My Top 10 Methods To Make Money Online
The following article details my personal
top 10 methods to make money from the Internet.
What makes this list unique is it’s based entirely on the methods I
have personally used, so I can reveal to you what I did and what my
results were. Bear in mind these methods represent ten years of working
online, so I do not do all of them presently. At one point in my career
however they were an income stream, and are still viable options for
you.
This is not an all inclusive list, which means there are plenty of
other ways you can make money, no doubt many of which are potentially
much more profitable or better choices for your own situation. As a
result you shouldn’t base your decisions on what methods you use solely
on this list. Do your research and include this article as one resource.
This list isn’t strictly ordered based on my preferences from top to
bottom. What I’ve done is listed the different things I did in a
chronology of time of when I did them. It’s no coincidence however that
as we get closer to the present (the end of the list), the more I
personally like the method, and hence still use it. Over the years I
made changes to how I made money in order to get closer to what I really
wanted from my business.
What Is My Ideal Way To Make Money Online?
To help you understand what I was striving for, here are my main
criteria when deciding what methods I use to make money online with.
Bear in mind certain options only became available as a result of
previous experience. Some things you can only do once you’ve done other
things because you build on what you have done before.
In a nutshell, this is the criteria I concluded are important to me –
Can you make a solid profit margin?
As you will see in a moment when I reveal my top ten methods, some income streams have very
slim margins,
which means you must push through a lot of volume in order to make
significant income. While not always the case, in most situations to
sell more requires more work, more resources and generally more of
everything, which results in violation of my next rule…
Can you maintain the income with minimal labour and/or is it easy to outsource?
I look for income streams that do not require significant amounts of
work to maintain. If I need to drastically increase the amount of
product I sell or customers I attract to make good money, and that
requires more of my own time to achieve, or cannot be easily outsourced
to others (it often increases your labor just to organize outsourcers,
so don’t assume outsourcing is a magic solution), that’s not the method
for me.
Is there potential to scale?
As per the previous point, often the logistics of growth makes a
method unappealing to me, however I do want the income streams I go
after to have the potential to scale, and scale big. This means if you
do discover something that makes you money, the possibility to grow it
to a
life changing amount of money is a reality, and you understand how this can happen.
Is there passive income potential?
In most cases I prefer something that is more potentially passive
than potentially scalable. Obviously it’s great to have everything, but
given the choice I prefer income streams that just work and can be
automated so you can do other things. You have to be careful to manage
your desire to scale something with your desire to make it passive.
Sometimes less is more because less gives you
freedom.
Can you create a sellable asset?
The final point is really important to me because I know that my
interest tends to fluctuate. Every five years or so I feel like moving
on to something new and leaving my main project. In the case of
business, I want to ensure that there is a profitable
exit strategy.
The better you meet the previous criteria (profit margin, automated,
scaleable and passive), the more money you can make when it is time to
sell.
I Look For The “Holy Trinity” Income Method
I’ve written before about my quest for the
holy trinity of a business model, one that delivers what I consider the three most important outcomes from a business –
- You make significant PROFIT
- The income can be made as close to PASSIVE as possible
- You have PASSION about some aspect of the business
Or phrased another way, my business should enable the following –
- Consistent Income
- Free Time (thanks to income automation, business model simplicity or large capital gain)
- Meaning and Purpose (development of your passion and reason for being on this planet)
So now you know my main criteria that has driven me to test different
income streams over the past decade. Now let me introduce you to
exactly what those income streams are…
My Top 10 Ways To Make Money Online
1. Sell On Ebay
During my pre-teen and early teenage years I went from playing with
Transformers, GI-Joe and LEGO, to playing Nintendo, Sega and Gameboy.
Eventually I added the card game
Magic: The Gathering to the
mix at about 16 years of age. All of these things were passions for me
at various stages of growing up, but one thing remained consistent
throughout each stage; I traded and sold toys and games I no longer
wanted to make extra cash.
In Brisbane where I live, before the Internet there was a newspaper called the
Trading Post
that was published every two weeks. It was an aftermarket for pretty
much everything. Whenever I grew tired of a game or a toy I’d sell it
via the
Trading Post, usually in an effort to make enough money to buy the new toy or game I had in my sights.
Eventually the Internet came along and the
Trading Post no
longer commanded the secondhand market like it once did (though it did
successfully transition online). It quickly became clear that eBay was
the winner when it came to secondhand commerce online. As a result my
first experience making any money from the Internet was selling old
games, toys and electronics on eBay.
