Today, many people are slowly realizing that they do not need to work a 9 to 5 job to survive. It is no longer necessary to spend all your best years working at a job you hate for little pay, just to pay the bills. The internet and the opportunities it promises has changed all that. It is now possible to work from home, living life on your own terms, and making a comfortable living from it. I know it sounds like a fairy tale, but many people are doing it. All it takes is an intentional decision to free yourself from the folly of a thankless 9-5 job and choose to be your own boss working online. There are many ways you can use to achieve this. Here is how to get paid to work online from home.
1.FREELANCING
Freelancing is a popular option that many people are taking while working online from home. If you are good at doing something, someone somewhere will happily pay you to do it for them. The beauty with freelancing is that the skills are as diverse as the people themselves. I have seen people with skills as weird and strange as wearing many T-shirts at once and playing The Star-Spangled Banner on a coconut, and I have also seen writers, accountants, architects, among other professionals, all selling their skills online. If it can be done, there is a freelancer out there doing it.
So where can you sell your skills? Well, the platforms are also many and diverse. Some of the most famous ones are Upwork, Craigslist, Freelancer and Fiverr. There are also specialized sites like Etsy, which is great for selling handmade items, and sites like TextBroker, where you can sell your writing skills, Shutterstock for photographers, and 99designs, which is tailored towards graphic designers.
Do a little research and you will find the right forum for you to montize your skills. There is something very rewarding in making money doing something that you are good at!
2. DROP SHIPPING
Drop shipping is another great way to make money online. As a drop shipper, you will be selling products without actually stocking up on any inventory. How this works is simple. You can choose to go about it in three ways: you can either work with a provider like Amazon, set up a shop on a platform like Shopify, or use your own website to sell the products. The next step is to find a supplier that you are happy to work with, then list a few nice photos of their products on your site or shop. The price you list it as will be the supplier’s selling price plus your commission. When a customer sees something they like, they will pay you for it. You will then turn around and buy it for them from your supplier, taking your cut at the same time. The supplier will then deliver the product to the customer. And everyone is happy.
The only downsides to drop shipping is that it can be considerably hands-on in the beginning. You will have to do everything yourself, from managing your inventory, conducting customer support, and dealing with returns and unsatisfied customers. The business model also heavily relies on traffic, so you may have to invest considerably in traffic generation. In this way, it can be quite expensive to get into. Other than that, you can make quite a steady income working from home with drop shipping. Once you learn the ropes, you will be well on your way!
3. BLOGGING
You can also get paid to work online from home as a blogger. Blogs are extremely popular among online entrepreneurs because they are cheap, easy to set up, and they drive traffic if executed correctly. However, do not expect to make much from a blog, especially when you are just starting out. However, if you know what you are doing, blogging can be a very easy and extremely profitable source of income.
The most important thing when it comes to blogging is choosing your niche wisely. Pick something you are good at if you are a beginner, and work with an audience you understand well and can relate to their problems. Aim to help your readers solve a particular problem with your content. The right content to the right audience can mean the difference between a successful blog and one that is a complete flop.
You can also easily sell your own products to your audience after you establish sufficient trust and authority within your niche. Things like eBooks, training courses and mini-email courses can further boost your blogging income by a huge margin.
4. EMAIL MARKETING
Building a high-quality email list can translate to a huge source of passive income. Recent reports show that on average, 1 subscriber will translate to $1 a month. If you have 500 subscribers that’s $500 a month. That is a pretty decent revenue stream. However, you need to be careful when it comes to email marketing. Pitching to your subscribers at every chance you get will lead to a huge wave of un-subscriptions. Instead, consider providing the value first, and build their trust. Then they will be more willing to buy the things you recommend.
So how can you build your email list? Well, one of the best ways of doing this is by using lead magnets. Lead magnets are things like eBooks, cheat sheets and checklists that your readers have to provide their emails to access. You can also upgrade and repackage your existing content and provide more value by adding more resources in them, then offer this to your audience. Several-part training series also work quite well if they are in video.
The most important thing here is to constantly think about your audience and what they need. Give them value and help them solve their problems. Serve them well and treat them with respect, without spamming them or selling their information to third parties, and they will thank you for it. Soon, your efforts will yield lots of benefits.
5. AFFILIATE MARKETING
Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make money online. Which is not to say it is easy. It takes a lot of work and requires a considerable amount of time invested before you can start turning a profit. However, if you are patient enough and stick with it, and if you do things right, you can make quite a large amount of money with it.
So, what exactly does it entail? Well, affiliate marketing is a business model where you earn a commission for selling someone else’s products. Your work as an affiliate marketer is to generate leads for someone else’s products, and if anything is bought from your efforts, you get paid a commission for that sale.
Affiliate marketing has become extremely popular online because it is relatively straightforward and (relatively) easy to find success with it if you put in the work. Plus, there are many websites where you can source your products, and they offer generous commissions. Many companies also have their own affiliate marketing products. In fact, all you have to do is search for a product name + affiliate in Google and you will get several options for affiliate programs. It is up to you to find the best fit for a relevant product or service that you can sell to your audience.
