Introduction: Six Proven Methods to Make Money Online
If you’re someone serious about using the internet to make money online over the next month or year, you’ve clicked on the right article. I want to show you six different proven methods I use myself to generate thousands of dollars every single month. I’m sure if you stick around for this entire article from start to finish, you’ll get a better idea of which method will be suitable for you. This way, you can also put yourself in a position to change your financial situation. Let’s not waste any more time—let me jump straight into one of my first recommended ways to use the internet to make money online, which is with investment income.
Passive Income with Investment in Index Funds
When I say investment income, this might sound really intimidating. But it has to be one of the most passive ways I’ve generated money using the internet. It literally all comes down to knowing which index fund is the best one to buy. When I say index fund, all it means is a group of different companies. Once you understand how an index fund works and know which one is the best to buy, you’ll be able to sit back and see yourself making profits and dividends.
Why I Recommend the S&P 500 for Beginners
Now, if you’re completely new to this channel, the index fund I normally recommend you look into is the S&P 500. This is the top 500 companies in the United States. When you buy into something like the S&P 500, when it goes up in value, you’ll see your money go up with it. Since it’s an investment, if the S&P 500 goes down, there’s a chance you could lose your money. When I say lose your money, I mean the value of the money you put in might go down over time. But because the S&P 500 historically has gone up in value, even if it goes down temporarily, it will bounce back and continue rising.
Personal Experience with Investment Income and Dividends
Of course, this isn’t financial advice—I’m just sharing what I personally do myself. For example, if I log into one of my investment portfolios, you can see I’ve got a total balance of around £70,000, which is about $90,000. I could withdraw all this money right now if I wanted to. If I click into the account, you’ll see the value has risen steadily week after week, month after month. The reason I recommend that if you’ve never invested before, you start ASAP is that you’ll make profits from things like the S&P 500, as you can see here.
The Benefits of Earning Dividends from Investments
You’ll also earn dividends. Every couple of months, I earn dividends paid directly into my bank account. There’s a lot more to building up an investment portfolio and knowing how to earn investment income, but I just want to give you the basics. I’ve got more videos coming out next week explaining how to get started.
Start Dropshipping to Make Money Online
Moving straight to the second recommended way to make money online as a complete beginner, which is with dropshipping. Whenever someone asks me, “Sam, I want to make money online, but I don’t want to be on camera or use my voice. I just want to build a real business using my laptop. What’s the best way?” I recommend dropshipping. Before I ever showed my face on social media, YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok, I generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit using Shopify stores.
How Replicating Successful Dropshipping Stores Can Lead to Profit
It can be a very simplistic business model as long as you’re aware of the steps that go into it. One of the biggest secrets that allowed me to go from $0 to $10,000 per month with my Shopify store was replicating what was already working. Once I saw how much money a particular dropshipper was earning, it became easy to know which product was worth selling.
Using Zeke Analytics to Identify Trending Dropshipping Products
Let me give you an example. If I log into Zeke Analytics, a software for spying on Shopify dropshippers, you can see the trending products over the last 30 days and the trending Shopify dropshipping stores. If I click into a store that brought in over a quarter of a million dollars in the last 30 days, I can see how many products they have, when they started, how many sales they made, and their total revenue.
How to Use Zeke Analytics to Source Winning Products
This store is New Zealand-based, and Zeke Analytics shows all this information, including which products are their best performers. If I click the link to their best-performing product, it takes me to their product page where customers buy. I can see how they structured things to be successful and get an idea of where to source the product. If I click the icon over here, Zeke Analytics shows different suppliers for this product. For those considering starting a dropshipping store this year, Zeke Analytics will help you figure out what’s working so you know which products are worth selling.
Monetize Your Video Content to Earn Money Online
Moving on to the third way to make money online, which is with article content. Video content can mean a lot of things, but essentially, if you post content online strategically, you can monetize it and earn money from home. Whether you’re thinking about publishing short-form content, long-form content, showing your face on camera, or not, all these methods work as long as you know how to monetize them.
Why YouTube is a Great Platform for Long-Form Content
For those considering publishing long-form content, I recommend YouTube because it’s the second biggest website globally, and they offer direct monetization through Google AdSense. If you’re consistent with YouTube, you can earn AdSense revenue paid out every month. You don’t even need to show your face if you don’t want to. There are many faceless YouTube channels with AI-generated voices, yet they get tens of thousands of views.
How to Research Video Ideas with VidIQ
When starting your YouTube channel, pick a specific niche so all your videos relate to one another, and your audience can expect a certain type of video. Make sure you research your video ideas so your content has a high chance of getting views, impressions, and watch hours. One tool you can use to do this is VidIQ, which has an “outliers” feature where you type in your niche, set filters, and it shows you videos that performed well in that niche.
Consider Blogging for Additional Income Streams
If the channels publishing these videos have few subscribers, like you’ll have at the start, replicating their content increases your chances of getting a lot of views when you first start your channel. If you want to earn Google AdSense but don’t want to start a YouTube channel, the fourth way to make money online is blogging. Some of you may think blogging is dead or may not know what it is. It’s essentially building a website around a niche, like a YouTube channel, but instead of videos, you post written articles. These articles should be 1,000–1,500 words, and you should post three to four times a week.
Why Blogging Still Works for Monetizing Content
As long as you use the right keywords, your website can rank on Google, the most visited website in the world, giving you a chance to get thousands of visitors and earn AdSense. You can also use social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest to drive traffic to your website.
My Experience with Building Successful Blogging Websites
I’ve been doing this for the past year with one of my websites, www.suuccessbus.com, which I recently built. I operate around three different websites, and even though this one is new, I’ve been able to rank multiple articles on Google and generate tens of thousands of dollars.
The Profitability of Selling Digital Products
Moving on to the fifth way to make money online—selling digital products. I’m a big believer in selling digital products because you’re essentially making 100% profit. Once you’ve created the product, you don’t need to pay for manufacturing, labor, or shipping costs. It’s a great way to earn passive income.
Understanding the Market for Digital Products
Many people get confused about how digital products work, but essentially, a digital product is something people buy to get information about a specific topic. People are willing to buy online courses, eBooks, PDF guides, etc., to learn more about various topics. You don’t need to be an expert on the topic—you just need to know more than the average person.
Different Platforms to Sell Digital Products
There are many ways to sell digital products. You can list them on marketplaces like Etsy, though you’ll face competition. You can also use Teachable, which I find efficient, or Shopify, where you can build your own store, list your product, and start driving traffic to make sales.
How Zeke Analytics Helps Find Profitable Digital Products
You can use Zeke Analytics to spy on Shopify sellers of digital products. For example, if you want to sell a spreadsheet, type “spreadsheet” into Zeke Analytics, and it will show stores selling spreadsheets. I found one store making $111,000 per month selling digital spreadsheets, which they don’t need to ship, meaning nearly all the revenue is profit.
Why Affiliate Marketing is a Powerful Way to Earn Online
Finally, the sixth recommended way to make money online as a beginner is affiliate income. Some of you may wonder what affiliate income is and how it works. It’s simple—you become an affiliate marketer and promote existing products. You don’t need to create, invent, or manufacture anything.
The Passive Nature of Affiliate Marketing
You just drive traffic to a unique URL, and when people click and buy the product or service, you earn an affiliate commission. Affiliate marketing can be really passive. You can build systems using AI to run things in the background, requiring little work from you, yet you can still generate tens of thousands of dollars monthly.