The internet has been one of the greatest forces for innovation and change in human history, and there are now entire generations that couldn’t imagine a world without it. However, that doesn’t mean you’re late to the party if you’re only just considering using the internet to make money!
This guide is going to take a deep dive into 20 different ways to make money online, covering various different categories such as e-commerce, content creation, online services, and trading. No matter what your goals and skills are and how much time or effort you have to put into your new venture, there's sure to be something in our list for you.
The Importance of Setting Goals
Before launching into the different ways you can make money online, it’s important to outline your goals and identify any constraints. As with practically anything, the amount of success you might expect to have with online money-making is going to be proportional to the amount of time and resources you put into it, so your situation matters a lot.
The main thing here is to figure out how much time and effort you are able to put in. You might take very different approaches if, for example, you’ve got money in the bank and plenty of time on your hands versus if you’re working full-time and only have an hour to spare every day.
Then there’s also the matter of whether you’re already a known quantity online and have some sort of niche. If you have an online following of some sort, it’ll be far easier to achieve success right at the start of your new venture since you’ll be able to leverage this new business to your existing audience and have a ready-made market for your content, products, or services.
For this reason, setting up multiple streams of income is also a great idea down the line. Once you start developing a following or a customer base in one area, it’ll be that much easier to get a second or third venture off the ground!
So, let’s take a look at the top 20 ways to make money online, broken down into the categories of e-commerce and product sales, monetization of content, freelancing and online services, trading and investing, as well as emerging online opportunities!
E-commerce and Product Sales 🛒
#1. Start an Online Store
E-commerce contributes massively to the flow of value online, and it’s surprisingly easy to set up a professional online storefront. Whop is a perfect example of this—it can take as little as a couple of minutes to set up a store on Whop, and lots of the detailed aspects of running an online business is handled on your behalf - even the customer service solutions!
All you need to focus on, therefore, is creating a great digital product or service that’s worth paying for. It’s also possible to create an online store for physical goods, so whatever it is you want to sell, an online store is a fantastic way to reach the widest possible market.
Getting started is extremely easy, but there are still things you do need to consider. Make sure your products are within the legal framework wherever it is you reside, and think about the structure of your business. You’ll be considered a sole proprietor at the beginning, but it may be worth learning about LLCs and their benefits as your business matures.
If you run an online store selling physical goods, remember that you’ll need to think about managing inventory and figure out delivery. Logistics is extremely important, so make sure not to neglect it if you don’t want to run into trouble. It’s one reason that many successful entrepreneurs prefer digital products—thanks to platforms like Whop, all you really need to focus on is the product itself.
Getting the product right is crucial, but once you do, it’s just a matter of scale. For this reason, running your own online store on a platform like Whop can be incredibly profitable. Even if you start small, you could end up deciding to make this your primary income stream.
Initial Investment: Low (High if dealing with physical goods)
Time/Effort Required: High
Potential Profit: Very high
Key Considerations: High-quality product, marketing, customer Service
#2. Dropshipping
If you haven’t heard of dropshipping before, the concept is really simple—it’s all about selling products without actually holding inventory. In fact, you don’t have to worry too much about the product either, since dropshipping is all about partnering with wholesalers or manufacturers who handle storage, packaging, and shipping products directly to customers.
You need to take care of marketing and customer service, along with the storefront of the operation, but beyond that dropshipping can be a way to make money online that doesn’t tax you too much in terms of time. Once your dropshipping business is up and running, it’s generally just a matter of keeping an eye on it and being on top of customer support, plus whatever marketing activities you want to run.
Beyond good marketing and great customer service, the key to running a successful dropshipping business lies in finding a reliable supplier or suppliers. This can be easier said than done, so you should anticipate putting in plenty of effort at this stage of the process. Developing a good relationship with your suppliers is important, because if they let you down, your customers aren’t going to be very happy.
Once you’ve sorted out your suppliers and know what products you’re going to list, you can set up your storefront. How and where you do this is up to you, but remember to customize your product descriptions and leverage your knowledge about the market and what customers want. Your suppliers, especially if overseas, are probably not going to have the level of knowledge of customers’ wants and needs that you do.
