30 Best: How To Make Money Online for Beginners

Everyone has to start somewhere. We all want to learn how to make money online for beginners. After all, that is why you landed on this article, right? Grab some coffee ☕️, and let’s get into it!

Pssst… Here we discuss how to make money online for beginners. I also have an in-depth guide on how to make money blogging.

How to Make Money Online for Beginners

As a beginner, the prospect of making money online can seem overwhelming, especially if you have zero experience working in the digital world. The internet is a big place, and the information available is even more significant. Sometimes it can be challenging to tell apart valuable information from the horrible stuff, even if you find something useful. Let me shortcut the additional research for you and give you one valuable piece of advice:

The most crucial step in making money online is to choose something and go with it.

It seems so simple. If you are like me, you probably suffer from analysis paralysis, where you are consumed with finding more data to make the “right decision.” I can say from personal experience this will slow you down and hinder you to the point that you will never start.

Pick something. Start doing it. Do it well. You will see results.

Now that we’ve got that taken care of, setting up some basic info is really important. This section will cover:

• What types of income are there?
• How much “time investment” and “focus investment” are required?
• When can you expect a return on your invested time and focus?
• Are all income types going to generate the same amount of income?
• Do you need one income type or multiple?

Let’s talk about these things below.

Types of Income

Most of the time, when people talk about types of income, they talk about “active” and “passive” income. When people talk about “active” stuff, they usually mean things that you need to keep putting time and effort into. When we say “passive,” we usually mean income that doesn’t take much time and effort to get started. Personally, I think those notions are overly simplified, especially since the internet allows for a bit more flexibility.

I like to think in terms of “focus.”

For me, “focus” is extremely valuable. When spending focus, that means that other things are not getting attention. The more focus something takes, the less opportunity you have to spend your focus on something else. To put it differently, if you have to concentrate really hard on something, it’s gotta be worth it on its own because you won’t have any focus left for other things.

Let’s talk through an example. When I write a blog post, I am completely focused on writing. Spending time on other things, like social media or checking email, degrades my work quality.

Thus, if I want my blog post to be the best it can be, I need to spend my absolute max focus to get it there. This leaves zero extra focus for anything else.

Sometimes you’ll come across tasks that require moderate focus but only a little. As an example, I used to rent out my tools. My clients would come to my house, pick out some tools they needed, put down a deposit, pay a small rental fee, and then return them in the future for a refund of their deposit.

I only had to focus a few hours daily to keep track of bookkeeping and the tools going in and out. I still had focus left over for many other daily activities.

Some tasks only need a little bit of focus to get started. For instance, my wife and I run several Etsy stores. One of them sells Digital Products. Each product takes a couple of hours to make.

That means one product only takes some focus, leaving plenty of excess focus to be distributed to several other tasks. I could use it to make more digital products, an online course, or even something fun (instead of more work).

As I see it, there are 4 types of income, broken down by the ongoing focus required to power them:

1. Full Focus Income
2. Moderate Focus Income
3. Passive Focus Income
4. Zero Focus Income

Let’s talk about each of them below.

Full Focus Income

Most people work for someone else. They perform a specific job and in return, their employer gives them either an hourly wage or a salary. The time spent in this way is directly proportional to the income generated. This is an example of Full Focus Income.

This income requires so much focus that there is almost always no leftover focus to spend on anything else. So, remember that if you concentrate on this kind of task, you won’t have much focus left for anything else. Usually, you can only focus enough on one of these income types, so it has to be the one that’ll make you the most money.

It is also important to note that this type of income is directly related to your time. When you work, you generate income. When you do not work, you do not generate income.

On one hand, this means you are in full control of how much you earn. On the other hand, if you do not put in the effort, you will not make any money.

Usually, Full Focus tasks will make you more money than the other types, especially in the beginning and middle stages. The income generated typically lands in your pocket immediately. For instance, when you work at a Full Time job you typically get paid weekly or bi-weekly. It does take all of your focus though; therefore, the income per amount of focus is typically low.

Moderate Focus Income

If we forget about the idea that time equals money, some income streams don’t need as much ongoing focus to make money. Getting these income streams up and running usually requires initial focus and time. They’ll also require you to put in some focus and time now and then to keep them going. Since these tasks don’t need as much ongoing focus, you’ll usually have some extra focus left over that you can use on other things that make money.

As a beginner, these types of income usually won’t make you enough money to live off of. People who use these kinds of income-generating tasks usually combine different ones to make things work. The idea is that you can do a little here and a little there. Each income source might make only a little on its own, but you can earn a decent amount when you put them together.

These types of income can also, usually, be delegated. This is crucial because if you want to scale, you need to unlink your income to the time you spend. When you can delegate the task to someone else, that person’s time is what generates the income, not your own. You can instead use your time for other types of income-generating tasks.

Have you ever heard the saying “never put all your eggs in one basket?” Well each of the income types, except Full Focus Income, is built around that idea.

Basically, you add up a bunch of small income sources. If one of them stops working, you still have all the other sources. So, your income is usually more stable because there are fewer places where things can go wrong. We can talk more about that later.

One last thing, these income types generally take a little more time to see returns. Unlike Full Focus Income, which usually brings in money immediately, income from these sources usually takes some time to build up. When you first start, you make little or nothing. If you stick with them, these income types will usually give you a moderate amount of money for the focus you put in.