With affiliate marketing, you get the opportunity to be your own boss. This is one of the reasons why it is so appealing. You also get an uncapped earning potential with no prior experience necessary. This along with the minimal risk it has and the job and financial security it promises you are the reasons why few online money-making ventures can compete with affiliate marketing.
So, how can you get started as an affiliate marketer? Well, before anything else, you need to arm yourself with a few essential skills: patience, persistence, hard work and the willingness to learn. That’s all you need if you are going to stick with it and do it for the long haul, and it is the only way success will eventually find you.
LEARN MORE ABOUT AFFILIATE MARKETING AND HOW TO START
Next, here is what you need to do:
FIRST – FIND A UNIQUE NICHE
How can you go about doing that? Well, there are a few things you need to consider:
– What do you like? You need to be passionate about your business because it is the only way you are going to stick with it through tough times.
– What problems can you solve? If there is a potential niche you are passionate about, chances are you already know the problems that exist within it and things that can be done to solve these problems.
– What is the competition doing? If you have identified a potential niche, go and find the highest-ranking site in it. Look for little signals that show you that it is possible to take over that niche. Things like poor quality content, lack of transparency and relatability, and paid competition.
– How profitable is the niche? How much money do you potentially stand to make by getting into this business? You can find this out by going to merchant sites like Amazon and affiliate sites like Clickbank. Browse the top products in your niche. You will notice that there are either very few or no products, a decent number of products, or an overabundance of products. Find a niche in that sweet spot where there is a decent number of products, meaning it is only just gaining traction.
Do this and you will have yourself a winning niche. However, all that effort will be in vain if you do not test it and market it to generate interest and traffic to your site.
SECOND – BUILD A SITE
Once you have a great niche, you need a site for it. Getting a website these days is cheap, and sometimes even free. There are many platforms that offer domain names and hosting services at very affordable rates. Pick a domain name that people in the niche can easily recognize and identify with.
Once you have your site, integrate it with a content management system like WordPress for free. This will allow you to post your content easily, without requiring any technical expertise. There are many YouTube tutorials on how to do this, or if you cannot do it yourself, you can outsource it to a freelance designer for cheap. This step should not take more than a few hours.
The truth is, you can do it yourself in under one minute if you have the right tools. The good news is there are a lot of tools out there than can help you do it. Check out this video below.
THIRD – DO YOUR SEO
Once your site is up and running, you need it to be found. And not just by anyone, but by people specifically looking for information and products related to your niche. The best way to do this is by appearing in search engine results. And the only way to appear in top search engine result pages without paying for it is to do your SEO well.
SEO gives you the power of organic search results. Organic search results are unpaid for results that users see in their browsers whenever they search for certain keywords. These are the best kind of results because their traffic juice lasts much longer than paid ad traffic. You want your website to rank as highly as possible for these organic search results.
FOURTH – KNOW YOUR PRODUCT
This step is related to the first step, but it is just as important. You need to be able to express your knowledge of your niche in your content. Reputation is everything in this business. Be honest with your audience, and if you are promoting anything, it better be something you strongly believe in. A big part of building the trust of your audience comes from selling a product you have tried and tested yourself, and one you can personally defend you had to. Knowing your product boosts your credibility, which in turn converts to more sales.
FIFTH – KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
Be relatable. Take their feedback seriously. A deep understanding of who your audience is and what they expect from you will place you at an advantage over your competition. Being able to anticipate their needs and to cater to their problems will turn you into the go-to resource center for your niche. How do you do this? If you picked a niche that you are very familiar with then you already know your audience. If not, you need to do some detective work. Go to forums and read through posts. Look for specific questions that occur often. Look at what the concerns are. Here is an example. I looked for a dog training forum and opened it. Nothing more than that. Here is what came up :
This took me under 1 minute and I can already see that dogs peeing inside is an issue…… It took me literally 1 minute. Spend 2 or 3 hours scouring forums and you will soon know everything you need to know about your audience!
SIXTH – CREATE QUALITY CONTENT
Affiliate marketing should not be all about making that sale. You need to provide value for your audience with your content. Many affiliate marketers completely ignore this fact. Use this to your advantage. Create content that your competition simply cannot compete with, and your target market will be quick to notice and respond.
Whenever you create your content, try to make sure you publish long posts that are packed full of useful information. Look at your competitors and find the best existing piece of content on the web on that topic, and strive to beat it. Search engines will definitely notice, and your content will always rank higher than that of your competition.
I want to clarify something before I leave the subject of affiliate marketing. I do not want you to leave this post thinking that it is an easy, get-rich-quick way of making money online. Nothing could be further from the truth. It requires dedication and discipline. You need to be willing to spend time and effort. Like anything worth having, it does not come easy. Having said that, it is the method that I use to get paid to work online from home!
FINAL THOUGHTS
So, there you have it! Five ways you can get paid to work online from home. Just keep in mind that none of these methods is for the lazy. You need to put in work if you want to get any substantial returns from them. The more effort goes into them, the more returns you can expect.
Whenever possible, try to incorporate all these ideas into each other. For example, you can set up your website, blog, become an affiliate marketer and advertise your freelancing gigs all at the same time. Think outside the box and maximize your income potential. Good luck!
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To your success!
Mike A