Dropshipping can be a very viable source of income, but it’s no secret, and you may find yourself up against plenty of competition. For that reason, you could find that the profit margins involved are quite thin.
Initial Investment: Low
Time/Effort Required: Low
Potential Profit: Low
Key Considerations: Storefront, marketing, customer service, finding reliable suppliers
#3. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a great strategy if you want minimal involvement in a business but are confident of your ability to market or direct potential buyers to products. It’s a performance-based model that’s all about promotion of products, and as an affiliate marketer you can earn a commission for each sale, lead, or even action that your efforts result in.
Many companies of different sizes have affiliate programs, and all you need to do in order to get started is sign up. Once you’re accepted, all you need to do is pick out what products or catalog of services you think you can market, and grab your tracking links!
The thing here, though, is that you need some sort of audience to make this work. Armed with an affiliate link but no platform to broadcast it is a problem—as such, affiliate marketing is often a great supplementary strategy if you’ve already got an audience via Twitter/X, Instagram, or even a blog, podcast, or YouTube channel.
There’s nothing stopping you from starting out with affiliate marketing and then moving on to content, however. If there’s a particular product you think you can sell, there’s nothing stopping you from registering to be an affiliate and then writing a blog review of the product or recording a video of you unboxing it. You could even run paid advertising campaigns using your affiliate link!
Signing up to be an affiliate on Whop is really easy, too. Check out this post on how to get started!
Initial Investment: Very Low
Time/Effort Required: Very Low
Potential Profit: Depends on audience/marketing reach
Key Considerations: Having or building an audience to reach with your affiliate links
#4. Print-on-Demand
If you’re into the creative side of doing business and would like to monetize your skill in design without worrying about too much else, then print-on-demand may be a strategy worth looking into.
With print-on-demand, your focus is going to be on creating custom-designed merchandise. T-shirts and hoodies are especially popular, as are mugs, phone-cases, and practically any sort of item that’s easy to reproduce but print onto.
This means that you may not get the opportunity to use your designer’s chops when it comes to deciding cuts, styles or shapes of the products themselves, rather color schemes, graphics, slogans, and logos.
You might already be seeing similarities with dropshipping here, but it’s a little bit more complicated. For one thing, you’re not only involved in the marketing of the product, but also the final stage of the design. This also means that you need to find a good printing partner along with a manufacturer for the unprinted products you’re going to sell.
Finally, you also have to manage the e-commerce aspect of the business. This means operating the digital storefront, marketing, and customer service as well. While it does entail quite a lot of effort on your part, print-on-demand can be extremely rewarding since whatever sales you make are down to the quality of your own designs.
In addition to that, print-on-demand can be a great way to make money online thanks to the easy scalability of the business. Once products are flying off the shelves, scaling up just means getting more production capacity from your suppliers—you don’t have to worry too much about inventory management.
It can be a competitive market, just like dropshipping, but the fact that you can differentiate not just via marketing but also design itself makes print-on-demand slightly more profitable if you get the mix right.
Initial Investment: Low
Time/Effort Required: Medium
Potential Profit: Medium
Key Considerations: Storefront, marketing, customer service, suppliers, good designs
Monetization of Content 💰
#5. Blogging
Blogging has been a popular way to make money online for decades now, and it’s a great option if you’re comfortable with the written word or can simply get your thoughts across effectively.
The best blogs tend to focus on particular niches, and bloggers tend to have some level of expertise or authority over that specific area of interest. Their experiences, advice, and thoughts can be extremely valuable to readers who may not know as much and are looking to learn, or simply want to live vicariously.
To get started, choose a niche that you’re passionate about or knowledgeable in. You may not think so at first, but sometimes, the more obscure the better—whatever you’re thinking about taking as the subject for your blog, there’s likely going to be a market for it from others who share your interest.