Passive Focus Income

This type of income represents what most people are looking for when searching for “how to make money online for beginners.” The basic idea is you invest a little bit of time and focus to create a wildly useful thing. Then it magically brings in bookoo bucks. While not quite that dramatic, the truth is not that far off.

Passive Focus Income can be a powerhouse income generator. If you do things right, you can create a product or a set of products that will keep making you money, even if you put in less time.

Think about books. An author could write one book, send it to a publisher, and then sit back and wait. Usually, the money won’t start flowing in immediately; however, the income will grow as more people learn about it. Eventually, if you combine it with other sources of Passive Focus Income, your total gain can be substantial.

This is another thing that can be scaled up through delegation. Imagine you run an Etsy store like my wife and me. For a time, you may enjoy creating digital products every day and posting them on your store.

At some point though, you might want to spend your time doing something else. You could easily hire someone to create your Etsy postings. If you found the right person, you could even offload the creative work to someone too.

Zero Focus Income

There is also a special class of income sources that basically require little to no initial investment of time and focus, yet still, somehow make money for us. They are hard to find and are even harder to recognize once you find them. These special types all share a few key features but their income return and risk vary.

One thing they all have in common is they require almost no time or focus investment. There is also very little, if any, ongoing focus cost. This is primarily because they only require signing up for a service, doing 5 minutes of initial account setup work, and then simply waiting.

Each of these income sources has its long-term income potential, but all of them require a significant amount of time to accumulate enough income to be substantial. Some have a high risk, and some have a low risk. They also need varying degrees of initial monetary investment.

None can be done more than once nor delegated to another person. However, when you look at how much effort they need compared to the money they can make, they’re worth it. You can gain all the benefits for almost zero time, focus, or work.

What is the Best Mixture of Income Types?

Most people who earn money worldwide do so exclusively using the Full Focus Income method. They tend to work for someone else, doing a job they do not like, for wages that are not enough to live on.

The main issue with this methodology is that you are stuck in a loop.You MUST sacrifice your time & focus to earn money so that you can live. Sacrificing your time & focus in this way leaves almost none of either for you to spend on other things that could free you from the loop.

Breaking free requires incorporating other types of income sources. With multiple income sources, you can rest assured that if you lose a single income source (like being fired from your Full Focus job) you will still have money coming in from another source. Therefore, it is crucial to have several income sources.

To diversify your income and create multiple sources of revenue, it’s essential to invest both time and focus into each income source. If you spend all those resources on a single Full Focus Income source, you will not have enough time or focus to spend on another source. You must have fewer Full Focus Income sources and more Moderate & Passive Focus Income sources to be the most effective.

The ideal blend of income sources will differ from one individual to another, depending largely on the circumstances of their life. For me, life currently requires that I have a bit of flexibility in my schedule. It also requires that I make enough to support my lifestyle.

Beyond that, I need to ensure my income is secured and hard to take away completely. Therefore I find the following mixture works well for me and my wife:

• 0 Full Focus Income sources
• 2-3 Moderate Focus Income sources
• 3-5 Passive Focus Income sources
• 1 Zero Focus Income sources

Your list will likely be different. Finding the right mixture for you requires a bit of experimentation. If you want my suggestion, I’d say ditch your Full Focus Income sources and focus on the other types because they can be scaled more easily.

Ideas: Full Focus Income

Despite my personal preference, excluding a list of Full Focus Income sources would be wrong. As a beginner, any item from this list can help you make money online.

They also have the added benefit of giving you complete control of your time. Instead of answering to a boss, you will answer to yourself. It also puts your livelihood squarely upon your shoulders, but that is what you are looking for, right?

Below is a short list of Full Focus Income sources. I tried to list them from highest earning potential to lowest. Take a look, and you might see a few ideas worth checking out!

1. Offer Consulting

The easiest way to learn how to make money online for beginners is to analyze how you can leverage your skills.

Are you a skilled worker? Is there something that you are particularly good at that most people are not? Do you have a skill that other people would pay you to perform? If so, you should considering offering consulting services to the world.

Perhaps you have always had an eye for design and love to create new visually appealing elements. You could offer your services to consumers through a one-time or recurring consulting product you offer on your website.

If you do not have a website, setting one up has become incredibly easy with services like Bluehost. Alternatively, there are service sites out there for practically every niche. Using the design example, sites like 99designs.com offer a marketplace for you to find clientele.

Whatever your skills, if they can be performed digitally, and you are confident enough to charge people, you can offer them online in a consulting fashion. This is a tried and true, effective way of leveraging your skills online to make money, without a pointy-haired boss to report to. Even a beginner can make use of this method.

2. Become a Freelancer

Similar to offering consulting, you could become a “freelancer.” Becoming a freelancer is beginner-friendly and usually does not require a website or established business. It requires signing up for a freelancer website, like Upwork or Fiverr, and bidding on some jobs. This is distinctly different from offering consulting.

As a freelancer, you will first fill out your profile. This usually requires a detailed description of your work history. You should also be able to provide a portfolio or at least some descriptions of work you have done in the past.

Once you have completed your profile, these marketplaces allow you to bid on jobs that potential clients have posted. Many of these marketplaces have a limited number of “free” bids you can make. This prevents people from spam bidding on every project.

