Are you looking for ways on how to make money online for beginners from anywhere in the world? I was once in your shoes, but now I am able to make a full time income working online!
Making money online can be life changing. It literally means you can make money from the comfort of your home without even having to get out of your pyjamas – who’s not up for that?! Especially since the pandemic and never ending lockdowns, learning how to make money online is very smart in today’s day and age. Plus it also means if you want to travel and move abroad you can still earn money from anywhere in the world! Having the choice of this freedom can honestly change your life.
If you are new to the idea of making money online and are a bit of a beginner it can seem quite daunting as it isn’t the ‘traditional’ type of job. But times are changing and there are so many different ways to make money online, including many ways to earn a passive income. Let’s look at some of the best ways how beginners can make money online!
12 WAYS HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE FOR BEGINNERS FROM ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD
1. Create A Website
One of the best ways that beginners can start to make money online is to start your own blog website. My website is actually one of the main ways I make money online. You can set up a blog in as little as 10 minutes – here you’ll find a step by step guide on how to set up your own blog!
The great thing about starting a blog is that literally anyone can do it. You can do it on any subject you wish and you don’t need any qualifications. You don’t need to be a writer to start a blog. I definitely didn’t have confidence in writing skills before I started my blog. But I just kept writing. All you need is something that you are passionate about, and something that you have knowledge in so you can share it with other people. We all have knowledge and skills and many people around the world will have something to learn from you. Many people think that blog are just about travelling or cooking or parenting, but the possibilities are actually endless. You can literally start a blog about any subject you wish!
If you are looking for a way to earn money fast, starting a blog is definitely not the fastest way to make money online initially. It usually takes around a year of working on your blog before you’ll start making decent money. It is however a great way to make passive income in the long term. When you have your own website you have the potential to make an income through several different ways such as on ad networks, affiliate marketing and selling your own digital products (read more about all these below). You need to put time and some money into starting your own website at first, but this can be one of the most successful long-term ways of earning money online! And once your website is established and you have several blog posts, you can then can do minimal work on your blog yet you will still earn money! Once you learn the ways how to get your website on the first page of Google you’ll get lots more visitors to your site. And more visitors means more potential to earn money!
The upfront fees for starting a website are extremely reasonable – you can create one for less than $4 per month if you choose the popular company Bluehost as the hosting provider for your website! Click on the banner below to start creating your own website now!
Follow this step by step guide to set up your blog!
If you are thinking to create a blog or have just started one lately there are some mistakes you should avoid to ensure you have a successful blog and earn money quicker.
HOW TO MAKE MONEY ON A BLOG
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Monetising through ad networks
Once you start to get a decent amount of visitors to your website you can start to make money through ad networks advertising on your site. Ad networks pay you to let them advertise relevant products and services on your website (you know those little ads that are usually on the side of a blog post? The ad companies are paying the blogger to advertise on this space). Display ads on your website are very easy to set up, and you can make several hundred dollars per month or more with this method of passive income alone! Having display ads on your website is one of the most stable forms of income each month for many bloggers. Be careful not to overdo it and have too many ads popping up on your website – yes you could make more money by having more ads visible, but if the ads are too annoying or take away from the user experience, the readers might click off your blog as the ads are too distracting.
There are several very reputable ad networks, including Ezoic, SheMedia and Mediavine (Mediavine does tend to have the highest payouts). If you have 10,000+ website viewers per month you can make money through advertising with Ezoic. If you have 20,000+ viewers per month you can apply to the SheMedia advertising network, or if you have more than 50,000+ readers per month to your website you can apply to Mediavine advertising network. If you don’t have the traffic numbers to qualify for any of the above yet, you can apply to Google Adsense, but if your traffic is fairly low the payouts will be quite low.
Ideally ad networks like traffic to come mostly from the USA or other Western countries such as the UK as these countries tend to offer higher conversion rates. The more traffic you get from these countries, the higher revenue you will get.
