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If you are looking for a detailed tutorial on the best internet-based money making methods; the stuff that is working RIGHT NOW and has REAL money potential, then you are in the right place! 🙂
Let’s get right into it; here (in no particular order) are my ten best picks for methods to start making great money online in 2022:
#1. Blog + Pinterest
I’ve made over $1.9M blogging since 2013 so I can vouch for this one! 😉 I can assure you that as a “money making system”, blogging is still thundering along and will probably continue to do so!
Why? Because people will always need useful, helpful information!
Create that – and learn the skills to put it in front of them (aka social media promotion, SEO and Joint Ventures). The rest is details. 😉
A great blog can generate a very useful additional income; with the best bloggers going on to make full time incomes and in some cases, fortunes!
The typical method used by pro bloggers nowadays is as follows:
1) First, Get Professional Web Hosting. This is important. Using a “free host” is not advised as this typically creates obstacles later down the road – for example restricting your ability to run ads. I’ve been using Bluehost (currently only $2.95 / month for a starter package if you sign up through my link) since 2013 and plan to continue to do so for the foreseeable future!
2) Choose a niche. A niche is the topic of your blog and you need one! A “random blog” about “whatever” you are in the mood for writing about that day is definitely NOT advisable! Trust me on this! Your choice of niche is important and there are some unexpected things you need to know. I’m very experienced in this area, having over 20 blogs in various niches – and I have one of the best free tutorials in existence on this topic: Top 26 Profitable Blog Niches Plus 11 You Should AVOID At All Costs.
3) Choose a domain name. Don’t panic! Here’s my free tutorial on coming up with a truly excellent name: How To Choose A Superb Domain Name For Your Blog (Amazing Branding Tutorial!). Once you have this name, you will set the DNS of your domain so that it connects to your web host (there are lots of free tutorials on this out there). Oh, and be sure to “bag” your brand name on the big social media platforms.
4) Install WordPress blogging platform on your domain. You can do this easily from within cPanel in your web hosting account. Definitely use WordPress, it’s awesome and considered the “industry standard”. I have used WordPress for ALL my blogs since 2013 and still do!
5) Now you are ready to begin the process of creating / publishing high value free content and promoting it (this part is vital!) via your social media accounts!
Pinterest works particularly well for bloggers (it’s been my #2 traffic source overall, with Facebook Fan Pages being #1; although I think Facebook pages are somewhat more difficult to grow big these days). Overall, Pinterest is a great social media platform for new blogs to focus on as a traffic source. If you crack Pinterest, you should be able to start generating decent traffic and corresponding income!
6) In order to get traffic from Pinterest, you need graphics. All your blog posts should have their own “headline graphic” (for example the one I have at the top of this post – it has the headline inside the graphic in big letters!), with Canva (free app!) typically being used to create these graphics. Canva is easy to learn and generates GREAT results – I used Canva for all the images on this blog!
There are a number of tips and tricks to doing these graphics the right way: Check out my free tutorial How To Make Pinterest Graphics That Drive Massive Traffic To Your Blog
Monetization of the blog (ahh, the good part!) is typically done via display ads, affiliate offers related to the niche/topic of the blog, sponsored guest posts and or by promoting your own products and services – typically training courses, one-on-one coaching or printables. Check out my free tutorial List Of 20 Best Ad Networks And Affiliate Programs For Blogs.
Creating a highly successful blog, of the kind that generates a five or even six figure monthly income, is an art form with a diverse skill set required. It’s also a lot of work – as top-flight blogs tend to have at least 500 pages and often 1000+! To give you an idea, my most successful blog, which has generated well over $1M in revenue, now has 1,320 posts, most of which are full-length articles with numerous scientific references. So be prepared to be “in it for the long haul” – but the potential rewards for consistent high-quality bloggers are high!
#2. Social Media Influencer [Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tiktok, Youtube etc.]
Being “an influencer” is one of the most highly desired entrepreneurial careers for the 18-30 generation and the revenue potential is seemingly limitless for top-flight influencers. But one of the truly great things about social media is that there are minimal “barriers to entry”: Many of the world’s top influencers started from humble origins.
Let’s clear something up right away: Although most people’s first thought is “well, you have to be super good looking”, this is absolutely not true. I have built up over 4 million social media followers (yes really) without ever showing my face on a single one of my channels! Not even once! I promise you I am not exaggerating or making this up! There are strategies for Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the rest where you can achieve great success and build a huge following without ever showing your face! Look around those platforms and see if you can spot these channels – there are loads of them!
