There are so many ways to make money online and become financially independent. It's no accident we don't hear about them in corporate school or the corporate press.
Government schools & media are designed to dumb us down, destroy our creativity, and turn us into broke consumers and obedient workers.
I'll keep this list updated with any new ideas/info. I tried to sum up each one as quickly as possible, and I plan on making blogs for each one, showing how to do them in more detail.
If you have anything to add, let me know via the chat in the lower right of the site.
Don't make my mistake of trying to do multiple/all of them at once! I urge you to pick the ONE option that appeals to you most, and stick with it till you master it, rather than try to do it all.
But do make sure your digital security is up to par. You don't want the money you make to get stolen because of a crappy, easily hacked password. (In short, use a password manager, so you only need to remember one password--but make sure it's a STRONG password!)
Affiliate Marketing
With affiliate marketing you promote products and earn a commission if someone buys after using your affiliate link.
Some people create blogs & social media accounts where they review/show off products, and make money by including an affiliate link. If you have a sizeable following it adds up.
Amazon has an affiliate program anyone can join.
You get a 4% commission on average--depending on the product's category. But right now, leading up to Prime Day July 12-13th 2022, they've increased many of their commissions by almost double.
One bonus: you also get a commission on whatever else they end up buying too.
Amazon also has 'bounties', where for example, if someone uses your link for a free trial of Audible, you get a flat fee of $5, and if they become a paid subscriber you get another $10. (<-- Yes, that is my affiliate link!)
Sites like ShareASale and Clickfunnels have a ton of different things you can become an affiliate for and make commissions of 50% or more.
There are also great courses on Gumroad you can become an affiliate for and get a 50% cut. (Or if you're knowledgeable about something, you can create your own ebook/video course on Gumroad, then let customers become affiliates for it. They'll market it for you and get you even more sales.)
Be aware legally you're supposed to disclose to people when you share an affiliate link--as I will do on this page when I include one :)
And speak of the devil, I am an affiliate for this Gumroad course about affiliate marketing!
PS: Instead of a website you can use Linktree to have one page where people can find links for all your social media accounts--and affiliate links or whatever else you want to link people to.
YouTube channel(s)
You don't have to show your face or use your voice in videos--you can use free stock footage and text-to-speech, or just outsource all the work to freelancers on fiverr.
A single video with a million views can earn about $2,000 just from ads. Whereas one video with 35 million views apparently makes at minimum $175,000 🤯
There are even people making bank from channels that simply have videos of rain sounds as peaceful background noise.
To make money from the ads that play on your videos you need 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watchtime. (In the meantime, you can monetize from the start with affiliate marketing links & merch.)
That can happen pretty quickly if you pick one niche and stick to uploading consistently. (If all your videos are generally about the same thing, YouTube's algorithm will know and autoplay more of your videos/recommend them.)
Many now-huge YouTubers made 100 videos before having any success--but that was before there were so many great resources showing all the different factors/things you should do, and how to do them well. For example, the thumbnail picture, title, SEO, and writing/presenting/editing in an interesting way.
There are also free apps to help you find trending topics, like TubeBuddy&vidIQ.
People think podcasts are too saturated, but most podcasts have died off from people giving up after a few episodes. If you just try to be interesting/entertaining and stick with it, you should end up getting ad money.
Starting from zero followers is much easier on TikTok, so you could post short clips there, then have a call to action to go to your YouTube to watch more & subscribe.
Resell Stuff Online
There are lots of people making a living reselling stuff online--some scour yard sales; some do thrift stores like Goodwill; some even do what's called 'retail arbitrage' and buy stuff that's on sale to then resell online.
Some even use Amazon FBA to send it into Amazon's warehouses, so they can ship orders out with Prime shipping. (Anyone can send in used books, but be aware, for many products you need to get 'ungated' / approved by Amazon before you can sell them--and to get ungated for some big brand names, you'll need to register as a reseller so you can get an invoice from a wholesale distributor.)
Why not try it out by listing some junk you want to get rid of onto eBay/Mercari/Etsy? It's a pretty fast way to make some money.
There's lots of gold out there at yard sales and thrift stores--but watch out, it can be addicting! I don't do it anymore because I want to focus on more passive and scalable income, but here's my affiliate link to a great courses on it.
Freelance Work
You probably already have some skills you can start doing freelance work for. If not, you can quickly learn the basics of a skill, eg video editing--and post on sites like Fiverr and Upwork.
