Top 8 Ways to Make Money Online

Sell leads to small businesses

Lead generation is one of the most lucrative online businesses because there's so many small businesses that need help generating new customers from the internet. It can turn into long-term passive income if you know how to cleverly leverage digital properties. The premise is simple. Build rank and rent websites that get to the top of Google for $500 or less. Each site can earn you an income of $500-$2000+. 

Once it's at the top of the SERPs, it produces leads you can sell to a local business owner. Blogging Wizard reports that 68% of local business owners need help with lead generation, also called the rank and rent business model. The concept is simple. Target the right niche in the right location. Then use identified parameters and local SEO tactics to leverage the algorithms and drive organic traffic to your website. But because local lead generation focuses on the local market, your sites can get to the top of the SERPs fast. Often in as little as 3 weeks to 6 months.

According to Rule Analytics, 37% of B2B marketers found generating high-quality leads to be one of their biggest challenges. With lead generation, you can build more than one site at a time and scale fast for minimal overhead costs. In addition, once your sites are at the top of the SERPs, they don't need much maintenance, so these lead generation web properties turn into digital real estate that you earn passive income by renting it out to small businesses. 

Sell SEO services

Earn $2,501 - $5,000/project by selling SEO services to help businesses improve their organic search engine visibility, according to ahrefs. SEO, or search engine optimization, uses various methods to bolster a company’s presence in the search engine results, like backlinking and keyword targeting.

Although it can take a year or longer for SEO to produce results, many businesses find it worth the wait and resources. Only 20% to 30% of traffic comes from paid ad clicks, while the majority 70% to 80% comes from organic search, according to Digital Marketing Institute. 

With the rising costs of paid advertising, SEO is becoming even more essential for small businesses looking to grow. However, of the 33 million small businesses in America, 57% are still without an SEO strategy, according to Search Engine Journal.

To capitalize on the ever-growing demand, consider an SEO agency. It's an online business model with reasonable initial investment costs and low overhead. But if you have the skills to get results for your SEO clients. You can make a solid income with an SEO agency in 2024. 

Sell Web Designs

Make money online selling web designs and get started working remotely for less than $100. You can find jobs on third-party sites like Upwork, LinkedIn, or Fiverr or network in your community. There are over 8.5 billion daily searches on Google, but nearly 9,570,000 small business owners don't have a website.

Web builders qualified in Java, CSS, or HTML can build websites and earn an income of $25-$75 per hour. Or invoice per build and charge $250-$25,000 per website. WebFX states that first impressions of a website are 94% design-related. At the same time, 83% of consumers expect websites to load in less than 3 seconds.

Selling websites is easier to start than a business model like digital marketing or SEO. So you can make money online fast. But after you build a reputation and gain a steady stream of clients, consider expanding your services.

For example, you could start a digital marketing agency and offer SEO or PPC ads for your clients. Demand Sage reports that the digital marketing industry is predicted to reach $807 billion by 2026. So there's a ton of opportunity to sell additional online services and earn a solid income online in 2024. 

Sell PPC & Social Media Marketing

Selling PPC and social media marketing services is another business opportunity to make money with digital marketing. Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, run through platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads, charge the advertiser when a user clicks on the advertisement. 

The average cost per click for a PPC campaign is around $2.59. Small and medium-sized businesses typically budget around $15,000 to $20,000/month for PPC campaigns, according to WebFX. Efficient ad spending is essential to marketing success, so it’s no surprise PPC managers make around $70K per year. 

PPC advertising is a major component of social media marketing to reach the 4.76 billion social media users out there. However, you can make money by starting a social media marketing agency and selling services beyond just paid advertising, such as influencer marketing, content creation, and community management.

Sell Private Label Products

With around 350 million products displayed in Amazon's product catalog, getting customers to notice your products can be challenging. That’s why the majority 59% of Amazon sellers do private label, including Amazon itself. 

You make money with Amazon private label by buying a generic product in bulk from a manufacturer and putting your own logo and branding on the product to sell it as your own brand. Private label allows you an exclusive product listing on Amazon and the ability to run Amazon PPC advertisements.

Even though the startup costs are high at around $10K, a private label business operated through the Amazon FBA program offers the best prospects for long-term passive income with Amazon. You can make between $500 to $10,000+/month in profit by private labeling on Amazon, according to FBAfaq. 

Sell Wholesale

Wholesaling is a business model that has been around for centuries and for good reason. The concept is simple. Buy products in large quantities to get a cheaper per-unit cost from a supplier and then sell them individually for a markup.

For those with $4,000 to $10,000 to order products in bulk, Amazon wholesale is a tried and tested online business opportunity that can earn you 10% to 50% profit on each sale, according to Helium10.

