The Internet is yet another source of news and entertainment. Increasingly, people are starting to trade on the Internet and hacking money online. Few people are even turning their online ventures into full-time internet businesses.

The internet has many possibilities for people regardless of age, location, or background to build a sustainable, online business, or side project that can make some extra money online each month. Are you ready to transform your passions into profits and start your own online business but you are not sure where to get started? Let’s take a look at few ways to make money online that won’t require a lot of time. Think of these options as additional sources of income.

Build a blog or website and use affiliate marketing or online advertising

If there’s a niche you are interested in and you can build a fairly good audience around it then starting a blog and using affiliate marketing to make an income is an incredible way to make money online.

Use your blog to share thoughts, hobbies, and passions with others and make links with people. The logic is straightforward, you’ll be able to profit with your blog via affiliate marketing, online advertising, and subscriber-based lists to produce a passive income.

Start your own eCommerce site and sell physical products

Another great opportunity to make money online is by setting up an e-commerce website and selling physical items. Plenty of digital entrepreneurs have created sustainable businesses by either: Creating physical products they know people will love, or purchasing low price goods manufactured in foreign and selling them for higher prices on domestic online marketplaces or self-managed e-commerce websites.

Start coaching and consulting online

You can start selling your knowledge and advice in an area you specialize in as a coach or consultant. If you are an expert, there are many people out there willing to pay for your time and expertise.

With tools like Skype, video conferencing apps, and webinar technology you can offer one-on-one calls, group calls, and small mastermind meetings.

Being an online consultant or coach is a great way to make money online. You teach your clients to be better, faster, stronger than the competition. Your expertise becomes a product that you sell online.

Selling online courses to productize your knowledge

If you’re an expert in a topic, you can package that knowledge into a high-value course and sell it.

Launching and marketing an online course takes a large amount of effort but its earning potential is more than other online ways to make money we’re talking about.

Courses and other educational products like e-books are called passive income. That means, once the upfront time and effort are put in, with a bit of regular maintenance and marketing you’ll be able to continue to sell and make money from them for years.

Start a YouTube channel to entertain and educate

YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine. It is the second most trafficked website after Google. It has over 1.9 billion (~ 200 crores) monthly active logged-in users.

If you manage to hit their new minimum bar of 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of view time in the past 12 months, it’s still an incredible place to make extra money online.

YouTube channels are based on a traditional advertising system – you will get more if there are more viewers of the channel. Once you’re approved for the YouTube Partner Program and can start including ads on your videos, with every 1,000 views, you will make approximately INR 150-300. Which might not seem like a lot, but if you have 100 videos with 5,000 views a month each, that would be INR 70,000–1,40,000 already. Just imagine if your videos start getting ten lakh of views!

Online publishing of e-book

Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform has given thousands of people a chance to become published authors and earn money. It may also serve as a way to get noticed by more established and traditional publishers.

Not only can you sell ebooks on platforms like Amazon.com; but you can also sell ebooks directly from your own website as well. This allows you to sell your ebooks at higher prices and get all of the profits.

Become an influencer on Instagram

Build up a following on your Instagram account and you could quickly be making extra money online. Major brands and even startups are willing to shell out INR 35,000-350,000+ per post to get in front of your audience. While it’s getting harder and harder to build a massive Instagram audience, if you already have a solid niche and are posting quality content regularly with a great camera for taking Instagram photos, with a few small tweaks you can make yourself an influencer.

Local business consulting

If you’ve developed valuable skill sets within your industry over the years, offering your consulting services to local business owners can be a lucrative way to make money online. Whether you’re an expert marketer, business strategist, or manufacturing aficionado, there’s likely a local business owner who’s willing to pay you to help them solve an issue with their company.

Teach English as a virtual tutor

Teaching English is a great way to make money online. There are people in countries such as Hong Kong or the UAE who are willing to pay upwards of INR 1,500/hr for you to tutor them English via Skype. Check Indeed, Learn4Good and Remote.co for remote English tutoring jobs or sign up on a specialized site like VerbalPlanet or Chegg Tutors.

Write on Medium’s partner program

Medium is an online community where anyone can post articles and essays and get them in front of their audience of millions of monthly readers. While it can be a great place to build your audience for your own blog or find customers for your consulting business, with Medium’s new Partner Program, you can now make money online whenever someone reads your articles. Register for free and you can choose whether your articles are freely available or only readable by those people paying $5/month for a premium Medium membership. You’ll make money based on the number of people who read and engage with your posts each month.

Answer professional questions on JustAnswer

Information and expertise are two of the most consistent and lucrative ways to make extra money online. If you don’t like talking on the phone, you can sign up to get paid to answer professional questions on JustAnswer. There are thousands of questions being asked every month from people looking for help from lawyers, doctors, mechanics, vets, and more. To apply, you’ll need to supply your professional verification, resume, and a form of identification.

Final thoughts on how to make money online

With the explosion of online businesses, there has never been a better time to look for ways to make money online.

From starting a blog to sell products online, answer professional questions and everything in between, it’s a very attainable goal to create an online living for yourself.

Did I miss any of your ways to make money online?

Let me know in the comments below your own personal ways of making money online.

Share some details about what’s working for you and I’ll add them to the list!