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Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is the most popular way to make money on your blog. It basically involves the blogger promoting a service or a product on their website and linking to it using a special trackable link. Whenever someone clicks on the link and makes a purchase, you are tracked as the ‘referrer’ so you make a small commission at no extra cost to the buyer. The blogger is basically the salesman – the middle man promoting the product. Affiliate Marketing is most successfully done through blogs or websites, which is another reason why it is a great idea to start your own website!
So many companies have affiliate programs where they will give you your own personalised affiliate links to promote their products. To join an affiliate program the easiest way is just to type it into Google. For example if you want to join the Bluehost affiliate program just type in “Bluehost affiliate program” into Google and you’ll be taken to the affiliate page. You can then just sign up. If your website seems like a good fit for the brand they will accept you onto their affiliate program and then you can add your personalised link into your articles.
Some affiliate programs offer a really good commission rate, for example: Bluehost and Booking.com. Sadly many others such as the Amazon affiliate network, have severely decreased the amount of commission you can make, and currently they only offer a shocking 1% commission!
Unlike displaying ads on your website where you have to wait until you have a certain amount of blog traffic, you can add affiliate links into your blog posts straight away! It can take a while to build up sales (and trust with your viewers), but if you make sure to include relevant affiliate links into each of your blog posts, in turn it can help you passively earn an online income! Make sure to not swamp your blog posts with affiliate links, otherwise it might turn readers off – especially if they aren’t useful or helpful to the reader. If you don’t have a website you can still do affiliate marketing via your Social Media channels such as Facebook or Instagram, but it might be harder for you to get accepted by some companies as an affiliate as many prioritise those with websites.
Whenever you use affiliate links in a blog post you MUST have a disclaimer on the post stating that you have relationships with brands and companies that you recommend on the website and that you may earn commission, otherwise it could be misleading to the readers. It is a requirement by the FTC. A disclaimer can be similar along the lines of:
This post may contain affiliate links, which means if you click on an affiliate link and make a purchase I earn a small commission at no extra charge to you! Thanks for supporting us!
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Sell Your Own Products
You can start a shop on your website and sell your own products on your website by downloading the Woocommerce plugin. You can sell anything from presets to ebooks, your clothing brand, physical or digital products, the possibilities are endless. Myself and my partner actually sell some of our most popular drone photographs on the website, which always do really well. See a couple of our favourites below!
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Sponsored Blog Posts
Another good way to make money online on your blog is to have sponsored blog posts. Either you can reach out to companies who pay bloggers to write content for them, or companies can pay you to write an article promoting them or their service, with links going back to their website.
HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE FOR BEGINNERS – FROM ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD!
2. Sell An Ebook
Selling an ebook is a really good idea for beginners how to make a money online. And once you have written the book is it actually very easy to start selling it! The great thing is that you don’t even need a publisher as you can just go through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing. You also don’t need your own website to promote your book – although if you do have a website that’s great as you can also sell it and advertise it on there which will bring in more website views (make sure your website is self-hosted though, otherwise you won’t be able to sell products on it). You can add Woocommerce to your website and start selling through there.
If the idea of selling an ebook appeals to you, think about what your expertise are. What information do you have and what information do people need? What questions do people have that you have the answers to? Are you able to put this knowledge into a book you can sell online?
There is so much free information available on the internet these days that you need to think carefully before you just dive in and start writing an ebook. You need to do your market research – are people actually looking for this information? Can they already access this information easily online for free? Are there already lots of ebooks out there that teach the same thing? There is no point creating something if there is no space in the market for it.
Like creating a website, writing an ebook will take a lot of time for you to create and it is a big upfront investment in your time. But once it’s done it is a great way for you to make money with minimal effort. With digital products like an ebook however don’t expect it to be an overnight success. You will also need to do a lot of upfront marketing to promote your book to your audience!
3. Create A Course
If you’re highly skilled in a particular subject and are better at explaining things and speaking to the camera as opposed to writing your knowledge down in a book you should think about creating an online course as a way to make a passive income online. Perhaps a photography course, a web design course, a digital marketing or social media marketing course, a course on how to successfully create a blog, a sewing course, a cooking course. Heck there’s even courses on ‘How To Create A Course’! The possibilities are endless – you can literally make a course on anything these days!