The next step is to set up a blog, and there are several ways you can do this. One of the best approaches is to self-host your blog by purchasing a domain from a hosting provider, but this can be a surprisingly intimidating process for someone who hasn’t done it before. Luckily, there are plenty of blogs on how to do so!
After that, it’s all about your content. If you run a ‘how to …’ internet search, your results are probably going to be plastered with blogs (and videos) on the subject. You may need to strike a balance with your content, here—you don’t want to be on page 12, after all.
Some research into search engine optimization (SEO) will go a long way, but don’t compromise on your quality. Once readers find you and realize you’re not just another cookie-cutter pile of keywords, and that your content is valuable and engaging, they’re going to stick around if you keep posting.
Actually earning money from your blog tends to become a matter of reach. Once you can show that you have a following and generate decent traffic, advertising programs like Google AdSense can start getting revenue ticking through. You may also be approached by various sponsors, and you can tie in your own additional streams by publishing eBooks, designing courses, or selling memberships.
Initial Investment: Low
Time/Effort Required: Medium
Potential Profit: Medium (very low until you build an audience)
Key Considerations: Choice of hosting/platform, Search engine ranking while maintaining high quality, Monetization strategy
#6. YouTube
If writing isn’t your forte but you don’t mind getting in front of a camera, it’s worth considering video content if there’s a particular niche that you’re particularly into. YouTube as a platform has what amounts to a monopoly on medium-to-long form video content, so there are certain constraints in this area, but it’s also a far more sought-after form of media.
Technology has progressed to the point that downloading video content isn’t much of a hassle, even in countries with data-limited internet plans. This means that whenever you have a ‘how to …’ search in mind, it’s often a better idea to watch a video tutorial than read up on the subject—even if the presenter isn’t great, you can see how it works on camera.
Thanks to the limited availability of video content platforms, remuneration for content is very much skewed toward the platform itself and the tech company that owns it. However, you can make a significant amount of revenue from YouTube once you reach a certain threshold of views and subscribers.
Certain niches and audience demographics also matter—it’ll be easier to succeed with a finance channel with predominantly U.S.-based viewership, for example, compared to a channel catering to low spenders in a “less valuable” area.
It’s also a sad truth that poor-quality content that panders to platform algorithms is far more likely than good content that goes against the grain. Still, once viewers stumble over your content and decide that they like your work, especially if they signal it by liking and subscribing, the YouTube engine is more likely to start suggesting your videos to others.
Putting in some investment at the start to create a better product can definitely help, as can a pre-existing audience from some other form of platform or content. As a new creator, though, you’ll just have to stick with it and keep dropping videos until you hit that magic subscriber count that qualifies you for revenue from YouTube.
In terms of monetization, YouTubers are well known for setting up alternate streams of income such as courses, paid memberships, and even print-on-demand for their own merchandise.
Initial Investment: Medium (You may have to purchase hardware, including portable cameras and mics depending on your niche)
Time/Effort Required: Medium
Potential Profit: High
Key Considerations: Niche, quality content, adequate hardware, learning to edit videos
#7. Streaming
Streaming requires a lot of the same skills as running a successful and profitable YouTube or even TikTok channel, but it’s much like comparing a sprint to a marathon. Streaming by nature tends to lead to much longer recordings, and they’re done live—so if you rely on a lot of editing, then shorter formats may be more your speed.
On the other hand, if you are able to provide consistent entertainment across a longer session, or simply have a niche that caters to this, then streaming is worth a look. Streamers succeed for a variety of reasons, whether it be their own personal charisma and how they present, or the skill and knowledge they can demonstrate. There’s a lot of freedom when it comes to finding your niche.
A visit to Twitch or YouTube may surprise you when it comes to the variety of what people stream. Computer games tend to be one of the most popular forms of livestream, especially with younger audiences, but you’ll find streams covering practically everything—fixing cars, woodworking, discussing fiction, and even walking dogs!
One of the advantages of streaming is that it’s quite easy to monetize even before you hit the sort of critical mass that other forms of content creation require. Streamers take donations from their audience in real-time, and it’s generally understood that the streamer would answer questions that accompany donations, or give “shout-outs” to those users when they donate.
