The key to financial freedom is a simple one. Create a monthly recurring income that surpasses your monthly expenditures. This is not a straight line and often requires different strategies. Now, the question becomes: What is the best way to earn a recurring income online?
The best way to earn money online is not from one source but from many sources – For instance, building a diversified online income.
Why are multiple income sources are so important for recurring income?
Well, imagine the following scenario. You own a website that that is monetized by affiliate commissions. Your affiliate partner decides to change their commission rate and suddenly your online income drops by 75%. Or maybe your site was funded by advertising that once ranked high in the search engines, only to find it with a lower ranking by a Google algorithm. Your income can potentially drop to zero.
You get the point. Without diversity in your online income source you are risking your income by having all your eggs in one basket. And, that can obviously create a huge amount of risk.
So, what models should you consider for your financial freedom? Diversifying is a good choice. Just take it a step at a time.
Here is a comprehensive list of the top Ways to Earn Money Online, both actively and passively.
Included are both active income and passive income examples to provide options to diversity. Now, a word of caution before we continue: Some of these online income sources are able to be implemented quickly, but are not necessarily the money making methods. These money online methods take hard work, dedication, and a willingness to invest. You need courage to try, to fail, and then to try again.
As for any idea, please research and learn all you can about anything you want to try. Knowledge is power and will help you make the right decision for your plan.
With this in mind, here are some of the best recurring income streams and ways to earn money on the internet.
Online Income #1: Selling Your Services
Selling services online is probably the most popular model on the internet for the simple reason that it is fairly quick to implement. This can be a good place to start and a good way to earn extra cash or possibly full time income.
Examples of services you could provide may be to edit video, write an article or blog, design a flyer, or perhaps create a unique voiceover – just about anything can be sold with the internet.
Here are the top ways to earn online income in this category.
Sell your services on your own website
If you have an expertise, such as programming, coaching, or consulting, then a well written sales page on your own website can be a smart business tactic. You can do this with web design, SEO, Social media marketing, and coaching services. To become a highly-paid freelancer, I recommend you first build your own online presence where you can highlight your professional expertise, knowledge, and life story with the world. If you don’t already have a website, create one immediately.
- Sell your services on your own website
If you have an expertise, such as programming, coaching, or consulting, then a well written sales page on your own website can be a smart business tactic. You can do this with web design, SEO, Social media, and coaching services. To become a highly-paid freelancer, I recommend you first build your own online presence where you can highlight your professional expertise, knowledge, and life story with the world. If you don’t already have a website, create one immediately.
- Join Elance
This is the leading place online for freelance work. Businesses can connect with independent providers, like you to get work done. They post their jobs for bidding and you can choose the ones that fit your skills and preferences.
- Sell your skills on UpWork
This is like Elance, but has more categories to select from. Consider using both of them.
- Sell services on Craigslist
While we mainly think of Craigslist as a place to buy and trade a variety of items, Craigslist can actually be a great place to sell your services online to an active and engaged audience. Check the “jobs” section and “gigs” section for specific cities and see if anything matches your skills. Craigslist is has one of the highest sources of active buyers for more opportunities at higher pay.
- Post your services on Fiverr.com
Fiverr is a big marketplace offering tasks and services beginning at $5. If you’re interested in doing some micro jobs and small gigs from time to time, Fiverr is worth your time.
- Try your services on Mechanical Turk
Mechanical Turk is simple and similar to Fiverr: You can complete micro tasks for a small fee. or you can offer to bookmark someone else’s site when they publish a new blog post, or new research. It’s owned by Amazon providing some peace of mind for it legitimacy.
- Put your services on Guru.com
Comparable to upWork and Elance. If you’re just starting and have no reputation yet Guru.com enables you to submit proposals for your services to show up first on the list. This is a good place to get started to build your reputation.
- Advertise your skills on Demandstudios.com
This is a website for freelance writers and video makers. Demandstudios work with some of the most well known brands online such as ehow.com, livestrong.com, and usatoday.com, but you have to be approved to join their list of experts.
Online Income #2: Advertising Online
This is one of the simplest ways to earn money on the internet, especially if you are just getting started and haven’t earned residual income yet. Although simple, it’s not always easy. You probably won’t make substantial revenue if you’re just getting started. To be successful you need to learn how to drive a lot of traffic to your website.
Here are the top ways to earn online income by Advertising Online.
Adsense
With your website Google Adsense will post ads that are relevant to your visitors. One of the best things is that Google does most of the hard work, for example, finding the advertisers, picking the ads, tracking the clicks, and will even deposit the earnings to your bank account each and every month. Roughly 65% of the top 200 websites use Adsense. Just go to Google to sign up.
Media.Net
Media.net powers the Yahoo! Bing Network Contextual Ads. They are easily the second largest contextual advertising company worldwide and the income is comparable to Adsense. In order to pass their rigid approval guidelines a website has to generate a required number of viewed pages during a month.
Chitika
While Chitika says their ads perform unlike any other, in many cases, the pay per click was lower. So Adsense and Media.net were preferable.
