4 Legit Real Ways To Earn Money Online

Real Ways to earn money online

What to know some real ways to earn money online from home? If you are like me you have probably already stumbled upon the bogus online opportunities.

So, time for some real deal stuff for you to look at. Following are four top picks that you can actually make some money with if you are keen to put in the effort.

These are all business types that are predominately or totally internet based that you can run from home.  There are pros and cons for all, so I have run through this for each option. I have also outlined my personal thoughts on the option that I have found to be the best.

Because you are searching for real ways to earn money online then it means you are doing your due diligence, so good on you. This is one of your key steps to success.

Drop Shipping

Drop shipping is a method of selling products online.  This is something that you can do from home by yourself starting off small and scaling up. Usually works by you having an agreement in place to work with a  vendor  (retailer, wholesaler or even a manufacturer) to advertise and sell their products.  It is also possible to do this without having any real connection to a vendor but you will need to deal with returns from a client if the product is faulty.

What is Drop Shipping You advertise the vendor’s products – through your own website or you can use eBay or Amazon. You need to check with the latter two to makes sure you do not contravene their seller regulations.

When a customer orders a product that you have advertised you collect the payment and place the order for that product with the vendor. The vendor packages and dispatches your order to your customer for you.  You will have to pay the vendor for the order. You set your own selling price, so the difference you make is your profit.

Pros

  • relatively easy to start
  • scaleable
  • no stock holding required

Cons

  • highly competitive – you may have to reduce margins to compete
  • medium risk – you may have to reimburse customers for refunds
  • upfront outlay required

Selling Through Amazon and eBay

Similar to drop shipping, selling products on eBay or Amazon can be done from home and online. You can sell either your own products or if within the boundaries of their seller’s agreements, other peoples product (like drop shipping).

Affiliate marketing The majority of products that you see on Amazon these days (for example) is produced overseas. A lot of it comes from China and Taiwan. You can source all sorts of products online directly from the manufacturer, arrange orders and ship them to Amazons warehouse. Have a look at Alibaba.com. They are the largest online facilitator of business between buyers and manufacturers.

You can get Amazon to manage your stock for you using FBA (Fulfilment by Amazon) where they pick, pack and dispatch the products that you advertise on their websites.

Selling on eBay is similar, only you need to manage your own stock and do your own dispatch and customer service. But you can start smaller with eBay and scale up as you need.

Pros

  • very high turnover of products can be achieved
  • potential high profits/income
  • scaleable
  • exciting, edgy business model – trips to China etc
  • opportunity to develop products and branding

Cons

  • stock inventory required (unless you try drop shipping)
  • larger capital required to start.
  • realising profits can be delayed – model works well by turning initial profits back into more stock to increase volumes
  • high level of risk
  • dealing with foreign manufacturers

Outsourcing Skills

This is a good potential option for people with special skills that can be transferred online. For example, drawing skills, writing skills, graphic artists, cartoonists, accounting skills, IT skills, etc.

You can advertise yourself through your own website, social media and localised business communities.  There are also groups like Fiverr and iWriter where you can join up and start promoting yourself as a freelancer. You get sent jobs and you can bid for the work and earn on completion.

Pros

  • select the work you want to do
  • scaleable – work your own hours
  • using your skills
  • good income potential
  • Low risk
  • No upfront cost to start

Cons

  • High workload to earn a good income
  • clients can reject your work
  • need to be good at what you do to succeed

Affiliate Marketing

This is sort of a combination of all the above but without the outlays and risk.  Affiliate marketing works through your connection (or affiliation) with company’s that offer affiliate programs. It basically works where a vendor offers a commission to a website owner in return for generating sales of their products.

The vendor offers an affiliate link that you use when promoting their products. This link is traced when a reader buys a product and the vendor pays you a commission.

How does affiliate marketing workYou market their products online through ‘content’ marketing techniques. This means you would target a niche group and develop a trust relationship with your readers by creating content for them to read. You can promote products and services through your content to help promote sales.

Affiliate marketing gives you the option of promoting whatever product or service you like. Most people chose a topic that they might know a lot about already, a sport, hobby, craft, business … could be anything you are passionate about if you like.

Affiliate marketing works best through a website but can also be done through social media. But I don’t think it is as easy that way and you need to outlay for targeted advertising to a larger degree.

Pros

  • no risk
  • low outlay
  • scaleable
  • easy to learn
  • huge scope – billions of people searching online
  • big income potential
  • many content mediums – written, video, audio
  • no stock or dealing with customers

Cons

  • You need to be dedicated and work at it
  • income does not always start immediately
  • some outlay – monthly or annual subscriptions

Conclusion – What I Recommend

My number 1 recommendation is to try affiliate marketing. I personally use the Wealthy Affiliate platform due to the exceptional training and mentoring that they offer.  It is a one-stop shop for all the bits that you need to test, start, learn and excel with Affiliate Marketing.