Many wholesalers choose to sell their products through Amazon FBA because of how manageable it makes their business operations. You just purchase the products from your supplier and then send them to the Amazon warehouse until they sell. Amazon FBA wholesalers typically earn over $5,000/month in revenue from their business, according to SellerSnap.io. 

Sell KDP (Kindle Publishing)

Sell self-published books on Amazon KDP (Kindle Publishing) for free, and earn an income of $4-$7/per book. KDP is much easier to start than traditional publishing because you're leveraging a platform with nearly 3 million subscribers. 

As a result, you have access to a market of buyer-ready customers making KDP the cheapest way to publish an eBook. According to Words Rated, Amazon sells 68% of all online retail books and has grown 264% in the last five years. The average title sells 200 copies in a year and 1,000 over its lifetime. An indie self-published author sells between 250-300 books and earns $1,000 per year.

However, if you sell an eBook on Amazon KDP, you license the right to sell it to Amazon and can only sell it elsewhere if you cancel your contract. But Amazon pays $520 million in royalties to self-published authors, and you can still sell it in other formats, such as print and audio.

Retail Arbitrage

If you want to make money by selling products online but don’t have much cash to invest in inventory, retail arbitrage on Amazon is a great option. You generate profits with retail arbitrage by purchasing products from retailers like Walmart or Home Depot that are selling for less than the price on Amazon and then flipping them on Amazon. 

Retail arbitrage is easy. You just head to your local retailer, scan products using the Amazon Seller app, and see if you can make a profit. If you don’t want to leave your house, online arbitrage is another option. Online retail arbitrage sellers use retailer comparison websites like BrickSeek to find opportunities. 

You can start an Amazon retail arbitrage business with as little as $100, and scale it up to $10,000+ by reinvesting profits, according to Go Aura.

Shopify Dropshipping

You make money with Shopify dropshipping by selling products from your own custom online storefront. Unlike Ecommerce marketplaces like eBay where your products are displayed alongside everyone's products, only your products are displayed to customers in your Shopify store. 

Shopify is the best platform for long-term passive income from dropshipping because having a website allows you to build your own brand. Also, you can use various marketing channels like Google Ads and social media marketing to reach your target audience.

According to Shopify, you can create an income stream of $1,000 to $2,000/month if you work on your Shopify dropshipping business for around 15 hours a week for 12 months. 

Amazon Dropshipping

Amazon dropshippers generate revenue by dropshipping products to Amazon’s more than 300 million loyal customers. Although Amazon has the largest and wealthiest customer base of any major Ecommerce marketplace, there are some obstacles when it comes to dropshipping.

Amazon dropshippers often must share their product listings with other sellers because Amazon only allows a product’s ASIN to be listed once on the platform to avoid cluttering. Amazon is also quite strict about dropshipping and requires you to list yourself as the seller of record and only you can be identified on any product labels and packaging.

Amazon dropshipping can make between $1,000 and $50,000/month in revenue with 11% to 25% profit margins, according to Steve Chou of My Wife Quit Her Job.  

Walmart Dropshipping

If you have a legitimate business entity set up and a history of successful Ecommerce selling, you can make money by dropshipping to the Walmart Marketplace's 220 million active customers. Unfortunately, Walmart dropshipping is not for beginners because Walmart has very strict qualifications for joining the ranks of its approximately 150,000 Walmart Marketplace sellers. 

If you do get accepted as a Walmart Marketplace seller, you can enjoy a massive customer base with substantially less seller competition than Amazon and eBay. Walmart seller fees are also very reasonable, as the retail giant only charges a 6% to 15% commission on the sales price. 

54% of Walmart Marketplace sellers earn over $100,000 in annual revenue, according to JungleScout. 

eBay Dropshipping

eBay dropshippers make money by selling products to eBay’s approximately 135 million active users. Dropshipping from eBay is often recommended for beginners because it’s easy to get accepted as an eBay seller and the selling fees are relatively low.

It’s simple to set up your own dropshipping product listings to start selling on the platform. eBay allows dropshipping from wholesale suppliers but does not allow you to purchase items from other retailers or online marketplaces like Amazon and ship them to eBay’s customers. 

The top 10% of eBay dropshippers make nearly $8,000/month in revenue, according to DripShipper.io. 

TikTok Dropshipping

TikTok dropshipping is a chance to leverage one of the hottest marketing channels in 2023. According to Insider Intelligence, TikTok will have  834.3 million monthly users worldwide by the end of the year. It's also the top global app for consumer spend.