(Even crazier – there are ways that you can make money on ALL these platforms without having any content of your own! Yes it’s true! Hmm… I should write a tutorial on this… 😉 )
There are three fundamental aspects that go to make up a successful social media brand:
1) Being a good communicator. Despite the glorious diversity of social media influencers, they all have one key thing in common: Being able to connect with people and “touch” their emotions. And what do you communicate? Typically a varied blend of one or more of the following: Inspiration, ideas, powerful emotions, entertainment and useful knowledge. If you have a flair for communicating and engaging people – whatever the medium – then social media has potential for you. Engagement really is the magic word!
2) Understanding the various nuances and patterns of the platform and its algorithms. Don’t overlook this, it’s critical; but also don’t panic – because you can learn it as you go along. Typically, high social media success requires a grasp of “what the algorithm is looking for” and then giving the algorithm what it wants. For example on Youtube, three key factors determine whether Youtube will give a video big distribution: a) high “clickthrough ratio” on the thumbnail b) watch time (whether the user quickly clicks away or stays watching the video and c) session time (whether the user “binge watches” multiple videos of yours during a viewing session).
3) The ability to make data driven decisions. Use the data (both yours and that of others) to observe what works and do more of that. For example, scroll through any major Facebook page / Instagram channel / etc and you can see that certain posts “hit it out of the park” and get way more views, likes and shares than their other content. These are the winning posts. But can you see why they were successful? To begin with, it’s very hit or miss but the more shots you take, followed up by observation of the data, the better you get at learning what works. Look at the major channels and study their top posts for clues. Look at everything – image choices, headlines, captions, emojis, subject matter, content style… it all adds up. You can’t steal their content of course but you can see what works because the data is visible.
Here are some in-depth free social media tutorials to get you started:
How To Make Money On Instagram – Full Tutorial
How To Make Money On Pinterest (Full Length FREE Tutorial)
How To Get Your First 1,000 Pinterest Followers (Free Tutorial!)
How To Get Your First 1,000 Youtube Followers (Free Tutorial!)
#3. Crypto
I can already hear it: “Crypto is super high risk, you should not be recommending that to newbies”.
So let’s clarify. Yes, although crypto has potential for “wild gains”, crypto trading IS very high risk. As a novice trader there’s a high likelihood of “getting rekt” and painful loss of capital. Here’s my free tutorial on what NOT to do as a novice crypto trader: This Is How You Are Going To Get “Rekt” (Wrecked) In The Cryptocurrency Markets (Don’t Do This!)
However, trading is not the only option here – and there are in fact options that are very low risk.
Low Risk Strategy: You can purchase Stablecoins such as USDT and “park” them on platforms such as Nexo (get $25 worth of free bitcoin when signing up through my link and depositing $100+!) or Celsius, which are backed by top level security / insurance – and earn a very respectable interest rate of around 8% to 12% at the time of writing, with interest being paid out daily! Stablecoins are pegged to the price of “real” currencies and so they do not experience the wild fluctuations that Bitcoin and (even more so) altcoins experience. So all things considered, this beats the heck out of the despicable 0.01% offered by the high street banks on savings. I can’t give financial advice but I have an account on Nexo and get daily interest. My only regret (huge!) is that I did not sign up sooner.
Medium Risk Strategy: Then there is yield farming / liquidity mining – which I would personally rate as “medium risk”. This one is somewhat complex and will require a full tutorial (expect that soon!) but I am doing it myself right now and it’s actually overtaken blogging as my #1 revenue generator at the time of writing!
Medium To High Risk Strategy: “Hodling”. Here’s an example strategy that does not involve big capital outlay; take your spare change / leftover income every month and just purchase some cryptos of a kind that are highly regarded as having genuine value and growth potential. You then leave these assets to acquire whatever value they acquire over the course of time, deliberately not paying attention to daily fluctuations but taking a more long term approach. With hodling, it’s generally advisable not to “invest your life savings” as this would definitely be higher risk. But if you take money that you “would otherwise have spent frivolously” and use it to gradually accumulate a few well chosen cryptos, there is some very good long term potential. Think in terms of a few years rather than a few months.
Timing is everything in crypto and in general terms being early has proven best so far. I deeply regret not starting to hodl back in the good old days. A friend of mine was RAVING at me about bitcoin back in around 2011. Fast forward 10 years and it has gone over 1000X since then. If I had put in a few thousand from my first successful blog – by God – I could literally be living in a castle right now and have absolute financial independence. But there is still opportunity and many on the forefront of this technology believe that we are still in the early days in terms of overall crypto adoption.
In short there are strategies for every level of risk tolerance. Full tutorial on this soon.
#4. Youtuber
Top Youtubers can make 5, 6 or even 7 figure monthly incomes! But one of the good things about Youtube is that the “bar of entry” is low – and there is room for you too.
