Want to know the best online income streams to pay your bills? Or are you tired of your hectic work routine? Regardless of the reason, you can generate healthy income via online channels.
Making money online creates passive income (making money while you sleep), low startup costs, and you have the ability to reach a large audience without accumulating much more costs.
Below you will find the top six ways to make money online that can be profitable and are well-suited for small business owners to the common man.
- Sell Digital Products
- Affiliate Marketing
- Blogging
- Sell Online Courses
- Start a Youtube Channel
- Dropshipping
1. Sell Digital Products
A digital product is content or services that you interact with via a digital medium. It is not a tangible product that you will be able to touch or feel but it is still extremely profitable. Digital products can be categorized as:
- Written: spreadsheets, ebooks, templates, guides
- Audio: songs, beats, tracks, presets, sound effects
- Video: short films, documentaries, video tutorials
- Software & Technology: apps, website themes, games
- Photography: lightroom and photoshop presets, stock photos
- Design: Wallpapers, fonts, logo designs, wedding invitation templates,
Selling digital products is a bit difficult at the start, but it is another useful way to make passive income online that pays off very well. The most significant benefit of selling digital products is that there is no need for physical inventory, and after initial hard work, you can generate good passive income.
To create a digital product, here are some steps to follow:
- Do some market research to choose the topic or determine a profitable niche
- Conceptualize the product
- Create the actual product
- Determine how the product will be sold
- Market and promote the product
2. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is another top online income stream. With affiliate marketing you earn commissions by endorsing and selling others’ services and products. To generate income, you won’t need to manufacture your own products. You are simply teaming up with retailers to promote their products or influence a sale. But some programs can reward you for leads, free-trial users, clicks to a website, or getting downloads for an app. You can do affiliate marketing in ways such as through social media, email marketing, a YouTube channel, podcast, or blog.
Some popular affiliate programs are Amazon, ShareASale and Fiverr.
Take a look at how it works in these six steps:
- You feature an ad or a link for a store on your website, blog, or social network.
- A customer clicks your unique link.
- The customer makes a purchase through clicking the link.
- The affiliate network recognizes and records the customer’s purchase
- The purchase is confirmed by the store.
- You get paid a commission.
Undoubtedly, affiliate marketing has great potential for earning revenue without taking any huge risks. But it requires time and effort to also reap the rewards.
3. Blogging
Are you passionate about something? Are you an expert in a particular area? What do you enjoy writing about and want to learn more about? These are some questions to answer if you are interested in blogging.
Blogging involves mostly writing but other media can also be self-published on the web. With the popularity of creating blogs, many individuals can earn up to 7 figures monthly.
To create a blog these are the basic steps:
- Select the niche for your blog
- Choose a blogging platform – For example: WordPress
- Select a domain name
- Get a web hosting account like Bluehost
- Design your blog
- Write and create content
- Promote and market your blog
However, time is money, and initially, you will have to work very hard, but soon you will get hefty returns.
4. Sell Online Courses
Are you knowledgeable in a particular area in business or maybe computer science? Maybe you have already been giving away advice for free on a particular subject. Why not monetize it? Whatever it is, you can create a course from it, market it and have it sold. An online course is a form of digital product.
The eLearning market is at its peak during the COVID-19 pandemic. As people are forced to stay in, people are finding creative ways to package that knowledge and provide it to the world.
You can use various platforms like Udemy and Teachable to sell your courses. Similarly, you can also make your own website and sell the course from it.
Here are the basic steps to get started:
- Choose the course topic
- Identify your audience
- Research, compile and structure the knowledge for the course
- Create the course outline
- Choose an online course platform like Udemy or Thinkific
- Create the course content
- Make the content engaging and appealing
- Market and promote your course to your target audience
5. Create a YouTube Channel
Youtube is a video sharing and social media platform. People have made tons of money by creating content to entertain, teach and provide reviews by using Youtube.
Some popular and profitable niches include:
- Food
- Fashion
- Gaming
- Vlogs
- Humor
- DIY’s and How To’s
- Education
Still not convinced?
Take a look at Forbes’ incredible list of the highest paid Youtube stars. We have added the top five from the 2020 list below:
- Ryan Kaji, $29.5 million
- Mr. Beast (Jimmy Donaldson), $24 million
- Dude Perfect, $23 million
- Rhett & Link, $20 million
- Markiplier (Mark Fischbach), $19.5 million
But again, do not let the numbers fool you. Success will not happen overnight as creating the channel is largely about understanding your audience so that they remain loyal but can also help to spread the content.
6. Dropshipping
Dropshipping is where you manage an online store but instead of being the one to fulfill the order, you instead use a third party to do so and get it to the customer. Essentially, you are able to fulfill the order without actually keeping stock of the product.
Without the need for stocking inventory, it’s possible to start a successful dropshipping business with little upfront costs. With the dropshipping model, you don’t need as much capital to get started because you don’t need to purchase the product until a customer buys it. You also don’t have to know how to code or build a website to create your online store. Websites like Shopify and Wix are platforms that you can use to get started today.
We continue to mention that none of these methods will bring instant success. Each of these methods of making money requires hard work, patience, consistency and determination to be able to get results. Nevertheless, making money online can make you some extra money on the side or become a full time entrepreneur. You decide which path you would like to take.
Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. At no additional cost to you, if you should make a purchase through these links, we may earn a commission.