That said, you can’t really expect that sort of thing if you only have a handful of people tuning in. An audience still needs to be built up, and watchers can interact with you and each other with the stream’s live chat. It can be quite difficult to keep an eye on live chat while also streaming good content, but practice makes perfect.
Once you do get used to how things work and build up an audience, it’s very possible to see your earnings ramp up dramatically. If your content is good and you figure out an effective strategy for donations, you can earn thousands of dollars per hour of live content.
Initial Investment: Medium (You will need the right hardware and software to stream effectively)
Time/Effort Required: Medium (But a regular schedule is advisable)
Potential Profit: Very high
Key Considerations: Niche, being engaging/entertaining for longer periods
#8. Podcasting
If blogs are a written form of presenting content and YouTube and streams tend to be mostly visual, then podcasting is your primary option when it comes to creating audio content. Podcasts tend to focus on a certain topic or range of topics, and distribute episodic content on a fairly fixed schedule.
As with other forms of online content creation, it’s possible to create a podcast on just about anything, whether it’s education, personal stories, instruction, or even doing an Actual Play of a tabletop game every week. You can go for a broader niche or a narrower one, and format your show in any way you like—there are just as many successful solo podcasts as there are interviews and panel discussions.
Just like with video content, however, you shouldn’t neglect your equipment. In fact, podcasting might require even more attention in this regard—the fact that it’s primarily audio means that your recording quality needs to be good. That means the right microphone setup, soundproofing if required, and plenty of attention to the quality of mixing and editing.
Just like with blogging, you’ll also need to think about where you host your podcast. There are more platforms for quality podcasts than there are for video content, so it’s worth shopping around and seeing which platform suits your needs best.
Podcasts might also need more marketing than other forms of content, simply because blogs can be found easily off a search and YouTube is one of the most popular websites on the internet. It’s not quite as easy for people to find your podcast in a similarly organic manner, so it’ll need some legwork on your part.
In terms of monetization, podcasts work much like a radio show with advertisements and sponsorships that are mentioned during the recording. You might also want to tie in a way listeners can donate to you, and pods also tend to rely a lot on other income streams to supplement their earnings.
Initial Investment: Medium
Time/Effort Required: Medium
Potential Profit: Medium
Key Considerations: Audio quality, presentation, marketing, platform choice
#9. Self-publish eBooks
Publishing is one of the areas that the internet has been able to democratize effectively in recent years. No longer are you at the behest of a publisher’s whims when you want to release a book—you can do it all yourself, especially if you’re not looking for a physical end product.
The benefit here is that, as an author, you have complete creative control and full freedom over all aspects of your book, including production, distribution, marketing, and for the most part, content. The latter does have a disclaimer because you will need to sell your eBook on some sort of platform, which may have certain rules related to content.
Related: How to Make Money Selling eBooks
The main consideration when self-publishing an eBook is your manuscript. Just like with the traditional route, you should ensure that your manuscript is of the highest quality—the difference being that there isn’t a publisher who might reject it later on. You need to ensure that your manuscript is properly edited for spelling and grammar, and there are professional services out there for this.
Cover design is also something that comes into play. The old adage of “don’t judge a book by its cover” simply doesn’t work when there are so many books for people to choose from—however good your book is, it won’t be read unless someone buys it, and the cover plays a big part even in a digital storefront.
You’ll also need to think about the format once your manuscript has been finalized. There are a lot of platforms and even devices for eBooks, so don’t forget to invest in a formatting software to ensure that your product can be accessed in every possible way.
Finally, there’s platform selection. You might already be aware of some of the top platforms in the eBook market, but there’s a lot more competition than you might think—there are several good platforms worth considering, and the industry is starting to become much more author-friendly now that there’s competition to be had among platforms.
