How to make money online: 10 formulas that work in 2021
So you want to make money online.
You have probably already found a lot of bloggers who explain how to do it. And most of them are probably not making a single euro (avoid anyone who tells you to fill out surveys or click on ads to generate income).
Not to mention those who only make money selling courses where they teach how to make money. Paradoxical, right?
Is not my style. I've been living off the Internet for a while, generating thousands of euros and learning the ins and outs of online business.
First of all, you should know that making money online is not easy or fast. It never has been, regardless of what you read or want to sell you.
I have had to put in a lot of effort and sacrifice a lot of my free time. I have spent sleepless nights, I have invested hundreds of hours in learning and I have given up my holidays while trying to earn my first euros.
But it was worth it.
The big advantage is that you no longer need technical knowledge. Before you had to know how to program to create a website, but today there are systems so intuitive that even a child would know how to do it.
So the opportunity is now.
In this article I am going to reveal the 10 best ways to earn money on the Internet for its economic potential, simplicity and ability to generate income in a stable way. And since I want to be totally transparent with you, I will also show you my own results.
I remind you that here you will not find high risk or ridiculous income systems such as filling out online surveys or playing poker. If you want to make real money, you are going to have to work for it.
Active versus passive income
Before starting, you should know that there are two ways to earn money online: active and passive systems.
Assets are those that require you to be doing something to generate income, such as selling crafts made by you, translating texts or playing poker.
Liabilities are those that, once created, require practically no further action on your part. Think of the advertising income generated by the readers of a website or the dividends you get with an investment. After the initial effort, then you don't have to do practically anything else.
How to make money online: 10 formulas that work
Let's now see the best ways to earn money online for its economic potential, simplicity and reliability, and the results I have achieved with them.
1. Make money with affiliate marketing
This is the system with which I earned my first euros, and in my opinion it is one of the most affordable ways for any beginner who wants to generate passive income.
It hardly requires knowledge, the investment is almost nil and its income potential is very high. In addition, once assembled you can practically forget about it: only minimal maintenance will be necessary.
Affiliate marketing consists of creating a website where you will publish product analysis and recommendations. In these analyzes you will put links to other web pages where the product is sold. If you end up buying it, the seller will give you a commission for having referred a customer.
Logically, you must first have reached an agreement with those web pages. Luckily, today there are affiliate platforms (the best known is Amazon Affiliates) where you only have to register to be part of that agreement.
Do you see where the grace is? You create a web page, you publish articles and, once they have visits, it becomes an automatic system that you should not be attending constantly.
The income potential of this system depends on the market you have chosen (the more that category of products is sold online and the more expensive they are, the better), but also on the time you invest.
Basically, these are the tasks that you will have to do:
Create a website. You can do it in 15 minutes with this tutorial.
Write analyzes, comparisons and recommendations. You will invest most of your time here. You can pay someone to do it, but I recommend that you write at the beginning to gain knowledge and practice.
Position your website in search engines. Although in markets with less competition your website can position itself practically on its own, sometimes you will need to present your website in other places on the Internet to make it more visible.
Ok, but how much money are we talking about?
I like that you ask me this question. So you can see what this system is capable of, this is what two of my affiliate websites generated during the month of July.
2. Create a website and monetize it with Adsense
Another of the best ways to passively earn money online is by monetizing web pages with advertising.
The concept is similar to that of affiliate marketing: you create a website on a topic, attract readers and once they are there you earn money when they perform a certain action.
The great advantage of advertising is that you do not need the reader to buy to earn a commission. The most common is that you earn money when the reader clicks on an ad (what is known as PPC -Pay Per Click-).
In fact, this is the way the world's largest ad network works: Google Adsense.
Adsense is so popular thanks to its ease of use and number of advertisers. You simply sign up and, once your application has been approved, you can place ads on your website by inserting a small code.
With Adsense you do not choose what type of ads appear: Google takes care of doing it automatically according to the theme of your website and the profile of the reader. This way you can display personalized ads for each reader, which has three benefits:
Maximize the money you can earn from advertising. The more relevant and specific an ad is, the more likely the reader will click on it.
It saves you from having to contact any advertiser directly. There are hundreds of thousands of companies advertising through Adsense.
That the ads don't seem forced. Being personalized for the reader and theme of the web, they are integrated quite naturally in the pages.
