How To Make Money Through The Internet
In the "real world" there are loads of ways to try to make money and the online world is no different. You can work for somebody else, a bit like a regular job, either on a part-time, full-time, long-term or short-term basis, or you can create your own products and sell them or run your own business. In this page I will go through a few of the possibilities and give you just enough to get started and to begin making money online/through the internet.
Know Yourself
A great starting poiint is to write down two lists of things you know about. The first list should be a list of your expertise, jobs you've worked in, hobbies you have had for years or any area where you know you really have skills that most people do not have. The second list should be a list of things you can do or do know a little about, let's say as much as the average person or more. Keep these two lists handy as they may provide inspiration later on.
Finding Online Employment / Freelancing
Loads of people all over the world need some jobs done for them that they don't have time to do themselves. This can be anything from editing a photograph to look nicer, transcribing some sound file, writing a letter, helping with spreadsheets, drawing a cartoon (with a pen and paper), doing some nice calligraphy writing for printing on a card, painting a picture for a girlfriend (from a photo), developing a full website, creating software, ahhh the possibilities are endless. There are many websites that allow would-be employers to search for freelancers to do these jobs for them. Most of these sites allow would-be employers to post their job advertisements for would-be empoyees to apply to. You, as a potential employee, therefore sign up to the website, apply for jobs, give a description of what you can do and how, and then wait to see if you're accepted. If you are, you start the work and set up milestones so that you may receive partial payment during hte job and full payment on completion, often handled via paypal.
When people are looking for freelancers to work for them they often post their jobs at freelancer.com or odesk.com, so head over to those two websites to sign-up as an employee and look through the available jobs using their search tools etc.
There are also websites that work the other way around, where freelancers post their skills and services and employers go there to find you. Usually, these are industry-specific, for example phpcoders.com for PHP Developers, but some are more general. The most famous is fiverr.com, where you can list yourself as a service provider and hope people come to find you.
Create And Sell An E-Product
An e-product is something that exists only on a computer but not in the real world, such as an e-book on a kindle or a letter template that can be printed, or even a video on youtube, that kind of thing. I will outline a few possibilities below:
E-book
You can write about a topic you know about and sell it through Amazon, Clickbank or through its own website. I can help you with this if it is something you want to do.
E-Course
You could create an entire online course, with lessons, tutorials, videos, to educate people on a given topic. This is a very popular method right now of making money online and also helps a lot of people.
Calendars/website templates/letter templates/wordpress designs/birthday cards/other printables
Look over your list of things you know about - do you play board games, is there a game that lacks inserts or score sheets? You could contact the owner of the rights and ask for permission to sell custom score sheets. Here you will have to use your imagination a bit.
Subscriptions
If you have a wbesite that you would like to be member-only then you can create a pay-to-subscribe feature. You could also do this for any information product, such as latest news on a given topic, that is then emailed to the subscriber on a regular basis, or perhaps picking the best potential kickstarter projects or something like that.
When creating a product, as with offline sales, you will need to identify demand, competition and your market. How will you market your product? In general, if you have something that is wanted and there is not much out there that already does what you're offering then the marketing should be fairly straight-forward anyway.
Sell Advertising for Commissions
You may create an information website about something you really know about and guide/advise people to use particular products that you know are going to help them and then make sure you are able to get a commission for each referral. There are many online shops offering such commissions, such as Amazon. You may also be able to use this method for emailing people and/or any e-products you have.
Sell Advertising for fixed fees
Likewise, if you have a website/twitter or any other social media account you may also sell adverts on your online space. You should really be aiming for around 10,000 visitors per month as a minimum to get going but won't really make big money until you get over 100k visitors per month.
Live Streaming
Patreon
This is a website that allows you to ask for subscriptions from anybody who wants to support you. This is usually done for regular media content, such as a youtube channel, podcast or an e-magazine of some kind. Some people are making tens of thousands of dollars each month, but others are earning around $500.
Getting Paid To Play Games
Some companies pay full salaries to people to play their games, either on a contract basis or as a reward for referring other people to download their game or just to advertise whilst you're playing.
Winning Competitions, Filling Out Surveys, Manufactured Spending, Free Sites And Product Testing
It helps to live in the West to do this, but it is possible to make a living doing any of these things. Product testing is free, but with a proper campaign set up it is possible to have everything you'll ever need sent to you for free. This could also be combined with a reviews website of sorts, where people will send you free stuff in order to have it reviewed.
Teaching English Online
There are many companies offering English language courses, mostly to Asians. This means lots of teaching jobs. Here is one such example:
https://bibo.com.ph/#apply-form
Please use: m2850 as the referral ID.
Sell real life products
It is possible that you may be able to make money buying products offline and selling them online for a profit. Some people do not have access to cheap products or do not have time to go and search for them, so profits can be made this way, especially through an online vendor such as Amazon Marketplace, Shopify, Lazada etc. It might also be that you can find rare items or collectibles through car boot sales, markets or other places and then you may find buyers through industry specific sites such as boardgamegeek or online auctions such as ebay.com
General Advice
Whatever route you take, if you are creating a product/service then you will need a way to find customers. With many methods there are already markets in place online, such as freelancers, odesk, clickbank, amazon, lazada, shopify etc, but you may decide to create your own website. If you go this route you will need to find out how to research the competition and how to make sure your website shows up high in google searches and/or engage via social media. These are large topics but you can learn to do them yourself, it is not particularly complicated but it is very time consuming.
Note to the author for future reference:
https://e-commerceaffiliates.com/