EBay is still I believe the best way to gain experience making money from the Internet for two reasons –
- You are pretty much guaranteed to make some kind of sale and thus experience a transaction
- EBay has the traffic, so you don’t have to worry about marketing your product beyond creating a good listing, the eye-balls are already there
These two reasons make eBay a great first stop because you will learn
how to list something for sale online, how to take money (possibly your
first experience with PayPal) and about the importance of things like
titles and copywriting, if you spend the time to study how to make your
eBay listings convert better.
The best thing about eBay – the
abundant traffic –
is also the worst thing. Barriers to entry are low on eBay, meaning
competition is fierce. When competition is fierce, profit margin is
slim. Unless you can find some form of competitive advantage through
your supply chain, how you create listings, or you have a means to
increase volume, you’re not going retire rich thanks to eBay.
I spent quite a bit of time studying eBay, both as a business model
and as a means to capture new customers because of how much buying
traffic is there. There is no doubt that eBay is a fantastic website
that represents a huge potential to make money, but in my case I wasn’t
keen to build my business there, it didn’t match enough of my criteria.
However eBay is a fantastic way to make quick money, even just as a
way to turn your old items into cash to start a new online venture. If
you’re brand new to Internet marketing and you don’t know your PayPal’s
from your Clickbanks, or your PPC from your SEO, eBay is definitely a
great place to learn some basics.
2. Sell products in forums, bulletin boards, classifieds and other community type sites
The card game
Magic: The Gathering was a big part of my life
from the end of highschool to the beginning of university. Although
initially I was just a casual player and then tournament player, I
quickly became a card trader and really enjoyed the wheeling and
dealing. Although my interest in playing the game wained, most of my
early projects online were connected with the game.
Before having my own website, I spent time reading websites,
newsgroups, bulletin boards and forums about the game, and eventually
started trading online. Back before search engines were any good most of
my time was spent in particular Magic newsgroups, some that talked
strategy, and some that were focused specifically on trading and/or
buying and selling cards.
I managed to make spare change selling my cards through these sites.
The main reason I could make any money was because I would win cards in
tournaments, hence I had a supply source that would result in a good
profit margin. Of course this wasn’t sustainable unless I kept placing
well in tournaments, nor was it really scalable unless I started buying
in cards from other sources.
I stopped using this method once I started my own card game site
(more on this below), however I still believe niche collectables,
particularly in a market that you really love, is a fantastic starting
point to gain experience making money online. Like eBay you can make
money selling secondhand items in community sites if you can find a way
to source product at cost or below. It’s not a model that has much
margin so again the challenge is to scale if you want to make
significant profit.
3. Sell products from your own website
My first successful website was about the card game
Magic: The Gathering.
At first the site was just a hobby with articles written by me and a
few friends. Eventually as traffic grew I began making some money with
the site.
Since I was already a card trader it made sense that my Magic site
have a Magic card store. At first I stocked the website with my own
cards, and eventually added retail “sealed” (unopened packs of cards) by
buying product at wholesale from a company in Sydney.
It was a very simple card shop made up of text listings of the cards I
had for sale, the quantity available and the cost per card or per pack.
I maintained the inventory myself from my room, sorting and listing
cards online by hand using plain text. I didn’t use any software and
most of the payments I received back then was via check or money order
in the mail. Some kids would even send money and even coins (!) in the
mail to pay for their purchase.
My business did well enough, although the manual labor was intense.
Maintaining inventory lists, packing cards into envelopes and daily
trips to the post office was not always the most fun way to spend my
time, though I did enjoy having my own little business while in
university.
Unfortunately my store was hit by credit card fraud when I foolishly
sold a significant amount of product to an unknown person in Thailand.
This experience was enough for me to decide that I had had enough of
running a Magic shop and it was time to move on. You can read about the
credit card fraud experience here –
Selling Products Online Is A Big Opportunity
My first three experiences of making money from the Internet all
involve some kind of physical product. Online commerce obviously
represents a huge opportunity to make money online, and having your own
product or a passion for a product that you can source can lead to big
profits.
You can sell product from your own website store, via community sites and classifieds
and of course eBay and collectively make good money. The challenge,
like with any business, is defining what is your competitive advantage
and can you come up with a model that meets your needs. For me selling
physical product was a great proving ground, but I eventually learned
that profiting from information was a preferable model if I wanted to
meet my aforementioned business goals.
