It’s easier to make money online now than it ever has been before.
In the post-pandemic era we’re living in, digital technologies have become more accessible and are now a staple in people’s working lives worldwide.
People are embracing remote work left, right, and center, which means that anyone with any level of skills and a decent internet connection can find realistic and easy ways to earn money online.
No matter if you’re looking for a little extra cash on the side or to quit your 9 to 5 and live the life of your dreams, my curated list of 26 ways how to make money online is sure to help get you there.
I’ve been working remotely for a long time and if this is your first time, let me show you around some of the digital working spaces.
How to Make Money Online
1. Earn Affiliate Income
Affiliate marketing is not a new concept. It’s been a buzzword in the marketing and “make money online” spaces for a while now.
Here’s how affiliate marketing works in a nutshell:
Many companies sell products online but they often struggle with marketing and making sales.
That’s where you can help.
It’s a win-win situation because you help them lower their costs on marketing.
What we love most about affiliate marketing is its ability to hit all the boxes you need from something that makes real and legitimate money online.
Ability to earn passive income? Check.- 100% online? Check.
- Low startup cost? Check.
- Ability to earn job-replacing income? Double check.
Getting started with affiliate marketing is also fairly easy.
- Sign up for some affiliate programs.
- Create ongoing content on a blog or social media platform.
- Add your affiliate links in your content.
- Build an audience and watch the sales grow.
Not sure what products you could promote? Check out our guide on the best affiliate programs to give you some ideas.
Essential Info Before You Start
- Ease of Getting Started: Fairly easy if you have some basic technical and content creation skills.
- Prep Time Until You Start Earning: It may take a couple of months until you see your first dollar and 18-24 months (on average) until you reach job-replacing income.
- It’s all relative to how quickly you can build an interested audience, so you can fast-track this timeline by building your audience quicker.
- Setup Requirements: A website or social media platform where you can start sharing your content and building an audience.
- Ability to Earn Job Replacing Income: High if you persist with it in the long run. Many people stop too soon, expecting this to be a “get rich quick” type of deal.
- That’s why those who think it doesn’t take much effort get stuck earning less than $500/month, if anything at all.
Affiliate marketing is a proven passive income business model among bloggers.
We surveyed over 790 bloggers and affiliate marketers from The Affiliate Lab community, and here is the breakdown of their earnings.
| Monthly Income bracket | % |
| $0 – $500 | 34% |
| $500 – $1,000 | 4% |
| $1,000 – $5,000 | 21% |
| $5,000 – $10,000 | 7% |
| $10,000 – $50,000 | 23% |
| $50,000 – $100,000 | 3% |
| $100,000+ | 5% |
From the above results, you can see 38% of people we surveyed are earning a job replacing income and at least 8% of them are earning that per month!
Next Steps
Starting affiliate marketing is far easier than you might realize. You don’t need a degree, and you can bootstrap your success even if you’re on a low budget.
If you want to avoid being part of the 34% of people who don’t earn more than $500/month, or if you want to fast-track your ability to earn thousands a month with affiliate marketing, check out our free training on How to Build, Rank and Flip Websites for Profit.
It will take you through everything you need to know to set up a successful affiliate marketing business, even if you’re a beginner!
2. Start an Ecommerce Store
If creating content to sell someone else’s product isn’t really your jam, that’s cool. You can still earn lucrative money online by exploring other avenues.
eCommerce and online selling have exploded since the COVID pandemic, and they can offer you a wealth of opportunities to bring your own products to market.
To get started, you need a product idea. You can either resell someone else’s products or you can manufacture your own products.
Some easy product ideas include:
Handmade jewelry- Phone cases
- Custom printed products
- Home & bath products (like soap or candles)
- Personal care products
In either case, you will need a robust eCommerce website to get you started. Feel free to check out our guide on the best eCommerce platforms if you’re unsure where to start.
Essential Info Before You Start Your Own Online Store
- Ease of Getting Started: Fairly easy. The initial product sourcing and manufacturing can take some time but once you’ve got your systems in place you can scale pretty easily.
- Prep Time Until You Start Earning: If you have an existing audience and already sorted your product sourcing and fulfillment, you can start earning straight away.
- If you’re starting from scratch, you can still earn pretty quickly, but you will likely need to hustle for the first few months to get your brand name out there.
- Setup Requirements: eCommerce is not completely offline, as you still need to store stock and fulfill orders.
- So you’ll need to sort out your sourcing and warehouse needs first.
- The good news is that plenty of third-party fulfillment services can take care of this for you, making things super easy to start!