After you have bid on a project, you make money by the client selecting you as their freelancer. As a beginner, you may need to lowball the first few bids. Do not go too low, because smart clients will ignore the extremely low bids since low bids are usually indicative of low quality.

When you place your bid, make sure to include a moderately detailed project plan. Having a few milestones and a general timeline is usually enough to attract most clients.

Once you have completed your first few projects and received your first few pieces of public feedback, you can attract higher-paying clients. You can also pick the projects you work on and gain control over your schedule. This is an excellent example of how to make money online for beginners.

3. Become an Influencer

If you constantly find yourself on social media, that could be another opportunity to make money in disguise. According to TheHill, one-quarter of all young adults want to be influencers. That is a substantial majority compared to all other jobs out there. There is something to that too.

As a beginner, it is crucial to know you will not make money right out of the gate. The more you post, the more consistent you are at doing so the larger your audience will grow. With a larger audience, your ability to make money grows.

Here is the loose list of steps to follow as you transition into a social media influencer:

1. Choose a niche. It needs to be specific. With a smaller audience, it is less likely that you will fade into the background or get lost amongst all the noise.
2. Choose the best platform for finding an audience for your niche. Not all social platforms work for each niche out there. Each audience is different, so choose the platform that speaks to your target audience the best and build upon it.
3. Learn about your target audience. Just like every platform is different, each audience is different. Strategies that work well for one audience might not work for another. Understanding the people in your audience will help you communicate with them effectively.
4. If possible, engage with your audience on the platform and off. Nobody likes feeling ignored or neglected. You cultivate a strong following by engaging them. Respond to them and be authentic, otherwise they will find someone else to listen to.
5. Think about your content strategy. What do you want your audience to do, and how will you communicate that to them? Will you post often? What content does your audience want to see from you? Answer all these questions and more to define your content strategy.
6. Be consistent; this is the most crucial aspect of becoming an influencer. It takes dedication and requires you to stick to a schedule and do what you say you will do. People prefer to avoid feeling duped or left behind, so post frequently and consistently on topics they care about. Use tools like Later to keep your content posting on a schedule.

Being an influencer is not something that happens overnight. You MUST be dedicated. If you are not, people will unfollow you.

As an influencer, staying relevant is a crucial factor. Posting infrequently or on an erratic schedule shows your audience that you are not to be trusted. Do not fall into that trap. Instead, be consistent.

4. Make Money on Etsy

My wife and I have seen significant success on Etsy. Even in the early days of our stores, we saw success. Etsy is an extremely good outlet for creative people to make money from their creations. Even if you have no creative talent at all, buying products at a low enough price and reselling them on Etsy can still show you profits in a relatively short time.

Etsy might seem complicated initially, but understanding a few critical concepts can make a world of difference.

• Every successful seller on Etsy uses a tool to help them research products to sell. Tools like ERank give you valuable information about how customers are using Etsy. They also shed some light on how your competitors are too. Use one if you are serious about Etsy.
• One of the most critical factors on Etsy is your number of sales. Customers are affected psychologically by the number of sales you have. Higher sales mean there is more “social proof” that your products are worth the money. As a beginner, advertising on Etsy is the best way to get more sales because it will give your products extra exposure early on, translating into more sales.
• The other most critical stat on Etsy is the positive review. Encouraging your customers to give you a positive review will show them their voice matters. Remember, people will only go out of their way to give a positive review if you ask them or have gone way above and beyond the call of duty. Do both, and this stat should grow on its own.
• Pick a strong niche. Use a tool like ERank to find a class of products with many monthly searches but only a few competitors.
• Saturation is required, so once you find that niche, saturate it with as many products as possible. DO NOT DUPLICATE YOUR PRODUCTS. Instead, create a large number of unique products all in the same niche. When people search, they should see your creations.
• All stores should be niche stores. Crowding a store with a “bit of this” and a “bit of that” will not work on Etsy. Etsy is a collection of highly niched stores. For your store to stand out, it needs to follow that pattern.

Within 30 days of starting our first store, my wife and I had over 20 sales. That is a big deal because new sellers usually struggle to gain traction in other marketplaces, let alone sales. Etsy is the best place to reach customers quickly for product-style offerings. Your ability to make money on Etsy has a low bar.

5. Become an Expert Writer

The internet is powered by content. Yes, there is “image” and “video” content out there, but the vast majority of content is written. Every site on the internet needs content, and many, if not most, are willing to pay money for it. As a beginner, you can capitalize on that, even if you do not already have a presence on the web.

You can get paid to write for blogs like Medium, and the bar is relatively low for getting your post published. Reaching out to blogs you read already could be another good strategy. Many of them could be willing to pay you to help them produce high-quality content.

Some companies are dedicated to providing writers as a service to people who need them, like Compose.ly. Becoming a writer for these companies requires significant writing skills but could net you huge income if you are accepted.

With a bit of motivation and a little effort, you can easily find someone to pay you for your excellent writing skills. Invest a little time into finding potential clients.

Establish a web presence with some samples of your work. That way, when they ask you for a portfolio, you have something to show them. You can make money pretty quickly, even as a beginner.

