Maybe you want to create a separate stream of income to pay a few bills? Or, you’re simply looking for a way to replace your current job? Whatever your reason, there are a ton of different ways how to make money online.
How to Make Money Online With a Website or Blog
One of the most time-proven ways to make money online is through your own website. You pick a niche, generate traffic, and then sell your products and services to your audience.
Here you’ll learn how to make money online with affiliate marketing, products, selling your own physical goods, courses, and a lot more.
Keep reading to learn about different ways to make money online.
1. Make Money With an Awesome Blog
A lot of people start a blog as a way to express their views or as a creative outlet.
However, there are many cases of people not only earning a living from their blogs but even turning them into massive companies, like the Huffington Post.
Not every blogger will hit these figures, but if you play your cards right you might have a solid chance of earning money with your blog.
Remember that it’s important to have a long-term vision. You won’t make money right away, but, as your writing improves, your skills grow, and your site picks up more traffic, it’s a definite possibility.
If your goal is to start a blog that makes you money, here are some tips to keep in mind:
- Choose a broad topic like health, finance, relationships, hobbies, or personal growth
- Always aim for quality and create the best possible source on any given topic
- Learn about SEO and how to rank your site in search engines
- Build a network with popular bloggers and other influencers
These tips will lead you in the right direction. Once you have a trustworthy blog that gets a large volume of traffic you’ll have many opportunities to monetize your site, such as:
- Paid advertising
- Selling your own courses and products
- Selling affiliate products
2. Start an Affiliate Website
An affiliate marketing site is built upon recommending or reviewing certain products. Then, when a reader buys that product through your link, you’ll receive a commission.
Although it might not seem like a big revenue generator, there are multi-million dollar sites based on affiliate revenue alone.
For example, Wirecutter was so profitable that the New York Times bought the site for $30 million. There is also Lucieslist, a site about baby product reviews and Outdoorgearlab, a site dedicated to camping and hiking gear reviews.
3. Build an eCommerce Website
If you prefer dealing with physical products and selling something tangible, then opening up an eCommerce store could be a great fit.
There are two different methods of running a successful online store:
Creating and selling a niche physical product to a dedicated group of buyers
Purchasing cheaper goods manufactured in foreign countries, repackaging them, and selling them at a markup.
The first approach can be very successful, but it does require a passion for the product and the willingness to do a ton of research, product development, and testing.
However, such success of stores like SkinnyMe Tea, Beardbrand, and Ratio Coffee shows that you can reach the incredible results with your eCommerce store.
If the first approach seems a little risky for your first online business, then you might consider the second option of reselling popular overseas products. This method involves sourcing a popular product from a platform like AliExpress, repacking the product, and selling it through your own storefront.
Beyond selling the right products you’ll also need to think about how you’re going to ship your products. You can personally handle shipping and order fulfilment yourself. Or, you can employ a popular method called drop shipping, where the manufacturer handles it for you.
4. Create a Digital Course
It seems like digital courses are everywhere today. So, if you have valuable knowledge that someone would pay for, this could be a great opportunity.
In addition to having your own courses, learning platforms such as BitDegree offer a chance to become an instructor. It’s a unique opportunity to pass your skills and experience to thousands of people who are eager to learn something new.
Digital courses can be produced in a lot of different formats, from simple PDF downloads, all the way up to self-produced video courses that have dozens of hours of content.
Creating online courses could also be a very rewarding plan. Since it’s under your control, there’s no limit to how much money you can make.
Like most other methods on this list, digital courses can be integrated into most styles of websites including blogs, eCommerce platforms, and even affiliate marketing sites.
If you’re looking to create a digital course, but haven’t settled on your topic, it’s a good idea to poll your audience. Often, they can tell you exactly what they’d like to learn and would be willing to pay for.
5. Create a Membership Site
Membership sites have exploded in popularity recently and the idea is easy enough to implement. It does, however, require having an existing audience of some sort.
For example, Mark Manson runs a popular self-development blog. On his site, there’s a membership portion that gives users access to online courses, videos, and additional article commentary. For fans of his work, it’s a great deal.
People are already visiting your website because they like what you write about and how you use your style. So, you can create a membership section of your site that offers premium content.
6. Sell Advertising Space
We’ve all seen sites that use advertising throughout their content. Sometimes the ads are intrusive, but other times they integrate naturally with the content.
Monetizing your site via advertising is usually reserved for when your site is receiving a large volume of traffic. If your traffic numbers are high and only continue to grow, then this option could be worth exploring for some extra cash.
