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*** Editor’s Note: With quite a few new readers to the blog (welcome!) and many who are just starting out, we thought it would be useful to run a series of posts getting back to the basics of making money online. Introducing the series is one of our new writers, Kirsty Henderson – read more about Kirsty at the bottom of this post. Enjoy! ***
Having the dream to live anywhere in the world is one thing, finding a way to finance it is an entirely different thing. Fortunately, we all have the internet at our disposal and it’s a hugely powerful tool in making this dream come true.
I earn a living from building websites and setting up affiliate programs so these are the two areas I will be able to shed the most light on – but they’re not the only game in town.
Here is a run down of some of the most common strategies to earn money online….
1. Start a Website or Blog
The idea is simple: start a website or blog, attract readers, and then sell products or place ads on the site. The execution, however, isn’t quite as simple.
Building a site from scratch is extremely time consuming and you’ll need to be dedicated to the task, to avoid getting discouraged by making next to no money potentially for years. There is also a pretty steep learning curve, especially for people who aren’t computer minded.
Many people start off with big aspirations and are overwhelmed by the work involved to get to a level when the money starts to roll in but if you stick with it, you can be rewarded with a stream of passive income whilst you travel.
2. Affiliate Marketing
There are plenty of businesses out there that want to give you money to sell their products. You send a visitor to their website for a commission of the sale is one example of affiliate marketing.
If you’ve got an established website then becoming an affiliate marketer can be as simple as adding a few links to your website’s code. You can do this with a very simple site too if you can think of products that will be in demand, aim for smart keywords and catch a few breaks along the way.
It doesn’t have to take years to become successful with affiliate marketing but you have to be pretty clever to start making money quickly. One recommended site for affiliate marketing is Commission Junction.
3. Domain Sales
This option might be well past it’s heyday but there could still be money to be made from buying and selling domain names if you’re creative and a bit lucky.
You can either buy brand new domain names, buy recently expired ones or buy at what you think is a low price and sell at a higher price.
Because most of the short, snappy domain names have been taken, this strategy for making money online is a risky one. However if the stars align and someone wants what you have, you could make some good money for minimal work – try NamesPro.
4. Get-Paid-To Websites
Get-Paid-To websites are paid by advertisers to attract customers to their websites to do certain things such as completing surveys, reading email ads, referring friends to purchase products, opening a user account, etc.
One of the problems with these is that you have to spend your valuable time doing irritating things. But if you really have nothing else to do and want to make some extra cash with your spare time then it’s a feasible way to earn money online.
One advantage is that you don’t have to have your own website and can get away with not having any web building skills.
There are lots of scams out there for this sort of thing and you’ve probably had at least a few ‘make thousands of dollars working from home for 1 hour a day’ type spam. It’s easy to be apprehensive about these sorts of opportunities but there are several legitimate companies out there – try CashCrate
5. Create a Product and Sell It Online
If you’ve got expertise in a certain area, why not try your hand at writing an ebook or even creating a product?
This is a time consuming choice because you first need to come up with a product to sell and then you need to have the skills to market it. However if you can find a market for your product and get the word out effectively, you could earn a lot of income and keep control over the entire process from creation to sale. Sales platforms to try include Ejunkie (for selling digital products), Etsy (arty, creative things) and CafePress (t-shirts, prints & other creative products).
6. Online Retailing
If you haven’t got a product of your own, why not try to sell other people’s products? You can go the traditional route and set up an eBay store, sell some products you have lying around the house and make a few extra bucks.
Or you could get a bit more involved and try things like drop shipping. Drop shipping involves selling items on eBay (and other similar online retailers) that you don’t actually have in your possession. You, the seller, can ship the product directly from wholesaler to the customer and make a profit based on the difference in price without taking on the risk of having unsold merchandise.
7. Sell Your Skills Online
If you have a talent like graphic design, copy writing, coaching, translating, programming or anything else that can be done virtually you can hit up the internet to find potential employers.
Plenty of people out there are willing to pay others to do the things they can’t do themselves, and that’s where you come in. There are loads of sites out there that exist to put people with skills in touch with the people who need their skills.
8. Sell Stock Photos
If you love photography and want to make a living from it then stock photo sites are a great place to start. The idea is simple: you take the snaps, upload the approved photos to various stock photo sites, then wait for people to buy them.
The beauty is that once the photo is uploaded, the work is done and as it sells over and over again the commission money keeps on rolling in. Try iStockPhoto or BigStockPhoto.