Although you might see “pro Youtubers” with fancy, expensive-looking production, you really don’t need that in order to get going. Seriously! Looking at the channels of even the most famous Youtubers, you can see that often they started by recording wobbly videos on a mobile phone and uploaded them with minimal or even no editing! So don’t get stuck thinking you need massively expensive microphones, cameras and hyper-expensive editing software. You don’t. Use what you got! And for a free-but-fully-pro video editing software, try Davinci Resolve. I’ve used it for all my Youtube editing and it’s absolutely amazing.
One thing you do need to understand about Youtube that this is a “slow burn”. As with blogging, it takes commitment to achieve success – and an ability to just keep going through the initial phase where you have only a small audience. It might take six months, a year or longer for a channel to take off, and this means a lot of grind before you see any pay. In other words, don’t quit your job to start a Youtube channel! Start by doing YT in your free time and maybe even try out a handful of different channel ideas, until you find something that “pops” and gets a noticeably stronger reaction from your audience; then double down on that. Again, let the data guide your choices and give the audience more of what they love the most.
For a Youtube channel to start earning ad revenue, you need 1,000+ subscribers and over 4,000 hours of watch time in the most recent 12 months. However there are numerous other ways to make money from Youtube and I have a free tutorial on that here: 18 Awesome Ways To Make Money With Youtube – Including Methods To Earn Money Without Making Videos!
Final tip – start an account on the other video platforms too (Vimeo, Bitchute, Odysee etc) and post your content there too. Might as well get it going and maximize your reach!
#5. Email Marketing
I’ve made over $300,000 with email marketing and although many people think it’s an “old chestnut” – it still makes money. Why? Because email is an integral part of the WWW – and despite the fact that people have all kinds of messenger apps, email is still a requirement for creating website accounts, as well as being a standard in business for documents and conversation. In short, email is as strong as ever. I have used Aweber since 2014 to manage my email lists and they offer a free option for the first 500 subscribers, which is pretty awesome as it gives you the opportunity to try it out at no cost. Note also, you are not locked in as you can download your subscribers as a CSV export and migrate them to another service if you want.
The typical way to build an email list is to offer a “high value freebie”, perhaps an ebook, which is just the sort of thing your target audience would appreciate. The job of the freebie is to get them to sign up. Then after that, you have a low-cost way to reach those subscribers and the typical method used is to send them a mix of “value content” (more useful, free info to keep them subscribed) and “offer content” which might be affiliate offers (I use Clickbank) or your own products and services.
Here’s a detailed free tutorial on email marketing: 12 Steps Towards Making Mega Money With Email Marketing.
#6. Ebay
If you are literally right at the beginning of your online money journey and sitting there thinking “I need to just generate some cash asap”, then eBay has to be one of my top picks. eBay is roaring along as always, and is just overall a great platform. I made several thousand dollars in 2020-2021 having a massive “mother of all clearouts” and selling stuff on eBay – and this REALLY helped out in post-COVID times!
Comb through your stuff and pull out everything that you don’t need and don’t absolutely love. Eliminate highly fragile or very bulky items as these are a hassle to ship. You can also sell broken items so long as you are 1000% honest about the condition of your goods – there are people who buy broken stuff because they are expert repairers and can make a profit fixing things up! So this is a perfect way to get started with eBay – selling your old junk that is getting in the way (or worse, costing you additional money to store!) You will gain experience and insight, as well as a feel for the marketplace and how eBay works. From there on, if you decide you want to become a trader, there are various options. Some opt for “thrift store flipping” – finding valuable items for pennies at thrift stores and then putting them up on eBay for a realistic price. Others obtain stock of goods and become pro traders (this is more advanced). Here are some further free tutorials of mine on eBay:
How To Make Money On eBay – Full Tutorial – 26 Tips For eBay Success
27 Surprising Things You Can Sell On eBay For Quick Profits (I Made $12,000+ Doing This!)
#7. Fiverr
If you have any sort of skills which can benefit others and can be delivered online, take a look at Fiverr. You may be able to make a part time or even a full time income from there!
Fiverr is a leading global marketplace for online services and “outsource work”. Go take a look at the Fiverr marketplace and you can see people offering an incredible diversity of online services, aka “gigs” – from article writing, coding, voice overs to graphic design, audio & video editing, translation and so much more!
This sector has absolutely boomed since 2020 – as so many businesses have migrated to “fully online” and are now utilizing the global workforce. Fiverr is thundering along and this demand shows no sign whatsoever of slowing down, which means there is room for you too. Fiverr is now a massive platform – currently ranked #129 in Alexa’s world ranking of websites by their traffic volume, which is extraordinary! I’ve hired writers and designers from there many times and I find the site a breeze to work with – its user experience is very well thought out.