6. Offer Zoom Tutoring

Want to learn how to make money online for beginners? Do you have some knowledge you would be willing to share with someone less experienced? Have you considered offering your services as a remote tutor over Zoom?

Almost every parent wants their kid to have a better life than they had. Many parents think the right way to ensure their offspring have a good life is to make sure they do well in school. Enter “tutoring.”

Parents with children “falling behind” tend to go to great lengths to bring their children back up to par or beyond. You can capitalize on that.

Offer your services as a tutor. You can do this on your website if you like. There is also the option of posting your services on sites like Tutor.com so that searching parents can find you without knowing a past client.

That type of exposure can get you noticed quickly. In turn, that means your client base can become substantial almost instantly if you are good at tutoring.

Using a service like this is not required. You can tout your tutoring skills on social media and build up a network of tiger moms and helicopter dads through word of mouth alone. Parents talk, and when they find a reliable resource to help their children, all of their parent-friends will know. You can make money without spending a dime on advertising, even as a beginner.

7. Become a Transcriptionist

While the transcription industry is advancing quickly, technology is still lagging behind good old fashion human power regarding accuracy. The automated transcription industry is still trying to overcome several challenges like handling homonyms (words that sound the same but have a different meaning) that humans can easily solve just by listening. As a result, this job is still largely human-powered, which is good news for you!

This is a good example of how to make money online for beginners. The main skills you need are the ability to hear and the ability to type. If you possess both of them, you are all set! There are several services that pay humans to transcribe audio and video content into text.

An example of such a service is GoTranscript. As a beginner, you can sign up for an account and start to make money right away.

Many of these services pay by the minute. This is because they also sell their service by the minute. You can quickly achieve their maximum pay rates if you are quick and accurate.

As an added benefit, you can choose which projects you work on and set your own schedule, even as a beginner. This one is pretty relaxed if you want an easy way to make money. All you have to do is listen and type!

8. Do Data Entry

Another way to leverage your fast typing skills is to perform data entry. This one, like transcription, is becoming more and more automated. Despite that, we are still in a phase that requires a human touch. Offering your data entry skills can help you make money quickly, even as a beginner.

Several companies specialize in human-powered data entry. On the flip side, many are scams, so be careful. After you sign up for an account, if they ask you to spend money in any capacity right away, then it is probably a scam. The good news is that you can offer this one alone without leaning on an established company to pay you on the backend.

Start an Upwork or Fiverr account and post your skills for the world to see. Bid on some projects and establish your abilities as a data entry specialist.

Once you have a few of them under your belt, you can bid higher and make money faster. This one is also good for a beginner because it does not require much experience. Just sign up and start entering data.

9. Offer Translation Services

If you are fluent in multiple languages, that can be leveraged to make money online. Yes, there are services like Google translate, which will help with rudimentary translations.

However, language is nuanced and still requires a human touch. This is especially true for “localization” in the software industry. The good news is that software companies will pay big for this.

Companies like RushTranslate and UniversalTranslationServices offer competitive pay for translators. These services allow you to choose your projects, schedule and earning potential. With these companies, you can help with website localization. You could also choose to translate documents or other content, if you prefer.

Not everyone can communicate in multiple languages. Your skills are in demand if you can because the automated alternatives are still pretty horrible. There are plenty of memes out there where Google Translate converts some innocuous words in one language to a complete botch job in another. Offer your skills, make money, and change some of those horrible translations into something intelligible.

10. Test Websites

Have you ever seen a website or app with a bug in it? Yes, we all have. Does it seem like you have a knack for finding those problems, even when you are not explicitly looking for them?

As it turns out, you can make money by testing sites like those, even as a beginner. Companies will pay big bucks to find problems with their sites and apps, and you could be part of the workforce that helps them do that!

Several services out there connect companies that need testing to users who are excellent testers. A quick Google search points to companies like Userlytics and TesterWork that specialize in providing this essential service to companies launching new products. The programs they offer are straightforward. Simply create an account and you can make money quickly.

Some of these services do not even require you to find problems! Several of them only want your opinion! If you like telling people your thoughts, consider this as another way to make money. Granted, being an influencer will probably pay more in the long run, but as a beginner, you might need to supplement your opinion-giving on social media by providing feedback to new apps and websites.

11. Take Online Surveys

Speaking of giving your opinion, you could always take some surveys, where you constantly share your opinion and make money in the process. This is especially good for a beginner because the skills requirement is extremely low. With no experience at all you can easily make money doing surveys for these companies.

Some examples are Survey Junkie and OneOpinion. All you need is a free account and some time to take surveys. Because there are no skill requirements, anyone can sign up and start to make money.

You also get to choose which surveys you take, when you take them, how long to spend on each one, and, most importantly, you get to share your valuable opinion in exchange for cash. This is one of the easiest jobs for a beginner online.

Ideas: Moderate Focus Income

Implementing several income sources from this category works best for my lifestyle. Each type of income listed here requires a recurring investment of time and focus. The investment is small when compared to the Full Focus Income list. The income per source is also smaller than one Full Focus Income source.

Despite that, one substantial benefit of doing multiple of these is that if one stops producing, the overall impact on my total income is small. When you have several smaller income sources instead of one larger one, the outcome is a more stable income that is more durable to changes in the world.

