If you’re interested in checking out a specific method, just click to jump to that section, or read the full post to make an informed decision before getting started.

19.

English Tutoring

18. Airbnb

17. Fiverr

16. Foap

15. Blog

14. Ebook

13. Course Marketplace

12. Affiliates

11. YouTube

10. Search Engine Evaluation

9. Domain Flipping

8. Podcasting

7. Virtual Assistant

6. Brand Ambassador

5. Crowdfunding

4. Freelance Writing

3. Online Store

2. Freelance Design

1. Selling Online Courses

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How to make a living online

19. Become a virtual tutor

There is a high demand for people who can teach or tutor English as a second language over Skype. This option isn’t for everyone, though, because most programs require at least a Bachelor’s Degree, or in some cases English as as Second Language Accreditation.

If you’ve got either of those qualifications and a knack for teaching, being an English tutor might just be right for you.

How to get started:

• Choose a program to apply to, a few options are:  Kds, TutorABC, or iTalki.
• Check through the requirements and make sure you qualify to teach English as a second language.
• Go through the program’s training.
• Begin taking students! Depending on the program you chose, you may be matched with students automatically, or they may choose you based on your profile.

If you don’t qualify for any of the official English as a Second Language programs, you can also make a profile on a site like Indeed or UpWork and hope to get hired through them, though it’s a lot more competitive.

How profitable is teaching ESL? This one is really going to vary depending on the program you apply for. Some pay $.17 per minute, while others have set rates such as $25 for a 40 minute lesson. Generally, the more requirements to qualify for a program, the higher your rate is going to be.

18. Rent your extra space on Airbnb

There is a lot of money to be made on Airbnb if you live in a high-traffic city and have space to rent out.

This option, obviously, doesn’t take place entirely online, but you can get started from the comfort of your living room.

How to get started:

• Go to Airbnb’s website and click “become a host” in the upper right hand corner and go through the prompts on the next page.
• Take photos of your space and list them on the website. For help taking high-quality images check out this blog post.
• Write an enticing description of the space you’re offering and house rules.
• Push your listing live!

Once you’ve listed your space, it’s a waiting game. After a hosting a few guests, you’ll probably have a pretty good idea of whether or not Airbnb hosting is for you.

How profitable is Airbnb? The profitability of Airbnb greatly depends on several variables: where are you located? How much space do you have to offer? What amenities are available to your guests? You can use this calculator to estimate how much you can make.

17. Make money with Fiverr

If you’ve been trying to build an online empire for anytime you’ve probably heard of Fierr. And because you’ve heard of Fiverr you may have let out an audible groan when you saw it listed here.

Despite the criticism Fiverr receives, the site is a legitimate way to make money online, but it is in no way the best way. Fiverr’s entire premise is that you can sell ‘gig’s for $5 but for most people a few $5 gigs won’t pay the bills.

Especially because Fiverr takes 20%, so really you’re selling it for $4 (and that’s before PayPal takes their cut).

Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t make good money on Fiverr. Because like any good rule, there are exceptions, and some people do make thousands of dollars each month on Fiverr.

Your time and talents are worth more than what you can make on Fiverr. While you might be pulling in a few hundred dollars here and there on Fiverr, another platform (*cough* your own) could be making you even more.

How to get started:

• Click the green “Start Selling” button on the upper right hand corner of the homepage
• Enter your information to create an account
• Pick which category you fit best into (writer, video editor, developer, designer, etc.)
• Fill out your gig info and set a price

From there you can hope for the best or start marketing on social media and community marketing websites. If you’re lucky you’ll become a featured seller which will help drive sales.

If you’re interested in reading about Fiverr’s marketplace, Joseph Feliciano offers an in-depth look at how he got 88 orders in a month without promoting his gig.

How profitable is Fiverr? Because there was no clear data on how much the average seller makes on Fiverr, it’s safe to assume that most users aren’t making significant income.

16. Make money selling pictures online

If you’re insta-obsessed (guilty) you might be able to pull in a few dolla dolla bills from the pictures you post.

Foap is an app where you can upload original photos and customers can buy them from there. Like Fiverr, you’re only making $5, but if you were going to take the picture anyhow there’s no harm in the extra few minutes it takes to upload to the app.

Besides selling your pictures online for $5, you can also enter ‘missions’ which are sponsored competitions searching for the best picture in a given category. These missions are more lucrative, oftentimes with cash prizes of several hundred dollars.