I started with their free account and developed some websites and proceeded through the modular training. When I was ready I decided to subscribe annually. Paying for access to the full program of training, website development and hosting tools along with the support enabled me to develop an online business and learn real ways to earn money online.

Hope this information helps you along your way with a new and exciting direction in life. Please feel free to leave some comments below.

If you would like to trial affiliate marketing through a free account with Wealthy Affiliate, click on the link.

 

 

 

12 thoughts on “4 Legit Real Ways To Earn Money Online”

  1. I agree with you affiliate marketing is the best way to do marketing online. Considering that with Shopify many use PayPal to pay for their purchases. PayPal always sides on the side of the customer..

    My sister was selling items on her Shopify store, a customer ordered an item on her store which was delivered , we know because tracked it. But the customer put in a complaint to PayPal that the item had not been delivered, so my sister was out of money on that.

    I’m not too crazy about Amazon or eBay either. Once again it goes down to having to be responsible for refund returns all that other stuff that goes with it.I’m most comfortable with affiliate marketing, as most of my marketing is done by content. All I have to do is push the customer through to the link so they can make their purchase and then I get paid.

    1. Certainly the bonus with affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to deal with orders, customers and returns.  If people are after a real risk free option, I cant see a better way to earn money online than through affiliate marketing.  Thanks for your comments… great to have some first hand accounts. 

  2. Great information. I personally don’t want to deal with packing, shipping or any of those headaches. Affiliate marketing looks like the way to go to me.

    Outsourcing might be ok, but I think you are right about the workload, unless you are really good at writing content or something like that and can charge what you want. I know some people that do that and charge $50 for 1000 words. That would not be hard at all.

    Thank you for this useful information and I agree that WA is the way to go.

    1. Hi Curtis,  I have been involved with all the 4 options I have written about and I feel the same as you about dealing with packing, shipping and customers. It is a good way to destroy a passion, lol!  

      But affiliate marketing has been a dream for me. I can;t see myself doing much else anymore. 

      cheers James

  3. for real ways to make money online is right on point. As an affiliate marketer I have always wanted to sell Amazon product but I have not had the chance to be able to. This article is really good I like everything about it because it is real you can make money on e-Bay, drop shipping, and Amazon and you can really make money affiliate marketing.

    Thank you for this really informative article I know there’s going to be a lot of affiliate marketers joining on through you.

    1. That is right Quinn, all of there methods are real ways to earn money online. But I think the affiliate marketing option for me has produced the best results without the side hassles. 

  4. I have to agree with you that affiliate marketing is the way to go when it comes to having an online business. 

    And Wealthy Affilaite is next to none – the training received is unmatched, and so very easy to follow. I was able to build a website within no time without prior experience! 

    It does take work, consistency and dedication but the work is enjoyable! 

    Thanks for the reviews. 

    Christine 

    1. Thanks Christine,  Yes if you have already plugged into Wealthy Affiliate then you know how much fin it can be. certainly hard work and consistency is the key – but it works. 

  5. One of the things I like about drop-shipping as you pointed out in your article is the ability to scale it.

    Also with drop-shipping they take care of delivery, shipping, returns, customer complaints, etc.

    One of the downsides in my experience is you really need massive traffic to get high income.

    In my experience it can also take time to get paid as each area such as USA, Japan, etc have their own payment thresholds.

    So there is good and bad.

    I like Wealthy Affiliate. It’s simple.

    Support in incredible and the community even better.

    I am making about $5 a day from WA with only about 2 hours work. The downside is it is really time for money and has an income cap based on how much time I can put it.

    It’s my preferred platform right now.

    So it depends which you prefer each way has it’s own pros and cons as you very well pointed out.

    Good post!

    Tim

    My Life Is My Passion

    1. Hi Tim,  thanks so much for your response. There are going to be pros and cons with all the options that you try online. I guess it comes down to finding the one that suits you the best and fits in with the time you can or are willing to put in.  

      At the moment I would not want to be calculating my hourly rate – but It gets better all the time, which is the most encouraging thing for me.  Affiliate marketing through Wealthy Affiliate has certainly been one of the real ways to earn money online for me. 

  6. There are many bogus opportunities, as well as many legit opportunities. I think Affiliate Marketing is the best way to go but there are pros and cons to everything.  You just have to figure out which is the best option for you.  It can be a lot of hard work.  People think that making money online is just easy, but they are wrong it is still work, but you get to do it at home, which is really great.

    1. Hi there Shy, you are so right about working online is not easy. Unfortunately, the ones that advertise ‘done for you’ type opportunities tend to be the bogus ones. As you say, you get to do it from home in your own time  … and that is great.

      james

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *