5 Legitimate Ways to Make Money Online in 2023 Even If You’re a Beginner

Looking to make extra cash online? Even big money perhaps? I’ll show you how it’s possible to do that. There are many options out there to explore. It’s the digital age and those who put their minds to it can indeed make money online. For me, affiliate marketing is the route to take and I do this by running a blog and YouTube channel but the main focus I have right now is my blog. I also have some eBooks up for sale and have made money selling these but that’s definitely not my main source of income.

In the past I made money with affiliate marketing using some different methods from what I use today. One of these was simply running Bing ads. I was selling a Clickbank product after completing a course on how to run Bing ads by KC Tan who sells the course on Udemy.

I made money selling a digital product that was designed to help with treating Eczema. I also tried selling other products like Brain Training for Dogs which is another Clickbank product. But I didn’t make sales with that.

Then I was using a product called 12 Minute Affiliate System which is quite good but it involved buying clicks from a website called Easy Traffic Now and I also had to use an autoresponder, Aweber which has a free and paid version. Again, I made sales but the truth is that I was never really in profit, I don’t think. The cost of buying traffic often means that even if you make some sales, you don’t end up any richer – in fact, you often end up poorer.

Eventually, I found Wealthy Affiliate and that offered extensive training on how to turn an interest into a business niche and make money using a blog. It also teaches paid ads and many other things but I loved the idea of getting organic traffic to a blog and actually helping people out with it. A blog seemed fulfilling and less risky than just paying for clicks to some offer.

Anyway, I learned about many opportunities out there that I know can help people to make honest money online. I also know about countless scammy methods that say they can help you make money but are not to be trusted. So, let’s dive in and see these legit ways to make money online.

Use Upwork and Fiverr to sell your skills

These are both sites where you’ll find freelancers. Of the two of them, it might be easier to get started with Fiverr.com than with Upwork but essentially, they are both legit sites where you can hire people as well as sell your services.

Upwork is, you could say, a notch or two more sophisticated than Fiverr. It offers a wide range of services from individuals around the world. They each have a profile where you can see their credentials and examples of their work, plus reviews from people who have hired them in the past.

You can sell your own talents on this website but to qualify, you’ll need to provide some evidence of your abilities and await approval. The first time I tried it, they rejected me. I was a bit generic and didn’t really know what I was doing. In the end, I decided there were better ways to make money online.

The site has been going for a long time and is widely known and trusted. You can find all kinds of talents being sold as services there. For example, you could even hire content creators for a website or video channel like YouTube or Rumble. You can even interview your clients before deciding whether to hire them or not.

Generally, services on Upwork cost more than on Fiverr which got it’s name because most services were $5 when it got started and you can still find many services on the for only $5 today.

But the fact that services cost more on Upwork is good news for you if you can get approved, have a decent profile and land your first few jobs. Just take a look at the site and you’ll see how many different types of services people are looking to hire and the amount of money you can potentially make.

Fiverr is also very popular but the services may not always be the best quality. Personally, I found it quite difficult to find a British writer. There are a lot of people on the site for whom English isn’t their first language.

Fiverr also isn’t as trustworthy as somewhere like Upwork. I was foolish enough to buy traffic to my business for cheap there. But I later discovered the offer was too good to be true and I was sent a load of bot traffic.

The upside to Fiverr is that it may be less challenging to get approved and start selling your skills.

It’s also cheaper to hire services although you’ll still want to be careful before paying someone for a service on Fiverr. Sometimes, you may not get you’re money’s worth from my experience and the testimony of others that you can find for yourself online.

Design and Sell Beautiful T-Shirts and Other Items on Teespring

Teespring is a wonderful site where you can create your own online store create your own designs for things like t-shirts, bags, mugs, iPhone covers etc.

The site allows you to sell them on the platform and takes care of all the shipping for you when someone purchases. For this they take a cut from the money you make on sales.

I know personally know someone who was very successful with this strategy. He reached people using Instagram which is a great idea since the designs can look very appealing and perfect for featuring on Instagram posts.

