How to Make Money Online in 2022

There are many reasons why people want to make money online. Besides being able to work from home with a flexible schedule, you can reach a global market with a low startup cost. Some methods of making money online don’t even require creating products or holding inventory.

1. Sell on Amazon

Amazon has become a marketplace that welcomes ecommerce entrepreneurs. It takes a few minutes to sign up for an account and a few more minutes to get a product listing live.

The platform has a massive audience, it’s a global marketplace, and it’s a go-to destination for product discovery and research. Listing optimization can help your products get found and unlock new opportunities. And Amazon’s in-app promotions can increase your brand’s visibility for highly targeted audiences.

Yet some ecommerce entrepreneurs question the long-term sustainability of selling on Amazon. While the marketplace is great for helping shoppers surface desired products, it’s challenging for sellers to get their business noticed. Amazon attracts many resellers of the same products you may offer.

Homesick went from not being on Amazon two years ago to becoming the number one scented candle company and the number two candle brand in the world. Amazon proved to be a good springboard for selling its products online.

Despite its success, Homesick used Shopify to build an online store as its home base. This gave the budding ecommerce business a place to showcase its brand, connect with its customers, and maintain control over its sales and promotions.

Startup time: A few hours, depending on how many products you’re listing.

Effort to start: Medium.

Time to first payment: 14 days after your first sale is delivered.

What to know:

1. You can only have one seller central account for each region you sell in, unless you have a legitimate business need to open a second account and all your accounts are in good standing.
2. Product detail pages do not belong to a single seller; they are for the specific product itself.
3. You must only ship products that you’ve included in the product detail page. Any additional items sent to the buyer is prohibited and may lead to the deactivation of your seller account.
4. You must confirm that you have shipped the product with Amazon in order to receive payment.

Requirements:

1. An Amazon account.
2. Must provide a product feed to Amazon or use its FBA program and send your products to an Amazon warehouse.
3. Must be at least 18 years old to create an Amazon seller account.

2. Start your own blog

Blogging ain’t exactly a unique idea to make money online in 2022. But it’s something that has worked in the past, works in the present, and will keep working in the future.

You can blog about almost anything you’re passionate about (as long as there are other people who are passionate about it, too). There are also tons of ways to make money blogging. For example, you can use affiliate marketing, partner with brands, display ads, and lots more.

Starting a blog that makes real money takes a lot of time and effort. But if you’re willing to put in the work, it’s still one of the best ways to make money on the internet in 2022 and beyond.

 How to start a blog site with WordPress

Investment: Low 
Skill to enter: Low 

Income type: Passive 
Good for: Pretty much anyone!

3. Sell digital products

Digital products carry some of the best margins of any product you can sell. The upfront costs of development can be high, but the variable costs of selling digital products is comparatively low. Once media or software is made, it isn’t very expensive to deliver to customers.

At its core, a digital product is an intangible asset you can sell repeatedly without restocking inventory. They often come in downloadable files such as a PDF, plug-in, or interactive document. These products have become such a good source of passive income that many top professional influencers, bloggers, or public icons release digital products like guides, ebooks, templates, research findings, plans, and tutorials.

Many creators make digital products to add another revenue stream to their main business, whether it be consulting, education, or memberships. You could build a presence on Twitter and LinkedIn or build an email subscriber list to promote your products and make sales.

Startup time: Varies, depending on how long it takes to create your digital product.

Effort to start: High initial effort to create the digital products you want to sell.

Time to first payment: It depends on the ecommerce platform you use, but platforms like Shopify take five business days to pay out.

What to know:

1. E-learning is becoming very popular as a digital product that people are investing in.
2. Digital products are scalable. There’s no limit to how many products you can sell. No inventory. No manufacturers, No shipping or logistics. Just market the products
3. An understanding of licensing laws, if you want to license your product or use licensed materials.

Requirements:

• An online platform to sell your digital products.

4. Test Websites and Give Feedback

If you have a keen eye for website design and development, consider becoming a website tester. It’s a great freelance job to make fast cash and a good starting point for newbies looking to enter the web development industry.

As a website tester, it’s necessary to have critical and logical thinking skills, excellent communication skills, and knowledge of website functionality and design. These factors can help improve job prospects and test-reporting quality.

Payments are project-based, and rates differ based on testing methods and the marketplace’s policy. For example, UserTesting offers between $4–$120/test, where the higher earnings threshold is for people doing live conversation tests with clients.