(POD) Print on Demand Merch
There are many platforms online where you can simply upload designs and then when one sells, the platform will print the product and ship it out for you--then you collect the profits.
The best/biggest platforms are: 1) Redbubble and 2) Amazon Merch on Demand. (Formerly known as Merch by Amazon - it was just rebranded with this new name.)
You can also use print-on-demand suppliers like Printful, ShineOn, and Printify to create or upload designs to online marketplaces like Etsy, eBay, Amazon, or even a website of your own (easiest with Shopify, but you can also use Wordpress & Woocommerce.)
Print on Demand Books with Amazon / Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)
Anyone can create an account on Amazon's KDP platform and self-publish books--and you don't need to be a writer. You can do what people call low-content books - such as blank notebooks, sketchbooks, or planners.
Blank books are quite saturated, so to make good money you'll need to upload a lot of books and/or have great cover designs--but you don't need to be a graphic designer either. You can use Canva to create your covers and interiors, and they have pre-made templates.
And you can update the cover and interior at any time. So you can correct typos or re-write it/update the info. If you aren't getting enough sales you can often improve that by updating the front cover.
Creative Fabrica isn't free but has tons of graphics and templates you can use--and more are added every day. I also love the covers & interiors made by Vexels.
The Goldilocks goldmine is the 'medium-content books' sweet spot of coloring and activity books. People buy these all the time and love trying out new ones. And you can still make money pricing them as cheap as $3.99.
Amazon affiliate link to The Anarchist Coloring Books.
I also love James Altucher's idea of writing at least one book--if only for your descendants.
If you're serious and want to commit to this, it's definitely worth investing in the one-time fee of $59 for Tangent Templates. They give you access to a bunch of premade and customizable templates for blank interiors and other low-content/medium-content templates for not-quite-blank interiors of things like weekly planners.
I'd also invest in a keyword research tool like Publisher Rocket so you can find keywords with high search volume and low competition--but there are free browser extensions/apps to do that research too.
Like with Merch, Amazon prints and ships (with Prime shipping!) the books, takes care of the customer service/returns, and sends you the profits every month.
Here's my affiliate link to the great course that taught me how to get started with blank books on KDP.
And another affiliate link to a great PDF ebook on how to create coloring books for KDP.
Email List
Building an email list of super-fans who will buy anything you offer is something anybody can do.
Unlike other money making options, you aren't dependent on one of these BS corporations who can suddenly ban you for no reason. Whatever email marketing service you use, you can keep your list backed-up so it can't be taken away from you.
There are many good services with free plans for new/small lists, such as Aweber and ConvertKit.
If you have a Shopify store, Klaviyo is a good service that's free. You can have sign-up forms offering a 10% off coupon as incentive.
Klaviyo also has pre-made templates for emails that can get sent out automatically when certain conditions are met--for example, a welcome series for people new to your list, or a reminder if someone abandons their cart.
I got the rights to sell the great Tom Woods Email Domination Program and can add you as an affiliate for it on Gumroad if you like.
Substack
You can always level up your writing, and the only way to do that is by...writing.
It can be scary, but just start by writing and sharing it publicly with Substack. It's like a cross between a website/blog and an email list. (It's hosted on Substack's site and looks like a blog, but when you publish a new post, each subscriber also gets it in an email.)
They're anti-censorship, and if people like your content, they can choose to support you monetarily. You keep 90% of the revenue minus credit card fees. You choose how much to charge (most go with $5 a month or $50 for a year). You can even create an additional tier, eg $1,000 a year for VIPs.
This book (Amazon affiliate link!) has great tips for improving your writing.
Bitcoin & A Bit of Crypto
Probably best to ignore the shitcoins, but bitcoin is probably the best way to protect your wealth from the coming inevitable hyperinflation. But this isn't financial advice blah blah.
And bitcoin is 'on sale' right now due to the economy&stock market going down, along with some crypto exchanges halting withdrawals. That's why withdraw off the exchanges, get a hardware wallet and store&memorize the seed phrase of words that can restore your funds if you lose/break the wallet.
To start though check out buying a bit each week automatically with Swan Bitcoin or Coinbitsapp. If you have a good PC capable of gaming/video editing, you may be able to use it to mine bitcoin profitably. You can enter your CPU and GPU on Nicehash and it will give you your estimated profitability after electricity costs.
YourFriendAndy focuses on bitcoin, but "gambles" a small percentage of his portfolio that he can afford to lose on riskier but potentially big-upside things like Flux nodes.
(You can download the ebook version of The Bitcoin Standard for free here.)