How to get started:

• Download the app to your phone – available on iPhone and Android
• Start uploading and categorizing your photos
• Explore missions
• Wait for purchases to roll in… hopefully

How profitable is Foap? Like Fiverr, there is no data available on how much you can earn using Foap. Me? Because there isn’t a large community (yet!) Foap isn’t going to bring in consistent income, but if you’re lucky it might allow you to splurge on a latte or two.

15. Earn money online with a blog

With so many six figure bloggers out there, you might be surprised to see this ranking so low. But in two and a half years of blogging I’ve learned a hard lesson: Blogging doesn’t make you money.

Influence makes you money. A following makes you money. Running a blog is a means to gain that influence and following, but at the end of the day, the blog itself is not what is going to make you money.

Bloggers earn money online through advertising, partnerships, selling their own products and affiliate income, all of which are means listed elsewhere on this list.

Monetize your blog with advertising

On most blogs you might see a snazzy ad or two in the sidebar or within the posts. These aren’t there to annoy you, rather they are raking in the dolla dolla bills for the website owner.

Well, kind of.

A lot of bloggers have a problem with sidebar advertisements because they really don’t generate much income. Even with 50,000 monthly page views you will be lucky to pull in $200.

Monetize your blog with partnerships

Brand partnerships are one of the most popular options for bloggers who are just getting started with monetization. These partnerships are most popularly referred to as ‘sponsored posts.’

Bloggers charge anywhere from several hundred dollars up to several thousand per sponsored post.

Monetize your blog by selling your own product

This is the most successful way to make money as a blogger. Many bloggers will focus on consistently putting out great content and building an audience for several months and then creating and selling their own product to that audience.

Bloggers like Melysa Griffin and Mariah Coz have sold six-figure courses on Teachable, harnessing the momentum they’ve built with their blogs.

While this money isn’t truly made through their blog, most bloggers consider this ‘blog income’ because their blog audience served as customers.

I’ll be going more into selling your own product a little further down the post.

How to get started:

• Come up with your domain name and niche
• Write a handful of posts before launch
• Set up your blog and publish your posts
• Establish a consistent posting schedule
• Promote your blog on social media

How profitable is blogging: Bloggers can expect to make 1% of their average page views. If a Blogger gets 50,000 views a month, they’ll make around $500.

At the $500 mark, we can consider that you’re already starting to make “good” money online (if you’re just doing it part time.)

Let’s move on to the other more profitable ways to make a living from the comfort of your home.

14. Earn money creating and selling ebooks

Ebooks definitely had their time in the sun and it seems like everyone and their brother (my brother included) is writing one despite the fact that they aren’t the most profitable online medium anymore.

Ebooks take a lot of time, research and energy to write, whereas you can’t sell them for very much. If your end goal is to be a published author then online self-publishing is a wonderful way to make that happen, but if you’re hoping to be profitable, ebooks aren’t always the best bet.

That’s not to say that there are no successful ebook sellers because there definitely are, but in a saturated market of online authors it’s hard to stand out.

How to get started:

• Outline/write/edit/revise/perfect your ebook
• Consider paying a professional to create a cover for your book
• Choose a self-publishing platform
• Upload your ebook to marketplaces or sell from your own website

How profitable is selling ebooks: While half of self-published autors make less than $500, we are going to put you in the more profitable half and say you’ll be able to earn at least $10k a year, or just over $800 a month.

13. Earn money online with a course marketplace

If you’ve got a lot to teach but haven’t established an audience (and have no desire to) then a course marketplace might be for you.

With a course marketplace, you create the online course and they take it from there. You have control of your content, but nothing else.

This lack of control has driven a lot of former marketplace users to course creation platforms like Teachable.

One such example is when Udemy put a cap of $50 on their courses and nearly 1000 of their instructors migrated to Teachable so they could have complete control over their course.

How to get started:

• Create your online course content – this can be video, text, audio, downloadable assets, or anything else you come up with, the Teachable Blog has a ton of course creation tips
• Upload your course to your marketplace of choice
• Let the marketplace promote for you or go the extra mile and promote to your list and social media accounts

How profitable is selling on a marketplace: A Udemy cofounder claimed that ¼ of creators on Udemy make at least 10k a year, or $833 a month.

