Out of everything you can do on the web, one thing is to make money online. If you’re here, reading this, you probably know or have a mild idea that you can make money online. Or you might as well be wondering how to make money online.

Well if you are, I’m here to do just that.

While the internet is becoming everything, one of those things is income sources. Sure, it wasn’t made for that in the first place. The Internet was invented to share information seamlessly without any limitations. Well, it turns out, people have commercialized it.

As the Joker said, “If you’re good at something, never do it for free”, considering the number of skills people have these days, the number of ways to make money online is equally high. You just need to know ‘How’.

Getting into how the internet works aren’t in the scope of this post. What’s in scope is to tell you ways to earn money online. But before we begin, I want you to know that this isn’t about “Getting rich quick”, it’s about slowly & surely growing an online business to make money from it.

So if you’re looking for that, I’m sorry to say you’re in the wrong place. You might as well close this tab right away.

If not, read on.

Why start an online business?

The world is getting more & more densely connected by the internet. Many brick & mortar shops are blaming the internet for throwing them out of business.

I remember a local taxi service (Fast track) that dominated the city I was living in. Its taxis were everywhere, so much so that it was the most affordable mode of private transport (don’t misunderstand it as a personal mode of transport).

Then came Ola & Uber who uprooted their business in no time & now they are nowhere seen.

The inability to adapt to the change led to their business collapse like the house of cards.

58% of the human population is already using the internet.

As an inspiration, I’d like to share a story. Just the moral.

Do you know who Michael Dell is?

By the name, you might have guessed it. The founder of Dell computers, or Dell Inc.

This guy revolutionized the computer era single-handedly. Keeping the details apart, Dell sold the computers directly to the customers, without relying on middlemen.

This happened by selling it online.  Though he started doing that offline, however, it’s online where the real magic happened.

So if you’re all pumped up, let me begin sharing the needful.

Understanding the investment required

I get it, you landed here assuming I’d share ways to earn money online without any investment. Trust me, this is not one of those scams.

I’ll explain this in a bit. Stay with me.

You and I know that “time is money“.

I believe you can either save money or time, not both.

Here, you can either spend time or money, but in this case, you can spend both.

But this post is about ways to earn money without investing a lot of money (sometimes)

Though I have included ways that require little to no money, to take it to the next level, you have to invest money. Money that will bring in more powerful tools & services that will help you make more money with your online business.

The ways included here require you to invest a lot of time & I assume you’re ready to put that. Don’t worry, I’ll explicitly mention where you need to invest money.

If you’re looking for ways to make money online literally without any investments (not even time), you still have the chance, you’re in the wrong place.

With that assumption, let me cut you some slack & give you cream.

30+ ‘Legitimate ways to earn money online (with little to no money)

1. Start a blog

My favorite is that’s how I got into this business. It was a very small step by creating a free blog on Blogspot then wordpress.com & then moving to a self-hosted WordPress blog on wordpress.org

Starting a blog these days is so easy that even a 107-year-old can do it in under 30 minutes.

You can pick a niche that you already know or are interested in, or pick a niche that already performing really well in terms of monetization & consumption.

Think of the long term, you can’t afford to switch niches every now and then. It takes time before you see some results, so I want you to be patient enough before you finally decide to switch a niche.

Immediate steps:

1. Pick a niche for your blog. Be very choosy, you’ll fail if you pick the wrong one.
2. Choose a web hosting & install WordPress
3. Start creating SEO-friendly content

2. Affiliate marketing 

Affiliate marketing is earning a cut by promoting someone else’s product/services. Amazon or eBay has an affiliate program where you can pick a product(s) and promote it all over your site or specific blog post.

Depending on the niche you’re in, there are big players who have affiliate programs running that you can leverage & make money from it.

The best part is these platforms offer a particular time period within which if the sale is made, you’d still get the commission.

For example, I promote a product/service & you don’t right away buy it. You intend to buy maybe a few days later after you get paid or get the pocket money.

The cookies of my unique referral link will stay in your browser for a specific number of days (amazon has 90 days period) and when you make the purchase within that period, I’d get paid the same amount I would get paid if your purchase on day 1.

