Editor’s note: This article was first published in November 2015. It reflects the 2015 landscape, including ClickBank described as the largest affiliate site, AliExpress delivery times of up to months, and three survey companies confirmed as paying in 2015.
Some people know you can make money online. Others have heard it but have their doubts. The fact is that there are clearly people who do it consistently and, to be honest, others who never manage it. Although we put “make 100 euros a day” in the title, it could just as well be 30, 50 or 500 euros.
Because there are people who make that kind of money, and we’re going to name some of the ways they do it.
The obvious question now is: “How do they do it?” Not everyone takes the same path. Some are clear that they only want to earn some extra money, while others end up shaping a very profitable business. It’s all about getting started.
Among the ways of making money online that get written about most are, without doubt, blogs, YouTube channels and affiliate products, although, it has to be said, few people succeed, and many end up getting bored after putting time into it.
As harsh as it may sound, I think this needs to be understood: the fact that people make money from blogs doesn’t mean you can, if you have nothing new to contribute or no different perspective to attract people.
The same goes for YouTube channels. The fact that some people with millions of views earn a steady income doesn’t mean it can be a business model for you, whether through lack of creativity or because you’re trying to be funny in a comedy niche and you’re simply not that funny. (See: Tips and steps to make money on YouTube.) And yes, luck can also play a small part.
How can you make 50, 100 or 200 euros a day online? Some of the methods used by people who live off online businesses
1. Sell a product on Amazon
Thanks to Amazon, today you can have a business whose shop window is visible to millions of people without needing commercial premises.
Some entrepreneurs have contacted a manufacturer in China and started selling the product on Amazon. Not all of these entrepreneurs have succeeded, but some of them are making thousands of euros a month from that product, and from others they added later once they saw the idea was viable.
2. Buy on AliExpress and sell on Amazon, eBay or your own website
AliExpress is truly competitive on price, especially for products shipped directly from China. Wholesale purchases also come with bigger discounts. The problem with AliExpress is that delivery times can often stretch to months.
But buying large quantities of products such as tech items, clothing, ties, accessories and so on, and selling them on your own website or on eBay, could be very profitable, bearing in mind that some people either don’t know all the buying options out there or don’t want to wait that long.
More and more, even local shops buy online and resell in their stores.
In this article we explain how to make money with AliExpress through dropshipping.
3. Sell courses
You don’t have to go to university to sell your own course on something. In fact, the best-selling courses tend to be the ones that explain how software, apps and the like work. If there’s a subject you’ve mastered, and you know it would take most people a long time to learn but you can cut that time down to a few hours, you can now create a course and sell it on Udemy.
There are many cases of young people who have earned as much as $120,000 in a few months this way. However, as with the rest of these ideas, you need to offer something people want and be good at it.
4. Write a book
As with courses, if you have something to say that people want to hear (or read, in this case), you no longer depend on publishers. You can self-publish your book, and there are several ways to do it:
- You can write one or several short books and publish them on Kindle.
- You can self-publish your book and sell it on your own website.
- You can partner with platforms and sell to their audience.
- You can list the digital edition with affiliate systems, so that bloggers interested in offering your book to their readers can do so and earn a commission.
- You can also make an audiobook and sell it on Audible.
- Of course, you can also go to a big publisher, although that route will take a bit more work.
If you’re interested in self-publishing a book, here is a thorough explanation of the options and steps (in Spanish).
A book is undoubtedly one of those assets that generate passive income (as long as the book isn’t rubbish, of course).
5. Dropshipping
Dropshipping is increasingly popular, because it’s a way of selling products without ever touching them: the product goes from the supplier to the buyer with practically no intervention on your part, except to collect your money from the sale. You do, of course, need to put in much the same work to promote the product or products.
You just need to find a reliable supplier with a high profit margin and you’re set (it’s a bit more complicated than that, but still). The good thing about this system is that you only buy a product once you’ve already sold it, and the company itself takes care of shipping it. If it works out (and it often does), it can be very profitable and, better still, carries no risk of loss and requires zero investment.
Is all this too complicated for me? Aren’t there other ways to make money?
The truth is that the ideas above are ways of making money that can turn into an excellent business. Many people have already made more money with them than working full-time for a company. That said, I understand that some people don’t have the knowledge or the desire, or the desire to acquire the knowledge, so for them there are always the usual options, which aren’t necessarily bad.
6. Surveys
Some companies pay you to answer surveys. Since others are a real scam, we put together 3 companies I know do pay, because users confirmed it to me (I’m not saying all the others don’t pay, far from it). You won’t get rich or earn a salary from it, but it’s better than nothing.
7. Affiliate programs
It’s cheap to try, although it takes a lot of time or remarkable skill to succeed. Choose a platform with affiliate products and offer them to the people in your networks. The biggest affiliate site is ClickBank. It’s a matter of choosing an eye-catching product.
The other ways out there, including selling your skills at a fixed price on Fiverr, we’ve already gathered in the articles mentioned earlier: you have 38 ideas here and 28 more here.
Featured image: Tony Webster from Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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