Here are a few other marketplaces where people can sign up for website testing projects:

• Ubertesters. A crowdsourced testing service focusing on mobile app and game testing.
• UserBrain. An online tool offering UX testing for websites and digital product prototypes.
• Testbirds. User experience testing for digital products, including eCommerce stores, mobile apps, and fitness trackers.
• Userlytics. In addition to testing websites and apps, it offers projects focusing on reviewing video commercials.
• TryMyUI. It provides impression testing for websites and mobile apps via recorded testing videos or survey-based feedback.

5. Start YouTube channel

Ever thought of becoming a YouTube star? Micro-celebrities like 10-year-old Ryan Kaji are making more than $29 million per year on YouTube selling toys. Another top earner on YouTube is David Dobrik, who makes about $15.5 million entertaining his audience with comical videos.

Create a YouTube channel around one niche. This will help you build a loyal audience that repeatedly tunes in to your channel, giving you more opportunities to make money online. You could offer tutorials, review products, keep up with celebrity news—whatever you think will keep your audience interested.

The key to a successful YouTube channel is to entertain or educate with your content. Once you’ve reached 1,000 subscribers, you can make money running YouTube ads on your channel. You can also offer paid product placement to big brands, sell products, or become an affiliate to make money on YouTube.

Startup time: A few hours.

Effort to start: High.

Time to first payment: Once you’ve reached 1,000 subscribers.

What to know:

• You can create a high-paying YouTube channel with the right niche.
• The key to a successful YouTube channel is entertaining or educating with your content.
• You can use your channel to become an affiliate.
• You need at least 1,000 subscribers to start earning money.

Requirements:

• A way to record video and audio, and a way to cut your video together.
• Creators between the ages of 13 and 17 need parental permission to start a YouTube channel.

6. Freelance

An increasingly popular home business idea is offering freelance services to clients online. Freelance writing, graphic design, data entry, digital marketing—almost every role an online business would hire for is viable as a freelance service. I’ve worked with writers, illustrators, and designers for years at Shopify, most of whom make their full-time living freelancing, not just doing it in their spare time.

Almost all of these services are best positioned toward business clients, for reasons similar to why business software is an attractive product: business clients are willing to spend. What most freelancers quickly learn is they have more leverage over the price they can charge when they position their work as outcomes instead of deliverables.

Put another way, businesses hire freelance writers to create content that drives traffic and leads, not for wordsmithing. Sell clients on the outcome and prove it, where possible, through customer evidence like case studies and testimonials.

The last thing to consider for these businesses is that they are a direct trade of time for money. You can make good money with a small selection of high-paying clients, but the moment you stop working, the cash flow dries up. You may be able to turn a freelance business into more of an agency, where hired help handles some client work.

Startup time: Varies, depending on service.

Effort to start: Medium.

Time to first payment: Varies.

What to know:

• Collect customer evidence cases, studies, and testimonials to help you in getting your next job.
• Freelancing is a direct money-for-time trade, so you may eventually want to grow your business model into one with a standalone asset.
• Sell clients on the outcome you can achieve, then prove it.
• Know your worth. You have the power to set your pricing.

Requirements:

• Ability to talk to clients and meet deadlines.
• An internet connection and laptop.
• You’ll need to be at least 18 years old to work on freelance marketplaces.

7. Affiliate marketing

So, how do you make money affiliate marketing? Essentially, publishers or individuals can apply for affiliate programs, wherever they’re available, in order to be added as an official affiliate. Once you’re accepted, you’ll receive a way to share an affiliate link to the product or service you’re interested in promoting. (Don’t forget to add a disclaimer!)

When someone buys the product after clicking your link, you’ll receive credit for the referral, along with a commission. The commission amount depends on the affiliate program and the product being sold—commodity items on Amazon.com won’t pay out much, but referring a high-ticket account may pay out hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

Because affiliate marketing works best when you help a visitor understand why a certain product may be the right one for them, you’ll typically notice it deployed on content-focused websites. Search engine optimization also plays an important role here, and you’ll see everyone from homegrown sites to massive, globally known publications competing for terms like “best gaming laptops 2022.”

Startup time: A few hours.

Effort to start: Medium.

Time to first payment: Varies, depending on how successful your affiliate marketing campaigns are.

What to know:

• Growth in affiliate marketing can be sporadic in the beginning, but if you stick with it and refine your strategies, it can become a great source of passive income.
• Building trust with your audience is the most important thing to cultivate with affiliate marketing.
• Disclaimers are required by the FTC and most reputable affiliate programs.

Requirements:

• A website or social media presence where you can promote products as an affiliate.
• Traffic to your website or a social media following.