To implement this strategy isn’t especially difficult. It’s a matter of going to the site, following the instructions, creating your designs, setting up your store and deciding on a promotion strategy.

It does of course help if you have a taste for designing things or if you are into some form of art, physical or digital, or if you’re into graphic design, but all the same, this stuff isn’t that difficult to get into. To help with your designs, you can also use a site called Canva which is a great place to design all sorts of things and provides many templates and other tools for free.

Start a YouTube Channel – Don’t be Shy!

There’s so many advantages to using YouTube and definitely more than one way to make money with it.

You can:

• Make product reviews of things you recommend and leave an affiliate link down below in the description and pinned comment
• Simply talk about an interest and teach people things until you build a sizeable following, then monetise the channel with the YouTube Partnership (basically benefit from the ads on your videos)
• Create a lead magnet for your viewers and build an email list which you can learn more about in another post
• Link to a website (if you have one) to increase its traffic which in turn can increase sales through your website
• Create YouTube shorts and share them on other platforms like Insta, Facebook and TickTok, growing an even larger following and again, promoting affiliate products to them
• Re-upload YouTube videos you’ve created to Rumble and gain more exposure
• Find copyright free videos by using the filter near the search and select Creative Commons. Then use and possibly edit these videos on a channel of your own.
• Go to YouTube Audio library and create relaxing music videos by adding free tracks to beautiful nature pictures. Sometimes these music channels get huge engagement and again you can monetise by affiliate links and working towards getting ad revenue

Here’s a useful resource: 3 Ways to Make Money on YouTube with Affiliate Marketing

There are ways of not showing your face on YouTube and not even talking. It’s all a matter of having some editing skills and a of course a video editor. But YouTube is free and you can make money with it for free if you learn some strategies that you think can work for you.

God a cool camera or other gadget at home? Why not start right there. Review it and leave an affiliate link to it in the description and pinned comment. Maybe it’s something people can buy on Amazon? Just go to Amazon and sign up as an Associate (same thing as an Affiliate). Then get your link and promote it.

Build a Blog and Monetise It

Here’s the affiliate marketing formula we learned at Wealthy Affiliate:

1. Choose a niche
2. Build a website around that niche
3. Attract organic traffic through content creation
4. Earn revenue

This is my favourite strategy for making money online as an affiliate. I build a blog in a niche I love. I then create content on topics relating to my niche including both informational posts and product review posts.

People then find me through Google search and other search engines like Bing and Yahoo.

Once they arrive on my site, some of them will click on links that recommend products. If they buy, I make money as an affiliate.

If I’m selling digital products with recurring subscriptions, I will make commissions every month from every customer who purchases.

It’s a tried and tested strategy and to do it properly, I followed the training at Wealthy Affiliate.

You can read about Wealthy Affiliate in my review:

Wealthy Affiliate Review >>

Create a Facebook Page and Drive Traffic to Affiliate Offers

You can also create a Facebook page and you’ll notice that there is always the option to ‘Boost Post’ or ‘Boost Website’ if you feature a website that is connected to your Facebook Page.

For example, I have a Facebook Page associated with this website and brand called Affiliate Resource Centre. I can link to my blog posts there which can be good for SEO.

But I can also boost these posts and drive more traffic from the Facebook ad to my website and thus make more sales.

The process is fast and simple. You set a budget and away you go. You can go as low or high as you want and either keep the ad running if it’s doing well or come back to it later and perhaps boost a different page.

If you don’t have a website, you can still create a quick, free 1 page website which recommends an offer and send traffic to that. The 1 page could be a review of something or a sales page for what you want to promote. You’ll just need to be a little cautious not to do anything that Fb is likely to censure. Each ad you submit needs approval first. So try to be smart with your promotions.

I did it by sending them to an informational post that wasn’t immediately promoting something. But half way down the post there was an affiliate link. This worked and I got some sign ups from that link.

This are some great ways to start making money online and one day have a profitable online business that generates money for you like clockwork. It’s a challenging adventure, but an extremely rewarding one when you get it right.

Leave a comment below if you found this useful. I’d love to hear from you.