Target your own advertisers on your website
You can use networks like adsense or media.net and still target advertisers on your own. To do this, search net for potential advertisers who advertised products relating to your website and offer them special advertising deals. You will need to provide them with traffic statistics to show the merits of signing with you.
Online Income #3: Online Courses
If you are good at teaching and leading others, creating an online course is something that can pay you over and over again. They are easily marketable and accessible.
They are seen as more valuable than eBooks, because they can offer multimedia content such as video and audio with step by step instructions and examples and not just text. You have the option to offer more support, guidance or coaching for extra value.
With this in mind, here are the top ways to earn online income in this category.
Udemy.com
This is the world’s premier place for online courses. Udemy generates high traffic and because they offer a non-exclusive agreement you can promote your course on other portals and/or your very own site. They do prefer that most of your course content be featured through video. Refer to the course they offer to help you produce a top quality course video product. Udemy does want a percentage of your profits.
Host your Online Course on your Own Website
You don’t need a fancy formats or special programming to make an effective online course. You can send out email lessons and attach study plans and/or video tutorials. Since most people check email daily, your prospective students will have ready access to the latest lessons and follow up. That makes it easy for you to manage and for customers to track their progress. Also consider using video hosting sites like Wistia or Vimeo. You can remove their company’s logo, and they provide analytics to show how well your video does in keeping your audience’s attention. Another idea is litmos that helps you to create an online course with your own branding, website domain name, and feature page. Instead of asking for a percentage of your profits they charge a monthly fee for services.
Skillshare.com
Skillshare is a social learning site where you can teach real-world skills. You can teach anything that fits your expertise, just use your imagination like game strategies, sewing or cooking, travel and relationship tips, childcare or any subject that you are passionate about. It’s free to create a course and Skillshare takes a 30% fee per student. You get a teacher referral link that lowers the fee to 15% for students who enroll from your referral that you can set up on your website. All online courses on Skillshare must go through an approval process based on specific criteria.
Online Income #4: Revenue Sharing
With revenue sharing sites give you can earn money online without a website or a product to sell. If writing is your hobby, for example, then you can earn extra income by writing quality articles and presenting them to different locations on revenue sharing sites.
Here are some ways to earn online income in revenue sharing.
Wealthy Affiliate
Wealthy Affiliate is a managed WordPress website with the best entrepreneur, free hosting and marketing training available. They can offer Live assistance with building your first WordPress blog and adding Google Adsense or other advertising. You simply create the content and the search engines will come and help present this to your website viewers. There are many success stories there and this also happens to be our Number 1 recommendation for passive recurring income via their membership.
But, even free members can earn recurring income promoting their membership OR presenting ads. See our Wealthy Affiliate Review for more information on this very lucrative online income stream. Adsense publishers can actually earn 100% of their revenue here. Unlike the other threee listed below, you really don’t have to share the revenue.
Hub Pages
Hubpages is a content platform for writers. Members get their own sub-domain, where they can post articles. You earn revenue primarily from Google Adsense and you need your own Adsense account and other advertising vehicles like Kontera, and the eBay and Amazon Affiliate programs. There is a 60:40 revenue split and it’s achieved by changing the code used in advertisements: Your code will be displayed 60% of the time, and HubPages’ code as 40%. Like Squidoo, traffic dropped heavily because of Google’s changes but the site is still very popular. It’s among the 500 most accessed US sites on the Internet.
Infobarrel
Some prefer Infobarrel over Squidoo and Hubpages because their program lets you keep a majority of the money that your articles earn, For example a publisher is entitled to 75% of the revenue from the ads on your articles. Since not everyone can get a Google Adsense account, Infobarrel now pays directly to writers PayPal account which is great for beginners and they feature. entitled ‘InfoBarrel Earnings Reports’. You can reveiw it out if you’re wondering how much money other writers on this site make, but the number appeared to be low.
Examiner
This is a more selective program focusing on articles with a local point of view like venues, events and local attractions. If accepted, you need to contribute 1-2 articles per week so you can build an audience, which is key to earning at a higher end. But Examiner does offer training, support, and editorial Guidance. Earnings on Examiner vary according to the amount of your article’s page views and what it brings in from advertising; however, the exact rate isn’t disclosed.
Online Income #5: Affiliate Marketing
The idea behind affiliate marketing is fairly simple and likely the fastest of all recurring income models – you promote the products of another company for a commission on each sale. Basically all you have to do is partner up with affiliate programs, get their links, and start promoting them everywhere you can. The idea is simple but there’s much more than just posting links to Facebook, twitter or your website. You need to do your homework and build a relationship with your target audience for lasting success.
You need to build your own email list. You can do that by using a powerful email marketing service. This helps you create a list of people that trust you and want to hear about your affiliate products’ recommendations. With this in mind, here are some of the top ways to generate income in this category.
Promote Clickbank products
This is considered the biggest digital products marketplace. Clickbank uses a very helpful measure to show product sales, based on how many and how recently sales have been made. But ClickBank will withhold payment of any balance until the account shows a minimum of 5 sales using at least two types of payment methods. Also, if you haven’t made recent sales for awhile you could be subjected to ongoing penalties and that will affect your affiliate earnings.
