In recent years there has been an increased interest in how to earn money online quickly and comfortably from home.
The magic of the web is that it’s a powerful sales channel, marketing network and community hub, and so much more. Aside from taking surveys and selling used goods on marketplaces, there are plenty of creative ways to make a quick buck online.
That said, some side drives are better suited to your laptop lifestyle than others. In this guide, we’ll cover the pros and cons of the 30 most popular online money making ideas.
How to make money online: 5 great ideas
sell things onlineStart printing on demand
Start working freelance
Start your dropshipping business
Create unique products to sell online
To help you choose the best ways to make money online, we’ll look at some key factors:
Business Type: Whether the idea is product-, service-, or audience-based.
Effort: How much time, skill or experience the idea requires.
Leverage:
How well positioned you are to turn the idea into a revenue stream that grows without requiring direct attention. A high leverage idea is not a 1:1 exchange of time and money.
Start-up costs: the preliminary budget needed to get the idea off the ground.
Profit Potential:
How much profit you can expect from your idea each year.
1. Sell things online
One of the best ideas to make money fast is to sell stuff online. You can sell things like clothes, furniture, and handbags from your own home, or you can buy and sell higher-value items like laptops, TVs, or phones. You can buy these items online from sites like AliExpress or at your local garage and thrift store – it’s a great way to earn some quick cash and earn some extra cash.
Try selling your products on multiple platforms and marketplaces instead of just one. The more your products are advertised, the more likely people are to find them. There are hundreds of online shopping sites, each with their own niche and commissions. Some examples:
eBay
Facebook Marketplace
VarageSale
Free market
Own online store
If you like the process, you can start a legitimate resale business and sell anything from vintage clothing to refurbished electronics.
2. Print on demand
Print-on-demand allows sellers to customize white-label products with their own designs and sell them only after a customer purchases, eliminating the need to hold inventory (which makes it a sub-market). market). market). market). market). market). market). market). market). complete dropshipping). When a customer places an order, a print-on-demand company will add your design to the product, fulfill the order, and ship it to the customer.
The most important advantage of print on demand over dropshipping is that you control the aesthetics of your products, a key differentiator for product categories where design is the distinguishing factor, such as t-shirts or fan merch.
When it comes to making money online, you can also use print-on-demand services to:
Test online business ideas or new product lines without risking buying inventory.
Monetize an audience you’ve already built, whether it’s on YouTube, social media, or a personal blog.
Offer various products by selling t-shirts, books, shoes, bags, mugs, phone cases, laptop skins, murals, and more.
Sell photos online by placing your images on physical products to sell to your fans.
Overall, print on demand allows you to create personalized products quickly. You don’t have to worry about shipping or fulfillment – it’s taken care of by your suppliers. And since you have no inventory to worry about, it’s a low-risk, low-investment way to make money online.
3. Start freelancing
An increasingly popular home business idea is to offer freelance services to customers online. Freelance writing, graphic design, data entry, digital marketing – almost any role an online business would hire for is viable as a freelance service. I’ve worked with writers, illustrators, and designers for years at Shopify, most of whom are full-time freelancers, not just in their spare time.
Almost all of these services are better positioned for business customers, for reasons similar to why business software is an attractive product: business customers are willing to spend. What most freelancers quickly learn is that they have more influence over the price they can charge when they position their work as results rather than deliverables.
In other words, companies hire freelance writers to create content that generates traffic and leads, not for word writing. Sell the result to customers and prove it, if possible, with customer evidence such as case studies and testimonials.
The last thing to consider for these businesses is that they are a direct exchange of time for money. You can make a lot of money with a small selection of high-paying clients, but as soon as you stop working, the cash flow dries up. You may be able to turn an independent business into an agency, where a hired assistant will do some of the work for clients.
4. Start a dropshipping business
Consider dropshipping: startup costs are low and it’s an increasingly popular way to make money online for beginners and pros alike. 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 processes and ships the order for you.
Dropshippers can take advantage of the latest trends and sell trending products, or there are many stable product categories that offer similar opportunities to do well.
Start-up time: A few hours.
Effort to get started: Very easy with little e-commerce knowledge.
Time to first payment: Two weeks to one month, on average.
What there is to know:
At Shopify, we regularly see these categories on our top performers list: Apparel & Accessories, Jewelry, Home & Garden.
You can create a Shopify store and test it out with a free trial.
The payment term with Shopify Payments is five days plus the number of days remaining until the day of your payment.
5. Create personalized products
While the above options have the advantage of not keeping expensive inventory, they also come with some limitations, primarily that you don’t have full control over the product you’re selling.
And when you think of most direct-to-consumer brands, here’s what comes to mind: quirky products that make meaningful improvements or add cool details to well-known items. Personally, I have bought many messenger bags, but I had never seen anything like the one made by Vermilyea Pelle until it hit my door.
The manufacture of handmade products is popular among jewelry brands, fashion brands and home decoration brands. It gives you full control over product development and the quality of your items.
The only downsides are:
It may take time
It’s hard to scale
The costs associated with making products by hand are the cost of materials, storage of your finished products, and labor.
Start-up time: A few hours to configure your e-commerce platform, followed by time to create your personalized products.
Starting effort: medium, but it takes a lot of effort to maintain it.
Time to first payment: The payment window with Shopify Payments is five days, plus the number of days remaining until the day of your payment.
What there is to know:
Sellers must collect tax from the state where their item is delivered.
Be sure to consider your packaging costs when pricing your items.
You can create a Shopify store and use it for free for 3 days.
Terms:
Most e-commerce platforms require you to be at least 18 years old. If you are under 18, your parents can create one for you.
Requirements vary by state, but you must have licenses or permits to sell anything online.
