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.
- The assets are those that require you to have to be doing something to generate income, as can be to sell crafts made by you, translate text, or play poker.
- The liabilities are those that, once created, require virtually 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.
The latter is the most desired.
Thanks to passive systems you can continue to generate income while you sleep, are traveling, or dedicate your time to anything else. They not only give you money: they also give you freedom.
And it’s not that active systems are bad, but the Internet is like a showcase that never closes. It’s always up and running, and you can take advantage of it to get a steady stream of income.
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 is to create a website where you will publish analysis and product 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.
Let’s say you are passionate about photography. You could create a web page where you would post reviews of different cameras or lenses with a link to the product page on Amazon for readers interested in buying.
This, for example, is an affiliate link.
Your website would appear in search engines like Google when people searched for analysis or comparisons of those cameras. They would go into your article, click on the affiliate link, and if they ended up buying, Amazon would give you a percentage.
Do you see where the grace is? You create a web page, you publish articles and, once they have visited, 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.
Earning some money with affiliation is relatively simple, but if you want to invoice figures like these, you will have to dedicate many hours and effort to it.
So forget about anyone who sells you that you can build such a system on a Caribbean beach overnight. To earn more than a dozen euros a month you will have to sacrifice a large part of your free time.
The good news is that, after the initial effort, you can dedicate yourself to reaping the rewards. Not to mention that you can maintain the system remotely, working from anywhere in the world (something important for a travel lover like me).
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 the theme of the web, they are integrated quite naturally into the pages.
Unlike affiliate marketing, the idea 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.
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.
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 you 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 text, editing a video, designing a logo, writing a resume, or preparing a PowerPoint presentation.
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 worked, although some specialized or highly reputable assistants can charge considerably more.
If you want to take the step as a virtual assistant, there are three ways to get your first clients:
- Contact entrepreneurs, bloggers or small businesses directly and present your services. Try to provide a sample of your work so that they can check the quality of your services.
- Be attentive to requests for virtual assistants made to their subscribers by bloggers who are starting to stand out.
- Sign up for Freelancer, People Per Hour, Workana or Upwork, because many entrepreneurs look for virtual assistants there. If they are satisfied, then you can propose a long-term collaboration.
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 to 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 a 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 earn?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.