If you’re here it’s because you probably want freedom from your current job or career. Or maybe you just want financial freedom.
Either way, you’re looking for a way to reclaim your time and life.
That’s where making money online can come in.
Is it possible to make over $1,000/day online? Yes. Is it a realistic goal you can achieve in the next 6 months? Probably not.
That’s why we need to start from square 1, and that’s why you’re looking for answers to making money online for beginners. You know it’s possible, and definitely achievable, but you need the roadmap to getting there.
That’s where I’m here to help!
Before I go into the nitty gritty about making money online there are a couple assumptions I need to get out of the way.
- You’re willing to put in the work
- You’re willing to be uncomfortable
If you have those 2 items checked off, I promise you’ll make a good deal of money online.
Having said that here is the exact playbook you can follow to make money online as a beginner.
Step 1: Begin Your Journey With Freelancing
If you’re a beginner you likely don’t have a bunch of skills in your toolbox. The good news? You have time and grit to learn these skills.
The question becomes, how are we going to learn the necessary skills to be successful?
That’s where freelancing comes in!
You see, even if you don’t have any skills right now, the beauty of freelancing is you can just start with smaller projects and work your way up.
Trust me when I say, there are a lot of solopreneurs and small businesses looking for young and hungry freelancers to help them.
The beauty of this is you get to learn a new skill AND you get paid for it! Even better is it’s all online and you can get started right now on Upwork, Freelancer, or even Fiverr.
Here’s a great example of how I got my start making money online.
In 2013 I dropped out of college to focus on an application I had built with some friends. One thing led to another and we had to close the app down in 2015.
Let me tell you that was the darkest period of my life.
I had no degree, no career experience (outside of this application I started and flopped with), and I was running razor thin on my budget.
I had to figure something out otherwise I was toast. And there was no chance I was going back to my parents place all washed up like that. (Just for reference I haven’t lived with my parents since I was 17, I love the freedom too much lol)
Here’s what I did to make money quickly.
I joined Upwork (which used to be called odesk and elance before they merged) and I got my first freelancing job transcribing business meetings. I got paid about $10/hr doing this work online.
I will never forget the feeling knowing I made $30 in that first day by freelancing. It unlocked a whole world of possibilities for me.
Fast forward about 2 months later and I made roughly $1,800 doing transcription work and other content writing work for SEO agencies. Yes this only comes out to about $900/month, but it paid for my bills which allowed me to keep going.
That’s when I learned about copywriting.
It was at this point my income made a stair step improvement. I spent the next 4 weeks learning everything I could get my hands on about copywriting.
I read Gary Halbert, Eugene Schwartz, Robert Collier, Bill Bly, Dan Kennedy, and loads of other copywriters who taught me about sales, marketing, and business.
These were my original mentors and I was their mentee, quietly soaking up all the information I could gather.
It was at this point I switched over from transcribing and content writing to full on copywriting. I applied to every job I could find and sold my ability very hard. I knew I could get it done.
Long story short, within 6 months I was generating about $3,000/month in income for myself. That might not seem like a lot of money to most, but I guarantee you going from basically broke to making $3,000 on the side by myself was life changing.
I was able to get back into school and complete my degree (I promised my parents I would get a degree) and I was able to get some of the best career opportunities from freelancing. Especially the sales skills.
Want to know the best part?
I get to keep my side income because that’s my personal brand.
Even if you don’t do the route I did, and you have other interests like coding, you’ll at least have the path.
You need to learn just enough to complete very simple jobs. Then after you build up a little experience and a small book of business, you level up your skills to take on tougher jobs.
Repeat this process for infinity!
Step 2: Purchase A Blog
Once you’ve gotten to the point where you’re making a little money as a freelancer, you’ll want to purchase a blog.
If you’re not making money as a freelancer, go back to step 1 until complete. You’ll thank me later.
This is where making money online becomes incredibly fun. You have a little book of business. You’ve been grinding to learn the in’s and out’s of your space or skill set.
It’s time to purchase a small business and help grow it up.
You can do this in a couple ways, but I recommend going the route of purchasing a blog as opposed to starting one.
Why?
Aged. Domain.
Starting a blog is possible and definitely doable, I’ve done it a handful of times successfully, but if you want quick results you’ll want to purchase one from Flippa or Empire Builders.
You’ll get the benefit of a blog already producing income, has an aged domain to help you with ranking, and will be in the niche of your choice.
The benefit of this is you’ll begin to get a legit brand out into the wild west of the internet, and you’ll start scaling your efforts to greater heights.
You’ll also be able to put all that work into effect with almost immediate impact.
Step 3: Start Affiliate Marketing
It’s at this point you can get to $1,000/day numbers.
With affiliate marketing you’re monetizing your blog by going after a lucrative niche. (It can literally be anything, just make sure it fits within the big 3.)
As you begin to learn more about monetizing your blog you’ll begin to learn how you can actually advertise products being sold as a sort of freelance sales person if you will, and you’ll make commission from those sales.
You’ll have the chance to start scaling out yourself and your time so you’re not freelancing too much anymore because your time will be too valuable, but you are creating advertisements and making money online at a larger scale.
This is the second best form of making money online. Because with affiliate marketing you can now make money from any location. This completely frees you up to be a location independent.
Step 4: Ecommerce
Ahh.
The holy grail of making money online.
This is where you can hit the $100,000/month/week/day numbers. You’ve now graduated to selling products online for people hungry to consume.
All of the skills you’ve learned up to this point will catapult you into success because you can actually control your advertising, have other stable forms of income, and you’ve got the money to actually do ecommerce right.
You can get into ecommerce 1 of 3 ways.
- Create a copycat product from your affiliate marketing experience
- Build a brand new product based on market demand
- Purchase an ecommerce business already making sales
Either way is fine. In the end you’ll get the experience and insight into what it takes to produce a successful ecommerce product.
You can also do dropshipping which takes away any of the fulfillment headaches, but they typically have a long lag time to deliver and you control basically nothing about the sale.
A word of warning though…
Get ready to be punched in the mouth.
Seriously, to get to large revenue targets you’re looking at a lot of upfront capital (think upwards of $50,000) which is just used for product testing, building, and deployment.
You’re going to want to be an internet vet before getting into the ecommerce side of making money online.
Conclusion
Yes, you can cherry pick the steps above and go straight into whatever you feel is best. I would recommend this though.
I recommend following the steps in order based on your experience. If you’re a beginner, which I’m assuming you are because why else would you be reading this post, you’re going to need skills to make money online.
The internet contains the fiercest competition. I would recommend learning how to swim before jumping into the ocean.
Plus if you need money right now, like in the next 7 to 30 days, you’re not going to get it from ecommerce. Although you will from freelance work.
Just my 2 cents!