You probably came here to get some make money online ideas like any alpha would.
When you search make money online, you mostly get scuzzy ideas like filling out surveys or becoming a mystery shopper. Lol. Thats why I hired a researcher and spent 40+ hours putting together this post. It only serves up money-making ideas that can make you good money.
If you wanna go straight to my #1 money-making option, you can shortcut to this quick video.
It will get you up to speed quick:
This guide comes in two parts:
Part 1: ranks the best ways to make money online in 2020
Part 2: money-making trends
As always, the following ideas are ranked according to potential earnings, industry trends, and “time wealth” (the ability for the idea to become automated, thus providing passive income).
For other similar rankings, check out our work from home jobs, MLM, home based business, small business ideas and online business ideas reports.
Without further ramble, here are the best, legitimate ways to make money online in 2017:
21. Survey taking
I put this in mostly as a joke to give you better context why its so basic.
“I don’t wanna learn a skillset and I am too lazy to start a business”, you’re thinking to yourself. Take some surveys online. You’ll make very little.
(Truthfully it shouldn’t have made this list, but I figured I’d throw something in here for people who are lazy)
There are tons of paid survey websites—Pinecone (1), SendEarnings (2) and Swagbucks (3), just to name a few—that can have you earning cash, gift vouchers and prizes.
20. Human intelligence tasks
You’ve probably noticed I write a lot about automation because it can increase productivity and profit. Huge online retailers know this, too, and they automate everything they can. But even in this age of artificial intelligence, some things still require a human being. Such things are called human intelligence tasks, or HITs, and you can earn great money completing them online through portals like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (4).
Tasks like “translate a paragraph from English to French” or “rate the search results for these keywords”.
19. Medical billing
Also known as health information technicians, medical billers are the go-betweens for patients and healthcare providers. And, as you probably guessed, medical billers process and bill for a variety of services given to patients. If you’re thinking, “Not a lot of glamor here,” you’re right. But anyone with a high school diploma or GED can do it, and business is good.
The medical billing industry is expected to grow 22% by 2020, much faster than most other industries. And the pay’s not half bad: the top 10% of medical billers earn more than $56,200 (6).
18. Tax preparing
I hear what you’re thinking. “I don’t even want to do my own taxes, much less other people’s”. But what if you could get paid $100 an hour and up? That’s what experienced tax preppers earn (7).
If you’re good with numbers, helping people and small businesses with their taxes is a market that will never dry up. You need to be certified, but it’s pretty easy. The Income Tax School (8) offers tons of inexpensive programs as short as ten weeks.
17. Web domain flipping
TV reality shows featuring folks flipping houses are a dime a dozen. But did you know you can flip online, too? But instead of houses, you’ll be flipping domains.
“Domain” refers to the root address used to find a site on the Web. For example, the domain of this website is MultipleStreams.org. Domain flipping is just like house flipping—buy a domain, mark it up, sell it for a primo profit. There are even online platforms now, like Flippa, to help you do it. One domain flipper grossed $165K off eight domains in only two months (9)
16. Virtual assisting
A virtual assistant (or “VA”) gives professional administrative, technical, or creative/social support to clients via the Web. VAs work online to handle clients’ emails, make travel arrangements, manage schedules, or anything else a time-strapped client may need. And the VA market is exploding, with growth projected to exceed $5 billion in five years’ time (10).
15. Network marketing
I know what you’re thinking. Yes, this blog does dis network marketing, but network marketing remains one of the best ways to make money online.
If you’re sure you wanna go the MLM route, the better alternative to hitting up your family or well-dressed folk at Whole Foods: Leverage the internet—blogs, video, social media, online ads, and partnerships – to recruit people into your organization.
14. e-Renter
As Airbnb continues to RIP the hotel business, a slew of other sites offering on-demand rentals are taking the Web by storm. And renting homes is so last year. Now, you can rent virtually anything.
Have some nice clothes to rent? Try RentNotBuy (11) or Loanables (12). Want to make some extra cream loaning out your car? RealyRides (13) and GetAround (14) can help. Got some sports gear lying around? Spinlister (15) can rent it.
13. Business consultant
Are you good with research and data? Are you an expert in any particular facet of business? If so, this could be a windfall for you. Trust me. I do a lot of this myself. I use my experience and expertise as an entrepreneur to offer clients advice on how to launch their own businesses. I do it all virtually, and I usually charge around $200 an hour for the service.
12. Video producer
Video producers are in high demand. You gotta be talented, though, otherwise you’ll blend in with the masses. All you need is talent, editing software, a camera, and a knack for spotting trends and for determining what’s likely to go viral (like the ones you see in your Facebook timeline everyday)
11. Web developer
Although you’ll have to have a killer sense of style and baller UI skills, a lot of what goes into web design can be learned online. CreativeLive (18) offers affordable (and sometimes free) virtual classes on the foundations of modern web design.
Okay. So visual artistry isn’t your thing. You can always try web development instead. If design is the facade of a website, development is the structure. The web developer is the guy who engineers the code that makes websites work. Codecademy (19) offers inexpensive online courses that will give you a solid foundation in web development in as little as a few weeks.
10. Facebook Ads consultant
If you’re a boss at Facebook ads, there are thousands of businesses that wanna work with you. Period. You can either take over their ad campaigns (hard to scale) or start offering your own Facebook Ads coaching service (easier to scale) through a video vault or private Facebook group.
9. Content creator
“Content is king.” That’s what all the experts say. If you want to develop an online moneymaking skillset in crazy high demand, this is it.
Finding good content providers has been one of the greatest challenges for my businesses. There’re a lot of hacks out there—I call them content “pretenders.” But if you can write a baller article or post, produce a killer video, or design breathtaking infographics, you’re in high demand. Bloated corporate budgets will love what you bring to the table.