Immediate steps:

1. Signup for two of the most popular affiliate marketplace CJ Affiliates & Share A Sale. Many a time, you will not find the desired product/service listed in the above two mentioned marketplaces, in that case, you can signup for individual products as well. Depending on your niche, you can find products/services and apply for those as well.
2. Create content to promote those programs & send traffic to those pages.

3. Online Courses

Good at teaching or do have a specific skill that you’re bored with writing it down in the form of multiple blog posts?

Well, you can create online courses & publish them on platforms like Udemy. You can even create your own marketplace i.e. your own blog where you sell the membership to access the premium courses.

Market yourself as an authoritative subject expert and generate leads to your website who’ll be interested in buying your courses.

Memberpress is a great online solution that can help you manage your online course marketplace. Also, if you’re on WordPress, you can make use of the Learnpress plugin to manage your courses.

Here’s a great guide that will help you get started with making money from Udemy.

Immediate steps:

1. Signup for a free Udemy instructor account
2. Record your lessons & market them online using free content
3. Create a sales funnel that will drive the users from free content to your paid course

4. Ecommerce

Running an e-commerce store is different than selling on an e-commerce store. Setting up a Shopify store or a Woocomerce store will be a great use.

Woocommerce is a freemium solution that makes your WordPress website into an ecommerce store. If you want an even simpler solution, you can use Shopify.

You can sell ebooks, music, software code, or fully functional software. You can even ship products that are not easily available in the market.

Remember, people are lazy to step out of their houses. Make use of this and make money without even leaving your drawing room or from any part of the world.

Also, you can handcraft some products and ship them for a minimal price. I can think of candles, cards & other fancy decorative crafts.

You have the freedom to sell whatever you want unless it’s legal in your own country & target country (if different).

Immediate steps:

1. Setup an ecommerce store using Shopify or woocommerce
2. Create product pages & optimize those for search engines
3. Send traffic to those pages via paid ads or organic traffic from a search engine should do, to begin with.

5. Paid newsletters & Memberships websites

I have been writing newsletters on substack for a while now. My intentions are clear, using the free tool I want to show people that you can make money writing newsletters as well.

I have a free newsletter (I call it Letters ByDavey) where I share my experience in condensed form, that is, all my emails are less than 500 words, hence it can be read in under two minutes.

If you’re looking for a source to get started with building a membership website, you can get started right away.

Membership websites are great but you have to be very choosy to pick the niche. Since the content you’ll be selling is already available on the web.

Make sure the premium content is worthy enough, even though you charge $1.

Immediate steps:

1. Create a free newsletter/publication on Substack
2. Write content around the various topic in the categories you’ve chosen
3. Build the email list by sending organic or paid traffic to the newsletter sign-up page

6. Dropshipping

This is one of the coolest ways to make money online, as it’s very easy to start with minimum effort. Dropshipping is a duo of affiliate marketing & ecommerce store.

Here, you create an online store to sell someone else’s product, and not only do you make a commission, but you also have a profit margin.

Even though the profit margin is thin, you can make a difference by selling in volumes.

Once you have decent traffic coming in, you can sell your own products & increase the revenue & profit margins drastically.

Immediate steps:

1. Create a Shopify store. Best way to start a dropshipping business.
2. Install Oberlo on your Shopify website to install pretty much any
3. Checkout top Shopify apps to suit various purposes for your dropshipping business

7. Job portal

This requires some serious efforts, but you can earn a consistent commission for recommending great candidates to companies. You can begin by creating a simple newsletter that talks about various topics that directly help job applicants with various pain points.

In that newsletter, you can share the job postings people can apply for. In this case, it will be very difficult to track the hirings. I have a better idea.

If you don’t want to put a lot of effort into creating a portal, you can create a community on Facebook where you can charge recruiters to post their requirements. You can also create a job portal on WordPress.

Also, if you take the difficult route, chances are you can emerge into a job search engine giant & really make a huge difference. Not only by helping people find jobs but you can earn a fat income by doing that.

Immediate steps:

1. Sign deals with employers for the commissions you’d charge for every hire you refer
2. Create a newsletter, Facebook community or a job portal
3. Send traffic to those online communities
4. Pro Tip: Use social media to promote the communities, job seekers are everywhere.

8. SEO & PPC Expert

If you’re not sure what to do to make money online, I’d suggest learning SEO & PPC.

What’s that you ask?

Well, it’s what the whole business world is talking about right now.