Unlike affiliate marketing, the ideal here is to create a website that provides general information on a certain topic rather than publishing comparisons and analyzes.
For example, you could create a website where you post cooking recipes or information about dogs or even dinosaurs (like this website).
The potential of this system depends fundamentally on three things: the theme you have chosen, the number of visits the website has and the percentage of those visits that click on the ads.
Adsense Ads
Adsense ads on a dog website.
The first point, the theme, is fundamental, because according to that you will earn more or less money per click.
For example, on a cat website, Adsense may advertise cat food. However, on a website about university courses, advertisements for postgraduate and master's degrees that cost a fortune will surely appear.
Which one would you earn the most money when a reader clicked?
Indeed, in the second. Since the advertised product is more expensive, the advertiser is willing to pay more money.
To find out what potential a theme has with Adsense, use the Keyword Planner. Enter the theme there and see if it is something that is searched a lot in Google, and how much advertisers are going to pay you per click (what is called a bid).
One part of the bid (68%) is yours and the other (32%) Google, so the higher the bid, the more money you can earn with a website on this topic.
For example, if you created a website with information about recipes, each click from your readers would generate between 0.16 (68% of 0.24) and 0.19 euros (68% of 0.28). This is an average of 0.175 euros per click.
The percentage of readers who click on an ad is usually around 1.5%. Therefore, if you had two thousand page views per day, the calculation of monthly income with Adsense would be the following:
60,000 page views / month x 1.5% clicks x 0.175 euros = 157.5 euros / month
In this case, the click pays little, so to earn a good figure you would need to have a huge volume of visits.
If you created a website with information on forex and currency trading, with the same number of visits you would earn much more money:
Each click would generate you around 7.8 euros (68% of the average bid), so 60,000 page views per month would translate into:
60,000 page views / month x 1.5% clicks x 7.8 euros -> 7,020 euros / month
In addition to what you get paid per click, the income potential is determined by the number of visits the website has. And that depends on the number of people who search for information on this topic on Google.
Fortunately, Google's Keyword Planner also offers an approximate range of the number of times a month a certain word or phrase is searched 🙂
I know first-hand people who bill several thousand euros a month with Adsense. In my case, I have used it as a complement in poorly paid themes and it still provides me about 2,600 euros per month:
3. Sell courses and services with your blog
If the previous two were two of the best ways to earn money online, this is the BEST way to earn money online.
But like everything else, the more money something can generate, the more effort it takes.
It is about creating a blog on a specific topic, positioning yourself as an expert in it, and selling your own paid online courses.
Sounds difficult? It takes effort, but it's not that complicated. The key is to choose a topic that you master, where people are interested, and build a reputation for publishing content.
The advantage of paid online courses is that they can become totally passive systems, because once created it costs you the same to sell one as two hundred. You just have to publish it in video or PDF format and sell it through an automated system to your subscribers.
This is what I do on my blogbilidadsocial.com. As I am passionate about social psychology, a few years ago I decided to start a blog offering scientific and practical information to shy people seeking to improve their social relationships.
At first it barely had readers, but little by little it became popular. Today I monetize it with online courses where I teach how to overcome social fears and achieve a more charismatic personality.
Every time someone subscribes to the blog, a sequence of emails is activated that send them valuable information. After a week, you receive an email presenting the premium video course in case you want to sign up.
In this way, I invoice on automatic pilot an average of 1,000 euros per week with something that makes me feel proud.
4. Offer your services on specialized pages
If you do not have or do not want to create a blog or a website (although anyone without technical knowledge can do it today), another way to get a handful of euros online is to carry out small online services.
The operation is very simple:
You register in one of the online platforms that put you in contact with potential clients
You publish your service and put a price on it
You wait for them to hire you
The jobs that are usually offered on these platforms are simple things, such as translating a text, editing a video, designing a logo, writing a resume or preparing a PowerPoint presentation.
There are even those who offer to write irresistible Tinder profiles, your imagination is the limit!
Your income will depend on the amount of hours and effort that you can dedicate to it on a regular basis. Some people make a full salary or even several thousand euros a month, but it will generally be useful if you need an extra income.
Currently, the most popular platforms and therefore with the greatest capacity to bring you clients are Upwork, Fiverr and Freelancer:
Upwork: It is only in English, but if you master it it has enormous potential for the number of clients it has.