8. Create online courses and workshops

There’s a reason online courses have a pretty broad appeal. Once a course is created, it accrues all of the benefits of any digital product: the costs to deliver the product to more customers is essentially zero, with the exception of hosting.

Compare that to the need to maintain inventory that all physical product businesses face and you’ll find yourself dealing with fewer product-related headaches as you scale.

The appetite for digital courses and continuing education is there, too. That’s why sites like Udemy and Skillshare thrive. Your biggest hurdle is actually the web itself, where there are thousands of wonderful resources available for free. And content on every topic is getting better by the day.

Remember, though, that while there are countless topics to create content about, there are far fewer topics that people are willing to pay for. Usually, the bestselling courses teach people a valuable skill that helps them progress at their job or get deeper enjoyment out of a beloved hobby.

Startup time: Varies, depending on course, but anywhere between 25 and 100 hours.

Effort to start: Very high.

Time to first payment: Varies, depending on your course’s payment structure.

What to know:

• Feedback is your friend. After you’ve sold your first round of courses, don’t be afraid to tweak it and improve it based on customer responses.
• Live elements, like a live Q&A or a live webinar, will raise the value of your course and make it stand out.
• Creating an online course takes a lot of time and energy, but once you’ve created the course, it will become a source of passive income for you.

Requirements:

• A way to record audio and video and edit segments together for recorded lectures.

9. Sell Media

Media is a wide-ranging term, but the best description available if you’re a creator in the market to sell music, videos, digital art, paid newsletters, magazines, or podcasts. Media seems closely related to digital products, but the difference with media is that it tends to be geared toward creative ventures—for example, a writer starting a paid newsletter subscription or an artist learning how to sell art online.

The best part about selling media is that, a lot of the time, it’s a way for people to express themselves online. Artists and creators who didn’t have access to networks, galleries, or PR in the past can now build a brand, grow a following, and make money online doing something they love.

Startup time: Varies depending on how long it takes to create your piece of media.

Effort to start: High.

Time to first payment: Varies depending on the ecommerce platform you use to sell your media.

What to know:

• Licensing laws, if you want to license your work or use licensed work in your pieces.

Requirements:

• An online platform to sell your media.

10. Become An Influencer

Influencers are a popular marketing channel for brands big and small, with 68% of US marketers at companies with more than 100 employees working with them in 2021. If others can become influencers, so can you.

To become an influencer, you’ll need an engaged following. Influencers today don’t need to have millions of followers. There are opportunities to become a nano-influencer or micro-influencer, which are accounts with up to 10,000 and 50,000 followers, respectively.

The two biggest platforms for this are YouTube and Instagram. Some of the most popular influencers found fame through these platforms like Lele Pons and pewdiepie. Check out our article on how to grow your Instagram following to build a big audience.

Once you have a following, you can make money several ways as an influencer:

• Charge for sponsored posts
• Speak at conferences
• Sell products in your online store
• Become an affiliate
• Sell ads
• Become a brand ambassador
• Write a book

Startup time: Varies, but generally, about three to four months.

Effort to start: High.

Time to first payment: Varies, depending on how you are monetizing your influencer status.

What to know:

• The number of followers you have isn’t as important as the number of engaged followers.
• TikTok is the hottest social media platform attracting influencers.
• Use multiple avenues to monetize your influencer status.

Requirements:

• Knowledge of how to engage and build trust with your audience.
• A particular niche.

11. Write eBooks

Got a story inside you just waiting to be released? It’s time for you to write that e-book. With Amazon Direct Publishing, it’s easy to publish an eBook. You just need to write the content, format it, create a cover, then publish and promote it online.

Use a keyword research tool to find trending topics people search for. You can use this information to inspire your book’s narrative, if you get stuck. Not the best writer? That’s OK. Hire a ghostwriter to work on the book with you. They’ll help you get your words onto the digital page. Then you can work with a designer to create the cover and a freelancer to format the ebook, if you need help.

To sell your ebook, market it a few different ways. Run a giveaway and offer it for free for a few days. The more traffic that comes to your page, the higher you can rank in search results. This can lead to more reviews, which can also boost your book’s visibility and earn more sales.

Engage in social media communities around the topic you plan to write about. For example, if you want to write a recipe book, you could get involved with food and culinary communities on Facebook and in real life. Once your book is published, you’ll have a strong community of folks who might buy it from you.

Startup time: Varies by book, but could take upward of two years.

Effort to start: Hard.

Time to first payment: Amazon takes 60 days after end-of-month sales.