Initial Investment: Low
Time/Effort Required: High (initially)
Potential Profit: Very high
Key Considerations: Content, cover design, platform, formatting
Freelancing and Online Services 🖥
#10. Freelancing
Freelancing is a type of work arrangement where you, as a freelancer or “independent contractor”, can offer your skills, expertise, and services to clients on a project-by-project or contract basis. The main advantage of freelancing is the freedom it gives you—a far cry from the hated 9-to-5, you can work whenever, wherever, and for however long (or little!) you want.
What you do as a freelancer really depends on your skillset, or at least what skills of yours you identify as being marketable and useful to others. If you’re a writer but don’t really have an eBook in you yet, you could try and freelance as a copywriter, but that’s just one of many possibilities. You could freelance as a web developer, a graphic designer, a digital marketer, a video editor… the list is practically indefinite.
One thing that you may need to think about as a freelancer is building a portfolio. An attractive webpage with some samples of your work could be enough, but testimonials can help too. This might be hard to manage if you’re just starting out, but think about building a portfolio as you go.
The main thing with freelancing, however, is connecting with clients somehow. There are various platforms that attempt to do this with various degrees of success, and a portfolio is especially important if you list your services through these websites. It’s also a good idea to keep an eye on social media and various online job boards—you may have more success going to clients than waiting for them to come to you.
Some platforms allow for pitching and bidding on jobs. Clients can post listings as to what they want, and it’s up to you to pitch. This is an opportunity to differentiate yourself from all the other freelancers out there because pitching is a rare but easily acquired skill.
Once you do acquire clients, remember that keeping them comes down to the consistency and quality of your work along with the communication skills you possess. A failure in one of these regards will make it difficult to establish the sort of relationship you need with your clients that keeps the cash coming in.
You’ll also want to stay on top of the legalities of contract work and freelancing in your jurisdiction. Whether it’s correctly creating and issuing invoices or even needing to acquire a license to freelance, different countries (and states) have different regulations. You’ll also have to stay on top of tax law and file your own returns.
Initial Investment: Low
Time/Effort Required: Very high
Potential Profit: Medium
Key Considerations: Finding clients, communication, portfolio, legal and tax regulations
#11. Online Coaching
If you have significant expertise or extensive qualifications in a certain area, you could consider online coaching. It’s usually done on a freelance basis as well, but is focused on a specific niche where clients tend to be individuals in search of personal or professional development.
What’s nice about today’s level of technology is that you can become an online coach from the comfort of your own study or living room. As long as your internet connection is good and you’ve got audio and video gear that passes muster, you have all the tools you need to deliver a good online coaching experience.
Credentials and qualifications can be important, especially when starting off. If you’re going in fresh, your clients need to take a leap of faith so having the right credentials can really help. A solid online presence helps too, from a good website to a professional social media footprint.
From that point onwards it’s about marketing to reach the sort of client count you want, and providing the best possible coaching for clients you do acquire. Satisfied customers will always come back for more if you offer continuous learning and have more to offer, and they’ll help you massively with positive reviews.
Initial Investment: Very low
Time/Effort Required: High
Potential Profit: High
Key Considerations: Client acquisition, marketing, effective coaching, client retention
#12. Online Consulting
Online consulting is another option for experts, although it tends to involve the provision of services to enterprise clients rather than individuals. As an online consultant you have the freedom to work remotely using digital communication tools, but provide most of the other services and solutions that consultants do.
If you’re in a situation where you can realistically consider online consulting, you probably already have your niche figured out. Effective consulting tends to need significant industry knowledge, and many consultants tend to be former employees of various industries who see that there’s far more money to be made if they write their own invoices.
This sort of experience needs to show in some way. You’re going to struggle if you set up an online consultancy without the experience and credentials to back it up, so make sure to broadcast the qualifications you do have when pitching or setting up your website.
It’s also advisable to have a set framework that you can share with potential customers. This generally means an outline of your processes and methods along with the sort of deliverables clients can expect. This helps clients understand what they can expect, and sets up a realistic roadmap of progress.
Initial Investment: Low
Time/Effort Required: High
Potential Profit: High
Key Considerations: Finding clients, communication, high performance
#13. Courses and Webinars
Courses and webinars are yet another way to share knowledge and expertise, but while coaching tends to be focused on individuals and consulting is all about putting it into practice, you can choose to play a broader educational role here.