- The online component is actually fairly easy, with all-in-one-eCommerce platforms doing the heavy lifting for you.
- Add your product details and branded design, and you can start selling in as little as a day!
- Ability to Earn Job Replacing Income: Very high. You can earn a job-replacing income far quicker with eCommerce than affiliate marketing.
Next Steps
If selling online with an eCommerce store and website sounds up your alley, we recommend getting started with BigCommerce.
It’s as simple as:
- Choose what products you want to sell.
- Create a BigCommerce account.
- Upload your product information and images.
- Choose a theme to design your website.
- Set up your shipping and tax information.
- Test everything works properly.
- Go live & start selling online!
3. Start a Blog
Starting a blog may sound like advice from the 1990s but hear us out for a second because it’s still a very viable method for making money online in the 2020s and beyond.
Let’s say earning income from affiliate commissions or selling your own products on an eCommerce store doesn’t really appeal to you for whatever reason.
Starting a blog can still help you earn job-replacing income (and fairly quickly if you do it right).
Any online business typically sells one of three things:
- Your products (eCommerce, software-as-a-service apps or selling online info products)
- Other people’s products (dropshipping or affiliate)
- Your time and expertise (services, coaching or consulting)
Where most people go wrong when they start blogging is that they follow outdated advice that hasn’t kept up with the recent changes in the online world.
Fortunately for you, you’re in good hands here. Not only do we run multiple successful blogs full-time, but over 59% of our students earn over $1,000/month from their blogs too.
Many find success by going down the path of monetizing their content with advertising revenue or affiliate revenue.
But if you want to make some big bucks quicker, you can go with option three above and create a professional blog targeting businesses or a professional audience.
Not only do businesses have more money to spend, but it’s also easier to build a personal brand and become a thought leader in your field of expertise.
All in all, a blog can open up so many doors for you to share your expertise and earn from it.
Essential Info Before You Start
- Ease of Getting Started: Fairly easy to start a blog using a drag-and-drop builder. No coding skills are required!
- Prep Time Until You Start Earning: If you have an existing audience, you can start earning fairly quickly.
- But if you’re starting from scratch, it can take a couple of months until you see your first dollar.
- The quicker you build up your audience, the sooner you’ll also see your profits skyrocket.
- Setup Requirements: You don’t need to invest much to start a website. This video shows how much you should budget to build a website.
- Ability to Earn Job Replacing Income: High if you persist with it in the long run.
You can get started for a very low cost by using the following tech stack:
- WordPress.org (free website & blog building platform)
- Elementor (free page builder plugin with a pro option available for more features)
- Namecheap (cheap domain name provider)
- SiteGround (affordable & fast web hosting)
Next Steps
We suggest building your own website to have complete access to your audience without the risk of a third-party platform taking that away from you overnight.
Also, check out our guide on the most common ways you can make money with your website.
Then, get started with Elementor and Siteground to give you the essential tools for building a no-code website today!
4. Buy an Existing, Profitable Website
If you already have some cash you’re thinking of investing, why not buy an existing, profitable website? You can invest in a turn-key online business that uses any of the above monetization methods.
Check out our blueprint for buying a profitable website to get started.
Depending on your interests, you can make money in a couple of ways by investing in existing, profitable websites.
Either you purchase a site now, improve it and sell it for a higher premium later (also known as flipping websites), or you can hold on to it and recoup your spending over time by holding onto the monthly earnings.
Essential Info Before You Start
- Ease of Getting Started: Intermediate. Not only do you need some capital to invest, but you also need some skills in doing due diligence and finding the right deals.
- Prep Time Until You Start Earning: As soon as your purchase is finalized, you will start earning money instantly.
- Setup Requirements: There is very little you need to set up as the previous owner of the website will likely have a team and some systems in place.
- You can also look for websites that are completely passive, so once the deal is done, you do not need to set up anything else.
- Ability to Earn Job Replacing Income: High, though it also depends on the size of the website asset you purchase.
- If you have around $150,000 to $250,000, you can purchase a website earning around $5,000/month at a 30x to 50x multiple.
- But if you’re starting out with less, you can work your way up to a job replacing income by building the asset your purchase and improving its sales or affiliate earnings.
Next Steps
Check out these marketplaces to get started:
If you’re not sure what niches to invest in, check out our guide on the best niches for making money online, which is informed by data from Empire Flipper’s best website sales.
5. Consulting
Hands down, consulting is one of the most lucrative ways you can earn money online.
If you have subject matter expertise or experience in specific industries, you can start a consulting business for a very low cost.