Offer Amazon Products
The Amazon Affiliate Program is a well-known online store and that is probably their biggest advantage. On the downside, commissions are fairly small from 4% – 8% for most products based on how many sales you make. When you send someone to Amazon, you earn a commission on whatever they buy within 24 hours of clicking your link. If you promoted a set of tools but the person ended up buying an expensive kitchen appliance or something else, you’ll get the commission for both. This can add up. One caveat, Amazon does not allow commissions for purchases by friends and family members.
Commission Junction Products
Commission Junction (CJ) is one of the oldest, largest affiliate networks out there. Their merchants are well established and this is a definite advantage if you want to promote bigger brands. Another advantage of using CJ is their Pay-Per-Sale offer, Pay-Per-Lead and other offers.
Promote DigiResults Products
This company features mostly online business and internet marketing products, but also health and fitness to travel. Vendors and affiliates get paid at the point of sale which is better than other affiliates.
Online Income #6: Quick Online Perks
This section includes a variety of methods with one thing in common to get paid for doing simple jobs online.
Sometimes the biggest roadblock for many is mental: believing that making money online is possible. After you have made your first dollar there is hope and enthusiasm.
Below are some of the top ways to generate income.
Cashbacks
You were going to buy the product anyway, so why not get a bonus. .Cashback sites pay when you click them, go to retailers, and spend. For example, eBates.com. There are over 2,000 stores to choose from such as Walmart, Target, Sears, Calvin Klein, and others. You can get a $10 gift card after your first $25 purchase. Sign up is free. This has been widely advertised on television recently.
Taking Surveys
There are hundreds and maybe thousands, of websites offering the ability to get paid for taking surveys online. Same as with Cashback sites don’t sign up if it’s not free. A couple of sites suggested are toluna.com or CashCrate.com. Understand their rules for taking the surveys. Some include age, gender or geographic areas.
Writing Reviews
Some people get paid for reviewing products online. There are companies willing to pay for your opinion and if you already have an established blog or other online presence this could work for you. Check out ExpoTV.com for example; where you can earn money for doing video reviews on products you already own.
Online Income #7: Selling eBooks
eBooks are quite a lucrative recurring income stream. It does take your time and effort and creativity to write a good book, but if it’s done well, eBooks can sell over and over again for many years. A key aspect is to have a planned strategy to writing and marketing your book. Take the time to find out what kind of eBooks are selling and write your own.
With this in mind, here are two of my favorite ways to generate income in this category.
Selling an eBook on Amazon
Amazon is the biggest online eBook seller out there. Amazon claims to generate about 75% of all eBook sales via their website. This represents a great opportunity for self published authors to release and market their eBooks. They pay 70% royalty on each eBook sold only if priced between $2.99 to $9.99. Less than that or higher and it drops to 35%.of the listed price.
Sell your eBook on your own Platform
By developing your own website, you can market your books on your own and keep up to 100% of the profits if you don’t have to pay transaction fees to a payment processor. You don’t have to compete with other Authors and Sellers and have your reader’s undivided attention, while building your relationships and a reputation and an email list. You might want to consider offering a special deal, price or free gift to make it more attractive to the buyer.
UPDATE: Outstanding BONUS Online Income Option:
The biggest challenge most freelancers face when starting out is finding quality clients. Many freelancers turn to freelance marketplaces and directories to find work but are often charged fees for using the services. Hubstaff Talent wanted to change the way freelancers find work so they created a directory that features the world’s top freelancers and is growing in popularity each day. Unlike other freelance directories, Hubstaff Talent is 100% free – no markups and no fees for both freelancers and businesses.
Hubstaff Talent makes it easy for freelancers find quality work, simply create a profile and wait for businesses to start contacting you. Potential employers are able to reach out to freelancers directly – no middlemen involved. Hubstaff Talent also recently launched a “Jobs” section on their website where freelancers can search through hundreds of awesome remote jobs to find the right one for them.
Hubstaff Talent has hundreds of freelancers creating professional profiles every day and they understand the importance of attracting and retaining talented creatives, which is one of the reasons why they keep their services free. It’s an easy to use platform and it’s clean, professional design makes it straightforward to search thousands of contractors based on skill, location or category. Once a business discovers a freelancer they think would make a great addition to their team they can contact them directly – no middlemen involved. Freelancers are also able to search for work on the Hubstaff Talent Jobs page, a newly introduced section of the website.
Thousands of remote startups, agencies, software companies and ecommerce businesses have chosen to use Hubstaff Talent for their recruitment needs and they are looking for talent just like you. Sign up and begin your career in freelancing today.
There are so many ideas online to make money these days. You can research and study and try a few of them for yourself. Please be sure to adequately investigate any proposal before you enter into any agreements. As always, take advantage of Free Trial offers whenever possible to see what is truly offered and ask as many questions as you can.
Any venture takes work and time and dedication, so keep in mind what you are willing to do and how much time and effort and especially money will be needed. If you need to do advertising, you will need to establish a budget and strategy to do that. There are some free advertising sites out there, but many people who click through to your website may be hackers and scammers and you do not want those kinds of problems. Always protect yourself online. The best of luck in whatever avenue you may chose.