What to know:

• Market your book in several ways to drive traffic to your website and get your book ranked higher in search results.
• Social media is your friend when it comes to marketing your book. Take advantage of the different platforms to gain a following.

Requirements:

• A way to get your book published. Amazon Direct Publishing is perfect for this.

12. Create an Online Course

There are many different ways to make money online, but you might be surprised that the most popular way to earn an income is by doing what you love and sharing it with others. The latest trend in earning money online is through creating your online course.

Online courses usually cover a specific topic such as personal development or business skills and offer a lot of guidance on how to do something, such as starting a blog or learning to speak Spanish.

Some courses even provide certification opportunities to look more professional when they put their skills into practice. Courses created by individuals who have earned tens of thousands of dollars from their online courses can be found on Udemy, Skillshare, and Teachable platforms.

The beauty of creating your own course is that you don’t have to rely on someone else’s income in order to make money online. You also get complete creative control over the content and how it’s presented, which makes this a really great way for you to build up an audience who trusts you enough to buy your products or services.

When building an online course, it is essential that your viewers feel like they are getting something valuable out of it. One thing that will make your course more popular is if you include a lot of actionable tips and tricks that they can use in their own lives.

You may build online courses in every field. The sky’s the limit when it comes to subjects – but how much money can you make from an online course? You may build online courses from $500 to $50,000 or more.

13. Take online surveys

A tried-and-true way to earn money online is through completing online surveys. The payouts won’t turn you into an overnight millionaire, but you can earn some pocket cash. Some survey sites like Swagbucks will give you points, which you can redeem for cash back or rewards. You can also earn points for playing games, browsing the web, or watching videos.

The best sites to take online surveys include:

• Swagbucks
• LifePoints
• Inbox Dollars
• Survey Junkie
• OpinionOutpost
• i-Say

Startup time: Less than an hour.

Effort to start: High.

Time to first payment: Varies by survey service.

What to know

• How your survey sites pay you out (gift cards, PayPal, etc.) and make sure it works for you.
• Most survey sites require a minimum balance before they pay out your earnings.

Requirements:

• Your time.
• Online survey sites have age requirements.

14. Sell Photos Online

The web is a beautiful place for photographers. Whether you’re shooting on the newest iPhone or the latest Canon DSLR, you can sell photos online as a photographer.

You can sell prints of your most popular photos through your online store, so you don’t pay fees or commissions to outside platforms. But that’s only one stream of income. You can also partner with a service like Printful to put your photos on products like clothes, phone cases, pillows, and more. We don’t have to pay anything until your product sells.

You may sell your photos to online stock photo sites like Alamy or 500px. If you’re brand new, you can submit certain photos for free to sites like Burst, where millions of people find stock photos for their projects. This helps build awareness for your brand and talent, which can lead to future sales.

Startup time: A few weeks.

Effort to start: High.

Time to first payment: Varies, depending on where you sell your photos.

What to know:

• Building awareness of your brand—even if you have to do it for free—will be worth it in the long run.
• Many photo marketplaces only charge you a percentage of your sales. You can also build an online store and sell your prints there.

Requirements:

• A camera.
• Photo-editing software.

15. Become an Online Tutor

During the pandemic, education turned virtual. Schools and universities switched to entirely online classes, and the tutoring business was no different. In 2022, the online tutoring business is expected to reach $1.5 billion in the US alone.

If you enjoy seeing that light turn on in people’s eyes when they finally grasp a concept, this is a good option for you. You get to decide which subjects you feel comfortable helping others with and set your own hours and rates.

On top of that, you can freelance as a tutor more easily than ever. With sites like TutorMe and Fiverr, you can easily find students who need your help.

Startup time: A few hours.

Effort to start: Minimal.

Time to first payment: Varies, depending on the site you use to get your clients. Fiverr can pay you out in as quickly as two hours.

What to know:

• Most freelance sites require some sort of proof that you know the subject matter you are wanting to tutor. It’s usually in the form of a test or proof of certification or diploma.
• Most freelance sites also charge a transactional fee to withdraw your payments. Fiverr charges $1, or $3 if you want the transfer to go through within two hours.

Requirements:

• Knowledge of subject matter you want to tutor.
• Computer and internet connection.
• Necessary licenses or diplomas required by the freelance site you’re using.

Conclusion

There are many ways to make money online. You can earn money by doing something you already love, and that is not a problem for you. You can also earn money from your hobby if it is related to your profession.

There are lots of different ways to make money online in 2018. You can earn money from freelancing, selling products on the internet, or even starting a blog and monetizing it with ads.