While more and more businesses are getting online (thanks to Covid), SEO & PPC have become an inevitable part of their marketing strategy.

SEO stands for search engine optimization and PPC stands for pay-per-click.

SEO is an organic or free way to get consistent traffic from search engines. Your job is to rank your client’s content higher in search engine page results.

PPC is for very specific businesses, where they bid for high-value keywords & run ads for those keywords. It’s tricky when the volume is very high, you can use your skills and help your clients get results & more sales.

You can either have a fixed fee, or a cut from the sales they make.

You can get certified for free from Google & showcase your expertise.

Immediate Steps:

1. Create a free account on Fiverr or UpWork (I’d recommend being active on both)
2. Create gigs/profiles around the skills i.e. SEO in this case
3. Start replying to the buyer requests or jobs (depending on the platform you’re active on)
4. You will have to be patient before you see any income on these platforms.

9. WordPress developer

WordPress powers more than 35% of all the websites that are online now and there are over 1 billion blogs & websites.

The best thing about WordPress is that you can completely customize the look and feel of your website. You can even add custom features using PHP.

You can learn PHP and offer this skill as a service to those who need customizations. You can easily make around $200-$300 per website if you have the skills required for customizations. Also, make sure, this isn’t a drag-and-drop thing, you will be dealing with code for customizations.

WordPress is an open-source community that is run by people like you. You can join the  WordPress community & get recognition from the community and use that to showcase your expertise.

Since WordPress is open source, there are a lot of sources you can learn from. However, I’d recommend the official source to learn developing plugins & themes for WordPress.

Also, you can go through the WordPress developer portal to learn more.

Immediate steps:

1. You can create a freelancer account on Fiverr or UpWork
2. Engage in WordPress communities to expand your knowledge, get recognition, & build a portfolio
3. Show your work & experience on LinkedIn, Quora & medium (other social platforms do well but these are a must)
4. Create a website to generate leads, convert & retain them

10. Marketplace 

Have you seen CodeCanoyon yet? It’s a marketplace that sells code scripts for pretty much all industries and the parent company Evanto Marketplace sells in-house & third-party themes & plugins.

You can develop your own plugins & themes and publish them there for bigger exposure.

But the point is you can develop such a marketplace that can turn into an income source for many.

The trick is to help people make people money.

Immediate steps:

1. Check out this guide to learn to create an online marketplace
2. Send traffic to the website by running ads or organic traffic
3. Create content on social media around the topics your target audience will be interested in
4. Pro Tip: Take one step backward & target a broader audience for better reach.

11. Graphic designing & video editor

With more businesses taking the online route, sales pages, brand videos and other elements for marketing are only increasing.

You can teach yourself graphic designing & video editing and find yourself a lot of projects.

Again, help people more money & you can make more money with that.

The best part of this is that people always require graphics & videos. Everyone may not have the budget for videos, but sure, everyone has a budget for graphics.

Next is creating a portfolio. You can either do that on Instagram or professional platforms like Behance.

Or create a website to do the same. I’d recommend beginning with social media unless you have enough budget to make a professional portfolio on your website.

Immediate steps:

1. Create a free account on Fiverr or UpWork
2. Set up your profile & upload samples.
3. Start bidding on the incoming buyer’s request.
4. Alternatively, start creating content for social media (preferably Instagram & LinkedIn)
5. Download long videos of creators and create interactive short videos for Reels & YouTube shorts (vertical form) and share that with the original creator and ask if you can get a contract to create more such content for them. So easy!
6. Create a portfolio website where you share original content & hiring details

11. Podcasting

Off late, I’m loving podcasts. Not because it’s a fruitful alternative to listening to music, but rather because I find a lot of value in it.

There are very few reasons why I love it. However, one of those reasons is JRE Clips by Joe Rogan. He talks about pretty much every topic under the sun, at least I think so.

Here’s a video on how COVID-19 affects the lungs:

He records the episodes as podcasts, but also publish video on YouTube for broader reach. Another reason why he probably publishes on YouTube is he can make money by running ads. A profile of his stature can earn a bomb of money just by ads.

Now, without diverting further, let me talk about podcasts. To shock you even further, Spotify has made a deal with Joe Rogan to create podcasts exclusively for $100 million. Feel free to imagine how much money is.

