Whether you're looking to make some fast cash, or you're after long-term, more sustainable income-producing results, there are certainly ways you can make money online today. Who needs the 9-5 grind and struggling to pay rent in an expensive place like San Francisco or New York when you can easily make money online?
Since your office can be wherever you open your laptop, more and more people are quitting their day jobs to do remote work. According to a study by Global Workplace Analytics and Flex Jobs, the remote workforce has grown by 159% since 2005, and remote workers will make up as much as 50% of the entire workforce by 2020, thanks to the ease of making money online. We sleuthed out some creative ways that digital nomads have found to make money online. Here are 7 exciting ways to make money online, work wherever you choose and live the dream.
1.Create an Online Course
Do you have a skill that you want to share? International Living suggests setting up an online course with written tutorials, PDF downloads and videos. As a matter of fact, creating an online course is one of the best methods to make money online. The biggest advantages of creating an online course are.
- Quick income - You can launch your first course in 1 or 2 months, and start earning from it.
- Non-expensive - You can create your online courses with minimal expense, all you need is a screen record software or camera and a microphone and some budget allocated for a video editor (to edit the course).
- Wide support of online course platforms - You can market your course in no time through various online course market places, and other platforms.
2.Become a Travel Agent
Until the advent of the Internet as a full-fledged commercial powerhouse, you could find travel agencies in countless shopping malls across the globe. Once it became easy for everyone who owned a computer to make their own travel arrangements, those engaging little travel agencies began to disappear. Fortunately, for those of us who have dreamed of becoming a travel agent, there’s plenty of opportunities to operate your own online travel agency thanks to some independent travel agents.
You can sign up for courses through a place like The Travel Institute. Or you can pay a fee to a company like Cruise Planners, which recruits and trains advisors to work remotely not only in planning cruises but in all kinds of travel—on land and at sea. The company was started in 1994 by a woman named Michelle Fee, who didn’t take a paycheck for the first three years so that she could invest back into the business. Now in its 25th year, Cruise Planners is the nation’s largest home-based travel agent franchise with more than 2,500 franchisees.
3.Sell your own stuff
If you're ready to enter the ecommerce fray, you could sell your own stuff. Of course, along with selling your own stuff on your own website comes a whole slew of both responsibilities and technical configuration and requirements. For starters, you'll need a website and a hosting account. You'll also need a merchant account like ones offered by Stripe or PayPal. Then you'll need to design that site, build a sales funnel, create and market a lead magnet, and do some email marketing.
You'll also need ecommerce software, fulfillment software, worry about warehousing, customer service and refunds. But that's not all. You'll also need traffic. Think search engine optimization, Facebook ads, and other social media campaigns. It is hard work, especially on your own. You could opt for Amazon's platform, which might be an easier route. But, then again, at the end of the day, this is a serious business, which could produce significant profits. So, you're either all in or you're not.
4.Become a Virtual Assistant
Are you organized and resourceful? As a virtual assistant, you make money by helping people and businesses with tasks ranging from data entry to research to customer service—the sky's the limit. Virtual assisting is growing in popularity as more and more business owners look for ways to outsource some of their more mundane tasks. If you are organized, and a self-starter, there is a chance that you could excel as a virtual assistant.
A virtual assistant provides a variety of administrative services to others, usually remotely. Generally, these services include assistance with technical and creative items as well as administrative items. Some of the duties that a virtual assistant can carry out include:
- Scheduling functions on behalf of someone else
- Research
- SEO functions
- Social media posting and submissions
- Technical writing
- Drafting memos
- Answering emails
- Making phone calls, and answering the phone
- Link building
- Secretarial work
- Transcription work
- Billing/invoicing
- Spreadsheets
- Comment moderation
There are other assisting-type duties that virtual assistant might have. Those who are expected to complete secretarial duties and more formal administrative duties might need some years of experience as an office assistant in “real life”, or long experience as a virtual assisting. Some jobs, though, like SEO functions, social media, and link building might only need some basic training.
5.Start a blog
Blogging is one of the most rewarding fields. And you don't need to be a professional writer to start a blog. You can start anywhere for that matter. However, you do need to be passionate about it. Especially at the outset. It takes a long time to build a good following on a blog. If you think it's going to happen overnight, think again. It won't. In fact, it will take months, if not years, of consistent effort. But eventually, it is one of the best sources for passive income you can find.
How do you start? Pick a topic. Do some research. And make sure you target a healthy niche that has plenty of traction and eyeballs. Don't follow trends. Focus on something in either health, wealth or relationships. That's where you'll find the most income. And you can sell a variety of related products and services through things like affiliate marketing and other native ads placed throughout your content.
6.To be a Freelance Writer
A writer is anyone who puts pen to paper, whether for enjoyment, artistic talent, creative outlet, volunteer work or pay. Paid writers, employed full time by one employer, might work for a newspaper, magazine, advertising business, or any other business which needs a full-time writer on staff. A freelance writer is simply a writer who acts as a small business or independent contractor; he sets his own pace, seeks out his own work, and pays no one but himself.
A freelance writer might work full time as a writer or have a completely different daytime career. He or she might be a stay-at-home parent, college student or shut-in. Whatever his choice, the freedom one finds in working this way is part of the appeal.
There is a large market from which a freelance writer can choose, and the sky is the limit as to what type of genre or how much work a given writer might have at any given time. One whose specialty is fiction might dabble in poetry, short stories or e-books, or might have an ongoing novel in the works. Many publishers will accept fiction but most freelance writers agree it is a much harder market to break into.
7.Conduct Internet Research
According to International Living, you can make good money (up to $50 an hour) by surfing the internet. “An interesting new income category has emerged, thanks in part to the world of 'fake news,'” says Winton Churchill, the founder of an international training and consulting company. "Companies and individuals are more concerned than ever with fact-checking the information they use on their websites and in their promotional materials. And they’re willing to pay someone to make sure it’s correct.”
No matter what method you choose to make money online, understand that you might be able to make some money fast, but for the sizable returns, you'll need significant sweat equity. However, a year from now, you'll be happy you started today. Remember, time is far more valuable than money. Focus on creating passive income streams that will free up your time so that you can quit the rat race and focus on the things that matter.