Some of the best platforms on which to create online courses are Udemy and Teachable.
If you are looking for some online course creation classes there are plenty on Skillshare – click here to get FREE access!
4. Sell Your Products on Etsy
You don’t need a blog to sell your own products online. If you are good at designing things, websites like Etsy could be a great way for you to make some money. Selling your own products is another effective way for beginners to make money online. I love Etsy as you can even sell digital products on here such as digital downloads of your art for people to print out and hang in a frame on their wall. The benefit of selling digital products like this is that you don’t have to print, package or ship your products – you just send a digital file of the product by email, the client can instantly download it and then they do the rest! So even if you are travelling you can still make money from anywhere in the world!
You can of course sell physical products too where you ship the product to the customer. Think about something you love doing, for example if you enjoy making jewellery or personalised baby products or name badge stickers, why not make money from it and start a shop on Etsy. Etsy can be life changing in creating an online income for even beginners to the online world. Since the pandemic, many people found themselves out of work but they turned their passions into a business using Etsy alone!
If you have a blog and sell your products on there, you can also sell your products on Etsy too to reach a wider audience. Plus you’ll often find higher conversions with Etsy as people genuinely go on there with the intent to buy something, whereas that isn’t always the case when people read blogs!
Once you have your shop, you can use your social media to promote it! For example you can make reels on Instagram or TikTok where you can show your products and share your story. Especially on TikTok it can be easy to go viral and reach a very wide audience.
5. Sell Your Photos Online
If you are a photographer, or you just simply enjoy photography and take good quality pictures why not sell some of your photos online to earn some extra money?
Companies, magazines and websites are always looking for stock products to buy online, so this can be a great way for beginners to make some extra money online. Upload your photos to a stock image site, then each time someone purchases one of your photos you will earn some money. The same photo can even be sold again and again – it isn’t just a one time purchase.
There are some stock image sites that don’t pay much for your photos so you want to make sure you avoid those. Websites like Deposit Photos, Shutterstock and EyeEm are good websites where you can sell your photos for a decent amount of money – sometimes for a few hundred dollars per photo. Your photos don’t need to be of dramatic scenery, often simple flatlays like the one below are required more. Have a look on the websites for examples of stock flatlay photos for ideas.
If you have your own website you can also sell your prints there, as well as on Etsy.
6. Start A YouTube Channel
Nowadays most people will prefer to watch a video as opposed to read an article for the same amount of information as it requires less effort on the consumer’s part. Video is quicker and often more effective and people can retain the information better. It can also appeal to a much larger audience as language is less of a barrier as video content is visual. Video is the way forward, however much us traditional writers hate to say so.
Starting a YouTube channel can be a great way for beginners to make money online. You’ll need to create engaging videos and post regularly, and soon you’ll start to get views and people subscribing to your channel. Once you have over 1,000 subscribers and have had 4,000 watch hours in the past year you can apply to join the YouTube Partners Program and start monetising your channel!
YouTube has been on the back burner for me for ages as I wanted to get my income through my website stable and consistent before I branched out and focused on YouTube properly. It is always best to establish yourself in one area first and monetise there, as opposed to spreading yourself too thinly and therefore not making any money.
Like a blog, with your YouTube you’ll need to put a lot of time into it and still need to keep updating your channel and adding fresh content – you can’t just do all the work at the beginning and then do absolutely nothing later on just because you are making money! But it is a great little earner and videos can become a passive income earner for you for years! You can create videos on whatever you fancy – there are a million different options! With video content you can really go very niche or really broad on your content – it’s up to you!
Creating content on a YouTube channel is a good alternative to creating an online course if you aren’t confident people would be willing to pay for your content straight away. You could always start on YouTube, build a name and some authority for yourself, then take it from there if the demand is great enough! Creating YouTube videos with yourself in is a great way for your audience to get to know you and build a relationship with you, thus beginning to form trust. This will then make it easier if you decide to sell products later down the line as people will like you and so will want to buy from you.