If you don’t already know, podcasts are audio episodes where you talk about topics that interest you. Podcasts make money through advertising, sponsorships, partnerships, affiliate marketing & more.

Immediate steps:

1. Create a free account on Anchor by Spotify
2. Set up your podcast & make sure you configure the distribution settings of your podcast within Anchor. This will ensure that your podcast episodes are submitted to all major listening platforms like Apple, Google & Spotify.
3. Chop out snippets of the episodes and put that on social media to drive traffic to your podcasts.
4. Include the episodes as embedded links to promote the podcast on your blog.
5. Run Instagram story ads to make people aware of the existence of your podcast.

12. Review platforms

Ever heard about Tripadvisor? That’s worth over $16 billion right now.

Tripadvisor does is reviews hotels, restaurants, agents & overall travel packages. Basically, it makes your travel experience better.

You can start a review website, or even do that on social media. Review movies, restaurants, travel destinations, books, tools, gadgets, and the list goes on.

You can either choose the niche you like or pick a niche that people are heavily consuming. If you choose to start a review blog, you can earn by placing ads, affiliates, paid marketing, sponsorships, etc.

Immediate steps:

1. Create a profile on social media, preferably YouTube. People prefer videos for reviews & it’s easy to get started.
2. Refer to leading review websites in your niche & check out the comments of people. People leave their feedback there. That’s your gold. Create content around it & optimize it for YouTube & Google searches.
3. Create a website where you cover the stories in text form. The thing with text form is that you can update anything on the webpage without changing the URL that’s already indexed by the major search engines. Doing the same with videos isn’t possible.
4. Highly recommend a podcast where you talk about your experience of using or being in a position where you’re eligible to review a thing or a place. Put your personal experience in form of opinion & that’s what people need to make decisions.

13.  Flip domain names

Did you know that Facebook paid $8.5 million to acquire fb.com? You can buy creative domain names & hold them until you get an offer from giant companies or startups to sell that domain.

Depending on the urgency & the business model, you can price the domain. The best part is they cannot go elsewhere because only you own that domain.

You can even create a fully functional website, get high-quality users engaged with it, and sell it on Flippa. Flippa is the amazon of websites. You can literally shop for websites on Flippa.

This is like trading real estate sites. You buy & hold onto it until you get a great offer.

Immediate steps:

1. Pick a registrar, I’d recommend Google domains. It’s a little pricy but it’s Google safe & the privacy option to hide the WHOIS data is free for all domains.
2. Research trending niches & keep an eye on the most used words on the web. Register domain, preferably a .com (or any TLD for that matter)
3. Buy all variations of the domain name, i.e. a .com, .in. net. .org or whatever is relevant for the domain. This is your investment.
4. Keep it parked, for years to come. Make sure you keep an eye on the trend to remove the domains that are no more relevant.
5. Use Flippa to trade your parked domains for a bomb of money.

14. Start a YouTube channel

Heard of Pewdiepie? His net worth is estimated to be well over $25 million. That’s a bomb of money for someone who records videos for YouTube.

Again, pick a niche that interests you. If you choose to be a YouTuber, you’d have to stick along for a very long time. Pewdiepie is doing this since 2010 and not many years ago, did he actually start making real money.

That’s why I recommend picking up a niche that interests you, or else you will drop it too early since you’ll get bored.

Immediate steps:

1. Create a Google account if you don’t have one already.
2. Signup for a YouTube account using the Google ID you created in step 1.
3. Brainstorm around the niche you’re going to create videos. Remember, YouTube is a search engine & people look for videos & not just the feed.
4. Create your YouTube channel. Check out this guide if you have never created a YouTube channel ever.
5. The first aim is to get discovered in YouTube search & then your videos will be shown to your subscribers in Feed & suggested videos in the sidebar.

15. Social media influencer

The Digital era is totally killing it. Not long ago social media was a place to connect with friends & family.

Now you not only connect with friends & family, but you also connect with businesses. Businesses that sell the products/services that you may or may not know you need.

If you love taking pictures/videos & have the patience to continue helping people before your word actually matters, you are influencer material.

You’d ask what is the difference between becoming a YouTube influencer & Instagram influencer (or any other social media influencer)

Well, the key difference is the length of content you put on both ends of the spectrum. YouTube has no length (I’ve seen 8 hours long tutorials) and other social platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter & TikTok have restrictions on the length, though not directly.

