*insert clapping here*

Congrats on taking the first step towards building a profitable, highly scalable online income stream that could change your life forever.

Even if you’ve never made a cent online, this guide will help you make your first $$$ online, regardless of your skillset. All you need is an internet connection to start making money online, that’s it.

Before we get started, know that you’ll need motivation, determination and perseverance in order to make this work.

I’d love to tell you that there’s a magic button you can press that does all the hard work for you, but that simply doesn’t exist.

If you want to make money online, -and I’m not talking about the odd dollar here and there (I’m talking BIG money), then you need to focus and give it everything you’ve got.

Internet millionaires are all over the place, and fact of the matter is, they’re no smarter than you. They simply know something you don’t (yet), and have put in the hours required to make it work.

Money flowing into your bank account while you sleep, that’s the dream, right? Well, let’s make that dream a reality!

Now who am I and why should you listen to me? I’m just a regular guy who started looking at ways to make money online in 2009, towards the end of 2010 I was able to quit my office job and have been working from home full-time since 2011.

I’ve made a LOT of money on the internet, I’ve also lost a lot. Most importantly, over the years I’ve learnt what works and what doesn’t, and now it’s time to pay it forward.

So, let’s get started.

Best Ways to Make Money on the Internet

There are about a million ways to make money online. Selling t-shirts, dropshipping, Youtube, online courses, etc.

Of course I can’t show you ALL the ways of making money on the internet, but here’s what’s been making ME the most money over the years:

1. Freelancing
2. Affiliate Marketing
3. Selling/Reselling

Let me break it down a bit and show you how, where and why.

1. Freelancing

I’m going to start with freelancing, since it requires no investment and is a fast way of making money online. The money you make from freelancing can be used to invest in other online money making opportunities we’ll discuss later.

Freelancing is by far the fastest way to make your first few dollars online. It requires no money to get started and no special skills. Jobs ranging from data entry to article writing to web design, almost anything you can think of is there for the taking.

I can’t tell you how much money I’ve made when I just started out writing articles and ebooks for people, but it’s a lot (roughly $600 per ebook of 5k words which takes a day or two). Not the most fun job, but if you need money fast, freelancing is the way to go.

Once I landed an editing job on a well-known article directory back when article directories were still going strong, doing something that took me 4 hours and got paid $900. That one job turned out to last almost 5 months.

The only reason I’m sharing this is to show you that you CAN make money freelancing even if you don’t have any special skills.

I was no editor, I also wasn’t much of a writer back then, but as my ratings went up I started landing more and more clients. Many of which kept paying me for more and more work.

The only hard part about freelancing is getting that first job, that first good rating. Once you’ve completed your first job and got a good rating from the client, more people will start hiring you.

It snowballs, BIG TIME.

Here are the best freelancing sites you can join free of charge:

1. https://guru.com
2. https://upwork.com
3. https://freelancer.com

Simply sign up, fill out your profile with a nice picture and list your skills, whatever they might be. Then all that’s left is to start bidding on jobs. It’s that simple.

Employers will list their requirements for a particular job, if it’s something you can do you can bid on it and write your proposal (and how much you will charge).

If the employer is happy with your bid, he/she will accept your proposal contact you to start work. Once done and the client is happy, you get paid and you can ask them to rate you (if they don’t do it themselves). Boom, done.

2. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing has been around forever, even before the internet existed. What it is, is simply referring customers to someone else’s products/services and get paid a commission should they take action.

This action could be either buying something, signing up for a newsletter or downloading something. It’s by far the best and easiest way to make money while you sleep.

The best part about affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to worry about customer care, you’ve done your job. No complaints, no customers to keep happy, just profits.

Now, in order to make affiliate marketing work, you’re going to need a few things:

1. Website or blog
2. Social network accounts
3. Affiliate Networks
4. Autoresponder
5. Traffic

Now of course you don’t have to have a website or blog to make it work, a simple Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn account by itself could work.

However, if you want to maximize your earning potential you’re definitely going to want a blog or website of your own.