12. Earn money online with affiliate marketing

If there is a store or product that you love so much that you’re constantly recommending it to your friends and family, you might want to consider becoming an affiliate.

People earn affiliate income by partnering with a brand or company and earning a commission of every sale that they drive. There are thousands of affiliate programs online – apparel stores, Amazon, tech companies and more.

Most people pull in a few hundred dollars a month with affiliate selling, though there are some outliers who have created entire businesses from it. If you join enough programs and are strategic in implementing them, you may be able to pull in $80k in 5 years like Hash Agrawal did.

When looking into affiliate programs be careful to do research on how you’re getting paid. A lot of programs pay you in gift cards or store credit – and while that’s great – internet points don’t pay the bills!

How to get started:

• If you’re looking to become an affiliate for your favorite company there are a few ways to find out if they have an affiliate program. Your first option is to Google “*company name* affiliate”

• If that doesn’t pan out, most companies that have affiliate programs will have them listed sneakily on the verrrrrryy bottom of their website

• Once you are accepted into an affiliate program figure out how you want to promote (blog posts, social media, business cards, etc)

How profitable is becoming an affiliate partner: There is no clear data on the average income you can make as an affiliate. Instead (very scientifically) I went to five blogs that share income reports and averaged their affiliate income to arrive at $987 a month.

11. Earn money online with YouTube

Ah, YouTube stardom. Growing up watching iCarly on Nickelodeon and YouTubers like Fred I was sure that online video stardom would be my scapegoat from ever having to work an adult job.

Fast forward to now and I’m pulling in a humble $5 a month through YouTube.

Ouch.

But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t other online personalities finding success on the platform. SociaBlade estimates that some YouTube stars like Miranda Sings are pulling in up to two million dollars a year.

Needless to say, she’s an outlier, but with figures like that chasing YouTube stardom sounds pretty darn appealing.

For every YouTuber making a full-time living through YouTube, there are thousands of YouTubers chugging away making pennies a month. Those people might rise to YouTube stardom, but the rise tends to be a slow one.

A lot of YouTubers also monetize their success by branching out from YouTube. Angela Fehr, for example, is a talented watercolor artist on YouTube and has since created an online academy teaching watercolor on Teachable.

How to get started:

• If you have a Google account you can set up a YouTube account with just a few clicks
• Establish a niche for your channel – you can do comedy, music, tech tutorials or anything in between
• Go into your settings and turn monetization on
• Establish an upload schedule and be consistent
• As your subscriber count grows consider reaching out to brands for paid collaborations

How profitable is being a YouTuber: The average YouTuber earns just $15/month. But, let’s say you’re above average and have 100 videos each getting 5000 views a month you might earn up to $1000.

At this point and with the methods mentioned below, you start to consider the posibility of making a living from the cash you earn online.

10. Earn money as a search engine evaluator

With over three and a half billion daily Google searches it’s fair to assume that a few bugs might pop up from time to time. To stay on top of these bugs, Google hires independent contractors to work as search engine evaluators.

Steve Gillman described being a search engine evaluator as a great learning experience – he makes several hundred dollars a month googling search terms and rating them on “quality, relevancy and usefulness.”

How to get started:

• Sign up with a site like Leapforce
• Take the entrance exam (it’s said to be easy)
• You will have several hours of unpaid training before you can get started

How profitable is being a Search Engine Evaluator? It looks like the average pay for search engine evaluation is $12/hour but the hours are unpredictable at best. You can expect to make $1000 each month give or take.

9. Make money online selling domains

People don’t always think of domain flipping as a reputable way of earning money online, but domain powerhouses like GoDaddy beg to differ.

The idea behind this is you buy a domain name that you think someone will want to use in the future. If you’re lucky you’ll be right and you’ll get an offer from someone looking to own that domain sometime down the road.

You can also buy domain names similar to domains that are already popular and reach out to the owners of those sites and see if they’re interested in buying.

Domain flipping is a long-term commitment and not something that you will see any sort of profit off of right off the bat.

How to get started:

• Decide a niche you want to focus on and start researching keywords
• Buy domain names that fit in your niche
• Research how much you can sell your domain for on Namebio
• Wait for people to reach out or be proactive and reach out to potential buyers yourself

How profitable is domain flipping? While there have been domains sold for millions of dollars, a more common price point is several hundred to a thousand dollars. Assuming someone can sell two domains a month we will estimate their monthly income at $1000.

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