead, think of the different niches, find the designs that are currently getting a lot of sales and create your own versions.
For example, you would search on Etsy for “funny coffee mugs”, look for designs that are getting a lot of sales and create your own version of it.
I recommend starting with at least 50 designs. The more the better, but fifty will be good enough to start with.
Step 3. Choose Your Print Provider and Create Your Store
Once you know what product you’re going to start selling and have some design ready to go, its time to pick your print provider and create your store.
Here are some print on demand service providers.
- Printify
- Printful
- Custom Cat
- Teelaunch
- Apliiq Dropship
There are many more POD providers, but the one I recommend is Printify.
Printify is easy to use. It integrates with Etsy and Shopify, so can add products to your store fast and easy.
Creating Your Store
To create your store, you need to decide which platform you’re going to use.
The two top platforms that I recommend are Etsy and/or Shopify.
For beginners, I recommend starting with Etsy.
Etsy is an eCommerce marketplace where people are looking to buy stuff. The traffic is already there.
Etsy also lets you run paid ads to promote your products right on the platform and outside as well. And all you have to do is list your products with the right keywords to start getting traffic and sales.
Although there is lower margins with a print on demand business, its one of the easiest and fastest way to start making online.
If you’re a beginner, I definitely recommend starting a print of demand store.
9. Make Money Online By Ranking and Renting Niche Websites
With this make money online method, what you’ll be doing is creating a website focused on one local business niche. You’ll rank the website and charge businesses a monthly fee to add their information to the site.
You can decide to create a local niche site or you can create an national site.
For example, take the plumbing niche.
For a local site, you’ll create a site called XYZplumbers.com, where XYZ is the name of the city.
allentownplumbers.com
You’ll then rank the site for “Allentown Plumber”
For a national site, you’ll create a site called XYZplumbers.com, where XYZ could be some like “hometown”, “pro”, or something along those lines. You then create pages for each major city of the country.
XYZplumbers.com/allentown
XYZplumbers.com/new-york
XYZplumbers.com/los-angeles
You’ll then rank the site for “Allentown Plumber”, “New York Plumber”, “Los Angeles Plumber”.
Once your website is ranking on the first page of google and getting traffic, you can start contacting business owners and offer to get them more leads via your already ranking website.
You can easily charge $200-$500 or more per month depending on the niche.
This is a great money making method, that is also beginners friendly. You won’t have to do any hard selling since your website is already ranking and getting traffic. Plus, since the site is yours, it will make you money forever.
10. Make Money Online Flipping Domain Names
Domain name flipping or domain reselling is when you buy a domain for cheap and sell it for a profit.
Flipping domain names is not as easy as it used to be because most domains have already been claimed. But you can still find very profitable domains and make some profit.
And with all the TLD (top-level domain) extensions have come out there’s even more chances to find a domain to flip.
Take the .IO domain extension for example. It is very popular with tech start-ups and SaaS companies. If you are able to get one that is short, brand-able and memorable, you could flip for a nice chunk of change.
Pro Tip: 3 – 4 letter .IO domain names are very profitable and easy to flip.
Where to start searching for profitable domains to flip?
Here two places where you can start searching for profitable domain names to flip.
1. Expireddomains.net
Here you can find every domain that has expired and it’s available to be registered again. It has a lot of filters, so you can find exactly what you’re looking for.
2. Justdropped.com
They post a daily list of domains that you can buy directly from them. You need to be fast here as the domains do sell fast.
Where to sell your domain names?
Once you have a profitable domain name, you can sell it using one of the online marketplaces.
Here a few that I recommend.
- Sedo.com – free to list your domain.
- Flippa.com
- GoDaddy.com
Flipping domain names is not as easy as it used to be, but once you get the hang of it, you can start making some good income.
11. Make Money on YouTube
YouTube is the the second largest search engine and many people are using it to make a lot of money.
The problem is that many of us try to take shortcuts and end up failing.
Take this channel that I created for example.
One of the videos went viral and it made a little over 7k in about two months. But then, the channel got review by a real person and they demonetized it because of the Re-Used Content rule.
I created all the videos myself, edited everything. But still, the videos were not unique enough for YouTube.
YouTube wants content that is unique and provides value to the viewer.
So, for those starting out, I recommend starting a Personal Brand channel on YouTube.
Why a Personal Brand channel?
A personal brand channel is where you record yourself showing or teaching the viewer something or speaking about a specific subject.
By creating a Personal Brand channel, all your videos will be 100% unique. It’s you on the screen talking to the viewer, nobody can claim otherwise. So, YouTube will have no problem monetizing and keeping your channel monetized.
And like everything else, you don’t need to be an expert to get started.
Say for example that you started learning affiliate marketing and created your first landing page. You can now create a video teaching people how to create their first landing page. Easy content for your channel.
In the long term, you’ll become an expert in your niche and have a channel full of videos making you money.
What about a YouTube Niche?
When it comes to picking your niche, you might think of going with what you’re already good at. But remember that not all niches are the same.
YouTube pays according to CPM (cost-per-mile) or cost per a thousand views.
Some niches have a CPM as low as $2 per a thousand views. While some other niches go as high as $70, even more.
My suggestion is to start with a high CPM niche. Remember that you can start learning and creating content as you go.
Here is a list of high CPM niches:
- Business
- Finance
- Make money online
- Travel
- Motivation
- Health & Fitness
- Tech
- Cars
- Make-up & beauty
Its never too late to get started. Pick a niche that you’re interested in, start learning and start creating content. Focus on quality over quantity. Create high quality videos 1 to 2 times a week. Stay consistent and you will be successful.
How to Make Money Online FAQs.
How can I earn real money online?
I think that the best way to earn real money online is by developing your own Personal Brand. If you take a look at all the successful online entrepreneurs, you’ll see that they all have developed their personal brand and that’s their main business. You can do this by choosing a niche that you’re interested in, create your personal website and all the social media profiles. Start putting out content that is helpful and valuable to the readers. That’s how you build trust, credibility and authority, plus a business that generates real money online.
How to make money online without paying anything?
The easiest way to make money online without paying anything is becoming a freelancer. As a freelancer you don’t need a domain, website or anything like that. You simply need to have a skill/service that others are willing to pay for. You can create your profile on Fiverr and Upwork to get jobs and make some money.
How can I make money online fast?
In my opinion, the fastest way to make money online is by advertising. You need traffic in order to make money online and advertising is the fastest way to get it. For example, you can create a one product store on Shopify, start running ads on Facebook and start getting traffic and hopefully sales very fast.
How can I make $100 a day online?
If you want to get to the point where you’re making $100 a day online, here are a few methods that can get you there:
1. Build your first website or blog to make money with affiliate marketing and ads.
2. Build an Amazon affiliate website to make money from Amazon.
3. Create a print-on-demand store on Etsy.
4. Become a freelancer. Offer your skill or service on Fiverr and Upwork.
Final Thoughts: How to Make Money Online in 2023
Now that you have some realistic ways of how to make money online, it’s time for you to make a decision.
Reading and researching is fine. But if you don’t pick a money making method soon, you’ll be wasting time. The sooner you, the sooner you’ll be making money.
Choose one of the ways to make money line listed above. Start learning it and start implementing. Remember that you don’t need to be an expert to get started and most of the information you’ll need is freely available online.
So, Which method will you choose?
Let me know down in the comments. And thank you for taking out the time to read my blog.