Getting Started…
There are countless websites that go into detail on each of these topics so if any seem like a good fit for you and your skills, you’ve got a lot of information out there and a lot of research to do before getting started. We’ll be helping out with some more in-depth articles on here in the coming weeks, but don’t let that stop you from getting started now!
Making a living from the internet is not as easy as some people will make it out to be. It was years before I made any money at all but I stuck with it because I love the work and could see how great the payoff of being able to work from anywhere in the world is.
Find what works best for you, learn as much as you can from free resources on the net and stick with it because with a bit of determination and persistance you could be living and working as a location independent professional from your dream destination.
I began my “make money online” attempt around July 2008.
I want to have enough (relatively) passive income to travel a bit (to cheap locations).
It’s true there are people who start making money quickly, but maybe I’m a bit of a slow learner. So far I’ve earned about $1,500, but that number is growing exponentially. I have my own product that I’m ready to market aggressively and might hopefully establish a $500-$1,000/mo income stream (at which point I’ll head out and travel, because I already have a bit in savings!).
One thing I’m not focusing on is “bulldog persistence” — doing 1 thing per day that will result in profit, even if that’s only 25 cents per day profit. Over time these “mini successes” will accumulate to the point where I have enough income to support my lifestyle.
In the end, it’s pretty fun and I’m glad I started this. It’s taking me about 10 times as long as I originally anticipated, and I’ve run into 10 times as many “brick walls” (a.k.a. disappointments) as originally anticipated. But such is life :)
*edit — typo*
“One thing I’m *now* focusing on is …”
Nice summary. I think people underestimate how long it will take especially if lack an essential skill. For me it was marketing -I didn’t understand why people buy or how to persuade them to buy from me. Its taken a year for me to get past what for me was a huge road-block – I didn’t want to sell stuff – I wanted people to come to my nice pretty website LOL.
Finally I figured out it took me 3 years to get my degree why should it take any less time to earn a full-time income on the internet?
Its taken me a few years too, to start to see some form of income covering costs, but you have to never give up, make every day count and dont spread yourself too thinly. All of these (and more) are seemingly (by me at least) learnt the hard way.
One thing I truly believe in is that you have to get IN to realize what is really possible. Spending ages researching is OK to a point, you have to get in and really see what is happening in a market to truly realize the opportunities.
One alternative to building a website from scratch is to buy an existing website that is already generating money from affiliate programs or AdSense.
Nice Post Kirsty thanks for pointing me over here :)
It really is just about “time”
Liz great statement
“Finally I figured out it took me 3 years to get my degree why should it take any less time to earn a full-time income on the internet?”
It has taken me two plus years to get to a point where I earn more than lunch money now I get enough to pay a car payment & rent and i would add arriving at this point has more to do with time than me working hard work.
My first few months where like all of yours downright discouraging what kept me going was the likes of Kirsty & others who where getting results just they where further down the track.
Interesting article. I’d like to hear people’s experiences with selling stock, and how photo and file sharing have affected that experience for them.
Thanks for all the comments & personal experiences…I think the big “takeaway” for anyone reading this should probably be:
It will probably take longer than you think, so start sooner rather than later!
All the strategies you mention will work, BUT, you need to understand a lot about Internet marketing. If you can grasp this skill, you can basically sell everything online ;-)
I agree with Richard. It takes time. I was lucky because I had a lot of experience of the Internet that really helped me. However, since running my own ecommerce site I think I have learned at least as much again, but it is all worth learning because you can apply it to anything you want to do on the Internet.
Getting some good books (Dummies guides are pretty good) on doing business on the Internet, doing it with Google, and learning the fundamentals of search engine optimizing is a great way to start. But it all takes time and you have to accept you will need to pace yourself. I am only now having time to look more deeply at Facebook and Twitter.. Im lagging behind! :-)
Good luck to all that venture, you are still the early adopters!!
Glad I ran across this. Loved the encouraging words in Step #1. It does take time, not even lots of hours, just serious perserverence.
I’ve been slowly (and I mean really slowly, since 2006) working on building a little niche website and ebook, and growing a few bigger ideas.
Along the way, I’ve learned the importance of lots of things, including testing your market before putting something out there. Nice to see that other people are plugging along. I’ll get there!
I plan to have enough passive (or almost passive) income to finance a location independent life in a couple of years.
Still, not bad for having two little babies and working full time.