Short videos, 1-5 minutes long videos tend to perform well on all social platforms other than YouTube. Furthermore, all social platforms have their own ambiance, Instagram is a picture-first platform, and Facebook is a mixture of both photos & video.

Immediate steps:

1. Create social media profile based on the media type you’re comfortable with. If it’s text, Medium, Quora & Twitter, or LinkedIn are the best platforms out there. If it’s video, YouTube & Instagram/Facebook are the best options out there.
2. Research the market & target audience. Find gaps in the market & create content around it. Find what people want & create content around it. It’s not gonna be easy, but once you have people engaging, things will get smooth.
3. Collaborate with existing influencers who have similar followers & have the friction of both personalities.

16. Offer technical support

If you’re good at the technicalities of certain systems, you can engage in relevant forums like Reddit or StackOverflow. Offering support will land you a job that you can do remotely.

Many companies outsource the support system and their customer support can live chat & seek support. Your expertise in their product will help you get that job. In most cases, you can support the customers from your home itself.

Immediate steps:

1. Again, Fiverr & UpWork is an ideal places to offer technical support. Create your profile there & get started.
2. Additionally, you can create video content on YouTube & Instagram Reels/IGTV on broader topics. This will ensure that people will know your skills & know what services to expect from you.
3. While you’re hustling to market your services, you can generate additional revenue through YouTube Ads & IGTV ads. Yes, Instagram has officially confirmed about IGTV Ads.

17. Digital Marketing Consultant/Services

Digital marketing is yet another source that can make a lot of money while spending time on the web. If you don’t know about digital marketing, take courses, or learn it from free resources on digital marketing.

You can even earn certificates for specific skills like Facebook Ad Expert by Facebook Blueprint, or PPC expert as mentioned in #8.

To get leads for your skills, you will need to market yourself on various platforms like social media platforms, and forums like Quora, Reddit & Stackoverflow.

I’m a digital marketing consultant, & I generate leads from Quora & Medium. I have my portfolio & detailed services on my website & these blogs as my other income source.

Related: Turn your Quora profile into content generation machine

Similarly, you can come up with a strategy that will help you establish yourself as an authoritative digital marketer.

Immediate steps:

1. Begin with any social media platform. The reason why I’m emphasizing social media is that it already has a user base ready to consume your content. This will give you the initial boost you need when you’re starting out.
2. Start a blog/website with WordPress, optimized to get leads for consulting & services.
3. Create landing pages for specific services & generate cold leads organically.
4. You can use freebies to gain their email address where you nurture the end-users & control their journey into becoming paid customers for your services.

18. Google Adsense/Media.net (Or any CPM ads)

Google paid nearly $10 billion to the publishers in 2015 alone. It’s the most effective way to make money out of your blog.

Yes, you will need a blog either hosted on Blogspot or self-hosted WordPress. You can’t place Adsense ads on free wordpress sites (understand the difference between free WordPress & self-hosted WordPress blog)

You can also use media.net (& other CPM ad networks) as an alternative. The main reason being Google Adsense has become very strict with more and more applications piling up. Furthermore, Google Adsense now manually reviews every time you add a site to your AdSense account to maintain the quality of the audience they serve ads to.

Read further: What should you do before & after approval from Adsense?

Immediate steps:

1. Create a blog & apply for Google Adsense & Media.net programs.
2. The sole trick to making money with CPM ads is sending a ton of traffic to your blog. The average CPM by any CPM ad network is anywhere between $0.40-$1.5 depending on a lot of variables. Even if you have 10,000 organic visitors & the average CPM rate you’re being paid is $0.40, you’ll make $400 a month which is amazing.
3. Once you have decent traffic (you define the “decent” traffic for yourself) move away from CPM ads. It’s at the bottom of the user experience ladder. Use affiliate marketing & selling in-house products to continue making money online.

19. Direct/Native Ads

This works only when you have decent traffic on your blog or any form of content (in most cases it is a blog). The idea is to bring business owners & their target audience closer.

Here your content acts as a medium or abridges the advertisers & their audience (which is yours as well).

Remember those blogs that are open for advertisement? Lifewire is a classic example of this. If you see the footer of the blog, you can see a link that says “Advertise”.

What this means is that the website is open to advertising. This is similar to running ads on Facebook, YouTube, or Google.

