9 Legit Ways to Make Money Online – Analyzed
Recently, my friend asked me this question:
"How to make money in camp?"
We are both serving the nation. He has a lot of free time in his camp so he was thinking about this question. He knew that I'm doing an online business so he approached me for some advice.
He said that he was thinking about investing in stocks but I told him it's not a good option. Investing in stocks is considered a high risk business which requires a lot of learning and experience or else the chances of losing money is quite high.
I told him that the only way to make money in camp is via the Internet. I met up with him and shared with him the various legitimate ways to make money online. Today, I want to share these information with you guys because this is very relevant to you if you want to make money online, be it as an extra income source or a Full-Time online business for you. This post will be a good guide to help you get started.
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Decide On Your Goal First
The very first step before you begin anything online, you need to understand what you WANT. What I mean here is that you need to decide whether you are looking for a Short Term Income or a Long Term Income.
Short term income is also known as the "Fast Cash" where you can earn money faster but it is small and not sustainable (Side/Extra income). Whilst, long term income is the type where the money will come slower but it is a potential full-time income in the future.
Short Term - Fast Cash
There are many easy ways where you can make money online but these are mostly short term measures. Many of these are simply exchanging your time for money online. For example, you can get paid by shopping, taking surveys, viewing advertisements or testing products. Let me break down for you. I've roughly classified them into 3 main types.
(I'm not going to give you every single related websites and review them because it's not the focus here. The main focus in this post is to introduce to you the different opportunities online. Once you've made your decision, you can search for more information.)
1. Survey / Offer Sites
You can earn some extra income by taking surveys, signing up for trials, shopping, viewing ads and so on. The downside for this is that you may receive a lot of junk mails or spams in your inbox.
Some websites for this are: InboxDollars, Survey Club & Global Test Market.
2. Sell Your Stuff
Be it selling away your old stuff or buying and selling like an online store, you can earn money in terms of E-commerce. Below are some good places you can sell your stuff:
- Amazon - There are two ways you can sell on Amazon. One is to put up your own products, the other is to become an affiliate. (I will touch on affiliate later in the post.)
- Carousell - Sell your new and secondhand goods
- CraigsList - Sell your stuff locally (buyers pick up)
- eBay - Similar to Craigslist but eBay usually requires you to ship your stuff
- Etsy - Sell your arts & crafts on Etsy store
These are just some of the common ones. But before you start selling online. There are 3 things you should keep in mind.
- You need to have a PayPal account - for both incoming & outgoing payments
- You need to take quality photos for your goods - people rely a lot on the images of your products in making buying decisions
- You need to be honest & authentic - create a good image of yourself is critical for any business
3. Freelance work
Freelance jobs are getting more and more common these days due to the advancement in technology. If you have a specific skill like writing, website development, coding, you can earn good money from freelancing. But if you don't, there are also works such as writing transcripts which only requires you to spend time to make money.
One very important thing you should take note is your online portfolio and review. People tends to hire those who are more experienced to do the work for them and this can be usually shown in your portfolio. But, don't worry about that when you just started. It takes some time to build that as well as your customer base. After some time, you will gain traction and more people will hire you.
In order for you to make this happen, you need to work on your customer service and your online image. This helps you build a strong customer base for your future earnings.
Below are some of the common freelancing site you may want to consider:
You can find all sorts of freelance work on Fiverr and Upwork while iWriter and Textbroker are for freelance writing.
That's the 3 main categories of short term money making measures. Let's move on to the long term measures. This is going to be more and more exciting because building a full-time business online always excites me and I want to help you achieve the same!
Long Term - Potential Full-Time Income
There are a number of ways where you can make long term income online but it all surrounds one area and that is...
Building An Online Asset - Your Own Website
In order to earn long term income, we need to look at "passive income". Those short term ones are known as "active income" in which you spend time and put in effort to "exchange" for money. Passive income however is where you earn money on a regular basis with little effort to maintain it.
You know what?! Building a website is a legit and feasible way for all or us to make long term passive income online. This is due to the nature of the Internet. When you have a website, everything you own online will be running 24/7/365. Once you upload your content/offer, they will be there all the time available for the whole world to see. Even when you are not working on it, you can still make sales automatically as long as you have the necessary things in place.
Can you see where am I coming from? That's why I always call your website as your online "asset". It's just like real estate. If nothing goes wrong, the value of your asset is there and it can rise or decline when there are changes in different factors affecting it.
6 Major Ways To Make Money With Your Online Asset
1. Adsense Ads
Once you have your website in place, you can sign up for Google's Adsense Ads. After Google approves your request, it will automatically insert Google ads into your website sidebars or in between your contents. Whenever someone clicks on any of them, you get paid by Google. Simple as that!
2. Advertising
When your website reaches the state where there are a lot of viewers, companies or individuals who want to advertise their products or services are your potential customer. You can "rent" certain spaces in your website for them to put their advertisements. This is a very lucrative business if your website is running pretty well because you can earn up to hundreds or thousands per month just for these ads.
3. List Building
List building is the process of collecting visitors' email address. You can do this by giving out some free offers like eBooks as an incentive for them to give you their email in your website.
Once you have a list of email, you are able to connect with your potential customer by giving them more information that can help them. When that relationship is built up and your potential customers trust you more, it's time for you to recommend relevant products to them and make some real money!
Tip: Send your promotion only 1 in 7 emails. (More or less around this ratio.) Always have the mindset of HELPING people and NOT SELLING! The more you try to sell, the less you actually sell. This is always the case.
4. Amazon Products
You can join Amazon as an affiliate and promote any Amazon products in your website. The advantage of using Amazon is that you get paid for any products your visitors purchase on Amazon as long as your cookies are valid. (You not only earn from products you promote.)
For example, you are promoting a shaver which is a few dollars. One visitor clicks on your link but they goes on to buy a television instead. You get paid for the TV commission which is a lot higher than the shaver commission!
5. Your Own Products
If you have your own products, you can sell them on your website as well. The product can be as simple as an eBook you create. It doesn't have to be a physical product. You just need a website.
6. Affiliate Marketing
Selling Amazon products as mentioned earlier is actually a type of affiliate marketing where you help to promote other people's products and get paid for each sale in the form of commission. The reason I put Amazon products as a separate point is because the way Amazon works is a bit different than normal affiliate programs.
Affiliate Marketing is a huge topic and it is very powerful in its potential. To learn more about affiliate marketing, click HERE.
Let's Put Everything Together Now
I've just very briefly touch on each of the point. There are more to learn if you want to earn legit money online. But there's one important thing in common and that is...
If you are able to build a successful website, there are tons of way in which you can potentially earn Full-time passive income online.
Whether you want to earn short term fast cash or long term full-time income, it's totally up to you. I've given you the fundamental guide and the options are in front of you right now.
If you are a forward-looking person like me, you may want to invest your current time and some money for the future reward. This is also known as "Work hard, enjoy later". For the short term measures, you work hard now but there is no promise you can "enjoy later" because it's a temporary measure after all.
Anyway, comparing to the idea of investing in stocks, building an online asset of yours is not risky at all. All the time and money you invest now is all adding value to your asset. No one can take that away. So, you've got nothing to lose. Do you see my point?
For Those Who Want Long Term Income
I can help you start building your own website for FREE