Fiverr: it is in Spanish and has many clients demanding services, but the prices are low.
Freelancer: it is in Spanish, but it has less volume of clients and it is not so easy to use.
All tend to stay around 10% of your turnover and rely on your customer reviews to increase or decrease your popularity. The better your reputation, the more attractive you will be to users interested in services like yours.
5. Work as a virtual assistant
If you find it interesting to earn money offering online services and you want to ensure greater regularity and a more stable income, you can consider working as a virtual assistant.
The virtual assistant is one of the new professions that the internet technological revolution has brought with it, and whose demand is expected to continue growing in the coming years.
It basically consists of providing remote support to bloggers, digital entrepreneurs or even companies in relatively simple or mechanical tasks, so it does not require too specialized skills.
It is not a passive system, but in return it offers you the freedom to work from wherever you want, a very attractive salary and it also saves you from having to create a website. You could literally start working as a virtual assistant tomorrow.
A virtual assistant usually takes care of the following tasks:
Email management
Dissemination of content on social networks
Management and organization of the agenda
Management of billing and reports of income and expenses
Design of images and banners
Managing communities in Facebook groups
Writing newsletters, pages and articles
Video and / or podcast editing
Support in online courses and webinars
Analysis of surveys and feedback from readers
Organization of face-to-face events
The key here is in the trust that you can earn from your client, since then he will delegate tasks of greater responsibility to you.
The fees of a virtual assistant are usually established according to a price per hour that usually ranges from 10 to 40 euros per hour.
6. Work as a copywriter
Generating content that attracts and loyal readers is a fundamental pillar of any digital strategy, and that is well known by both large companies and small entrepreneurs.
That is why more than 3 million articles are published on blogs every day. There are posts on economics, animals, photography, food, health, marketing, videogames, philosophy, politics ... Anything you can imagine.
This need to create content has led to the emergence of another highly demanded professional profile in the online world: the editor.
Working as a copywriter is a very fast way to start making money online, as there is constant demand. You don't need great skills to do it either: you just have to like to write and be good at it.
How much money can a copywriter make?
It depends on your experience, quality of the texts and your specialty, but in general the rates tend to move between 3 and 10 euros for every 100 words, so that a 2,000 word article can be perfectly paid for more than 100 euros.
I have been working with editors for my affiliation projects for years and several of them, working full time, generate a monthly income of over 2,000 euros. But some can earn much more!
Writers specialized in creating sales pages are usually the best paid, since they are in charge of creating those messages that must convince people to buy. Thousands of euros have been paid for a page of this type.
If you are interested in starting to carve out a path (and an income) as a writer, I recommend that you sign up for platforms specialized in putting writers in contact with clients who need content, such as:
iWriter: one of the most popular. It doesn't pay very well, but it makes up for it with the number of customers who need content.
LowPost - Pays better and has decent customer volume.
Textbroker: allows you to negotiate the price directly with customers, but you will not find much demand.
7. Translate content
If you consider that you lack creativity or prefer something more mechanical than working as a copywriter, and you have a good level with a language, you can make the most of your knowledge by doing online translation services.
There are many companies that need to translate texts from their blogs, websites or posts on social networks and who are looking for native speakers to do this job. In addition, it is usually quite well paid.
In fact, at the time Netflix opened applications to find people to translate its series online through its Hermes program.
In the case of the translation from English to Castilian Spanish, they paid 12 dollars per minute translated, not bad!
Now they no longer require this service, but there are also online platforms that connect translators with companies that need translation services, such as Gengo.
Gengo is an online platform that has provided translation services to YouTube or Sony, among others. You just have to register on their website and pass their level test. From there, you will move up the ranks and access higher paying jobs as you translate.
The great advantage of Gengo is that you can choose what jobs you do and organize the schedules to your liking, which gives you enormous flexibility to earn money from anywhere.
Other interesting options are One Hour Translation (they also ask for a level test) or Textmaster.
And now the key question: how much money per month can you earn translating?
Well, according to Gengo's own calculations, if you regularly translate from other languages into Spanish, you will achieve an average monthly income of $ 435.
8. Create a YouTube channel
With the purchase of YouTube by Google and the exponential growth in the consumption of content in video format, there were people who, overnight, began to earn a lot of money with their video channel.
Yes, there are more and more competitors, but YouTube is the second Internet search engine, only behind Google, and it is expected that in a very short time it will become the first. That means its economic potential is booming.