7. Monetise Your Social Media & Content Creation
You can also use social media to promote your blog posts and work and also attract a new audience. If you are a photographer, Instagram is a great platform to show your work, and get people interested in buying your prints.
OTHER WAYS TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE FOR BEGINNERS:
8. Teach Online
Teaching ESL English Online
If you are a native English speaker from UK, USA, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and even South Africa, Teaching English Online is a popular way for beginners to make money and connect with students from all around the world.
There are many good sites where you can make an income teaching English online, but due to the new Chinese ESL regulations it is now not advised to teach English online to Chinese students (the Chinese Government actually banned it) so you should just apply to non Chinese ESL companies.
Generally with Teaching English you will need to be a native English Speaker and need to hold a TEFL certificate (click here if you need to get one!), but some sites like Cambly let you teach without one which is great so you can start teaching straight away once your application has been approved! Click here to apply to become a Cambly tutor.
The great thing about teaching English online is that you can do it from anywhere in the world and at any time of day! So whether you want to do it for a couple of hours in the evening, or teach for a full day you can. With Cambly you can literally teach at any time of the day and there will always be students waiting to have a lesson with you!
Cambly is based in America and is one of the most well known ESL companies.
- Students at Cambly are mostly adults but there is also Cambly Kids which you can sign up to which is dedicated to teaching children.
- Classes focus more on conversational English but you can teach from their curriculum if the student prefers.
- Cambly students are based all over the world: many students are from the Middle East, South America and Europe so there is a real mix.
- You can teach at any time of the day with Cambly – the platform is open 24/7 and there are always students online waiting to learn! So whatever time zone you live in, you can teach at a time that is convenient to you. This is a huge advantage compared to Chinese ESL companies for example, who only offer lessons at selected hours of the day (which could mean a 2am or 5am start if you live in the West Coast of America!). You can literally log on and earn money whenever you feel like it.
- No lesson prep required or homework needed to mark.
- No minimum hours required to teach per week, and you don’t have to book a timetable (of course you can if you want to build up regular students and teach the same students every week). YOU are in charge of your schedule, you are not tied down to a mandatory number of hours you must teach each week.
- As you are paid by the minute ($0.17 per minute) you can always end a lesson early if necessary, and you won’t get penalised (unlike many Chinese ESL companies who will deduct money from your pay check if you leave the class early!).
- Paid via Paypal every week which is very convenient.
- One of the best companies to start earning money straight away, as there aren’t lots of steps in the hiring process, nor trainings or demos to be done before you can start teaching (which is often the case with many ESL companies).
Cambly is great to have as a backup as an extra way to make money when you have free time in your schedule during the day.
Cambly Requirements:
- Native English speaker
- NO DEGREE NECESSARY!
- NO TEFL/TESOL CERTIFICATE REQUIRED!
- NO PRIOR TEACHING EXPERIENCE NECESSARY!
The hiring process and teaching requirements with Cambly are so simple compared to many other online English teaching companies. The ONLY requirement is that you need to be a native speaker of English – a Degree or a TEFL/TESOL Certificate isn’t mandatory (only recommended)! There is no interview and no trial class to do (only if you want to sign up to Cambly Kids). You just need to fill out the application form and send them a 2 minute video about yourself that will appear on your profile for your students to see. With many other ESL companies you will have to put in several hours (unpaid) to learn the syllabus, do marking and grading students. With Cambly there is none of this which makes teaching here so simple!
There are several other online ESL school that pay better rates than Cambly (around $15-$18 per hour) but you will usually need to have prior teaching experience and a Degree. So if you are new to ESL and Teaching English Online, Cambly is a great place to start to get experience. If you have teaching experience, you may want to look at other companies. For example Japanese Teaching English Online companies offer fairly good rates if you would like to check them out.
The great thing about teaching English online is that it can be location independent and you can do this job from anywhere in the world so long as you have a good internet connection.
