If you’re looking for ways to make money online, you’ve probably considered trying your hand at product reviews for affiliate programs. Or, you may have even tried your hand at freelance writing and discovered that you’re quite competent at penning insightful blog posts and marketing materials. If you’ve considered trying these ways to make money online, but haven’t pursued them yet, read on. We’re going to tell you about five ways that you can make money online that don’t require any previous experience.
5 Ways to Make Money Online Without a Website or Product to Offer
If you’re looking to make money online without a website or product to sell, you’ve probably considered trying your hand at:
- Reviews for hire
- Affiliate marketing
- Blog writing
- Marketing
- Virtual assistant work
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Any of these may be a viable source of income for you, depending on your skillset, but none of them necessarily require you to have a specific product to sell. Let’s explore.
1. Review Products For Hire
Do you enjoy being pampered with luxurious items? Then reviewing products for hire may be the right fit for you. More and more companies are turning to independent contractors to review their products and offer feedback on whether they’re worthy of purchase, as customers have grown weary of getting scammed by online marketers, especially after the COVID-19 outbreak.
If you go this route, make sure to read the contract carefully and ask any pertinent questions before signing on the dotted line. Make sure to get a good review quote in advance, so you don’t end up with a nasty surprise afterwards. Most importantly, make sure you’re getting paid what you’re worth. As the old adage goes, ‘you get what you pay for’. If you want top tier reviews, you may have to pay accordingly.
Forbes has an excellent guide to reviewing products for hire that you can utilize as a jumping off point.
2. Affiliate Marketing
Many of us have experienced the affiliate marketing hustle at one point or another. You’ll often get approached by online marketeers who want you to promote their affiliate offers on social media or blogs. Usually, this is done under the guise of ‘referral marketing’, where they claim that you’ll get a commission if a customer clicks a link or buys a product that’s promoted on your behalf.
The problem with affiliate marketing is that the online marketeers are counting on you being affiliated with a trusted brand or company. If you get paid if someone clicks a banner or buys a product, you may find yourself in a bit of a legal bind when that person discovers that you haven’t necessarily reviewed or endorsed the product yourself. Legally speaking, you’re only entitled to earn commissions on products that you’ve personally tried out and reviewed to determine whether or not you wanted to recommend it to others. So, if you go this route and decide to pass on their affiliate offer, you may not get paid for that particular sale.
Now is a good time to point out that a lot of online marketeers are cheaters. They’ll get you to sign on the dotted line with an affiliate marketing agreement without ever telling you that they are already partnered with a specific company. Once you’re committed, they’ll introduce you to another party who’ll make up the other half of the commission. At this point, you’re just a piece of collateral until someone higher up in the food chain decides to buy into the partnership.
Even still, affiliate marketing can be a viable option if you do it right. Start by identifying your target audience and determining what products they’re most likely to buy. From there, you can begin to build out a niche site around that topic, using affiliate marketing to generate revenue, and voila, ya got yourself a passive income stream.
You may not want to go the route of affiliate marketing all by yourself. You can use affiliate marketing platforms like ClickBank, which connect advertisers with affiliate marketers, to connect with a group of like-minded individuals who’ll help you get the ball rolling. You may also want to consider creating your own branded affiliate marketing platform to handle all of your affiliate sales.
3. Blog Writing
If you’re a talented writer with a deep knowledge base, you may want to consider making money online from your writing. There are numerous opportunities to make money online through writing, with some businesses going as far as paying you to write. The catch is that you have to be able to prove that you have the skills necessary to become a successful freelance writer.
To do this, you may want to consider creating and publishing an ebook. In today’s digital world, an ebook doesn’t need to stand for anything other than ‘I can write, and you can find dozens of my ebooks online if you search for my name’. With so many authors jumping on the ebooks wave, you may find it difficult to stand out from the crowd. Still, if you can become a successful freelance writer, you may be able to use your talents to make money online, even if you don’t have a product to sell.
Blogs aren’t just for fun these days. They can be quite the moneymaker when done right. You’ll often hear entrepreneurs and business owners say that they spent a lot of money on ads, traffic acquisition, and a few affiliate partners, but they still don’t know how much money they’ve made online because they haven’t published their blog’s financials. This is where the math comes in. If you’re good at taking financials and doing the necessary math to determine the blog’s income and expenses, you may be able to effectively track your blog’s income and expenses, as well as create a financial plan for your blog’s future. This isn’t something that non-technical people should attempt to do, as it requires a decent amount of math and stats knowledge. But, if you’re willing to learn, the income and expense potential is there.
The key to a profitable blog is to figure out a way to get paid for content that’s always going to be useful to your audience. If you can do this, you’ll never have to worry about making money from a blog again. And to help you effectively figure out how to get paid for that content, we’ve compiled a list of 25 things you should consider before starting a blog. Hopefully, this article will help you determine if blogging is the right fit for you.
4. Marketing
If you’ve got a business or brand, you may want to put some money into marketing, especially if you’re trying to gain traction in a crowded marketplace. Just because you have a product or service to market, it doesn’t mean that marketing is easy. In fact, it can be one of the most challenging aspects of business. If you’re looking to make money online, you may want to consider paying for marketing. But, the good news is that you don’t necessarily need to. There are numerous free and low-cost ways to market a business without having to spend a single penny.
You may want to consider using PPC [Pay Per Click] marketing, which is also known as ‘pay per click’ or ‘cost per acquisition’. Essentially, this is when someone clicks on your paid link or ad and ends up on your site. While this may not sound like marketing, it’s still a form of online marketing, as you’re paying for people to be brought to your site. But PPC marketing requires a steady hand and a strong knowledge of how to manage your pay per click campaigns. If you’re looking to get started with PPC, check out this guide by HubSpot, which explains in simple terms what PPC is and how it works.
Another option is to use SEO [Search Engine Optimization], which stands for ‘search engine optimization’. The goal of SEO is to elevate your blog’s or business’s ranking in the organic search results on search engines like Google and Bing, ensuring that your site shows up when potential customers are searching for products related to your niche.
SEO is a massive undertaking, as you’ll have to dive into the world of online marketing, content creation, and keyword research, among other things. If you’re looking to make money online, SEO may be a good fit for you. You’ll just need to determine which one.
5. Virtual Assistant Work
If you have a tech-savvy ear, you may want to consider doing some virtual assistant work. Essentially, this is when you perform tasks for businesses or individuals, either remotely or from a separate location.