The products here tend to be more structured than with coaching, too, and cover the broad strokes of a particular subject area rather than providing tailored instruction. You can also do one or the other—courses tend to be downloadable, while webinars can be live presentations. So, if your skillset suits one better than the other, you can focus on one area.
The key with courses and webinars tends to be quality and structure of the content you create. You’re probably aware that practically every influencer out there has courses to sell, so you need to differentiate in qualitative terms. You may not have the quantity of sales that they have to begin with, but if you really put the effort in, your courses will stand out.
As such, it’s important to have good structures for your course material and plan out your webinars properly. It’s also a good idea to consider formats and software, letting your growing audience download and view your products across a variety of devices and log into your webinars from anywhere.
Courses have a big additional benefit in that they provide passive income. Once you create them and put them up for sale, you don’t need to do anything more—it’s also why just about every influencer has courses to sell, it’s easy money for them if they get their hooks deep enough into their followers.
Initial Investment: Medium
Time/Effort Required: Very low for courses, medium for webinars
Potential Profit: Medium
Key Considerations: Content quality, marketing
#14. SaaS
SaaS, or Software as a Service, is a form of cloud computing where users can access software on the internet via a web browser rather than purchasing and installing software on their own machines.
If you don’t know anything about software or web development you shouldn’t skip ahead just yet, because some of the best products start with someone spotting a gap in the market. What this generally boils down to is a problem that a certain number of people don’t have an easy solution for.
Spend enough time in any industry that relies on computing, and you’ll probably have an entire list of potential SaaS ideas. The next step, therefore, is development and coding—if you’re skilled in this area you’re in luck, but it may just be a matter of partnering up with a coder or even just commissioning some code from a freelance developer if the project’s small in scope.
Once you have enough resources to start building your software solution, you’ll also need to consider things like hosting. Cloud services tend to be the go-to here, and most of the top tech companies have options you can look at.
Remember that you’re not just providing a problem, but building software that humans are going to interact with. This means robust security measures and data protection, especially if you want to serve European Union-based customers, as well as quality user experience (UX) design. If you’ve a poor UX, then people may decide that your software just isn’t worth the hassle.
In terms of monetization, most SaaS products tend to use a subscription-based model. Users will pay a monthly or yearly fee for access, and you can develop your pricing strategies and subscription plans accordingly.
Initial Investment: Medium to Very high depending on scope
Time/Effort Required: Very high
Potential Profit: Very high
Key Considerations: Robust code, data security and privacy, UX
#15. Listing on Whop
We’ve already mentioned Whop as a great choice to host an online store, but several of the options we’ve gone through since can benefit significantly from a Whop listing. If you’re looking to make money online you’ve got that invaluable entrepreneur mindset, and Whop was designed for people just like you!
Whop is a digital marketplace meant for entrepreneurs to list their digital products and services, so it can take care of the storefront for you no matter what you’re listing. Developing a SaaS product? List it on Whop. Want to design and sell courses and webinars? Provide online coaching or sell trading signals? Educate traders? Sell your SaaS solution? Whichever the question, Whop is the answer.
Plus, Whop doesn’t just take care of the shop, it takes care of customer service for you, helps to handle payments, and looks after just about every aspect of both front- and back-end that you need. With Whop, all you need to worry about is providing the best digital product or service that you can.
If you want to give Whop a try, it only takes minutes to get set up. Check out this guide for an example of how to create a store on Whop, or visit Whop directly to start making money online!
Initial Investment: Creating a listing on Whop is free
Time/Effort Required: Very low to medium (as above)
Potential Profit: Very high
Key Considerations: Niche, product quality
Trading and Investing 📈
#16. Passive Income from Investing
If you’ve taken a look at the stock market lately and wondered why it was doing well, especially in times of inflation, what’s going on behind the scenes is that asset prices are inflating at the same pace as consumer prices. Which, in turn, underlines the value of investing as a means of preserving wealth.