It doesn’t need to cost you anything, as there are free options out there for creating a free blog. The 2 main free ones that are easy to set up are:

1. Google Sites (here’s a great step–by–step guide on creating your first site)
2. Wordpress

WordPress is what I’ve been using for all these years, as it gives you more flexibility to scale your business. It takes a bit longer to get used to as there are more advanced features as opposed to Google Sites, but either of these 2 options are a great starting point to get you up and running.

Both WordPress and Google Sites are 100% free to use, however, the downside to the free options are that you don’t get to choose your own domain name.

Instead, you’ll have a “yoursite.wordpress.com” website, instead of a “yoursite.com” or whichever extension you’d prefer to use like .org, .net, .us, .co.uk, etc.

If you want your own domain name, I suggest Hostgator, which is the web hosting company I’ve used for all these years. Their cloud packages start at roughly $13 per month which is very affordable and worth every penny.

Having your very own domain name definitely helps with credibility, and in turn, you’ll make more affiliate sales with a custom domain as opposed to a yoursite.wordpress.com or Google sites extension.

If you’re looking for a great WordPress drag n’ drop site builder, check out  ThriveThemes’ Thrive Architect. I personally use and absolutely love Thrive Architect for building great pages, and Thrive Leads for generating leads. Worth every penny if you have a few dollars to invest.

Once you have a website, together with your social media accounts like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Instagram, all that’s left to do is to start promoting affiliate products and services and get paid.

Affiliate Networks

An affiliate network is where you’ll get products and services to promote through a unique tracking link. When someone clicks on your unique link, a tracking ‘cookie’ is placed on their system, so should they make a purchase or take a specific action, you’ll get paid.

We also have an affiliate program where we currently pay anything up to $591 per sale. We also pay recurring commissions on all our monthly services, so should you refer 1 client through your unique tracking link, you’ll get paid a commission each and every month as long as that person remains a client.

Recurring commissions is the way to go when it comes to affiliate marketing, that is true “making money while you sleep” at its best.

Here are some other affiliate programs you can join free of charge:

https://jvzoo.com 

https://clickbank.com  https://cj.com 

Amazon is another popular affiliate platform, but know that they pay pennies, so not worth your time in my opinion.

Once you’ve found an affiliate offer you’d like to promote, all that’s left to do is to write a short article about it. Reviews work great, as well as lists comparing similar products with one another.

Think about reviews you’ve read online recently. What do they say, what do they look like? Simply tell a reader what they’re getting, most of the time everything you need for your article is on that product/service’s sales page, so it’s just a matter of re-writing and adding a few words. It doesn’t need to be complicated.

Get your unique tracking link and add it to your article. This could be either a banner, or a simple text link, like the ones in this guide.

When a user reads your article, clicks on that link and buys something, you profit. Simple.

You can also use your tracking links to refer friends via email or on your social network accounts like Facebook. The internet is yours for the taking as long as you don’t spam anyone.

Autoresponders

An autoresponder is something that will make you more money over the years than you could possibly imagine. It’s where someone who visits your website can subscribe to your newsletter by submitting their name and email address.

This allows you to market to them over and over again. You see it all over the internet, those popups offering free ebooks, courses or helpful newsletters in exchange for your email address. That’s an autoresponder, a very profitable way of making money online.

The one I use and recommend is GetResponse, coupled with Thrive Leads you’ll build a list of hungry buyers that will buy from you over and over again.

GetResponse also have a great free 90–day list building course you’ll get instant access to, showing you the ins-and-outs of how autoresponders work and how it can help build a profitable email list of your own.

All you need to make it work, is to give away something for free your readers can’t say no to in exchange for an email address. It can be a short 2-page ebook, a checklist, recipes, patterns, how-to, demo, trial, etc.

You can even give away THIS GUIDE to build your list, as long as you don’t edit anything and keep the name and format as is.

Simple as that. Use GetResponse or Thrive Leads to build an appealing form to fill out, and BAM, your leads will start flowing in. With Thrive Leads you can also split test different designs or copy for best results. I split test everything, so should you if you want to maximize your profits.