For instance, you probably lost your only income source if you worked at a non-essential brick-and-mortar business before COVID-19. If you instead had several sources of income, one or two of them would have been impacted, but not all of them necessarily. Having multiple and having a diverse mixture of them can offer a nearly untouchable income.

12. Invest in Real Estate

Trying to understand how to make money online for a beginner? Try real estate. Real estate has the long-term potential to provide the highest returns on your investment.

Most people think it is hard to get into or that you must have substantial cash to get into it. Both notions are incorrect. Right now, it is easier to invest in real estate than it has ever been.

You can do this completely online if you have a person you trust to “go out into the world” for you. If you don’t, you can still do most of it online after doing the initial in-person setup steps. Real estate requires that you talk with people in person and build some form of relationship with them, evaluate properties in real life to determine their condition, and do some legwork in the communities around the property.

After those initial steps, you can manage most of your investment online. You can use tools online to communicate with your team instead of in person. If you have a “property manager” to handle the “gathering of rent” for you, they most likely have online tools to manage their management.

If you go a different route and handle much of the admin work on your own, you can still use tools like AppFolio or YARDIbreeze to manage most of the administrative tasks. You would only have to call contractors to take care of the repairs at that point.

The startup capital for investing in real estate is also at an all-time low. With an FHA loan, you can start investing in a house with as little as 3.5%. If you are good at talking to people, you can even strike deals that require $0 out of pocket.

The possibilities are limited only by your imagination when it comes to funding your investment. Robert Kiyosaki teaches a method that shows you how to make $0 deals, even as your first deal.

The bottom line is that you can easily make money with real estate, even as a beginner. You can even do most of it online after the initial setup tasks. There are tools for managing almost every aspect of the business right from the comfort of your own home.

It can even be done with $0 upfront. Additionally, the majority of billionaires have most of their net worth in real estate because it keeps growing. It is widely considered one of the most stable, high-return investments you can make!

13. Make Money Day Trading

Have you ever dreamed about hitting it big on the Stock Market? We all hear stories. Regular people start an E-Trade account, buy some unknown stock before it explodes, and becomes an overnight millionaire when Google buys them.

How can you make money like that? Day Trading is a possible answer, even for a beginner!

Many Stock Brokers like Fidelity, Merrill, and E-Trade are out there. Each has its own online platform and its own suite of tools. Several of them even offer incentives for new accounts, like free money when you make your first deposit or free stock when you create your account. Some of them even have low or no account minimums or open amounts.

In addition, there is plenty of information about how to start trading. YouTube is an excellent place to look for free material on the topic. If you want to learn beyond the basics and how to optimize your day trading, several online courses and masterclasses exist that can guide you to the next level. With the right amount of online research and patience, you can become a day trader who can make money every day, not just a few times a month.

For a beginner, it can be a little overwhelming. The most crucial thing to remember is that many people have started doing it before you did. A vast amount of content is out there telling you how to start day trading. All it takes from you is opening an account with an online broker, making a small deposit, and submitting trade requests.

14. Flip Websites, Apps, & Businesses

If you have some startup capital, there are quite a few options. Sometimes it is easier to skip the initial setup steps and hit the ground running with a ready-made business. With those initial resources, you can buy an existing business that someone else has already set up for you and start to make money right away.

These businesses are premade, ready for you to buy and operate from the comfort of your couch. Someone else has already performed the initial setup and even some of the more challenging intermediate steps for you, such as:

• Obtained all required licenses and certifications needed to run the business.
• Created the product or service being sold.
• Established a value-prop that customers are responding to.
• Refined business processes for attracting and converting customers.
• Built a brand that people know and trust.
• Established a baseline monthly income and procedures required to obtain it.
• Generated a loyal customer base, email subscriber list, and social media presence.
• Hired a team of people who can competently run most of the business for you.

Even as a beginner, you can find the right business to make money from day one. Marketplaces like Flippa host listings for thousands of businesses ready to buy. With your startup capital or access to financing, you can buy a business online without ever needing to do anything in person.

You can even run almost all of them from your couch. Imagine if you could buy a mobile game like Clash of Clans. You could make money easy, even as a beginner!

15. Make Money Drop shipping

Another popular way to make money online, especially as a beginner, is to start a drop shipping e-commerce store. When you drop-ship, you are a middleman between a customer who wants a product and a manufacturer or wholesaler with a product. This is distinctly different than a traditional store model. Lets dive into that.

With a traditional e-commerce or brick-and-mortar store, you have a warehouse where you have pre-purchased products to be sold. Then, at some undetermined time in the future, your customer buys one of the products, and you send it to them using your team to package and mail it. Your upfront costs are substantial because you maintain an item’s stock before it is needed. Additionally, you must process all the shipping yourself, which creates significant overhead in time, focus, and money.

It is easier to make money with drop shipping, especially as a beginner. With drop shipping, you have a relationship with a manufacturer or wholesaler. As customers buy products from your site, you request that the manufacturer or wholesaler send the product directly to the customer.

Unlike the traditional model, you never hold any stock of any item. More importantly, you do not pay for items before they are sold. In addition, you do not need to worry about shipping or handling returns either.

A common and easy way to start a drop shipping store is to establish those relationships with manufacturers and wholesalers and then create a store on Shopify. People sell everything you can think of via Shopify stores. Most importantly, you can easily set up a drop shipping e-commerce store using Shopify. It is one of their most common business models.