Your goal should be to have a platform that attracts business owners who’re ready to pay you to run ads on your blog.

Pro tip: Have a media kit that contains all the detail about the stats of the blog, audience details, type of ads, placement of ads price, duration & other such relevant details. This will help expedite the process of ad placement.

Immediate steps:

1. Pick a niche that has high demand among the end-users. This will be important because if the niche you pick doesn’t have a high search volume, there’s no point in blogging around that topic.
2. Once you have the traffic, you will have opportunities to attract businesses who’re interested in buying native ad blocks on your blog. This can be sponsored posts/review posts, mentions in newsletters, shoutouts on social media, giveaways, banner/media ads & more.
3. Building a newsletter for native ads is highly advisable. Brands love being mentioned in the newsletter & hence there’s a chance of making money by talking about the brand in your newsletter.

20. Sponsored posts 

There are many blogs that offer sponsored posts. Here, a business/brand pays you for having a post of their product/service and you charge a certain amount for it. The reach of your blog justifies the price your charge per post.

You can use services like Payperpost to find sponsors who’re looking for bloggers like you who can market their content & broaden their reach.

Immediate steps:

1. This requires an established blog that already has traffic, be it from search engines or social media. If your major source of traffic is social media, you can also have brand collaborations/sponsors on your particular social profile.
2. Monetize the traffic to your blog by using sponsored posts using tools like Payperpost.
3. Creating additional traffic sources is always a plus point to earn more money for your blog.

21. Public speaking & keynotes

This is once you have an authoritative following online. Like Gary is followed by millions across the globe, he’s a serious influencer and hence he’s appearing on keynotes occasionally.

That’s your goal.

Begin with podcasts & YouTube videos. That’s how you tackle the fear of getting in front of the camera & hence the hall full of people.

Immediate steps:

1. Establish yourself as a thought leader, informed & resourceful in your niche. Attend conferences to get access to a bigger network.
2. Record yourself and post that content on YouTube and IGTV. This will help you get eyeballs of a target audience who are also being targeted by corporates you want to get hired by for speaking.
3. Interview people, if that’s your thing. Or content curation is the best way to get started.

21. Paid event calendars

As weird as this sounds, this is a great way to make money online. I don’t see anyone else doing it. The idea is to promote events of a specific niche so that more people will join the event. Basically, you’re promoting an event & helping the organizers fill up the hall & you get paid for that.

You can even organize an event by partnering with other emerging businesses like food startups, music bands, party halls, etc. You can keep the bigger pie since the idea is your brainchild.

Immediate steps:

1. List the events happening around the globe.
2. Get in touch with the organizers and crack an exclusive deal that you can use to bring more audience to them
3. Start by cold emailing the potential audience and DM on social media for faster response.

22. Saas

SaaS stands for software as a service. Pick any software that you use daily as a SaaS. WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter you name it. All of them began with the aim to solve a major problem.

The revenue model might be different but the baseline remains the same – selling software as a service.

This is for those who’re good at developing and can afford to spend time, a lot of it. Also, to make software efficient, you need to invest in premium resources like fast servers & databases.

It can be an Android, or iOS app, or even a web app (chrome extensions) that solves daily life problems for people. You can begin with developing extensions for browsers & then shifting gears to bigger projects.

Immediate steps:

1. Get active on Twitter where people often post their problems. Follow relevant lists where these problems get listed.
2. Get in touch with people and try to understand their problems & solve it using your skills.
3. You can use their feedback as ideas for prototypes and give them testing.
4. Use their testimonial to find more people who’d use the product.

23. Ebooks

I know a couple of health professionals who sell ebooks by email. They built a highly qualified email list on social media and then pitched ebooks on various topics.

It didn’t take long to see a conversion rate of 12%-15% selling $20 on average to a list of over 100,000 people.

A brilliant move that they made was to choose topics. They chose the most generic topics that any health-conscious person would relate to.

Also, their marketing strategy was to reach anyone who’s alive. Basically spreading awareness about health issues people might have if they don’t pay attention to it.

In the process of educating the audience, they bagged a huge list that’s super-engaged & brings in a lot of sales.

You too can sell ebooks on your blog or sell them on social media or just by email.