FYI we do accept Bitcoin and other cryptos as payment for our products during checkout 😏
UPDATE:
Adding more options:
Donate Your Precious Bodily Fluids
You can be paid to donate your blood plasma, sperm, and probably other things.
And if you're unvaccinated, your sperm may be the next Bitcoin!
Accept Recurring and One-Off Donations / Monetary Support From Fans
If you're creating content online and have built an audience that values it, you can start to accept donations via PayPal or places like Patreon. However, both these companies have a bad history of banning/cancelling people for no good reason, so I would avoid them.
Instead of Patreon, you can create a community on Locals (an anti-censorship facebook-like site where you can create a community page for yourself where your supporters can post. People who join can choose to pay $5 a month to support you--and you can make some posts private so only paid-supporters can see them. Substack is another similar option.)
You can also use Gumroad to accept recurring monthly charges, and offer access to exclusive content, like Patreon.
For one-time donations there's BuyMeACoffee.
You can also accept cryptocurrency donations by creating a wallet account and then putting the address for it and/or a QR code in your bios/the description of your content, or in a Linktree account if you want to create one.
Crowdfunding
Similar to donations, if there's something you want to do/make, you could start a Kickstarter or use another non-censory site like GiveSendGo (instead of GoFundMe, which cancels accounts for politically-incorrect people/non-leftists.)
Also similar to crowdfunding, is you could use Gumroad to set up pre-orders for a product/course/ebook you're considering creating. This lets you test the waters and gauge the demand for what you're offering, and if it isn't big enough for your liking, you can cancel the project and refund the people who ordered.
Digital Products
There are many ways to sell digital products online. Technically self-publishing with KDP applies, if you offer the Kindle ebook version of your books.
You can create a digital download of a course and/or ebook on Gumroad. On there you can also add people as affiliates--so then they market it for you and you split the money for any sales they bring.)
You can create online courses and sell them on many sites, like Coursera, Udemy, Skillshare, Thinkific, Kajabi, Teachable, etc.
You can sell digital downloads on Etsy, but FYI, they charge you $0.20 for each listing you create on Etsy. (Although some people have affiliate links/promo codes where if you use their links you get your first 40 listings free.) Ryan Hogue has some good videos and a link too I believe.
Rover
You can become a dog-walker and/or pet and house-sitter on this app. You make the most if you watch them overnight of course. You can choose whether to offer to go to the client's houses or to et them bring their pets to you.
Sell Stock Video Footage
If you're a good with a camera, you can record and then upload and sell your videos as stock footage.
You probably make more from 4K footage, and/or if you're using a legit camera like a mirrorless cameras with legit lenses, like or a Sony or a Lumix. And even more if you have a drone that records video, like a DJI, which are mostly 4K.
Quick reminder about the above YouTube channel option: there are channels that just show 4K aerial footage from drones of nature--eg of coasts/beaches. Some videos have millions of views, which amounts to many thousands of dollars just from the ads they show on your videos.
There are many sites for this. You can also upload/sell photos in addition to video on Shutterstock. I've heard good things about blackbox.global, but they only do video (no photos).
DistroKid
If you're a musician - or an aspiring one - you can use DistroKid to get your music uploaded to all the different music streaming services, including YouTube and Spotify, etc.
You can upload as much music as you can make for only $20 per year.
Amazon FBA (Fulfilled By Amazon)
With Amazon FBA you take products you want to sell and send them into Amazon's warehouses. Then they ship out the orders with their fast Prime shipping. (Fulfilled by Amazon.)
A cheap way you can start doing FBA is by sending in profitable used books. Most books aren't profitable to send in, but you can use the Amazon Seller app to scan the barcode and check. A faster app is ScoutIQ--it isn't free, but you can get a free trial. I'd go to Goodwill and focus on non-fiction, especially textbooks.
Once you save a decent chunk of cash you can try selling your own new products under your own brand name. First you'll definitely want to do some research on what would be a good product--I hear JungleScout is good for that.
Then you can use Amazon Ads to drive traffic to your products, which can be quite cheap and effective if you know what you're doing. (You choose the maximum of how high you want your bids to be, and how much you want to spend per day.)
*EDIT 7/28/22*:
Narrate Audiobooks for Audible / ACX
If you're comfortable with your voice and reading, you can narrate audiobooks.
Here is a video about it: https://youtu.be/IExQ2URqkaA
The person interviewed said they made $300 for narrating a cookbook that took about an hour.