While the amount you’ll get paid will depend upon the network, you’ll usually get paid based upon the number of impressions or clicks.
There are many different ad networks to choose from. Google AdSense is probably the network you’re most familiar with. With it, you apply to the network, and once you’re approved you can start adding ads to your site.
There are other ad networks like Ezoic and Media. Both of which have an approval process and site evaluation. These networks also have the benefit of working with you to optimize your advertising revenue.
If you don’t want to work with an ad network you also have the ability to sell advertising yourself. If you have a niche audience, this can be a pretty worthwhile option. Let’s say you have a site dedicated to sleep optimization. Instead of using one of the ad networks mentioned above, you could sell ad space to large mattress companies.
You also have the option of creating sponsored content. This is where a company will pay you to create sponsored content that you would post on your site. Sites like Buzzfeed and Millo have taken this approach.
7. Sell Your Services
Selling services from your website is one of the fastest ways to online money making.
There are two different approaches you can take:
Create an Educational Blog and Offer Your Services
Create a niche blog that contains useful information about a certain topic. Let’s say you have a blog about woodworking techniques, and you’ve built a decent sized email list and got a solid traffic number.
You can add a services page to your site where you offer woodworking lessons, whether in person or through mediums such as Skype.
Create a Basic Website and Pitch Your Services
The other method involves creating a WordPress website for the sole purpose of pitching your services to companies and individuals.
Let’s say you want to be a freelance writer. You need to pick a niche and build your website. Then, create a few pages telling people who you are, the services you provide and showcase a few examples of your work.
Then, start generating leads for your new service business by engaging in guest blogging, podcast interviews, or cold outreach.
If you’re looking to take your service-based business to new heights, then combining the two methods will give you great results.
8. Create a Subscription Job Board
Job boards can be a rather profitable way to earn a living with your website.
The process is simple — people looking to hire someone in a specific niche will post a job listing on your site and your visitors will apply for the job.
You can either charge people to post job listings. Or, you could charge your visitors a monthly membership fee to access the job board.
Keep in mind that you do need to have decent traffic in order for such a site to work. A company won’t pay to post a job on your site if you aren’t sending any qualified applicants their way.
For example, let’s look at the ProBlogger Job Board. Here, companies and individuals will pay a fee to post a job listing on the site. Then, it’s entirely free for anyone to access and apply for the job. Since ProBlogger is an authority site with a large audience, businesses who post a job will get hundreds of applications for each listing.
When creating a job board make sure you have a solid audience that has a synergy with companies in your space.
9. Create an Online Directory
Online directories aren’t as popular as they used to be, but they can still be profitable.
They work in a similar fashion to the job board above. But, instead of people paying to post jobs, or get access to the job board, they’ll pay you a monthly fee for a directory listing.
If you have an authoritative site or get a lot of traffic, then these listings are pretty valuable.
Let’s say you run a site that’s dedicated to web development and design. You produce high-quality content and have a solid amount of authority. You could create a directory portion of your site where web developers and agencies can purchase a listing.
This will not only provide them with a solid authoritative backlink, but it could be a nice source of traffic for their business.
Usually, directories work by charging a monthly subscription fee to be listed. You could even charge a premium fee to let businesses list themselves at the top of the directory, getting even more eyes on their listing.
10. Sell Your Website
Finally, one of the most profitable ways to make money from your website is to sell it.
Depending on your site, this can be a pretty profitable option.
On average, your site will sell for a few times more than what you usually receive per month. This number will depend on a variety of factors, but you can generally expect to sell it from 12 to 30 times your monthly passive income.
The following factors will influence the final result:
- The age of your site
- Your domain authority
- How much traffic your site receives
- How much profit you generate
- Your revenue diversification
- The steadiness of your revenue
- Whether your site is growing or stagnating
If you’re curious how much sites will generally sell for, then spend some time browsing through the Empire Flipper listings.
Closing Thoughts
By now you understand how you can make money online. Whether you just want to earn an extra couple hundred bucks a month or start a new career, everything depends on you.
Don’t let the list above overwhelm you, but instead ask yourself what you would enjoy doing? Take your current skills into consideration and see how you can apply them to one of the opportunities on this list.
Remember, just like any way of earning money, it might not happen right away. But, with persistence and dedication, you will get there.
Are there any additional ways to earn money online we forgot to mention? Please share your ideas in the comments below.
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