Making money online isn’t as hard as you think!
If you’re working towards a better life, you’ll know as well as I do that it helps to have money. You can make money the traditional way, where you work a job and earn a wage, or you can choose to start a business online.
Everyone works differently. Some people like the order and stability that the 9 to 5 grind offers and if that works for them, that’s great. But if you’re reading this article, I know you’re not one of them.
If you’re like me, you want financial and time freedom.
There are some super easy side hustles to make money online that you can scale to serious income streams if you put in the effort. There has never been a better time in history, to start your business.
I’m going to go through 3 side hustles that I think are perfect for beginners to get into. The last one I have started myself and have already seen some success in, but it’s time intensive and expensive but the potential pay-off is lucrative.
1. Create a Faceless TikTok Account
To do this, all you need is a smartphone and TikTok. I’d also recommend downloading the CapCut free video editing app.
Choose a niche that you’re actually passionate about, like funny dog videos, and create or repurpose content.
By repurposing, I mean to seek out videos already on the internet and apply your own twist. This includes a voice-over and some heavy editing. You don’t have to do special effects. you just need to add music, and sound effects like popping, pinging, laughing etc. As a matter of etiquette, you should tag or credit the person who owns the original video.
TikTok Success Stories
If you prefer to create, then I’ve got an inspiring fact for you. A guy went viral on YouTube and TikTok for placing objects in increasing numbers under a pane of glass. He then stood on them to see how many were needed to support his weight. One of the videos shows him putting Cheetos under the glass and it’s racked up 100’s of thousands of views.
I’ve also seen a guy on TikTok, who buys cheap tech and gadgets from Amazon. He then records faceless videos with his voice, reviewing the item and taking it apart. On average he gets around 700,000 views on each video, some have millions.
TikTok pays creators per 1,000 views once you join the creator program, but they do have eligibility requirements. You need to have 10,000 followers and get at least 100,000 video views in the last 30 days, which is surprisingly easy.
Plus, he attaches an affiliate link for every item he actually likes, generating a percentage of all sales made through his link.
This is one of the easiest ways to make money online but isn’t as lucrative as the next 2.
2. Sell Print-on-demand Accessories
If print-on-demand is done right, you can make thousands from it.
Print-on-demand is a business model where you do not hold stock of the products you are selling. These products are usually clothing, accessories, phone cases, coffee mugs, etc. They are produced as and when orders come in, in other words, they are ‘printed on demand’. It’s one of the least risky forms of business as the customer pays you for the product before it’s been made. This way you don’t have to splash out from your own savings.
It’s also one of the easiest ways to make money online and the initial outlay is virtually nothing. You just need a website, domain & SVG designs to put on the products.
Don’t Start by Selling on Etsy
Many people sell on Etsy, but I think Etsy’s fees are extortionate. Their customer service is as bad as the people who ring you pretending to be Microsoft tech support.
I went from having a successful POD store on Etsy and making around $7,000 per month for a solid year. Only to find that in the next year, my monthly income dropped to $300 due to the sheer crowding on the website with listings, and a race to the bottom with prices. For some reason, Etsy would always recommend other sellers with much lower prices to buyers who were viewing my listings.
Why Print-on-demand Stores Fail
Moving on, the key to success with print-on-demand is niche selection. There are thousands of POD businesses out there, and hundreds of new startups every day, but don’t let that discourage you. I’ll tell you why.
I’ve seen how most of them have set their businesses up. The niches they’re in, their product designs, their marketing tactics, the way their websites look, and their product pricing. I can confidently say, 90% of them are deluded if they think their business is going to be a success. As many POD startups pop up, there are just as many that give up and fail.
It’s not hard. POD is an incredibly easy online business to get into. I’ve seen it time and time again, they all make the same mistake, and that’s with poor niche selection. Couple that with bad artwork to go on the products, they’re setting themselves up to fail.
How I would do it
If I was setting up another print-on-demand store I would definitely sell through my own website, most likely hosted on Shopify. I would then choose a broad niche, and niche as far down as possible whilst ensuring demand.
For example, think of the Animal niche. Narrow it down to dogs because 65 million US households own a dog, but that niche is really competitive and there are so many people selling dog-related merch. Instead, narrow it further to German Shepherds, and now we’re talking. We’ve just slashed competition to 1/3rd of what it was and we know the demand is still as high because German Shepherds are the #2 most-owned dog breed in the US and across the world! You could even niche down another level to German Shepherd puppies.
Whichever niche you decide to go into, make sure you niche down by at least 1 level before you check the competition and demand. If the competition is still too high, niche down again keeping a careful eye on the demand.
3. Start a Hands-off eBook Business
This is by far the most lucrative way of the 3 to make money online.
There’s a service called The Urban Writers where someone writes your entire eBook for you. It’s an expensive investment but with the money you could be making on Kindle publishing and through other channels, it’ll make back your initial outlay plus more.
I started an eBook business recently and used The Urban Writers for the project. They did a really good job of writing the book and then passed it on to their editing team to make some final adjustments before I reviewed it myself.
They’ll write you a 10,000-word ebook for as little as $404. This includes full cover design, 20 images through the eBook, content revisions, proofreading and editing. You get a done-for-you business with zero work from yourself. There are people out there, like you and me, who have made publishing empires from this sort of thing. I’m talking $10,000 to $50,000+ per month.
The Mistake I Made
What I’ve learned from my first-ever eBook is that niche selection is incredibly important. I sold 10 copies of my eBook in the 1st week of it being published on Kindle before I took it down as I wasn’t happy with the niche I chose. I wasn’t interested in it and hardly knew anything about it which meant that It would be really difficult for me to scale.
So in the next month or so, I’ll have another eBook written. This time in a niche I have an insane amount of passion for (finance), and post my results in another article on here for you to see.
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