5 Ways to Make Money Online

Hello business owners!

Woohoo! I’m so excited for today’s topic!

Today we are going to talk about an extremely popular topic: “How to make money online”. This topic is definitely one of the hottest topic of all times.

To be honest, this is one of the main reason business owners started their online businesses. I know there are more noble reasons to start a business like helping the world to solve a problem or creating your very own legacy in this world.

But here’s the truth. Your business must have a way or two to make money so that it can pay for its own expenses, to pay you and your employees’ salary and to give back to the world.

Now let’s learn the 5 ways to make money online!

1. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is promoting your favourite brands or products to your audience and if they take action (make a purchase, visit the website or sign up a form) through your special affiliate link or code, you will receive an affiliate income. There are numerous affiliate marketing opportunities right now in the market and the most popular one is Amazon associates for products on Amazon. If you prefer to promote various brands or products, an affiliate platform such as ShareASale and CJ has a variety of options for you. 

If you choose to do affiliate marketing, be genuine with your audience and treat them like your best friends. You will only promote brands or products that you have used before and can vouch for it to your best friends, right? Your personal branding is worth more than the affiliate income from a bad product.

2. E-commerce

E-commerce is selling products online either on your own website or e-commerce platform. The most popular e-commerce platforms are Amazon, eBay and Etsy. You can either sell products that you purchase from suppliers or your own unique handmade products. 

This is similar to the conventional way of opening a store or shop without the cost of renting a shop, waiting for customers to pass by your shop and worst of it all, if you’re in lockdown then you can’t open your shop at all. E-commerce is a better way of doing business online while expanding your reach to customers of various location within your country or even global. And the best part of it all, it’s available 24/7 (24 hours a day, 7 days a week) for your customers to purchase your products. All you need to do is to fulfil the sales by packing and sending the products with love.

If you decide to do e-commerce, here’s a tip for you (from a frequent e-commerce customer’s point of view): Write a thank you note to your customers and they’ll love you even more!

3. Coaching or consultation

Coaching or consultation is a service where you help your customer to solve a specific problem, provide your expertise insight onto their specific situation or to teach and guide them with something specific. You could conduct a coaching or consultation session on a 1-on-1 basis or in a group. If the information to be discussed in the session is sensitive or confidential, 1-on-1 will be more suitable.

You can provide coaching or consultation session either in-person or online via Zoom with screen sharing feature if it’s required. Turning on your webcam during your Zoom session will make your customer feel like this is a face-to-face in-person session.

If you are going to provide coaching or consultation services, I do recommend that you get a calendar scheduling app to help you manage your appointments better. At Nuts Accounting, we use Calendly to make it easy for our consultation clients to book appointments in their own time zone.

4. Digital Course or Online Course

Digital course or online course is the online version of conventional course where your students learn a specific topic or skill in a short period of time, usually in weeks or months. It is fully delivered online, which means it is available globally as long as your student has internet access. If you are an expert in certain topic or you have a skill that you could teach others, you can create your own online course.

To create your online course, there’s various format of lessons that you can choose from. You can record videos of you teaching the lessons, you can record your voice only like an audiobook or you can teach your lessons by writing the content.

At Nuts Accounting, we have created various online courses to help you become a successful DIY bookkeeper. Check out our courses here! (Click here)

Store the lessons of your online course in an online course platform. At Nuts Accounting, we use Kajabi because it is an all-in-one platform that we use to build our website, blog, online course, payment collection and email marketing as well. We prefer Kajabi as it is a convenient all-in-one platform and most importantly it is easy to use. You can try Kajabi for free for 30 days here. (Click here)

5. Membership

Membership is pretty versatile and you can shape your membership according to your preference and offerings which can be products, services, knowledge, discounts or a combination. A typical membership is where your customer join as a member by paying the membership fees and enjoy the products, services or knowledge for as long as they wish to remain as a member.

You can charge the membership fees weekly, monthly, quarterly, biyearly or annually. Let me give you some examples of membership. At Nuts Accounting, our Master User Academy is a combination of Xero Accounting lessons with tutorials, masterclasses, group coaching and a place for members to support each other with a monthly membership. Check out Master User Academy here! (Click here)

If you sell products or services that your customer will repeatedly purchase on a monthly basis, you can start a monthly membership and send the products or provide the services monthly. Or you can give your members exclusive access to new launch products, 10% discount on all purchases or free shipping.

For a membership, you will need a payment collection platform that supports recurring payments. If you provide classes to your members, you will need an online course platform and if you provide community, you will need a Facebook group or other platforms that provide this feature. At Nuts Accounting, we use Kajabi for membership as well. Try Kajabi for 30 days for free here! (Click here)

Let’s recap! The 5 ways to make money online is affiliate marketing, e-commerce, coaching or consultation, online course and membership.

Start with the one that is easiest for you so you can start making money online, either as a side income, expand your business from a brick and mortar store to online or create a new online business.

So now that you have learned the 5 ways to make money online, which of these are you doing right now? Or if you haven’t yet, which will you add to your business?

I love to hear your choices and big ideas!

Drop me an email or message me on Instagram, Facebook or YouTube and let me know!