As someone who's been immersed in a number of online industries for quite some time, I know a thing or two about what it takes to succeed in this arena. However, just like you, I started at ground zero with little knowledge, but a great deal of passion. What I learned along the way were some invaluable lessons from failure that hurt at the time, but helped immensely in the grand scheme of things.
Today, if you're at all serious about succeeding in any endeavor,
whether online or offline, you have to deliver enormous amounts of
value. Yes, you have to do the most amount of work for the least initial
return. This is especially true online. Why? Because it takes time to
build authority and create an audience, two primary ingredients
necessary to succeed in the wonderful world of commerce on the web.
Every successful business and person has delivered a tremendous amount
of value at the outset. They did the most amount of work, and they
inspected every detail meticulously, to ensure that they were doing
right by their customers. As long as you keep that in mind, and you
don't look for a quick buck, you'll succeed in the long term.
- Find your niche — Figure out what you're good at or
what you want to be good at. You don't need to be an expert right now,
but you do need to decide where you're going to fit in if you're at all
serious about making serious cash in the long term.
- Build a blog on a custom domain — Your blog
is your virtual home. Without it, you've no place to filter all that
traffic and people interested in what you have to say. But don't build a
blog on a subdomain like yoursite.wordpress.com, create a blog with a
custom domain like www.yoursite.com.
- Always add value — Adding value over time creates
authority, and authority breeds trust, which in turn helps to grow your
audience and readership. Without a significant following, you'll find
it hard to gain any traction online. It simply takes time.
- Create an email list and treat them right —
One of the best ways to make money online is by marketing to an
actively-interested group of email subscribers. While most people think
that email marketing is dead, that's far from the truth. This is your
greatest potential source of income online. Think of it as your money
tree.
- Don't sacrifice morals for a quick buck — At
the outset, you'll want to do all sorts of things to make money online,
but don't sacrifice your morals for a quick buck. Not only will you put
people off, but you'll lose Google's trust. You also shouldn't concern
yourself with things like Adsense or other ads on a blog before you have
around 100,000 visitors per day. Yes, per day.
The point? Think about the long-term results of your activities. It will
seem frustrating in the beginning. Then again, everything worthwhile is
going to be difficult. It will take time. Stick it out and don't give
up. In the meanwhile, here are some of the best and most legitimate ways
you can make money online in the short and long term.
#1 — Write And Sell An Ebook
If you have a propensity for writing and you can slay with your
prose, consider writing an ebook. While the market has certainly become
saturated as of late, books that help teach people about a technical
topic still sell extremely well. This is a great source of passive
income but does require a large amount of effort at the outset before
any money is generated.
You can sell your ebooks through Amazon's Kindle program or Apple's iTunes Connect,
which gives you access to a large majority of the digital-book reading
market and the barriers for entry are incredibly low. You don't need to
invest lots of money to make this happen, but you do need to invest lots
of time, not only in writing the ebooks, but in marketing them as well.
#2 — Sell Audiobooks With Audible
I've been in the audiobook-selling business for some time now and have over 3 dozen titles to my name.
I know a thing or two about audiobooks. And, what I've noticed recently
is that audiobooks are growing in popularity as their digital-ebook
counterparts are becoming less and less popular.
People are turning to audio and visuals when it comes to technical
subjects. However, you should consider doing an ebook first and turning
it into an audiobook through a resource like Audible's ACX
platform. You can hire a producer either through a royalty share
program, so you don't have to shell out upfront cash, or you can do a
pay-per-hour hire as well.
#3 — Create An App
Yes, this is far more technical. Unless you have the right
app-development skills, doing this is going to be a significant
undertaking. But, apps are also a great source of passive income when done the right way. You can reach a massive audience of smartphone users by building a great app.
However, like anything else truly worthwhile, apps require a
significant investment of your time or money upfront. If you don't have
the skills, then you have to hire someone who can assist you in creating
a great app. But first you need to come up with an idea that will sell.
Do the proper market research and analytics to come up with the right
app.
#4 — Use Mechanical Turk
Mechanical Turk
is Amazon's take on micro-jobs. These are small miniscule-jobs that you
can do for other people, which they call HITs, or Human Intelligence
Tasks. These are super simple tasks that anyone can do. Some examples
are listing off some URLs with certain kinds of images for one cent, or
recording a few phrases with a microphone for 6 cents.
Yes, they don't pay much, but if you string together hundreds of
well-paying HITs, you can make a bit of money quickly online if you're
in a crunch for cash. Also, it's important to note that you can also
employ people with HITs to help you with whatever micro-tasks you might
have.
#5 — Offer Gigs On Fiverr
If you have some professional experience in graphic design,
accounting, social media marketing, web development or SEO, for example,
you could offer gigs on Fiverr starting at $5 per job. You could perform a valuable service that you could also up-sell to make more money per gig.
Fiverr is one of the biggest providers in the gig economy on the web
and you can sell a wide variety of services and products through this
medium. Do the research and find out what you can offer. However, keep
in mind that like any other money-making task, it takes time to succeed
here. And stellar reviews will help you generate more and more income
over time.
#6 — Build A Blog
One of the most exhaustive endeavors when it comes to making money online is to build a blog.
But we all know that building a blog with real readership is difficult.
It takes a lot of work. And I'm speaking from experience. However, once
you reach a certain point, the progress and momentum sways in your
favor and it becomes far easier.
Blogs can easily generate tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of
thousands of dollars per month when done right. Yes, that much. But it
won't be easy to get there. However, looking back on it, a year from now
you'll wish you started today. So why wait another moment?
#7 — Email Marketing
Email marketing is at the heart of every successful endeavor on the
web. For those serious about making money online, email marketing is
certainly where it's at. But it has to be done the right way. Before you
even try to market anything to anyone via an email list, be sure that
they're people that subscribed and opted in directly to you.
When you try to market to people via email out of the blue, you won't
find as much success. But, if those email subscribers are actively and
keenly interested in what you have to say, and they signed up directly
through your blog or site, your success rates will be much higher.