Teaching Other Subjects Besides English
English isn’t the only subject you can teach online. If you are a non native English speaker, or perhaps you don’t want to teach English online, there are many other marketplace platforms that enable you to teach a particular skill or subject online. For example you could teach French or Maths, or whatever you feel passionate about to teach. Upwork and Preply are good websites where you can promote your tutoring.
9. Social Media Manager or Virtual Assistant
Many companies these days need to outsource their Social Media to someone experienced in social media networking and advertising. If this is something you have knowledge and a passion for you can easily advertise yourself as a Social Media Manager on Fiverr.
This can be a great way for tech savvy beginners to start making money online, providing they have the knowledge. It’s not just enough to like using your personal Social Media – you need to know strategies and algorithms and marketing to be able to promote the brand.
If you are just starting out and don’t have that much work experience in the field of Social Media Management, but it’s still the direction you want to go in, you can offer your services as a Virtual Assistant (VA). As a Virtual Assistant it will often mean that you may do the mundane tasks that still need to be done for the company, such as managing their calendar, responding to emails, dealing with customers, or working on the company’s Pinterest account. Pinterest is an invaluable source of gaining traffic for your website and many website owners are really keen to outsource the job of creating pins and pinning to Pinterest. You can also advertise to be a Pinterest Virtual Assistant on Fiverr. You will need to demonstrate that you have good organisation skills to work as a Virtual Assistant.
10. Offer Your Services As A Freelancer
Thanks to the internet, finding work as a freelancer is easier than ever! Fiverr is an amazing site on which you can sell your services and personal skills online to create an income. Whatever you have skills and work experience in, you can offer your services for a freelance contract. For example, if you have knowledge about website design, promote yourself here and show what you can offer potential clients, and you can find plenty people who are willing to pay you to redesign their website for them.
It’s not just website designers that can find work on Fiverr – if you have skills as a copywriter, translator, app developer or videographer for example you can use Fiverr to find work! Depending on your profession there may be a fair bit of competition, so people who are looking for your services will browse by profession, and they will choose the freelancer who they think will do the best job for them (often based on past reviews and amount charged).
Click here to head to Fiverr and sell your services online!
11. Network Marketing
Remember the Avon lady that used to call around the house trying to convince you to buy some beauty products? She was doing network marketing – also known as multi-level marketing. Network marketing is mostly done online these days now, and by getting into Network Marketing online and building your own team beneath you, you can earn a passive income as you’ll make commission off the sales of everyone in your team! The larger your team, the more commission you’ll make and the less work you will actually have to do to make a decent income!
12. Invest in The Stock Market
Stocks are something that I am not too experienced in, but they are definitely a good way to make money online from anywhere in the world. You will need to do your research well, and generally unless you invest a large amount of money you won’t make a significant amount of money so it is all relative. However even if you only invest a small amount into stocks, you can consistently make a good passive income online over time.
Final Thoughts On How To Make Money Online For Beginners – From Anywhere In The World!
As you can see, there are a wide range of ways how beginners can start to make money online. It can be scary having to be your own boss and be accountable for yourself, as well as not having a fixed salary but it is a great path to go down in today’s day and age, especially if your goal is financial and location independent freedom.
Some of them do require a certain amount of skill or expertise, however a lot of them just require you to put in the time and you’ll be rewarded. It is absolutely possible for anyone, even a complete beginner, to find an online job and make money from anywhere in the world!
Luckily there are many different ways to make money online so it is wise to have multiple income sources so you aren’t dependent on just one (didn’t the pandemic teach us that- don’t keep all your eggs in one basket). I would suggest focusing on one income source first until you are making, before you branch out to others, just to ensure you are making money online faster and not spreading yourself too thin without seeing rewards.
If you plan to make an income online you will need to look into your countries tax laws.
If there is anything you need any clarification with or need some more advice please don’t hesitate to drop me a comment and I will do my best to help!
HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE FOR BEGINNERS – FROM ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD!
This post may contain affiliate links, which means if you click on an affiliate link and make a purchase I earn a small commission at no extra charge to you! These costs all go back into the running of the website.