To make money with TikTok dropshipping, first, find a winning product. Then create videos with virality or post content that WOWs users. Get people to take action. The goal is to drive a ton of online traffic to your dropshipping store. But that's how you can earn an income online with TikTok dropshipping. 

Adsense & Affiliate Marketing on YouTube

Although there are quite a few methods YouTubers can use to make money, Adsense and affiliate marketing tend to be the most common. These offer the best potential for long-term passive income because you can keep earning from both long after you publish videos. 

You earn money with Adsense by letting advertisers run YouTube ads on your video content. If you meet the requirements to join the YouTube Partner Program, which includes 1,000 channel subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the last year, you can enable Adsense on your videos and start earning money. According to Forbes, YouTubers make between $3 to $5/$1,000 video views. 

If you want to make money from affiliate marketing, you can join an affiliate network like Amazon Associate to get brand affiliate links to put in your YouTube description and promote the products in your video.

YouTube Automation

With a YouTube automation channel, you can generate passive income without creating video content yourself. You build a team of freelancers from sites like Fiverr to handle every aspect of your channel, from content creation to channel management. 

A YouTube automation channel can make passive income on YouTube in a variety of ways, like sponsorships and Adsense. In fact, Adsense revenue alone can be quite lucrative with a YouTube automation channel. According to the Social Blade tool, a successful YouTube channel can make upwards of $20K/month or more.

Twitch Streamer

Twitch is a streaming platform with 31 million users where you can make money online by live streaming your activities. Most Twitch streamers play video games in front of their audience, but categories like music, chatting, and sports are popular, too. 

Successful Twitch streamers can make between $3,000 and $5,000+/month for 40 hours of streaming, according to Business of Apps. Twitch streamers have various methods to monetize their channel through the platform, like channel subscriptions, Twitch Bits, ad revenue, and game sales.

TikTok

TikTok is a social video platform where video creators publish short form videos to attract followers from TikToks 1.53 billion users. Although TikTok has extended the maximum video time to 10 minutes, most TikTokers post videos of around 30 seconds. 

You can make money through TikTok in a variety of ways. Common TikTok monetization strategies include TikTok Creator Fund, TikTok Pulse ad-revenue sharing program, brand sponsorships, and song promotions. 

TikTok video creators who have racked up around 1,000,000 followers can make $1,000 to $5,000/month, according to SEO Design Chicago. However, viral TikTokers like Charli D’Amelio make $100,000+ just for a sponsored post.

Start a Blog

Start a blog and make money online in 6-24 months. According to Income School, "most bloggers were making an extra $250 – $3000+ per month on average after a year of blogging with a minimum of 100 blog posts".

You need $50-$200 to begin blogging and should be ready to commit to posting 3X a week in the beginning. But the global content marketing industry is set to grow by $584.02 billion by 2027, and there are over 600 million blogs online.

77% of internet users read blogs, so become an authority in your niche. Then you can monetize your blog with Google AdSense and subscriptions. But blogs with a steady stream of online traffic have one of the best long-term passive income potentials in 2024. 

Start a Podcast

Make money online as a podcaster for an initial investment of $350-$400. Podcasters with 10,000 downloads or more can earn an income of $300-$1000 per episode. Then you can use monetization tactics like high ticket affiliate marketing, donations, and subscriptions to increase the amount of money you make with your podcast. 

According to IAB, the podcast market will grow to $4 billion by 2024, but there are almost 4 million podcasts. To establish an audience, you need to publish content that entertains, educates, or adds value. Consider that 74% of podcast listeners tune in to learn something new.

But almost 50% of non-listeners say they don’t know where to find podcasts. To be discovered and grow an audience on multiple channels. For example, get active on social media platforms like TikTok and Facebook. Or start a YouTube channel to share content and create a buzz around your podcast.

Become an Influencer

You can make money as an influencer with less than 1000 followers. Known as nano-influencers, more business owners are leveraging nano-influencers lower costs and higher engagement rates. According to Statista, the influencer marketing industry is worth $13.8 billion. 

Nano-influencers earn an income of $10-$100 per post by influencing people's buying decisions. In addition, 61% of users trust the content they get from influencers. You don't need to invest money to become an influencer. But you do have to be different, aspiring, and relatable.

Share valuable content that defines you and your brand. Then build an audience and persuade your followers to act on your recommendations. Of course, more followers mean more money, and micro-influencers make as much as $500-$5000/post. At the same time, macro-influencers can earn an income of $5000-$10,000/post. 

 Become A Copywriter

 Become a copywriter and join legends like Claude Hopkins and Eugene Schwartz. A beginner can earn $61,250. Skilled writers with experience can make $84,446. But freelancers grab as much as $100,000+ a year.