Immediate steps:

1. Identify areas people want organized information from qualified people
2. Gather questions people have and ask those questions to qualified experts
3. Take the expert’s consent that you’re gonna use their answer to make money online. Pay them some fee if needed. Be a gentleman.
4. Promote the ebook by getting hyperactive on Facebook groups, Reddit, and Quora to find people who’d buy. Ebooks sell like newspapers.

24. Webinars

Webinars are seminars, on the web. Though people do it for free, you can relay premium content on your own blog or use tools like Webinarjam

First, you need to pick a niche, then do your marketing that will help you bag more leads who will attend the paid webinar. You can find leads by giving free advice first and then diverting the traffic to a detailed webinar. Use tools like TexAu to scrape details of leads from the web (social media & google) and get in touch via cold emails or DMs on social media.

You can even sell your ebooks, tools, or other paid programs at the end of the webinar as an exclusive offer for the attendees.

Immediate steps:

1. Find leads using TexAu and get in touch with them via email or social DMs
2. Inquire them about their concerns and ask if they’d be interested in joining your webinar
3. Don’t forget to collect their email. You’ll need them later.

25. Freelancing

This one is easy, that’s how I began my career. I began with Fiverr, then Freelancer & then UpWork. I still love working there. You can begin your career there and either find buyers for your skill or develop a skill that’s trending in your region or the platform. The base price is $5 and the maximum is anything you think is worth your work.

However, I don’t freelance anymore but you don’t have to start as low as $5. I personally find that price an insult. Even if you’re just starting out, don’t work for that price. Buyers on freelancing sites have made a joke out of freelancers. Find clients on social media by creating content to show off your work.

Immediate steps:

1. Create an account on Freelancing sites. Just to keep your morale high and the money flowing in.
2. While you’re working for clients from Freelancing sites, create content on social media to invite more inquiries.
3. Find ideal people who’d need your services, and pitch them your product/service. Let your pitch be worst in the beginning, it will get better with time. The best way to pitch is to tell them the benefits first. Short and sweet.

26. Print on demand

Customization is the future of Entrepreneurship.

Whats your say?#DaveyJi #personalbranding #personalbranding

— SEO by Shubham Davey 🇮🇳 (@bydaveyji) July 8, 2020

The Print-on-demand business model is trending now, in fact, it is the next thing. Every business needs stationaries & clothing that has its branding on it. Next smartphones are not going anywhere, people customize them by covers. You can create a platform where you sell pre-designed accessories and clothing or whatever you list.

Or you can have a template that people can customize as per their requirements & place the order to print it. Trust me, this is the next big thing. Graphic designing will be the highest cost for this business, if you’re a graphic designer, this is your gold mine.

Immediate steps:

1. Setup a Shopify/woocommerce store
2. Setup product pages & do some decent SEO
3. I’d recommend ads but only if you have a budget. Rely on influencer marketing till you make some money.
4. Build an email list & send them cold emails for product promotions

27. Help local businesses set up Google My Business

This one is very easy. All you need to do is search for local shops in any niche and search for them on Google Maps. Or simply begin searching “<service name> near me”, for eg: “Salon near me” and look for “Claim this business”, as shown below.

If you find that link, that’s the business you need to target. Contact that business and tell them you can help them list their business on Google Maps which can give them more visibility.

If the business is already registered on Google My Business, this link will not be available. So you have to skip those businesses.

You can charge them anywhere between $20-$30 per listing. If that brings them more business, they’ll be more than happy to give you that money.

Immediate steps:

1. Scrape a list of local businesses from Google Maps using automation scrapping tools like TexAu. Though this is not mandatory, you can do it manually as well
2. Manually check if those businesses are claimed or not. If not, find their contact details and get in touch with them
3. This is top of a funnel service. Upsell other marketing services like social media marketing, content marketing, and more.

28. Help businesses set up Facebook Pixel

Facebook pixel is a code from Facebook that user tracks activity on websites, which then can be used by businesses to target users with ads on Facebook.

The best usecase of Facebook Pixel is retargeting or remarketing. Use this to pitch to the businesses that don’t have Facebook Pixel set up already.

How do you find out if a website has a Facebook Pixel setup or not?

It’s easy, simply install the Facebook Pixel Helper Chrome extension.

What this extension will do is highlight all the Pixel codes that are installed for a particular domain name.