16. Start a Podcast

Chances are you have probably listened to a Podcast. People used to have to host their podcast content from their websites. Things were bad back then because you never knew how well their site could handle serving the content to you.

Recently, though, podcasting has received massive attention from more prominent companies. Even YouTube hosts podcasts now.

Podcasting can be a great way to make money, even as a beginner. This is especially true if you have a video podcast instead of just audio. With any audience size, you can find people willing to pay you to plug their products. Some affiliate programs even allow you to tell your audience about a product inside your podcast.

The biggest thing about a podcast is that you can literally talk about anything. Do you like crocheting? Talk about it on a podcast.

How about sports? Give your highlights with a co-star on a podcast.

Are you a serial entrepreneur? Tell the world how you created all of those businesses and what you learned from each.

Like complaining about stuff? Do it on a podcast, and plenty of people will listen.

Using tools like Patreon, you can even pay-gate some of the premium content you produce once you have a large enough audience.

The barrier to entry for creating a podcast is pretty low. In the modern era, you can start recording your podcast with an inexpensive ring light and a smartphone. You can use free software like iMovie or other free editing software to refine your video.

After that, just upload it to the podcast platform of your choice. The more people watching it, the higher your potential to make money.

17. Make Money with Amazon FBA

You could always sell stuff on Amazon, the most popular e-commerce store for the average person. Amazon goes out of its way to make it simple for you to sell with them too. The “FBA” part of Amazon FBA means “Fulfilled By Amazon.”

That means once your store is setup, all you have to do is send Amazon the product you are selling, and they will print all the labels and ship it to the right person for you. They even handle returns, refunds, and restocking.

To start a store, here are a few things you need.

• Create an Amazon Seller account. This takes a few days to verify.
• Find or create products to sell. When looking for products to sell, make sure you understand how to calculate your profit margin and that you are actually making a profit.
• Generate a listing for your product. Amazon will show this listing to each potential customer, so make sure it is eye-catching and has all the relevant information for the product.
• Send your products to Amazon. They will charge to receive and store your products in their warehouse. That means you should include that in your calculations for profit margin.
• Optional: if you have the budget for it, advertising on Amazon has good value. It could jumpstart your store in the early stages.

You can make money using FBA. It varies from product to product, so you must calculate it for each product you sell. JungleScout says about 73% of Amazon sellers make more than $1,000 monthly.

That is good news for you! Even as a beginner, those numbers show that the odds you will make money are pretty high.

18. Rent Out Your Stuff

Everyone has heard of Airbnb, where you can rent out your house to short-term guests for a nightly fee, like a hotel. Thanks to a plethora of online marketplaces, you can easily rent out almost anything you own. The possibilities are endless. The more stuff you have just laying around, the more potential there is to make money.

You can rent out anything from your car to your clothes! Thanks to marketplaces like Turo and Style Lend, you can quickly make money renting out your stuff.

People are willing to pay money to borrow your stuff. Most of these marketplaces handle the money-gathering part. Many of them even help you insure your stuff so that damaged items can be replaced.

All you need to do is have something you do not need and sign up for the appropriate service! Even as a beginner, if you have stuff you are not using, this can be an excellent way to make money. You could even rent out your stuff if you want to get an upgraded item but do not have the cash to afford it right now!

19. Crowdsource Funding for Your Idea

We all have ideas, but most of us never take action to make them a reality. Do you have an idea that could help you make money? Is the only thing holding you back the fact that you do not have startup capital? Crowdsourcing might be right for you!

Thanks to crowdsourcing marketplaces like Kickstarter, you can now use the power of crowds to generate startup capital! Let’s say you have an idea that costs $10,000 to start up. You could find one person to give you $10,000.

An alternative is to find 10,000 people to give you $1. This turns a huge monetary commitment for one person into a very small monetary commitment for many people. That is a much easier lift.

Services like Kickstarter allow you to create a free account. Many of them even allow you to make a free listing. They make their money by taking a small percentage of the money investors give you. In return, they show your idea to thousands of small-time investors that might be interested in your project.

Getting several of those small-timers invested in one project can be just like receiving VC money. It could even be better than VC money because you do not have to pay it back, at least not directly. Most of the time, you only need to offer investors a thank you or shout-out.

Ideas: Passive Focus Income

The highest return on your investment comes from Passive Focus Income sources. With these sources, you invest a little startup time and focus. In return, these ventures can be money powerhouses over a long time horizon!

They take some time to see returns on your investment. You will not see a profit from them on day one. However, months from now, these ideas can generate steady income. Enough of them together can generate massive amounts of income, even without much upkeep.

Below are some ideas for this category. They are roughly ordered from highest profit potential to lowest when considered over a long time horizon.

20. Make Money Blogging

Starting a profitable blog can make solid passive income, especially if you implement a well-timed monetization strategy. You can make money from ads, classes, consulting, and even affiliate marketing programs. If you want more detail on this, check out my Make Money Blogging Guide, one of the focus pieces for this site!

21. Sell Digital Products

Selling Digital Products can be an excellent way to make money, especially for a beginner! With Digital Products, there is nothing to keep in stock, there is nothing to ship, and there are no storage costs! You are literally selling ones and zeros!

