There are many ways to make money online. I like to group
them into three main categories:
Making money selling your stuff
Making money selling other people’s stuff
Getting paid to do something
Let’s talk a little more about each of these categories…
Way #1 – Making money selling your stuff
When most people think of starting a business they think of selling
their own stuff. Here are some of the ways that people sell their own
stuff online:
Selling products
When I started out online my intention was to create educational
software and sell it online. Like myself, most people that start a
business online start off with the idea of selling a product. Almost
every product imaginable can be sold online. Arguably, the easiest to
create are information products.
Selling Services/Freelancing
One of the quickest ways to start making money online is by selling your
services. You call sell all kinds of services online. Some of the more
common online services being sold are web design, freelance writing,
coaching/teaching, virtual assistants, copywriting, traffic generation,
and software development.
Domaining
Domaining is essentially the process of buying and selling domains.
While I own quite a few domains, most of them were bought with the
purpose of developing them at some point in time. Although, I would be
willing to sell some of them. For example, when John Reese bought
trafficjam.com I wish he had contacted me about buying one of my domains
blogtrafficjam.com, since I am not sure I will develop the idea I had
for it when I bought it several years ago.
Website Flipping
Website flipping is a very tempting business model to me. Flipping
websites is a lot like flipping houses. You buy a website with the sole
purpose of making it better so that you can turn around sell it. Much
like house flipping, you should buy a website with good potential that
is not properly monetized and/or not properly designed and marketed.
After “rehabbing” the website, you can sell it at a much higher price.
This process sounds like fun to me, except that I would have a hard time
parting with the site after fixing it. I am more likely to buy a
website, fix it up, and keep it for the residual income.
There are other ways to make money selling your own stuff, but the ones
listed above are the most common.
Way #2 – Making money selling other people’s stuff
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make money online, and I
will be discussing it in much more detail in a future series (or a free
mini-course). Essentially, affiliate marketing is revenue sharing
between online advertisers/merchants and online publishers/salespeople,
whereby affiliates(publisher/sales people) are paid based on performance
measures, typically in the form of sales, clicks, registrations, or a
combination of methods. In layman’s terms, it means you get a percentage
of a sale when you sell someone else’s stuff or cause someone to take an
action that might sell someone else’s stuff. It is currently my primary
method of making money online.
Advertising Income
Many websites make money by selling advertising space on their site.
This is most commonly done on content sites. Advertising income can also
be gained through other methods like selling ad space on website
templates and selling ad space in newsletters.
Drop Shipping
Drop shipping is a technique where you sell products from one or more
suppliers who take care of shipping the products directly to the
customer. All you do is take the order and get the money from the
customer, then you send the order details and and part of the money that
you charge to the supplier. You make profit on the difference between
the suppliers price (including shipping) and the price you charge the
customer. This is essentially running a wholesale business without the
inventory, although you will usually pay somewhere between true
wholesale and retail prices for the goods. I have seen a lot of people
run drop shipping businesses on ebay.
Retail commerce
Retail commerce is where you buy products at wholesale prices from
wholesale distributors, carry an inventory and turn around and sell said
products. Many of the ecommerce shops you see are doing this. This model
is similar to drop shipping. The advantage of this method is that you
can make a higher profit margin then with drop shipping, the
disadvantage is that you store the inventory and you handle the details
of shipping the products.
These are the most common methods for selling other people’s stuff
online, although certainly not the only ones.
Way # 3 – Getting Paid To Do Something
Paid to sites (Paid to surf, Paid to take surveys, etc.)
With “paid to” sites you can make a little extra money online every
month. You can’t really use these sites to make a living online (at
least not that I’m aware of), so I won’t be devoting more space to them
here. If you’re interested in a little extra cash, and this method
appeals to you, there is plenty of information available on the
internet. And if you ARE making a living from these sites, and you’d be
interested in writing a series on the topic, contact me.