Here’s an example:

I already have the extension installed. So I opened Forbes and immediately the extension shows that Forbes has a Pixel code setup already.

So this is not the business I want to target. Moving on to businesses that do not have a Pixel code setup.

I’ve not set up the Pixel code for this blog, so when I open the home page, the extension tells me that the Pixel code isn’t already set up for this blog.

You can get in touch with such businesses and brief them about the benefits & importance of having a Pixel code setup.

You should find businesses that seem to be interested in growing their user base. Who knows, you may even have them as a client & who hire you for social media marketing.

Immediate steps:

1. Scrape Google search results in a Google sheet using TexAu (Yeah! You can do a lot of things)
2. Install this chrome extension and activate it.
3. Load all the websites you scrapped one by one and check if the pixel is installed.
4. If not, pitch them to do that for them and upsell other skills.

29. Ghost Writing

Everybody needs a writer. Everybody!

I don’t know if you know already, but ghostwriting is a real thing now. I have seen Nicholas Cole become a world-class ghostwriter. I’ve seen him grow exponentially on Quora. Now he killing it on Medium.

He has an agency that provides ghost writeups for CEOs & entrepreneurs. But this isn’t the highlight.

It’s the efforts that he put on Quora back in the days that actually laid the foundation stone of who he is today.

So yeah, ghostwriting is a thing.

Immediate steps:

1. Get active on Twitter, Linkedin, Quora, and Medium to write and build a portfolio
2. Get in touch with founders, and leaders to pitch your writing services.
3. Finding entrepreneurs & founders is very easy. A simple search on any social platform will give you enough people to keep you busy reaching out for hours together.

30. Ad agency

I specifically focus on ads here. You help businesses run ads on various platforms like search engines & social media. You can run ads for businesses full-time and help businesses earn more than they invest in ads.

You have the upper hand that there will always be a platform that will yield a way better ROI. Right now it’s Facebook & Instagram.

Look for certifications on the official website of the individual platform if not a third-party certification from Coursera also would do.

Immediate steps:

1. Scrape business pages from Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/Linkedin using TexAu
2. Get in touch with business owners and pitch your ad services
3. Share testimonials to establish trust
4. Give them a business plan for free. Without expecting them to pay you anything. They’ll remember you at least and recommend you to someone. It’s all about connections.

31. Sell stock photos

Love photography? Well, it turns out there are marketplaces where you can host your photos & every time someone uses your photos for commercial use, you get paid.

Marketplaces like Shutterstock, Pond5 & Getty Images.

Though there are a lot of platforms, these are the best.

You can even set up your photography website & sell directly from the website & have a fat profit margin.

However, you have to market your portfolio from scratch. And platforms like Shutterstock have the upper hand in that they already have users globally.

Immediate steps:

1. Take photographs and publish them on social media
2. Get in touch with locals in your area and ask if you can do a photo shoot for free. They’ll most likely say yes! In return for a video testimonial
3. Publish that work for free to create more buzz around your work
4. Create an account on Shutterstock, & Getty Images
5. Promote your work for direct sales

32. Bug Bounty programs

All the tech giants have this program. If you have a hacker’s blood, this job is for you. You have to find loopholes in the current system and report them to the concerned authority.

Once they validate and approve it, you can make serious money, at least 4-5 figures, depending on the bug you find.

I remember Facebook giving around $15,000 for a major security loophole back in 2015. It was related to username & password.

Immediate steps:

1. Almost all tech companies have bug bounty programs. Search <company name> bug bounty program on Google
2. Start hunting for bugs. Simple!

33. Web/App Testing 

You can test the features of many products and provide feedback. These are real products looking for real feedback and you can monetize your testing skills & attention to detail.

Use Usertesting to find such products and earn serious money from them.

Immediate steps:

1. Create an account on user testing and start testing for people.
2. Reach out to founders and pitch your testing services.
3. Mostly, testing is done in-house. Unless it’s a big project, it’s not outsourced. Pitch for consulting.

Final thoughts on ways to earn online

I know the listings here require you to invest a lot of time & do a lot of marketing. There’s a huge difference between knowing & doing. Now that you know what to work on, I’ll help you with how to execute that. These were some of the most effective ways to make money online.

I’m sure you’ll find some of the above mentioned ways useful. Let me know in the comment section below, also if you know some other ways share that too. Let us learn & grow together.