Here are the best 5.5 ideas on how to make money online even as a beginner, with Zero
money to invest.
In this video, I will share all the ideas based on these two questions:
- how long does it take you to generate your first $1000?
- how hard it is to learn the skills for this method?
And we’ll use these little stars to give the rating from 5 stars being the easiest
and fastest way to 1 star requiring more time and effort.
Let’s start with the method #5
5.
Create and Sell a Digital Product
What are digital products?
Well they are anything that can be created on your computer or sometimes even just on
your smartphone, and delivered to your customers via the Internet.
Products could range from an eBook on how to potty train your toddler, to a digital
marketing course, an application, a website, a landing page tempates, graphic design templates,
excel templates and so on.
If you decide to create a digital product, I promise you can make your first $1000 pretty
fast, especially with video courses because typically they sell above $200 for enrollment.
So you’d need only 5 clients to buy your course to make $1000.
I also think that this method can be relatively easy in terms of learning new skills because
if you decide to share your knowledge or skills and package it into a digital product, it
should be easy for you because you are sharing knowledge or information in which you are
already an expert.
If you ask me, creating a video course might help you earn $1000 faster than an eBook or
some kind of low-cost product, like templates for instance.
But it will take you more time and effort to create a video course because it’s not
so easy for everyone to speak in front of a camera, then to edit your videos.
But the good news is you can start recording your course even from your laptop and using
your headset instead of a professional microphone.
But still, creating eBooks and templates will take you less effort and you can totally do
it in Canva, it’s a free graphic design tool that works in your browser.
I already have a video on my channel showing how to use Canva to sell eBooks, I'll link
the video up there and in the description below.
When it comes to the platforms to deliver your digital products to customers, we live
in times when it’s super easy.
Anyone can start selling digital products even for free.
Many platforms will provide you the complete infrastructure for selling digital products,
including a shopping cart, an online store and payment processing.
And as I mentioned, many of these platforms will offer you all of this without any monthly
fees!
I recently published a video covering the best platforms where you can sell your digital
products.
You'll find the link up there and in the description below.
So I’ll give to selling digital products the 5 stars for both of our factors - the
time to make your first $1000 and for the skillset.
4. Make Money on Pinterest
The next method of making money online is what empowered me to escape my miserable life
working at a corporate job and gave me unlimited new opportunities.
It’s making money on Pinterest.
You can start your Pinterest account absolutely for free and by growing your audience on Pinterest,
you can get paid in many different ways.
The first way is the easiest.
All you need is a Pinterest account and Canva to create simple pin images.
Then you can create pins and link them to affiliate products directly.
When someone clicks on your pins, they will visit the product page.
And if they make a purchase through your link, you’ll earn a commission.
As you noticed, for this method, you don’t need to worry about creating your own website
or paying for a hosting provider.
For the ease of achieving your first $1000 with this method, I’ll give it about 2 stars
because it can take several months for your pins on a new account to get some traction
on Pinterest.
But when it comes to the level of skillset, I think it’s pretty easy and deserves 4
stars because even if you don’t have any graphic design skills, in Canva you can use
thousands of pin templates to create professionally looking images with text overlay.
As I mentioned, I am rating this method with 4 stars for the skills you need to learn.
And you might ask me why not the 5 stars, isn't it easy to use Canva templates and upload
images on Pinterest?
Well, yes and no.
Anyone can make an account on Pinterest in a minute and start uploading, whatever images
they want.
But here's where it gets tricky standing out on Pinterest, because it's so easy to start,
thousands of pins are uploaded on the platform daily.
Competition is getting higher every year with more creators on Pinterest.
If you are still in doubt, definitely start your Pinterest account today and your chances
for success will be higher.
Also, if you want to really get into the 10% of the most successful Pinterest accounts,
you need to know what you are doing on the platform.
Just uploading images is not enough.
You need to learn about Pinterest SEO – search engine optimization, and add the right keywords
to your pins and boards.