In fact, there are investing strategies that you can leverage online not just as a means of protecting your wealth, but also growing it. In much the same way as we’ve mentioned affiliate marketing and online courses as sources of passive income, it’s also possible to manage this via investing.
The easiest way to do this is called dividend investing. In a nutshell, dividends are a portion of a company’s profits that they pay out to shareholders on a fairly regular basis. All you need to do, therefore, is to identify shares that pay regular dividends and start to accumulate them.
These shares then pay dividends, which means a check in the post every so often. You can treat this as income, or choose to reinvest the dividends by putting them straight back into the same shares, taking advantage of the power of compounding to build your wealth. You can read more about this style of investing here.
It’s important to note that individual stocks and shares aren’t the only assets that can provide a return. It’s possible to earn passive income by investing in bonds, taking advantage of the coupon rate that they pay out, or you can go right to the other end of the asset spectrum and go for proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies which also pay out a certain rate of return.
All of this is a legitimate way to make money online since most stock and asset brokers have great online interfaces and even apps that you can use to execute your investment strategies.
Initial Investment: Your choice
Time/Effort Required: Very low
Potential Profit: Benchmarked against inflation
Key Considerations: Choice of asset(s) and electronic investment platform
#17. Trading
Very closely related to the previous section, but a completely different approach since trading is an extremely active strategy compared to the passive income approach associated with dividends.
That being said, trading can encompass several approaches, and the people who make money online in this way (as opposed to losing their shirts) tend to be structured and have a very well-defined approach.
The biggest consideration to look at right away is the time frame you’re dealing with. If you have a certain amount of money that you’re willing to trade and are completely free during trading hours, you may decide to spend the entire day buying and selling—that’s called day trading.
In fact, you might choose to use algorithms and bots for this and run hundreds of trades a day like investment firms do, which is called scalping. On the other side of the coin, you might be a swing trader who does some research on a few stocks, buying when they drop and selling a couple of weeks later.
Once you’ve decided on your approach, you also need to think about the sort of research you want to do. Traders who operate across shorter time frames tend to use technical analysis, but if you’re holding assets for weeks or months at a time, fundamentals may be more important.
Check out our blog’s Trading section for guides on these various styles of trading and research, and if you want to learn even more, check out Whop’s trading communities for the best discussion and instruction in the business!
Initial Investment: Your choice
Time/Effort Required: Low to Very high depending on trading style
Potential Profit: High, but also high risk
Key Considerations: Risk management, trading style, choice of asset(s) and electronic investment platform
#18. Online Real Estate Investing
Rent is a time-honored strategy for earning an income, but thanks to technology, you no longer need to worry about actually buying a property, renovating it, and taking care of tenants!
Today, it’s actually quite easy to invest in real estate properties or even real estate-related assets such as REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) without all of the hassles that come with actual property management and ownership.
You’d be well served in doing your research, though. Real estate is a complex market, and it can be catastrophic if you get things wrong—look no further than the global financial crisis of 2008 for this.
In fact, it’s possible that there’s a similar bubble today in the form of commercial real estate, with the majority of the population preferring remote work while the owners and holders of instruments like CMBS (Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities) desperately push back to protect their investments via their media arms.
The advantage of online real estate investment is that you don’t need to take a large lump sum-sized risk by buying a property. You can invest in small amounts, thereby insulating you from at least some of the risks in the real estate market.
You can adopt both passive and active approaches with online real estate investing, either looking to rent for passive income or being more proactive by flipping assets, so your approach will depend on what strategy you want to take.
Initial Investment: As with any form of investing, it’s your choice
Time/Effort Required: Low
Potential Profit: Low in the short term
Key Considerations: Risk management, due diligence
Emerging Online Opportunities 💡
#19. NFTs and Digital Collectibles
NFTs don’t have the hype that they had at the start of the decade, and you’re much more likely to read articles bashing digital collectibles than harping on about their potential. What you need to know here is that NFTs are far, far more than monkey JPEGs.