Traffic

Once you have your affiliate offer and your lead magnet (autoresponder) ready, the only thing that’s left to do is to get as many eyes on it as possible.

You need traffic. Good, targeted traffic. Without traffic there will be no sales.

There are many ways of generating traffic for free, one of them is via social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Join groups, take part in discussions, and recommend your affiliate article when you see an opportunity.

Other great ways of generating traffic are:

• Forums
• YouTube
• Google

Of course, there are a ton of other ways to drive traffic to your affiliate offers. There are paid ads, shoutouts, guest blogging, quora, etc. But I want to discuss the 3 mentioned above because they’re the fastest, easiest and cheapest ways of driving traffic.

Forums

Discussion forums are where people who have the same interests gather to discuss different aspects around a specific topic. One forum I use all the time is called “WarriorForum”, which is all about SEO and Online Marketing.

You can learn a lot on forums, you can also get a LOT of bad info from people who have no idea what they’re talking about, so watch out.

But I’m not telling you about forums to learn from, but to HELP OTHERS by answering questions. Most forums allow you to have a “signature” below all your responses in a particular discussion thread. This signature can point to your affiliate offers, or your lead magnets (signup forms).

If you answer a question on a forum relevant to what you’re offering (either your lead magnet or an affiliate offer you’re promoting), people are bound to see and click on your link to see what your signature is about.

To find a forum in your niche, simply do a Google search for:

Yourniche inurl:forum

So if you’re selling bikes, you’ll search for “bikes inurl:forum”, minus the quotes.

That will return a list of forums you can sign up to and participate in. Be sure to check whether they allow you to posts links in your signature after signing up. If they don’t, don’t bother.

YouTube

Youtube is another great source of traffic, and truth is you don’t need a camera or even a mic to make great videos. If you do have a mic and camera (or webcam), great. If not, or if you’re simply not comfortable showing your face to the world, there’s another way.

You can always use something like Pictory AI, which allows you to create professional videos with ease. No need to download anything, no need to record videos or talk into a mic… All you need is some writer content to make awesome videos that will drive traffic to your offers for years to come.

Check it out, here’s a 14-day trial you can use to make as many videos as you want.

Google

Organic traffic is a bit trickier than the first 2 methods, but highly targeted and very high-converting. Have you heard about Search Engine Optimization? If not, here’s a free SEO guide I’ve written that will teach you all the basics of SEO.

SEO is simply optimizing your website and content in order to rank on Google’s search results. The goal is to rank on page 1, within the first 3 search results for a specific keyword or phrase.

It takes some time to master and requires some split testing, but once you nail it you’ll be making sales left and right. SEO also plays a major role in how YouTube videos rank, so be sure to download our free guide.

That’s all there is to it in a nutshell.

3. Selling/Reselling

This is by far the most profitable way of making money online, although it takes a bit more work and generally requires some investment to make it work.

This is where you sell either your own products or services, or resell someone else’s. When I say resell, I’m not talking about affiliate marketing.

You can sell literally anything online, provided it’s legal of course, so the possibilities are endless.

Here’s a complete guide on reselling, how to do it effectively with minimal effort and make a lot of money doing so.

I’m not going to go into detail with regards to reselling, as we have an in-depth guide available already, but know that it’s a great way to make money online.

Selling your own products/services are just as profitable, if not more. But it does require more resources and more work to pull off successfully.

The beauty is, anyone can do it anywhere in the world as long as you have an internet connection and the drive to succeed.

Here’s what you need to make it work:

1. Your own website
2. Social media pages
3. Autoresponder
4. Platforms to sell on
5. Marketing

In short, you want lead generation forms all over your website and social pages in order to capture leads. When it comes to marketing, you can recruit affiliates through places like Clickbank and JVZoo that can help you promote and sell more products/services.

Paid traffic is another very effective way of marketing, but can be a money sink if you don’t know what you’re doing. Here’s a complete guide on free and PPC traffic.

Selling online isn’t hard, so if you have an idea, we’d love to work with you to get your business off the ground.