According to Statista, the copywriting industry is worth an estimated  $21 billion. In addition, Career Explorer forecasts that the market will see a CAGR of 7.6% from 2016 to 2026. So if you're a creative thinker or have the power to weave the right words together and influence people's buying behavior, you can earn a steady income as a copywriter.

More than 90% of businesses use curated copy to get more leads, build brand awareness or gain attention online. Studies also suggest that almost 67% of companies outsource their copywriting needs. In 2024, it's a service in that's in high demand and a chance to make real money online. 

Create a Course

Online course creators can make money within the first month of launching their products. Plan on a budget of $140 to $10,770, but there are options to create a free course on platforms like Thinkific and EdX. Statista advises that the online learning market will be worth over $166 billion in 2023.

Of course, online courses require time and effort to develop. But they take 90% less energy than face-to-face training. To make money selling your product, you need to create something people want to buy. Then utilize the right marketing strategy to maximize your profits. For example, 58% of top course makers use social media traffic to attract students. 

You can increase your online earnings even more by offering a service. Email Vendor Selection reports that 36% of top course creators sell membership and coaching. Offer free trials and bonuses to increase the perceived value of your material. As a result, your course will sell over and over and is one of the best, most long-term passive income potential ways to make money online. 

Create an App

Create an app and make money selling your product for free on platforms like App Builder. Or outsource to sites like Clutch or Dribbble with a budget of $5000-$25,000+. According to Statista, there are over 258 billion downloads of mobile apps. And the number of users is around 3 billion.

Apps with voice search that offer a freemium version with continuous updates can make $3000-$82,500/day. When creating your app, focus on what people want to buy. Target a high-demand category like gaming, education, or business.

Data from Zippia infers that only 0.5% of apps are successful. To make sales and increase your chance of success, promote and market your mobile app on multiple channels before launch, like social media platforms or your YouTube channel.

Find Freelance Work

Be part of a $455 billion gig economy, find freelance work, and start making money online for less than $100. Freelancers are independent contractors hired by companies to perform various tasks. They are typically paid per project or at an hourly rate.

The average freelancer makes $28/hour and an annual salary of $15,000-$158,000. However, you can earn an income of $40+ if you specialize in high-demand jobs like IT, full-stack development, scripting, and automation.

You can find jobs on free sites like Upwork, Fiverr, or Freelancer.com or connect with local businesses on LinkedIn and Facebook. There are 73.3 million freelancers in the US in 2023. So create a profile that makes you stand out from the competition, and you can start making money today. 

Become a Virtual Tutor

Virtual tutors connect with students via the internet. The virtual tutor industry is worth $9.68 billion and, according to Guru99, is expected to hit the $325 billion mark by 2025. Virtual tutors teach everything from core subjects like math and science to how to play an instrument or paint.

Startup costs are $100 or less, and the average tutor earns between $10-$100+/hour. Of course, your income depends on the subject, grade level, and certifications. However, an increased interest in eLearning and tech advances suggests that the market will experience a 200% increase by 2025.  

Start your own business and find clients on forums like Reddit and LinkedIn. Or search Facebook for teacher and parent groups. Another option is to land jobs on freelance tutor sites such as Chegg Study and Wyzatt. But you can make money as a virtual tutor as soon as you land your first client. 

Become a Virtual Assistant

Become a virtual assistant for under $100. You can work from home and have a flexible schedule. It's a much easier business model to start than a brick-and-mortar or shared office space. Virtual assistants only need a computer, an internet connection, and any specific software for the jobs they're retained to perform.

A global market set to reach $245 billion by 2030, the Freelancers Union reports that 50% of the USA workforce could be virtual by 2028. You can find jobs on third-party sites like BELAY and Randstad. Or you can create a website and connect with local companies on platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook.

Freelancers earn $10-$30+/hour or $400-$5,600+ monthly. However, your income will depend on your services and how many hours you work. The most in-demand jobs for VAs in 2023 include social media management, email marketing, and project management. The average VA works 20 hours/per week. Others work full-time hours or do temp work in their spare time.

Become an Online Translator

Online translators work remotely and can start for under $100. Find jobs on sites like Unbabel and Lionsbridge. If you have superior skills in a localized market, you can earn $30-$100+/hour in as little as 6 weeks-6 months. 

Data from Verified Market Research states that online translation will reach a market value of over $84 million by 2030. You can make money translating manuscripts, blogs, website copy, etc. Or specialize in high-demand niches such as Chinese, Korean, and Spanish. 

87% of B2C consumers said they would not buy from an English-only website. Hence, there is a growing demand for native language writing and reading translators in a localized market.