You also don’t need to be a world-class expert or learn an entirely new skill to earn lucrative amounts from consulting!
You can consult in the industry you currently work in.
Explore whether there are people who have not yet reached your level and would be happy to pay for your time to help them progress in their careers.
Now that online video tools like Zoom are widely accepted, you can consult from anywhere in the world!
And if you also start a blog or build up your thought leadership content, you can earn quite a bit without the hassle of stocking products or promoting other people’s goods.
Essential Info Before You Start
- Ease of Getting Started: Very easy though you may need to invest a bit in your marketing if you don’t have an audience or any connections to potential clients.
- Prep Time Until You Start Earning: Instant, once you start landing clients.
- Setup Requirements: There are very few overheads and setup requirements! With most types of consulting, you can get started with a laptop and a video conferencing tool like Zoom or Google Meet.
- Ability to Earn Job Replacing Income: Very high. Consulting is one of the most lucrative ways to make money online.
- Depending on the level of your expertise, you could easily earn hundreds of dollars an hour and that can scale to thousands as you start becoming seen as a thought leader in your field.
Next Steps
The wonderful thing about making money by consulting is that you don’t need much to get started.
Many consultants don’t even need a degree!
If you have accrued experience in your industry over years of working full-time, it’s simply a matter of making a pivot to start working for yourself.
However, if you do not have such skills to lean on, or you’re starting from scratch, you can register for a low-cost course teaching you everything you need to know.
Here’s a great example of one for travel consulting.
6. Build a Boutique Agency or Firm
Even though consulting is a very lucrative way to make money online, it can be difficult to take a step away from it and continue to earn money.
It’s also very time intensive and cannot easily turn into a passive income stream.
But if you start your own boutique agency or firm offering professional services, including consulting, you can enjoy the best of both worlds!
You can also charge more and secure ongoing monthly retainers to implement the strategies you recommend to your consulting clients.
For instance, you can start a:
- Digital marketing agency
- Web development business
- Online tutoring business
- Virtual assistant agency
- Bookkeeping firm
Essential Info Before You Start
- Ease of Getting Started: Easy to set up but more challenging to find the right people to work for you.
- You must also invest in marketing to get your name out there and secure your first few clients.
- Prep Time Until You Start Earning: Instant, once you start landing clients.
- Some clients also agree to pay a deposit in advance so you can earn money immediately once you seal the deal.
- Setup Requirements: There are very few overheads and setup requirements! You do not need an office to start, but you may wish to get one as your team expands.
- You may also prefer to invest in various marketing channels to boost your online visibility.
- Ability to Earn Job Replacing Income: Very high. If you thought consulting was lucrative, wait until you start an agency.
- You can earn 5 to 10 times more than you would just from consulting if you pair your consulting services with strategy implementation services.
Next Steps
Decide if you will fulfill all services in-house or if you would prefer working with white-labeled service providers. With a white-label partner, you’ll be outsourcing the fulfillment of the service.
For example, many web development business owners outsource their SEO services to The Search Initiative, my specialist SEO agency.
They can start selling these services straight away without needing to hire in-house talent.
You can do the same in your industry, so you are not tied to delivering all of the services you sell to clients.
Once you have these details worked out, it’s just a matter of getting your name out there and signing new clients.
7. Grow an Audience on YouTube
YouTube is the second most popular search engine after Google.
It has seamlessly transitioned from being a video-sharing platform to becoming one of the most popular video-on-demand and live streaming platforms that people use to create viral videos.
As such, if you enjoy putting videos together, you can earn income in a few different ways by starting a YouTube channel:
- Monetize the channel with ads revenue and/or affiliate links in your video descriptions.
- Direct your audience to your monetized website and encourage them to sign up to your email list.
And it’s pretty easy to get started to be honest. All you need is a quality camera and microphone (as a bare minimum), and you can start a channel in no time.
The best performing channels on YouTube are:
- Educational
- Entertaining
- Actively posting new content
While there is definitely potential for your channel to skyrocket to YouTube fame and earn you millions, success as a YouTube creator will still take time and be a dedicated commitment.
You must keep uploading new content as YouTube most rewards channels with engaged audiences.
Essential Info Before You Start
- Ease of Getting Started: Pretty easy if you have the right equipment (even an iPhone will do to get started). Some basic video editing skills can help too.
- Prep Time Until You Start Earning: Earning on YouTube can take a while and is directly linked to the size of your audience.
- The quicker you build up your profile and viewer count, the quicker you’ll start earning.
- Setup Requirements: There are very few overheads and setup requirements! If you want to start on a profession