It is difficult for it to replace a full salary, but if you can contribute knowledge or fun to users and you are funny in front of the camera, in the medium term it is possible to generate some extra money with a YouTube channel.
How much money are we talking about?
Surely you have heard that some Youtubers bill millions of euros a year. But you can count them on your fingers. For you to do your calculations, you should know that, on average, YouTube advertising pays between 0.20 and 3 euros for every 1,000 views of a video.
This figure depends on the theme of the channel, since content on Forex or health is usually paid better than channels on video games or curiosities.
Suppose that after 18 months you manage to build a channel with 100,000 subscribers, which is not bad at all.
If you were to upload a video a week that got 75,000 views and YouTube paid you 1 euro for every 1,000 views, your income would be approximately 300 euros per month.
As you can see, you must publish videos consistently if you want to make money with YouTube, so it is not really a very passive system unless they go viral or have thousands of searches a day.
Fortunately, there are also alternative ways to increase income:
Contact companies and offer to put their advertising on your videos
Sell custom merchandise, such as t-shirts and hats with your channel logo (when popular)
Accept donations with Patreon
If you already have stable income in some other way, betting on a YouTube channel is not going to mean too much investment and over time it can give you more than one pleasant surprise.
9. Sell online by dropshipping
Another good way to make money online is by selling products online.
I know people who are achieving more than 4,000 euros a month in profit with very simple but specialized products, so if you do it well it is possible to generate a good income.
You should know that, mainly, there are two ways to sell online:
Create your own website (again, it is easier than it seems) and sell your products there
Sell your products on third-party platforms (like Amazon)
If you don't make products, don't worry. It is as simple as finding a manufacturer with little popularity, buying the product and selling it to the final public through your website or the platform, adding your margin to the price.
For this reason, most tend to look for Chinese suppliers. Although you will have to carry out the import procedures, you will have a greater margin.
The main drawback is that you will have to carry out billing and product shipping tasks, which can be a lot of work. To avoid that hassle, it is better that you look for suppliers that work through dropshipping.
Dropshipping Oberlo
The dropshipping system will allow you to turn your online store into a passive business. With it, you do not keep stock or take care of shipments, you only take care of sending the order data to the manufacturer (there are very simple automated systems) and he takes care of getting the product to the customer.
Note: there are already websites like Oberlo that put you in direct contact with manufacturers that work with dropshipping.
The profit margin is usually between 20 and 50%. The inconvenient? If the shipment does not arrive or a return has to be attended, customers will complain to you and you will have to resolve the issue with the manufacturer.
The keys to the success of this system are:
Find a product with more demand than supply
Achieve a serious and reliable supplier
Have a good profit margin
Drive traffic to the web with organic positioning, Google Ads or Facebook Ads
10. Sell courses on online platforms
If the idea of selling products online, having to find distributors and creating a website does not appeal to you, an excellent alternative is to sell your knowledge on online platforms.
The concept is simple: you create a video or text course on a specific topic, upload it to platforms like Udemy, and price it.
To create the course you can record yourself on video, record a presentation on your screen, or do it in text format (in pdf files), just as you would for your blog.
This type of platform receives thousands of daily visits from users looking for courses on a topic, so if yours meets any demand and meets the expectations of users, you can earn a lot of money.
Ok, but how much money can you make?
In general, these types of courses are not usually very expensive (according to Udemy, 90% of the courses that are sold are priced below 50 euros).
Udemy also has a calculator, the Udemy Marketplace Insights, which allows you to calculate the potential of your online course based on your topic.
For example, if you created a photography course for beginners, this would be the potential:
As you can see, most photography courses generate just over 30 euros per month, while the most successful courses exceed 400 euros per month.
Of course, there are also instructors who generate thousands of euros per month, such as this web design course that currently.
If you want to build a successful course on Udemy, I recommend this strategy:
First list those topics in which you consider that you know more than the average of the population
Create an instructor account on Udemy and enter your topics in the Udemy Marketplace Insights to calculate the potential of your course
Stay with the theme where the monthly income from popular courses is higher
If the demand is also HIGH and the number of courses is MEDIUM or LOW, you are facing a good opportunity
Creating a course is laborious and not many instructors reach large numbers, but if it is of quality and the evaluations are positive, you will gradually increase your turnover.
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