A Digital Product can be almost anything digital! Online courses, masterclasses, ebooks, and software are some well-known examples. But you can also sell things like event tickets, Digital Art, Photos, PDFs, mockups, layouts, and spreadsheets! If you have the capacity to create anything digital, there is a good chance that you can sell it and make money, even as a beginner!

There are marketplaces for most Digital Products. With services like Podia and SkillShare you can create an online course once and repeatedly sell it to thousands of people. Marketplaces like Creative Market allow you to create mockups in Photoshop and sell them to designers who do not have the time or skill to make their own. These are only a few examples, but there are marketplaces for almost any type of Digital Product you can think of.

If you cannot find a specific marketplace for your creations, you can always start an Etsy store with exclusively Digital Products. You could even start your own e-commerce website using a tool like Shopify. Selling Digital Products is a low-overhead way to make money. It is beginner friendly and requires very little ongoing focus to keep running.

22. Create an Online Course

Even though you are a beginner in generating income online, you know other stuff. Lean into that and make money from it! To do this, create an online course and sell it. It sounds like it might be complicated or overwhelming, but I promise it is not.

Modern technology lets you record your first few with your smartphone and an inexpensive ring light. Like in the podcast example from earlier, free tools like iMovie can help you edit the course to your liking. These tools even allow you to add fancy overlays and on-screen messages. It does not have to be fabulous or overly fancy, but it does need to walk a person through a topic.

When you create your video course, imagine that the person you are talking to is an adult who understands the topic exists but has no intimate knowledge about it. You may have to explain the most basic of concepts to start. Once you have a series of courses, you can level up your videos’ context and assume the listener has a bit more experience.

After you have completed the video course, you must sign up for an account on Coursera or SkillShare. Upload your video course to your account and publish it. Make sure you understand how the service pays you for students using your course.

This process is beginner friendly and can be done from your couch. At this point, you can sit back and passively make money.

The bottom line is that creating a course is very beginner friendly. You can share some knowledge in video form and start to make money quickly. Your audience will be people of all skill levels, so be sure to indicate what experience level is needed to understand the content of the course.

23. Write a Book

Long ago, it required networking with other authors and possibly a few publishers if you desired to be a professional author. You would then start a business relationship with a publisher who would read your book and decide whether it was publish-worthy. If they rejected your book, your only other option was to find another publisher and start over. Thanks to the modern era, this is a thing of the past!

Now you can self-publish a book on Amazon! With Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP for short), you have the power to publish your book without the fear of publisher rejection (for the most part). Write to your heart’s content. Then, after you have reviewed and edited your book (or paid someone to do it for you), you only have to export it in a format that Amazon can use and upload it!

Your book will now live on Amazon in digital form. Amazon Kindle users will be able to buy your book directly in the Kindle app and start reading it instantly! You can even have Amazon offer a printed version of your book, though typically your profit margin is a bit lower, because of material costs associated with physical books.

Regardless, even as a beginner, you can become a published author! The barrier to entry is relatively low and you can start to make money immediately. Amazon also handles the promotion and presentation of your book to its customers. All you need to do is fill out some basic information about the book, and voila!

24. Create an App

Do you have a killer idea for an app? Are you confident that everyone would use it and that it would become insanely popular if it existed? Could you monetize that app if it existed? If you answered yes to any or all of those questions, you could try creating an app!

It used to require substantial technical prowess to create an app. App developers with years of programming experience used to run the whole app industry.

Thanks to tools like Softr, which is for a complete beginner, you can easily create a full-featured app with “no code.” The drag-and-drop interface is sleek and easy to use. They literally guide you through everything as if you know nothing about app development.

Regardless of how the app was produced, once you have it, you must get it on the app stores before you can make money. The Android Play Store and Apple App Store are the most popular smartphone app stores, even though hundreds are out there now. You must sign up for a developer account to publish apps on either. This does take a little effort but even a beginner can complete it.

Once you have the app in the stores, you can start to make money right away. Typically apps require minimal upkeep. Some apps require more upkeep than others, but it is certainly not a Full Focus task unless you have a complex offering that requires constant new content. Also, in case you did not know, apps can be powerhouse money makers if they are good quality and fill a gap in the market.

25. Create NFTs

If you have spent any appreciable time on the internet in the last decade, you have probably heard of Cryptocurrency. It is an entirely digital form of money that is exchanged and created using advanced computer-powered cryptography. Complicated computer calculations are required to process any transactions in crypto and they are extremely difficult, almost impossible to forge, unlike physical money.

Built upon this technology is another relatively new technology called NFTs. NFT is the acronym for Non-Fungible Token. It is a digital asset that can be uniquely identified (non-fungible) and is impossible to replicate.

The implications of such a technology are substantial. Despite that, the primary usage of this powerful technology is for aspiring artists to make money from their digital art.

The world primarily associates this digital art with the term “NFT,” even though NFTs represent a much more extensive classification of digital products. As it stands today, anyone can make an NFT. By extension, that means anyone can sell an NFT. It only requires a few simple steps.

1. Create a cryptocurrency wallet for Ethereum.
2. Sign up for an account on an NFT “minting service” like MintNFTs.co.
3. Mint your NFT from your digital art.
4. Present your NFT to the world by promoting it on social media or platforms like Coinbase.
5. Sell or trade your NFTs for money or other NFTs.