I’ll leave it in your hands to decide whether physical commerce is the way to go for your situation.
4. Sponsorship advertising on a content site
Once my card game site was successful I began researching how to make
money from it. I sold cards initially because I already knew there was a
market for that and I had the cards, but I was also aware that if I had
an audience I could charge sponsors money to advertise to them.
Thus began my love affair with
banner advertising.
Although challenging at times to find sponsors, I was quickly able to
bring in several hundred dollars per month in advertising revenue by
directly approaching online companies who I considered good targets for
my readership. I emailed them and asked if they would like to pay a
monthly fee to place a banner on my site. Most said no, but some said
yes and eventually I had a couple of loyal sponsors.
Banner income would prove very reliable over time as long as I
continued to do whatever I did to maintain and build a readership. This
has continued today, where several sponsors pay a fee to advertise their
products and services to you, the reader of this website.
Banner advertising, when set up using a system like I presently use, can be very hands off – in fact for me it’s entirely
passive
– assuming there is an audience that the sponsors benefit from
advertising to. It’s difficult to make loads and loads of money just
from banners unless you have significant traffic, but it is easy enough
to make some money from it and once you do, it generally proves very
reliable unless you stop updating your website.
I’d recommend this method to you if you have some kind of content
based site or a community site that attracts enough traffic to make it
worthwhile for sponsors. The best thing about banners is that they don’t
have to replace any other income method you use, you can use this
income stream in tandem with others.
5. Sell services you provide personally
At one stage early in my career when my online income wasn’t
consistent, I was part of a business grant program run by the Australian
government designed to assist entrepreneurs with money to pay for
life’s necessities so you can focus on growing your business. The idea
is that when your business is successful you will eventually hire people
and pay taxes, thus the government reaps a return on the investment.
The grant ran for 12 months and I was under the assumption
(incorrectly) that I had to show consistent income growth in order to
maintain my qualification for the program. My income at the time always
suffered a downturn around Christmas/Summer in Australia. To combat this
problem I decided to teach English face-to-face with people in Brisbane
to hopefully boost my reportable income.
To advertise my tutoring service I marketed using posters offline and
eventually set up a website and marketed on classified sites as well. I
charged $15 an hour and eventually had a few Korean clients. This idea
eventually ballooned into a full on English school with a real world
premises that I managed for eight months before closing down. It turned
out to be an experiment that taught me I much preferred online business
to bricks and mortar.
My English tutoring days were short lived, but that doesn’t mean
selling some kind of service that you personally deliver isn’t still a
viable option. The Internet is a fantastic place to market your services
for free. Similar to what I talked about in the first three points, you
can use online community sites, classified, forums and your own website
to market your service.
The downside with this model is that you are still trading hours for dollars, which is a violation of my
holy trinity
concept. It’s not necessarily the worst option – and many people enjoy
the life of a high-paid consultant very much – but it does have the
inherent limitation that a service is not replicable unless you
personally do it yourself or hire people to do it for you, both
activities that take time and/or resources.
If you are good at something and enjoy helping/teaching/working on
other people’s projects, selling what you do online is worth
considering.
6. Sell services provided by other people
My next big success after my card game site was an online
proofreading business. For this business I wanted to focus on selling
something that did not require either my own labor or sourcing some kind
of physical product.
The business began in very simple fashion. I created the website personally myself and advertised two services –
English proofreading and
language translation
services. I knew how to find contract proofreaders and also had access
to an online database of language translators. When a job came through
I’d organize a quote, slap on a margin for myself and then return the
quote to the client.
Over the years I heavily refined this business. I brought on an assistant, simplified the services, cemented a principle mode
and learned what methods of marketing brought in the best type of
client. The end result was a full time income for me and barely a few
hours of work to maintain it.
This was the first time I found a business that met all my major
criteria – except one – I really wasn’t that passionate about the
industry. Initially I enjoyed being the entrepreneur, the thrill of
making money and automating the business as much as I could, but after a
few years my passion wained. I eventually sold the busnes, earning a nice payday in the process, making this one of my most personally gratifying projects.
Selling a service is a real option for making money online. The
challenge is sourcing good people to do the work, learning what specific
offer to make to the market, how to differentiate yourself so you earn
good margins, how to market what you offer and how to automate the
entire process so it becomes a
passive income stream.
