Times are tight for a lot of people. Higher costs for everyday items like food and other necessities… has people pinching pennies tighter than ever. Or, in many cases, they’re racking up credit card bills that could snowball out of control – just to keep their heads above water.
So the need for additional income options has never been greater. But what are the BEST options – especially if you’re already stretched to the breaking point trying to juggle your current job, family, or other obligations?
And how do you keep from getting sucked in by the gauntlet of screaming hype-marketers promising you instant riches with little or no work? I am sure your’e seeing offers by the dozens on Facebook alone!
Well the good news is there are REAL ways to make money from home while balancing your schedule – without being taken advantage of. And that’s what this post is all about. Over the years, I’ve helped hundreds of people make real money online using some proven, rock-solid principles that anyone can use.
The goal of this post is to give you an overview of some of the most reputable ways to make money online. You can use one or more of these methods to bring in a few hundred dollars a month – or even several thousand and replace your day job if you like. The best thing to do though, is to crawl before walking. Learn the basics of bringing in some supplemental income, then scale up if you desire.
How to Best Use This Content
Each section highlights a different income method by focusing on:
- What the method is
- What you need
- Get started now
- Recommended resources
Pick a method that suits your interests and schedule and take action. It’s really that simple. The post is designed to be used, so I’ve tried to make it as “take action friendly” as possible. The methods profiled here really do work with some time and investment. But NO method, no matter how good will work if you don’t take action.
So are you ready? Great! Let’s dive in.
Ways to Make Money from Home #1: Affiliate Marketing
What it is: Affiliate marketing is basically when you get paid a commission to promote someone’s product. The commission could be anywhere from 3% to 75% or more on products costing a couple of dollars to thousands of dollars.
And affiliate programs are available in nearly ANY market you can imagine, from golf to health care products to dog training to courses. Whatever your interests are, chances are there are people willing to pay you a commission to promote their products.
What You Need: Affiliate marketing is one of the least expensive ways to get started making money online. All you need are the products you want to promote, a blog or website (which can be free), and visitors to your site.
The products you choose to promote will give you a special link, unique to you. Then when someone clicks the link on your site, they’ll be taken to the product’s site. If they buy, you get a commission. It’s that simple.
Get Started Now: To get started, pick a market you’re interested in. Then go to Google and run a search for “your niche + affiliate.”
You can also check out Clickbank.com and Commission Junction (CJ.com). Both of these sites are considered to be leaders in affiliate marketing directories.
Then set up a blog at WordPress.com. It’s very easy to do and straightforward. To get a domain name for free and pay just $12 for a year of hosting, check out the Consulting Business post.
Start writing blog posts about your market niche and articles (500+ words minimum, best results 1,000+ words) and include a review of one of the products you want to promote (don’t forget to use the affiliate link).
If you want to know the amount of words your top competitors are writing, you can copy and paste their content into a free counter at WordCounter.net
Finally, start sending people to the site. There are a lot of ways to drive web traffic. One of the most effective free ways is by posting in social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter. You then link back to your site. Make it a goal to post frequently.
Recommended Resources
Ways to Make Money from Home #2: Blogging for Bucks
What It Is: This method is an off-shoot of the affiliate marketing method just discussed. In fact, combining both of these sections can create even more income opportunities for you. Basically, you create a blog (again, you can use WordPress.com) and start posting blogs on the topic you’re interested in.
But on the site, you’ll also have ads that are automatically posted by the Google’s ad network Adsense. When people click on an ad on your site, you get paid. It’s that simple. This method though is highly dependent on your site getting A LOT of traffic. So generally, it’s best to get your site established and bringing in visitors before activating Adsense.
What You Need: All you need is a website or blog (blog works best) with some content on it and some visitors coming by every day.
Get Started Now: The best way to get started with Adsense is to view Google’s excellent tutorial section. Google wants you to succeed and you can get the very best training on Adsense from them. Plus it’s free.
Go to Google.com/adsense and open an account. Again it’s free. Once inside your members section, click the question mark “?” in the upper right hand corner. This will allow you to browse all articles and visit the help forum where you can get up to speed very quickly.
Recommended Resources
Ways to Make Money from Home #3: Your Own Product
What It Is: Selling your own digital information product online is widely considered one of the best ways to make an extra income – or even a lucrative full-time income. Your product can take the form of an e-book, a set of audios, videos or a webinar.
And you can create it on any topic you like. Just note, that this method is more advanced than some of the others, so you may want to get grounded in affiliate marketing or blogging with Adsense before diving in here.
What You Need: You’re going to need a way to create your product. If your product is an e-book, then you’ll need to write it (or outsource the writing) and format it as a PDF document. There are a lot of PDF creators online if you Google it.
Audio products can be easily made with free audio software called Audacity, which will create an mp3 file of your recording. And for videos, you can use Snagit or Camtasia. I used both and I prefer Snagit, it’s less pricey and works great.
Finally, you’re going to need a website to sell your product from as well as a way to process orders. Clickbank is the leading digital products directory online and is a great place to sell your product through. They’ll process your orders, collect your payments, and handle refunds. Go check out Clickbank and look at how other marketers are selling their products for ideas.
ClickFunnels is another good option that you can integrate a payment processor into like Stripe.com. You can setup a landing page for selling products but it is more advanced. The monthly cost starts at $97.00 too. This may be better once you get some experience.
Get Started Now: The first step is to determine if people are already buying products similar to what you want to create. There are a couple of ways to do this.
Go to Clickbank and see how similar products are selling. Also, Google your main search terms and see if any ads show up on the right-hand side of the page. These are Google Adwords advertisers and they’re paying good money for their ads to show up. If there are ads, then that’s a good sign people are spending money in your market.
You also want to research your competition, other products that are similar to yours, and the wants and needs of your market. The idea here is to understand as much about your market as possible so you know what sort of problems they have that you can solve with your product. You want to do this BEFORE you create your product.
Once you do this, decide on the content you want to create, make a plan, and create it. Once you’ve made your product, you need a sales letter on your site to sell it. Again, check out how others on Clickbank are selling theirs for ideas. I would only look at the top 3 in the category, they are likely all making good money!
As for getting visitors to your site (and this goes for all the methods above), there are dozens of strategies. We’ve already discussed social platforms a bit. You can also create videos and post them on video sharing sites like YouTube.
Get involved in related forums and answer questions, it’s all about being helpful. Don’t be promotional and spam forum members with links, this is frowned upon. Just continue being helpful by answering their questions. These questions can also be future articles or blog posts.
You can also test out paid advertising using Google Adwords or Facebook Ads.
There’s not enough time to really get into this method in detail in this post. A lot of the skills you’ll need to pull this off can be learned by following one of the other methods above.
Recommended Resources
Closing
Those are 3 of the top ways you can supplement (or replace) your income online. And to be honest, we barely scratched the surface. Though you can go very deep in each of these methods, keeping it simple to start with is very important. Getting overwhelmed will just keep you on the sidelines.
So take a deep breath, pick a method that interests you the most and dive in. Try not to hop from one method to the next. Pick one and stick with it.
Good luck and keep your eyes peeled for more helpful posts to get you off the ground fast!