And the best place to start is in my free Pinterest masterclass.
Check the link to it in the top right corner and in the description below.
3.
Manage Social Media Accounts for Others
Many small business owners know how important it is to be active on social media networks,
but their problem is time and lack of skills.
They have so much MORE on their plate and they really need someone to help them handle
all their social media accounts.
That someone coud be you!
A pack of services to manage several platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest
could include creating and scheduling posts,
interacting with followers, creating graphics for posts,
tracking their analytics and so on.
The best part about this income stream is that most of your clients will pay you for
many months.
If you achieve for them the results they hoped for, they will work with you maybe even for
years.
Because once you gained their trust, it's much easier for your clients to keep working
with the same social media manager to avoid sharing access to their business accounts
with new people and training them all over again.
At the start of this career, it can be a bit challenging because you need to actively look
for new clients and this marketing activity will take a part of your working day.
But the great news is once you are booked with several long-term clients, you can focus
on the work and forget about promoting your services.
If you are good at what you do, your clients will be happy to give you nice testimonials.
Once you have a bunch of them on your portfolio page, new clients will reach out to you without
any effort on your side.
Plus, word of mouth works like majic!
I've seen how it works in Facebook groups when someone asks for a recommendation of
a good social media manager, small business owners happily share their positive experiences
and even share the contacts of their social media manager.
To understand how much you can charge for your services, I recommend you to google some
of your competitors and see what exactly they include in the packages.
Which social networks they manage for clients, how many posts they create per month, and
so on.
Many newbie social media managers charge approximately $25 – $35 an hour to start, and normally
you'll need to spend between 10 to 20 hours per month working for each client.
This means that each client could be paying you between $250 – $700 per month just to
start with.
Based on this, I would rate this money making idea with 4 stars for the ease of making your
first 1000 dollars a month.
You will need just a couple of clients to reach that number.
I think the easiest way to start and find your first clients is by charging an hourly
rate and later on, once you have some portfolio and testimonials, you could increase your
earnings per client by offering packages of services instead of hourly rates.
Usually these packages are more scalable, you can have more clients on packages and
can charge more for this work.
Because packages will specify all what's included, and it makes it more difficult for your clients
to stretch the boundaries and ask you to do more work in the same amount of time.
For the ease of learning the skills I'd give this idea about 3 starts because you'll need
to learn how to optimize graphics and content for several different platforms, so it's not
like you can become the best expert in this in 2 days.
But as I mentioned, when you are starting you can charge a lower fee or an hourly rate
and as you learn more in the process of working with your first clients, and improve your
skillset, you can gradually increase your rates.
2.
Affiliate Marketing
The next idea is to make money online with affiliate marketing.
This one can be very scalable in the long run.
I can tell you that I had promotions as an affiliate for a few high-ticket programs and
made over 8k in one campaign, and over 12k in another.
Each promotion took only about a week.
So in both cases I didn't have to create the products, I didn't have to provide support
to the people who purchased those products through my affiliate links.
That's what I like the most about affiliate marketing!
Your only work is to promote the products someone else created and they are responsible
for customer support.
The commission size depends on the affiliate program and the product being sold.
For many high-ticket products, commissions reach between 20 and 40% so you can often
make hundreds or even thousands of dollars for each client you referred.
Things to keep in mind when you do affiliate marketing:
You need to follow the regulations and make affiliate disclaimers according to the laws
of the country where you live and also based on where the majority of your audience lives.
These rules and requirements may be different in each country but if you want to be safe
for sure, just adding a disclosure next to the promoted product definitely won't hurt.
As an affiliate marketer, it's good to promote a bunch of products with a recurring commission.
This typically works with software products that have a monthly fee.
Initially, your income from affiliate marketing can be quite unstable but the more of those
recurring commissions you get, the more passive and stable your affiliate income becomes over
time.