As you are considering how YOU want to make big money online, this list
should prove a good starting place . In my next post in the getting
started series, I will be wrapping up with a list of resources to help
you continue your quest to make money online
them into three main categories:
Making money selling your stuff
Making money selling other people’s stuff
Getting paid to do something
Let’s talk a little more about each of these categories…
Way #1 – Making money selling your stuff
When most people think of starting a business they think of selling
their own stuff. Here are some of the ways that people sell their own
stuff online:
Selling products
When I started out online my intention was to create educational
software and sell it online. Like myself, most people that start a
business online start off with the idea of selling a product. Almost
every product imaginable can be sold online. Arguably, the easiest to
create are information products.
Selling Services/Freelancing
One of the quickest ways to start making money online is by selling your
services. You call sell all kinds of services online. Some of the more
common online services being sold are web design, freelance writing,
coaching/teaching, virtual assistants, copywriting, traffic generation,
and software development.
Domaining
Domaining is essentially the process of buying and selling domains.
While I own quite a few domains, most of them were bought with the
purpose of developing them at some point in time. Although, I would be
willing to sell some of them. For example, when John Reese bought
trafficjam.com I wish he had contacted me about buying one of my domains
blogtrafficjam.com, since I am not sure I will develop the idea I had
for it when I bought it several years ago.
Website Flipping
Website flipping is a very tempting business model to me. Flipping
websites is a lot like flipping houses. You buy a website with the sole
purpose of making it better so that you can turn around sell it. Much
like house flipping, you should buy a website with good potential that
is not properly monetized and/or not properly designed and marketed.
After “rehabbing” the website, you can sell it at a much higher price.
This process sounds like fun to me, except that I would have a hard time
parting with the site after fixing it. I am more likely to buy a
website, fix it up, and keep it for the residual income.
There are other ways to make money selling your own stuff, but the ones
listed above are the most common.
Way #2 – Making money selling other people’s stuff
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make money online, and I
will be discussing it in much more detail in a future series (or a free
mini-course). Essentially, affiliate marketing is revenue sharing
between online advertisers/merchants and online publishers/salespeople,
whereby affiliates(publisher/sales people) are paid based on performance
measures, typically in the form of sales, clicks, registrations, or a
combination of methods. In layman’s terms, it means you get a percentage
of a sale when you sell someone else’s stuff or cause someone to take an
action that might sell someone else’s stuff. It is currently my primary
method of making money online.
Advertising Income
Many websites make money by selling advertising space on their site.
This is most commonly done on content sites. Advertising income can also
be gained through other methods like selling ad space on website
templates and selling ad space in newsletters.
Drop Shipping
Drop shipping is a technique where you sell products from one or more
suppliers who take care of shipping the products directly to the
customer. All you do is take the order and get the money from the
customer, then you send the order details and and part of the money that
you charge to the supplier. You make profit on the difference between
the suppliers price (including shipping) and the price you charge the
customer. This is essentially running a wholesale business without the
inventory, although you will usually pay somewhere between true
wholesale and retail prices for the goods. I have seen a lot of people
run drop shipping businesses on ebay.
Retail commerce
Retail commerce is where you buy products at wholesale prices from
wholesale distributors, carry an inventory and turn around and sell said
products. Many of the ecommerce shops you see are doing this. This model
is similar to drop shipping. The advantage of this method is that you
can make a higher profit margin then with drop shipping, the
disadvantage is that you store the inventory and you handle the details
of shipping the products.
These are the most common methods for selling other people’s stuff
online, although certainly not the only ones.
Way # 3 – Getting Paid To Do Something
Paid to sites (Paid to surf, Paid to take surveys, etc.)
With “paid to” sites you can make a little extra money online every
month. You can’t really use these sites to make a living online (at
least not that I’m aware of), so I won’t be devoting more space to them
here. If you’re interested in a little extra cash, and this method
appeals to you, there is plenty of information available on the
internet. And if you ARE making a living from these sites, and you’d be
interested in writing a series on the topic, contact me.
As you are considering how YOU want to make big money online, this list
should prove a good starting place . In my next post in the getting
started series, I will be wrapping up with a list of resources to help
you continue your quest to make money online