For service providers, Fiverr works super well as a “side hustle” which can then transition into a bigger money generator if your services take off and generate high demand!
#8. Amazon KDP
When most people think of an “Amazon based business” they think of e-commerce – which in my view is a highly complex endeavour. Yes, it can be very lucrative but it’s also very challenging. You are also “in with the big fish” – competing against highly experienced traders and retailers.
If you have writing ability, definitely consider Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). Amazon Kindle’s “on ramp” for new publishers is now highly efficient, meaning you can finish a script and get it published, visible to the global audience and earning money faster than ever!
You will need to have your document correctly formatted for Kindle – however this is a service that can easily be sourced on Fiverr if you don’t feel like doing that part yourself. You can even hire ghost writers on there and some Amazon KDP publishers do this!
The most successful Amazon KDP publishers are making very good incomes – 5 figures per month or even more – and there are absolutely tons of tutorials on Youtube for those wishing to learn more about how this system works.
A big KDP income typically takes a few years to build up, assuming you do everything right of course. You will need to be able to “crank out” ebooks of the kind that people love – and keep on doing it. So it’s a lot of work – but on the positive side; once each ebook is published, it can continue to generate revenue for years and so after the initial work, meaning you can build up a passive revenue stream. So this is something you could try out, perhaps by creating a few ebooks in your spare time – and then see how it goes. If the benefit-to-cost balance works for you then you can scale up and create your own Kindle empire!
#9. Online Tutoring
If you thought that being a teacher can’t pay well – think again! Top online coaches can earn very good incomes. In my post 45 Of The World’s Most Successful Blogs I featured a piano teaching blog – hearandplay.com – which is reported to be earning $100K per month!
If you have strong skills in a certain area and good coaching abilities, there are various options. Youtube channel, blog, free ebook(s) and other social media platforms can be used to distribute free tutorials, which demonstrate your value and helpfulness. You can then monetize the free content and / or offer one-on-one coaching “on the back end”. Video conferencing platforms such as Zoom open up the ability to do one-on-one coaching to people anywhere in the world, from anywhere in the world. So this could be a great “freedom lifestyle business”!
#10. Facebook Groups
While Facebook Fan Pages still have massive potential, they are in some ways a “tougher nut to crack” than Facebook Groups. Facebook seems to be giving Groups higher newsfeed priority which means that content will be seen by more people. The other plus of a group is that a good group can pick up momentum of its own without you having to create / curate and then post all the content yourself. Yes, you will still need to admin the group (or hire a VA to moderate it for you) but there is a potential there for lower workload, because you can post “when you feel like it” without the group necessarily losing momentum; whereas with fan pages, keeping the momentum going is an essential for the algorithm. Facebook Fan Pages have been my #1 traffic driver and revenue generator of all time, but it’s a TON of work to create fresh, engaging, high quality content and maintain a posting schedule of several posts per day. Ask me how I know 😉
Some quick tips on Facebook Groups: 1) Branding is key – the group should have a great name and be focused on a popular topic. The name should convey what the group is about “at a glance” and make people think “I want to be part of that”. 2) Research and find other big fan pages and groups in your niche, then note which of their content got the most likes and shares. Share the very best performing stuff in your own group (go by the numbers), taking care to avoid super-controversial posts. You will typically find that posts that perform well with one Facebook audience perform well with another. 3) To monetize your group, typically the best strategy is to have your own blog, and then create / share high quality content with your group (try helpful top 10 lists – can you see what I did here? 😉 ). Pay attention to which content performs best and “do more of that”. The blog itself will typically be monetized with ads, affiliate promotions or other goods and services you provide. Full tutorial coming soon.
#11. Bonus – Affiliate Product Reviews
Google updates have made life more difficult for “thin” and flimsy product review websites, however for everything that goes down, something must go up. There is still going to be a top 10 for “best power drills 2022” and the Goog ain’t going to leave blank spaces! Affiliate sites based on product comparisons, with high quality reviews and genuine evaluation of the product are going to be hot for as long as e-commerce is hot. What can I say, I am launching 10 new affiliate sites in 2022. 😉 And for Youtube channels, product reviews is one of the best niches going. Check out my full tutorial on How To Make Money Doing Product Reviews On Youtube.
The Wrap-Up
These are some of the best methods to start making real money online that I know of in 2022. Final tips – 1) Choose one and focus on it. Don’t try all of them like a kid in a candy store! Choose one or perhaps two to focus on and give these your best shot. It takes focus to get the best out of these and if you scatter your efforts, it’s harder to build up momentum. Which of these do you feel most strongly “is your thing”? 2) Begin it now! Don’t get stuck in “analysis paralysis”. Start asap and develop your skills as you go along! Get it cracking, and I’ll see you at the top!
Hope this helped you!