With these simple steps, you can make money with NFTs, even as a beginner. Give it a shot!

26. Publish Your Music

Much like the Write a Book section above, publishing music was a pain in the past! It required networking with other musicians and possibly music producers. After some time, you would start a business relationship with a producer in your network. They would have a contract with you where they would siphon a significant percentage of your music proceeds and in exchange, they would publish your music to their already established audience.

Again, thanks to the modern era, you can skip all that in-person negotiation and jump right to the generating income part. You can even save a bit of the “fees” these sharks used to charge. Thanks to tools like SoundCloud, Spotify, and even Amazon, you can easily publish your music without worrying about cutting in that middleman. Instead, these platforms act as your agent, and their fees are much smaller than a traditional gouger.

Like all the other ideas in this post, you can even do this as a beginner. If your music is good, you can even make money with it. This is the first part of the strategy, as you still need to promote your music, but at least you can publish it immediately and start making money!

27. Invest in Royalties

Have you ever heard a song you knew when watching a movie? How about during a commercial? Maybe you heard it in a video game?

Well, as it turns out, the artist who created that music is being paid for those occurrences of their music. This idea is called “Royalties,” which are extremely common in the music industry.

This idea also translates into other creative works too. You can collect royalties on patents, franchises, performances, books, mineral rights, and much more. It gets better!

You can buy royalties from the owner.

That’s right. You do not have to be a great musician, inventor, or gold miner to collect royalties from your assets. Instead, the owners of these royalties are willing to sell them for a bulk profit.

As the buyer, you offer them upfront cash for something that will pay you over time. In almost all circumstances, the amount of money generated over time is substantially more than what you pay upfront.

Buying royalties is surprisingly easy. As a beginner, you can invest in them immediately using marketplaces like RoyaltyExchange. All you must do is create an account, add funds, and start buying royalties. Over time, you will see returns on those royalties, which will outweigh that initial investment!

Ideas: Zero Focus Income

As mentioned before, this classification of income sources has an extremely low barrier to entry. They require only signing up for an account and about five minutes (literally) of setup. After that initial time and focus investment, they require practically zero upkeep. Let’s dive in because I know only a few of these.

28. Become an Affiliate

Okay. Technically this is an additional step you can take with a few of the other ideas above. Despite that, these programs are so easy to start and require such minimal upkeep the whole idea deserves its own section.

At the core, Affiliate Programs are like gold. All you must do is qualify for the program, sign up, agree to their terms, add a couple of links on your website or app, and wait. Granted, you must adhere to rules before you can get paid. Regardless, there is pretty much zero upkeep once you set it up.

Affiliate Programs exist for almost every topic you can think of. You can make money by simply encouraging people to sign up for Grammarly, even the free Grammarly account! That is just crazy! Some offers give you recurring income for users who continue purchasing the service, like ConvertKit, which is THE BEST marketing tool out there! Seriously, it is extremely powerful and it has a free tier!

All it takes is a little bit of an audience, a google search, and a signup. Becoming a brand ambassador for tools you already use is an excellent way of entering the Affiliate Marketing industry, and trust me when I say you can make money fast and in large quantities!

29. Invest in REITs

Real Estate Investment Trusts have been around for a long time. These are “securities” (like a stock symbol) with many small-time investors who invest exclusively in Real Estate and related businesses. Think of them as a Mutual Fund, but only for Real Estate. Typically they have a high-dividend yield, which makes them attractive to all types of investors.

One of the most substantial benefits of REITs is that they offer a more liquid real estate investment method. Traditionally, investing in real estate is a long-term investment. Buying or Selling a property can take 30-90 days after you start the transaction.

Finding a buyer or seller that has amenable terms takes even longer. With an REIT, you can see a lower return on your money when compared to full-blown real estate investing, but you can modify your investment at any time.

Traditional real estate investing has substantial taxation benefits, as you may well know. REITs also have taxation benefits, but the benefits differ from those in traditional real estate investing. I highly recommend engaging your accountant for details on how all that works.

REITs are traded through your stock broker. Most of the top stock brokers support these types of trades, but not all of them do. Fidelity, Merrill, and E-Trade all support trading these types of securities, so if you also make money day trading, you can easily add this to your strategy.

30. Make Money from Your Internet Connection

This one is simple. If you have the internet on a laptop or desktop, you can make money by renting out your bandwidth, even as a beginner. They make it easy to get started, and you can make a few bucks based on their marketing material. It is not life-changing money, but considering it takes no time or focus to set up but still generates money for you, it is worth mentioning, at least.

It is a relatively new concept so there are only a few players in the space right now. The consensus online indicates that the best companies offering this are Pawns.app and HoneyGain.

Typically, users are paid based on how much GB of bandwidth they share with others. Each GB earns a few cents. Over time, those cents add up to bucks! It sounds like an easy way to make money, even for beginners.

Conclusion

At first glance, thinking about how to make money online can be overwhelming. Hopefully, you can now see that there are plenty of ways to make money with varying degrees of focus and time requirements.

Combining several of these together can easily supplement or even replace your existing hourly or salary income. I have personally implemented several of them and seen success with each! If I can do it, so can you!