Another thing to remember is that your key to success in affiliate marketing is building
trust with your audience.
In this sense, providing value with free content, building a community of real fans on your
social media and building your email list are the best strategies to work on for building
a consistent income with affiliate marketing.
The really difficult part about being a successful affiliate marketer is that you need to have
an audience.
It can be your email list, your blog, your Youtube channel, Instagram account and so
on.
I would say, it's easy to start making money with affiliate marketing if you happen to
have the foundation - your audience.
If you do have an audience, you could earn commissions right away, in a matter of hours.
Let's say you joined an affiliate program, you have yoru email list, send a promotional
email and in a few hours you can make your first commission.
But if you don't have an audience, it will take you more time because you first need
to build it.
So we'll have to rate affiliate marketing with about 3 stars, for the time needed to
earn your first 1000 dollars.
As for the skills required to make a decent income with affiliate marketing, I think nothing
is easier so it's 5 stars out of 5, because in most cases, the brands you promote will
provide you with graphics, content ideas, for high-ticket products it's even very common
to provide email swipes so all you really need to do is edit the swipes to adjust the
texts for your audience and your own style a bit.
1.
Consulting You can make money online by sharing your
expertise and experience in the form of consultations.
I'll tell you this method here is number 1 because I can give it 5 stars for the ease
of making your first 1000 dollars and for the ease of learning the skills.
Why?
Well, because here you can make the first $1000 on the very first day if you take 2-3
calls with clients.
And because you don't need to learn any skills, this income stream is based on what you already
know.
Let's say you worked in a particular industry for a while, you are an expert in this area.
But that's not it!
You also probably already have some contacts in the industry that might help you to land
your first few clients!
Depending on the niche, there could be different platforms and communities to find your clients.
For many industries, I would assume you could be in some FB groups where people often ask
for help or look for a specialist in your niche.
For example, as a full-time blogger, I am a part of several FB groups where established
publishes often ask each other for recommendations of the best SEO consultant, the best website
speed specialist, and so on.
For some industries, LinkedIn can also be a great place to connect with people and build
up your profile for landing more work.
Idea # 0.5 Content Creator or Influencer
Now, remember I promised you a bonus idea?
Here you go!
This idea is to become a content creator.
This could mean to be a blogger and grow your website traffic, or to be an influencer on
Instagram, Youtube or Facebook.
Just pick one platform and one format of content that you enjoy creating most.
Personally, I started with just a blog and now I am also a youtuber.
This idea doesn't get the best stars for the time of making your first $1000 because you
definitely need time to build your audience and creating content is not so easy.
I'll give it 2 stars on the time to earn your first $1000 and 3 stars for the skillset.
You see, for a long-form blog post that has a chance to rank well in Google search results,
I challenge you to write it in less than 4 hours of deep work.
It would take me about that amount of time.
And for a good video on Youtube that takes you about 10-15 minutes to watch, it can easily
take a full working day or even two days, between writing an outline, recording the
video, editing the content, doing keyword research and publishing it with all the SEO
and tags to give it a chance to rank on Youtube.
But the good news is your income potential is very high and to a certain degree, your
earnings get more and more passive over time if you optimize your content to rank in search
on Google or Youtube.
Because high rankings mean that your old content can consistently get visitors for months and
even years to come.
Also, I have to mention here that it may take longer to earn your first $1000 but the income
potential with this method is really impressive.
You can build a multi-million dollar personal brand like the famous influencers, and if
you are lucky, this can happen with viral effect in just a few years.
I'm not in the league of 7-figure influencers yet but even I had some really good months
for example this one when I made $40,000 with my blogging business.
Check the video where I shared the income report up there and in the description below.
Now if you want to learn how to grow your website traffic for free using Pinterest,
check up there my video about the strategies that allow me to get over 10 million monthly
viewers on this platform.
I also manually picked for you a couple of other videos check them out here and there
and I'll see you in the next one!