10 real ways to make money online

In what follows, I want to give you real ways to make money online. Actual, decent money, not pennies. I’m not going to tell you to fill out surveys for money or become a Mechanical Turk because those things suck and exploit you. 

So let me tell you some things I believe actually will work. Many of these I’ve used myself. 

1. Get a job

Oh snap, I started here. But let’s be honest, a lot of amazing jobs are remote now. I have spent months working on teams that I have never met in person. I think that qualifies as working online.

What is it you want from making money online? For most people, it’s freedom. I know what it’s like to be chained to a desk every day. I wanted the freedom to make money as I travel, living in new places, experiencing new things. Five years ago, it was very hard to get a job that let you have this. Now, tons of companies are working remotely. Some will even let you work from abroad. The unicorns will even give you a bonus to travel and work abroad.

So it’s worth it to figure out if a job could give you some freedom and wealth online. You can always build other stuff in your spare time.

2. Consulting + Freelancing

If you don’t want to get a job, or you want more flexibility, you might choose consulting or freelancing instead. The great thing about consulting or freelancing is that you often earn a much higher rate. You might be able to make two or three times per hour what you can make as an employee. But you do have to be a bit entrepreneurial. That might be a bad thing for some people, or it might be exciting for others.

Probably depends on your personality. But with platforms like Upwork, it can honestly be super easy to get started and find clients.

Want to learn more about online business?

In this free, email masterclass, I'll show you how to grow an audience and monetize what you love!

3. Start a community 

One of the online businesses that’s growing fast, and I’m betting will explode in the coming years, is starting a community. People are looking for connection, and online communities are one way to find it. 

That’s why I’m all-in on community as the ultimate business in the coming years. Think Discord or Facebook group, but people pay money to belong. It’s huge.

It could be communities for business owners, hobbyists, or just about anything under the sun that can unite people together. 

Even a community of 40 people paying a membership fee of $40 is $1600- a respectable side hustle. If you grow it to 100 people, you’re making what a lot of people make in a full-time job. And within a community you can charge for events, launch paid courses, and more.

I build my communities on Mighty Networks, which is by far the best community engine out there. It’s awesome for community, but you can also create and sell courses, mastermind groups, live events, and a bunch of other stuff. They don’t even make you put in a credit card to try it.

It looks like this:

4. Blogging 

I have to give blogging a place here since it changed my life. 

I already told you that I don’t make a full-time income off of this, but I should add a caveat. 

I don’t make a full-time income passively–with ads and affiliate sales. 

So I’m not going to tell you that you’re going to put up a blog tomorrow and be making full-time passive income in a few months to a year. That would be stupid. It takes time to learn how to blog and grow your traffic.

But in my experience, blogging does so much more for you than just the passive income of affiliate marketing or ads. For me, blogging has led to being considered a thought leader. It’s led to book sales, speaking engagements, and consulting. 

When you factor all this in, I’ve made a TON of money from blogging.

That means that I still believe blogging is a solid way to make money online. BUT… you have to actually get good at it. Learn content strategy and SEO to drive people to your site and create an attention machine.

5. YouTube 

Do you want to know why I prefer blogging to social media? It’s the same reason I prefer YouTube to Tik Tok or IGTV. 

The search engine factor.

The 10,000 people who read this blog every week come from search engines. Not from social media. 

So when I wanted to start making videos, I chose YouTube for the same reason. And it works. I don’t have a huge Channel, but it consistently gets views on videos that are months old. It’s what I love about YouTube. And why I think it could be a good bridge to making money online.

The trick is, if you’re going to go all in with YouTube, you’ll need to find a way to monetize. Monetizing with ads is fine, but you’re not going to make much. At least for a while. The best thing to do is probably to create an offer that goes with YouTube. Sell merch. Create a course or community. Find a way to monetize.

6. Create an online course

It’s a tried, tested, and true way of monetizing on the internet. But you could create an online course. Online courses are super popular, and it’s becoming more challenging to get attention on yours and to sell it. But with a constantly growing audience of people who know and take online courses, it’s still possible to make good money off of one.

I think the keys will be your price point and your niche:

1. Assume that you’re not going to sell 100,000. If you do, amazing! But price it in such a way that, even if you only sell 50, you can feel good about it. 
2. Niche down to a specific end-user. There are a million “start a business” courses out there, but there probably aren’t as many “start an Amazon store as a single mom with kids at home” courses. If you can find these key niche markets, you’ll likely have more success.

You should also decide whether you want to host your course yourself or put it on a marketplace. 

Course Marketplace

A marketplace comes with a group of users who are already there–you build your course and they can buy it. Udemy and Skillshare are two popular options, but I think Udemy is a bit better for monetization as a creator based on its revenue structure. 

Try Udemy

Hosted Course Platform

The alternative to a marketplace is a platform that hosts your course for you. You have to bring your own students, but it’s all yours–nobody is going to buy your competitor’s course instead of yours. Teachable is a good course platform you can try that does this. 

I’m also giving a shout-out to Mighty Networks here too since it’s a great platform that lets you bring courses and community together. In fact, I think it’s the ultimate all-in-one.

Try the platform I build my community on–it’s free to try!

7. Start dropshipping 

Of all the ways to make money online, I think dropshipping makes a lot of sense. Disclaimer, unlike the other options on this list so far, I’ve never tried dropshipping. But I’ve heard from people who do pretty well with it. 

Unlike the old days of selling physical products, where you had to stack your garage full of inventory, dropshipping basically just means you sell a product and someone else handles the shipping and fulfillment. There are lots of companies that do all this for you and you just provide the customers. 

8. Amazon flipping

Amazon flipping is another web business that’s so hot that brick-and-mortar stores are reporting an increase in robberies in which people get merchandise to sell on Amazon. But you wouldn’t do that, right? 

If you’re interested in legitimate Amazon flipping, you can get merch from local stores, garage sales, thrift shops, and more–as long as you can figure out your price points so that you can buy, flip, and resell for a profit (don’t forget to add your work time and shipping into the costing).

9. Print merch

It’s not totally different from dropshipping, but if you’ve got a blog, YouTube channel, or following of any kind, you could print merch! Again, you don’t actually have to do it yourself. There are lots of companies that will print your merch for you–whether it’s stickers, hats, shirts, or something else. 

Chances are you need to build a following first, but with the sites out there that do everything for you, you could just set up a funny t-shirts website or something like that. 

10. Write an eBook

Writing an eBook and hosting it yourself on Amazon is a great way to make money online. Seriously. I’ve done it. And it consistently brings in anywhere from $100-$200/mo in passive income. Now I know what you’re thinking, “That’s not much!” And it’s not!

But look around this site, do you see a book advertised anywhere? (okay, you will see it in a few places.) That fact is, I put next to 0 time into promoting it–I just wrote it and forgot about it. And people keep finding it and buying it on Amazon. 

What could you earn if you just devoted yourself to making money through writing? What if you focused on publicizing your books? I actually think it’s a great way to make some money online, and you can self-publish on Amazon KDP and keep all the royalties! 

Article by Chris