8. SEO consulant
According to Webopedia, “Search engine optimization is a methodology of strategies, techniques, and tactics used to increase the amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine.” And as the internet becomes even more crowded, search engine optimization (or SEO) grows even higher in demand.
The great news is with a little study anybody can do it. The Moz SEO guide (21) is a good place to get a head start.
7. Social media/influencer marketer
The only thing bigger than SEO right now might be social media marketing, and there are countless businesses out there that don’t want to create their own “in-house” team.
You either gotta BE the social media influencer or you’re connecting influencers with makers. Because of an influencer’s following, companies will pay them—tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes—to promote the companies’ brands.
6. Build a new marketplace
Most slept on
(and I am working on one of these BIG DADDYs myself)
You’ll probably fail or do 7 figures here
How do you think Naval made his money?
Step 1: Build an info platform
Step 2: Incentivize 2 audiences to connect (like VCs w/ early startups)
Step 3: Profit from referrals, listing fees
5. Build your own infoproduct
Insane profits but you better bring the intel
(minimum top 10% in your craft)
Step 1: Create a video product or video course
Step 2: Run traffic to it (paid, social, content marketing)
Step 3: Get feedback from community, upsell new products
Examples: Tai Lopez, Alex Becker, Ryan Moran, Ryan Deiss, Ramit Sethi
4. Build ecommerce brand
Step 1: Use Shopify or Clickfunnels to build ecommerce brand
Step 2: Dropship product or create your own product
Step 3: Run paid ads to your product
Find out how much ad spend $ it takes to produce 1 sale.
From there you can scale 6 figures easily.
E-commerce shopping in the U.S. is expected to reach $500 billion soon.
Make your own products or go the affiliate route (Affiliate networks, Amazon, Alibaba). Think: Multiple streams.
Examples: Mentorbox, MVMT watches
3. Build a marketing agency
Simple maths
Step 1: Get 5 clients paying you $2,000/mo
Step 2: Demonstrate value using FB & Google ads + content marketing
Step 3: Find more clients*
*find “big daddys” who spend $$$ on billboards but on page 3 of Google for their main keyword
2. Build an authority site
Long-term play but commissions get juicy
(I own 3 authority sites)
Step 1 – focus on underserved audience (skin care for men)
Step 2 – build actionable, 3,000-word, evergreen guides that address pain-points in audience
Step 3 – sell to community
Example: Multiple Streams
1. Create leads for local businesses
The best because you can SCALE & AUTOMATE
Step 1 – create lead funnel for a niche like towing or divorce attorney
Step 2 – run FB & Google ads to it
Step 3 – forward leads to client & PROFIT
Sell the leads to local businesses on a commission or pay-per-lead model
Why is this #1?
Low barrier of entry, it can be infinitely scaled, automated and there isn’t tons of competition. Yet. Our coaching program has people who’ve built 30k/mo agencies – even 100k/mo agencies – using this model.
Part 2: Online money-making trends
Folks, you’ll notice a lot of these “make money online” ideas have common skillsets that overlap.
Copywriter. Paid Ads.
Not long ago, if you wanted to make extra money you took on a second job, with a second workplace, a second commute, a second boss, and all the headaches. Not so anymore. Thanks to the Web, if you want to make a little extra money today, all you need is an internet connection and some ingenuity.
But certain things never change. Commerce is commerce whether it’s face-to-face or avatar-to-avatar, and as always, commerce is governed by trends. And when it comes to making money online, there are three key trends driving profitability. I call them the “3Ms,” and they are
1) Mobile
If you want to make money online, you have to understand that most people are interacting from their smartphones. Whether you’re selling goods or providing a service, it means everything—from your websites to your emails—has to be mobile-friendly. Anything less is like concealing the entrance to your storefront.
Google’s mobile-friendliness analyzer (23). Enter a website and this tool will tell you how mobile-friendly it is, and make optimization recommendations.
2) Millennials
The numbers were pretty grim for a while there. Millennial employment was teetering somewhere between egregious and embarrassing. But the slack has been slowly seeping from the 25 to 34 year old cohort, and, according to Business Insider, “There is a long uptrend in 25 to 34 employment coming (24).”
Increased employment means increased spending, and this from the largest consumer group since the Baby Boomers. By 2020, Millennial spending will account for 30% of all U.S. retail sales, or roughly $1.4 trillion (25)!
Bottom line: if you want to make money online, you have to understand the Millennial mindset. This article from Shopify is a good place to start (26).
3) Automation
From drones that deliver packages to robots that pack and ship them, everything is trending toward mechanization these days. We talked about it earlier in this article, where I called it “automation.” But it’s all the same phenomenon. Greater automation means greater profit for less work, and you have to understand this equation if you want to make money online.
Whether you’re running a business or just gig working online, automation offers you “time wealth.”
In closing, I haven’t been shy about why local lead generation is my #1 pick because its the best money-making opportunity out there.
If you think I am wrong, I’d love to hear why and I’ll Paypal you $500 if I think you’re right.
To become an SEO consultant you need extensive online marketing experience. A newbee cannot just go and start providing consultancy for SEO because its an ever evolving field.
True, as is the case for most valuable skillsets.
Jeremy,
Thank you for the mucho valuable content! I have been working on the authority model for some time. I have not been successful yet.
Recently I’ve been wanting to go more local. I already have a decent content creation gig, BUT I want something that scales up and is more automated.
I believe you are spot on with the creating leads for local businesses. I had brainstormed the idea as well, very similar to your simple method.
Appreciate the knowledge. I am going to jump on this in 2019!
Mark
Epic brother
40+ Hours that too for one post, that’s dedication mate.
Really liked your content, Very Helpful.
Keep up the good work.
Cheers,
Shalabh
Thank you.