7. Paid reviews
For a brief period on my blog I invited people to submit their
product, service or website for a paid review. This means they pay a fee
(for my site it was $250) and I would write an article about whatever
they submitted. I would not accept just anything for review, I had to
see an angle that made for relevant content for my audience. Nor was a
paid review a promise that I would write positively about the subject – I
would highlight both good and bad points.
Initially I didn’t mind writing paid reviews as the income was pretty
good in terms of how long it would take and how much I earned. I could
make as much as $250 an hour, which was great at first, but as my
motivation focused more on freedom and less on money, even this became a
poor incentive. Plus I never did like that I was told what to write
about rather than choosing subjects I enjoyed.
The challenge for you, if this method is relevant to your growth
stage, is to create a website where you can command a price for paid
reviews that makes it worth your time. Until your traffic is
significant, charging more than $50 for a review is not realistic, so
you need to build your website asset first.
8. Affiliate marketing
As my blog audience grew I began to test a method of making money I was very interested in –
affiliate marketing.
My first test proved positive, though initially I was disappointed that
of my readership of 500 or so people (at the time), I could only sell
one or two products, making $20 commission each. It wasn’t retirement
money, but it was a start.
Affiliate income has gone on to become my second highest source of
income in recent years, thanks in part to the increase in my audience
reach. By combining my blog and email newsletter I can reach thousands
of people with just one piece of content. By testing different products
and recommending things I personally use myself, I’ve been able to earn
as much as
$50,000 in commissions selling just one product.
Affiliate marketing is possibly the single best way to make a living
online because it is so hands off, can be automated easily enough and
can deliver some incredible profit margins. It’s especially good when
you can use affiliate marketing to recommend things in areas you are
personally interested in – for example you can make money simply writing
a review of a book you really wanted to read anyway and you get paid
for doing what you love.
The challenge for you is figuring out what market(s) to enter,
building an audience and maintaining relationships with your readers so
they trust what you tell them. If you know something that other people
want to know and you are prepared to share that information, you could
be looking at a fairly lucrative affiliate opportunity.
9. Sell your own information products
The single most profitable income stream I have ever developed is selling my own
information products.
If you are a long time follower of my work you know I have created
courses on how to make money with blogs and membership sites. I also
have several reports, an ebook and new products on the way.
The profit margins on information products is significant, especially
as you can earn money for content you created years ago. Technology
makes selling information online relatively easy to automate, once you
get through the learning curve. If you focus on areas you are passionate
about you can build expertise and leverage that trust and credibility
to make sales of your products. Best of all, all of this can happen
while you sleep, once you have built the machine to do it for you.
I personally enjoy teaching, so creating my products
though hard work, was an enjoyable process. Once the course was created
I continued to sell it year after year to people new to the industry
who want to learn how to make money with blogs.
Like with affiliate marketing, your potential to succeed selling
information products rests on your ability to identify market needs, tap
into audiences looking for this information and then give them what
they want. There are plenty of subtleties and things to learn about, but
thankfully there is plenty of guidance out there too. Digging into the you are reading now and downloading my free reports an are fantastic starting points if you want more help.
10. High end private coaching
I’ll end this article with something I only recently did – offer high
end coaching to a select group of clients who had to apply to work with
me. My program cost between
$5,000 and $10,000 and I
turned away more people than I accepted. This was deliberate as I knew
working one-on-one with people is not something I can do with many
people or I will use up all my time. However I was keen to help certain
people who were in the right position so I could learn more about the
challenges they face.
Private coaching, like consulting, is another situation where you
trade time for dollars, but in terms of your hourly pay rate it is hard
to find a higher paying “job”. Of course you don’t have to start off
charging thousands of dollars. Depending on your expertise and what kind
of outcome you help people achieve, will determine how much you can
charge. Offering coaching for $100 per session is not out of reach for
most people, and that’s not a bad starting rate if you are looking to
build up your experience through helping others closely.
Again the Internet is by far the easiest and most affordable tool to
attract coaching clients. In many cases you can add private coaching to
many of the other methods I listed above, including selling info
products you create, affiliate products, sponsorship banners and
physical products.
Combine What Works For You
In my case progressing through these various methods, figuring out
what I actually want from a business and then combining different
methods to maximize my income and personal satisfaction has worked the
best.
I recommend you follow a similar path to build your own business.
Figure out what you like using the options above and other resources
online, begin testing to see what works and learn more about what you
enjoy, and keep at it until you find what “floats your boat” and is
incredibly profitable too.
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from Hewlett Packard (HP) will work with Team4Tech and Voces Vitales
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