Being a digital nomad means you can work from anywhere in the world. But what if your current job doesn’t allow you to work remotely?
The past couple of years has encouraged us all to embrace the great indoors. No surprise then that interest in making money online is on the rise. What’s even more appealing is the idea of being able to work from anywhere in the world. Living as a digital nomad, you’re able to see incredible places, learn from different cultures, and work when or where you want to — true freedom!
Before you quit your job and travel as a digital nomad, you need to figure out how to make money online. You can work for other companies remotely, or become an entrepreneur and start your own online business.
Below are 20 Ways You Can Make Money Online:
- Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing is one of the most popular ways to make money online. If you’re a savvy marketer and have a decent following on social media or perhaps you even have a blog or a website, you can make money by promoting other brands and earning a commission from sales promoting retail products, software, courses, apps, and more. - Write and Publish an eBook
With Amazon, it’s never been easier to publish an ebook and it’s a great way to earn money. You can write your own or you can choose to hire a writer for your ebook and a graphic designer for the cover. Optionally, you can find a book that’s already been published in print and license it to publish online. - Dropshipping
Dropshipping is a business model where you don’t keep the products you sell in stock. Instead, when a customer buys something from your store, a third party fulfills and ships the order for you. This means you’ll never have to store your products, maintan inventory, or buy products in bulk. Because startup costs are low, this is a popular way to make money online. Check out Oberlo for fulfillment and sell products on Shopify. - Start a YouTube Channel
If your YouTube videos or blog posts draw a big audience, you may be able to make money from advertising. Optionally, you can create how-to videos and charge a subscription fee or password protect content for paying customers only. - Become an Instagram Influencer
Just like bloggers, YouTubers, and anyone who’s amassed a following online, Instagram Influencers have amassed an audience around the content they create for the platform. Companies use influencers to rep their products. It’s not just the follower count and reach of your Instagram account that brands want, it’s your audiences trust and engagement with high-quality content. Typically, brands partner with influencers for the creation of content via Posts, Stories, Reels, or longform video on IGTV. Most of these deals are negotiable and can involve a single post or an entire campaign in exchange for a fee, a free product, a service, or a combination of these. - Sell Your Photos and Videos
Stock photography websites like Shutterstock are huge repositories of photographs and videos, covering almost every possible subject you could imagine. Photographers can upload their images to a database allowing magazine editors, designers, or any organization with a website to purchase them. And the beauty of stock websites is that the media can be sold multiple times so you can continue to make money without any effort. - Become a Copywriter
With a growing interest in content marketing, more brands are looking for great writers to create content. Once you learn the basics and choose a specialty, copywriting can be a very lucrative career, ripe with opportunity that allows you to live and work virtually anywhere in the world. - Start a Podcast
Podcasting doesn’t have to be difficult. With a microphone, laptop, and free recording software, you can be up and running in no time. Podcasting allows you to build a personal relationship with your audience, build more brand authority, increase traffic, and it’s easy to get started. Once you build your audience to at least 5k or 10k listeners per month, you can join an ad network to connect you with advertisers. - Create an Online Course
Do you have an area of expertise that others can benefit from? Sharing your knowledge and experience is one of the best ways to make money online. You can monetize your knowledge by creating courses to sell on platforms such as Udemy or Kajabi, or if you already have an audience, you can sell on your own website. - Become a Life Coach
Becoming a Life Coach is a career that helps people focus on both thier personal and professional goals. Celebrities and regular folks alike hire life coaches to help them overcome fears, boost their self-confidence, create goals and instill success-oriented habits. You can find thousands of online training and certification programs on how to be a life coach. Then, you can offer coaching services on your website. - Offer Digital Marketing Services to Businesses
Most businesses lack the skills of being able to drive traffic to their business using online ads. Before you are able to offer these services, it’s important you educate yourself and build your digital skills, so you will need to invest some time and money in learning these skills. There are a lot of online courses out there, but you can save yourself a lot of time by joining a program that offers coaching in addition to training so you have someone to turn to when you need help. - Create an App
Have you ever thought about an idea for an app? You don’t have to be a developer to create and make money with an app. Fortunately, there are freelance platforms where you can find affordable developers to create an app. - Become a Freelancer
Make money online through freelance platforms such as Upwork, Fiverr, FlexJobs, and Freelancer.com. These sites offer opportunities to do a variety of freelance jobs such as writing, programming, design, marketing, and more. Do you speak another language? Check out sites like Welocalize, Gengo or One Hour Translation to find work as a translator. - Design Websites
It’s not as difficult to design websites as it used to be thanks to resources like WordPress and Elementor. Designing websites can be an excellent source of income and web designers are always in demand. You can offer your services on freelance platforms such as Upwork, Fiverr, and Freelancer.com, but you should also have your own website that displays your portfolio for people to view. - Offer Social Media Management Services
Social Media is one of the top ways that businesses, bloggers, and YouTubers can connect with their audience, yet many of these business owners don’t have the time or the energy to focus on their social media. That’s where a social media manager comes in. Your job is to help craft content, write captions, gain followers, and ultimately manage a variety of social media accounts. The primary purpose of a social media anager is to represent a brand utilizing the brand’s voice and color scheme across social media channels to connect with their audience, boost sales, and increase overall reach. - Offer Paid Memberships
A membership site is a great business model that can turn what you already know, love, and do into recurring revenue. A membership site offers customers exclusive access to content that is protected by a gate and requires payment and login credentials to access it. There are lots of WordPress plugins or membership platforms that allow you to get going quickly. Check out WishList, Memberful, Wild Apricot, and Weebly to name a few. - Write Online Reviews and Surveys
If you’re looking to make an extra $1,000 to $2,000 a month part-time, there are companies such as Qmee, User Testing, Life Points, Survey Junkey, and many others, that will pay you just for trying out a product, reviewing goods or services, or sharing your opinion about a variety of brands. Product feedback plays a very important role in the buying process and also helps manufacturers make improvements to their product lineups. Now, you can get paid by sharing your opinion on the internet. - Teach English Online
If you’re a native English speaker, teaching English online is a great way to generate a portable income that can hand you a steady paycheck from anywhere in the world. Some resources include GoOverseas.com, TeachAway, and English Hunt. - Become a Virtual Assistant
With so many entrepreneurs building businesses, the demand for virtual assistants is increasing almost daily. As a virtual assistant, you’ll do a variety of tasks from writing, order processing, bookkeeping, social media, and customer support. You can earn money using freelance platforms like Virtual Assistant Jobs, Indeed, or Upwork, but you can also reach out directly to brands and entrepreneurs asking if they’re interested in hiring you. - Sell Your Designs Online
Print on demand allows sellers to customize white label products with your own designs and sell them only after a customer buys, eliminating the need to hold inventory. When a customer places and order, a print-on-demand company will add your design to the product, fulfill the order, and ship it to the customers. Alternatively, you can pitch your designs on a crowdsource platform like 99 Designs or create your own graphics, templates, and more and sell them on marketplaces like Graphic River or Creative Market.