Technologically speaking, NFTs provide a way to digitally authenticate beyond all doubt that something is unique. That has significant value, and NFTs are being used (under different and quite boring names) in several major industries, including logistics, delivery of goods, and manufacturing.
If you want to speculate on cheap NFTs hoping for the reappearance of gullible celebrities willing to pay millions, it’s your money. Then how to make money online using them, you ask? The answer lies in what they can do.
For instance, musicians and other creative artists have discovered that NFTs allow them to distribute their content, eliminating both piracy and intermediaries at a stroke. You could argue that they can be resold, but NFTs have an answer for that too—creators can bake in royalty components that allow a certain amount of the resell value to go back to the creator.
NFTs are still very much an emerging opportunity, because the depths of their utility are still to be plumbed. Nevertheless, even the ability to add the royalty model to an NFT may be invaluable to you as a creator, if you’re worried about your products being resold or shared without any benefit to you.
That being said, many top brands have adopted NFT technology for various uses. Much of it is behind the scenes but some allow you to make money online easily by selling any media of your own creation.
Initial Investment: Very low if using rather than speculating
Time/Effort Required: Very low (for passive income via royalties)
Potential Profit: Low
Key Considerations: Research and learning blockchain code, quality of content, marketing
#20. Play to Earn Gaming
Play-to-earn (P2E) gaming is an emerging model of gaming that allows players to earn easily and legally transactable assets with real-world value without having to resort to black or gray digital markets.
In direct contrast to titles such as The Sims which have a “printer and ink” business model or supposed AAA releases riddled with microtransactions, P2E games attempt to reward players for their time rather than latching onto their wallets.
It’s no surprise that many P2E games rely on NFTs and blockchain technology for the way ownership of digital assets is handled. In most regular titles, even in-game items that you pay for can be stripped from your account by the company managing the title on a whim.
Blockchain technology allows players to have full ownership of items if they’re transferred across as NFTs, preventing this from ever happening. This mechanism, or simply transferring fungible cryptocurrency to players, make for easy reward mechanisms.
Many question whether these fungible cryptocurrencies, which can be created in a few clicks, do actually have value. This depends quite simply on what utility is given to them by the game designer. If the currency is reasonably scarce but has some significant utility within the game, it stands to reason that there’ll be a secondary market where some players are prepared to pay for it.
P2E gaming is still in its infancy, but there are several titles of note in the genre already. Immutable’s Gods Unchained is generally quoted as the most polished product available today, featuring Hearthstone-like gameplay with the $GODS token rewarding players along with NFT cards of various rarity.
Initial Investment: None, unless you buy in-game NFTs for a stronger start
Time/Effort Required: Your choice
Potential Profit: Low with potential for appreciation
Key Considerations: Finding quality games remains difficult
Creating Multiple Income Streams
There’s no single best way to make money online, and while we’ve got through 20 different methods here, it’s always a good idea to think about employing multiple streams at the same time.
If there’s one thing you can earn from an influencer, it’s about monetizing their content in as many ways as they can. It’s almost a guarantee that any top YouTuber will have their own merchandise (#4, print-on-demand), try to sell you courses (#13), or watch their stream (#7). Some will add a podcast to that, run affiliate marketing programs, and even spin-off more YouTube channels.
The key point here is that you should also consider alternative streams of income that complement both your skills and the time you have as well as your existing product. If you’re an online coach, why not sell courses and consult as well? If you’re a blogger, put out some eBooks and freelance a bit. Not taking advantage of alternate ways of making money would be a shame, once you get your main venture to where it needs to be.
Key Takeaways on How You Can Make Money Online
Making money online is sometimes easier said than done, but hopefully, this comprehensive list of 20 different ways to get started has awoken your inner entrepreneur. No matter how much time or money you have, no matter your skills and background, there’s definitely going to be something for you.
👉Once you're ready to get started, remember to check out Whop! You can check out the Whop blog if you’re looking for detailed guides on things like trading and SaaS, and no matter what your future venture is, consider a Whop listing! It only takes minutes to get started, and our team is available around the clock if you want to know more.
