What is a Way to Make Money Online in 2021: The Top 2 Alternatives

Intro.

It depends who you talk to but as you’ve come here, I’ll give you my opinion. There are multiple ways to make a living online but I don’t want you to learn illegitimate ways to do this. That’s not what this website is about. So, what is a way to make money online that is legitimate and will lead to long term success?

There’s two options to go about this and I’ll explain the pro’s and con’s of each. These are legitimate money making opportunities that will set you up with an online business. They offer long term income streams, should you implement the correct tactics and strategies, which are fairly straight forward to learn.

The 2 Best Ways to Earn Money Online

Let’s not beat around the bush. The best 2 legitimate money making opportunities online are:

• Creating your own store
• Affiliate marketing

These are not in order of preference, both have their great points, and their pitfalls. So, let’s study them a little closer and see which stacks up better for your situation.

Your Own Store

There’s a lot of self satisfaction with running your own online store, especially if you’re selling your own products. Don’t concern yourself if you don’t have your own products to sell though, there is another way.

It’s called drop shipping and it’s as popular as ever. Drop shipping is where you sell an item from a manufacturer and have it shipped directly to the purchaser.

Let’s use the largest Asian online drop shipping company as an example. If you’ve never heard of Ali Express, it will become a very familiar name if you decide to venture into the drop shipping model.

This is how it works. You find products on the Ali Express website that you’d like to sell on your website. Upload their images and write a description.

Now, Ali Express will have a price that you pay for these items. Let’s say you advertise a bracelet that costs you $3 from Ali Express. This is not the price you’ll sell for on your online store. You can come up with your own price. So if you have an advertised price of $8, you make a $5 profit, right?

Well not exactly. There’s still shipping costs to take into consideration. Ali Express will show you the shipping costs for each product with various carriers to different countries. But you can charge the customer your own shipping costs to make an extra profit.

This is a great way of making money online and if you do it right, you’ll make more money than my other option to make money online.

However, there are more pitfalls and more setup costs with this model.

Each country has their own tax system and you may need to see a tax specialist to have your tax figures set up correctly.

If you don’t do this, you may be in for a surprise once tax time comes.

You’ll also have advertising costs if you promote products through social media such as Facebook ads. This can add up if you don’t get it right. There’s an art to targeting the audience you want through Facebook and it can take much learning to get it right.

Creating a website with a money exchange gateway can be a bit of a hassle also. The most common way (and the easiest to implement) is using BigCommerce or Shopify. They have all the inbuilt features you’ll need to set up a proper online store including shipping details and taxes. Although you’ll still need to see an expert re: taxes.

There’s also the issue of when problems arise such as damaged goods. You will be responsible for any returns and dealing with customer complaints.

Creating your own online store may sound like something you’d like to jump straight into but realistically, you need to learn how to do it properly. There are a few experts that offer courses on this, here’s a few that I know of below, in preferred order.

1. Adrian Morrison – eCom Success Academy
2. Jon Mac
3. Dan DeSilva

These guys have all experts in the field and have made millions from exactly this online store model, so they know what they’re talking about. However, they know how to charge for their knowledge.

So, let’s go through the pro’s and Con’s of the online store model.

Pro’s

• More profits
• Sell your own goods
• Mark up your own prices
• No inventory if drop shipping

Con’s

• Have to deal with returns
• Higher setup costs
• Complicated tax setup for various countries
• Education Cost are Much Higher

Setting up your own online shop can work out very well, if you’re selling your own products. Drop shipping is also a proven model that works, but you will have deal with some issues that are beyond your control. Customer complaints can be a bit of a headache, but the extra profits you make, may alleviate this! It’s possible to learn how to sell watches online, or other merchandise for that matter, and set up an online store quite quickly.

Here’s some Facebook groups that can help you with this money making model.

Shopify Mastery – Join Here
Selling on Shopify – Join Here
Shopify Money Makers – Join Here

Now let’s look at the alternative option for making money online.

Affiliate Marketing for Commissions

This option is slightly different and is less risky. You can still make a very good income but not as much as you would for a successful online store.

This is my favourite way of making money online because there are no hassles from customers or returns/exchanges for me to worry about.

The basic principle behind affiliate marketing is to sell the products of a company, on your website. This company will then pay you a commission for helping them get a sale.

Here’s a typical scenario. You create a website about bird cages. To monetise this site, you sign up to Walmart and join their affiliate program. Walmart will have a section on their website where you can get unique affiliate links that can be added to your website to sell bird cages and equipment.

If a visitor clicks on a word or image that has this affiliate link attached to it, Walmart will recognise this and you will earn a commission for your work.

What I love about this model of income, is that I don’t deal with customers directly, I just send my visitors to the companies website to make a purchase. There’s no dealing with customer issues or damaged products.

I can still make money at anytime during the day or night, from buyers the world over.

Again, an education is required to learn how to get this right. Of course anyone can just jump straight in and setup a website and attempt to do this themselves. You’ll find snippets of information from the internet, YouTube and Google are great sources of information.

However, it may take you a long time to learn it all this way. The better option is to learn from somewhere like Wealthy Affiliate. This is where I learned the art of affiliate marketing. They are the industry leaders in this sector and you can even build your website within their platform. They have an easy website builder for this purpose.

The most help you’ll get with the affiliate marketing option is the community within Wealthy Affiliate. Everyone is there for the same reason, to build up an online business for long term success. There are many full time affiliate marketers willing to offer their knowledge to any members.

Many create extra training for you to follow and all training comes with a communication area for Q & A. If affiliate marketing is your preferred online business model, don’t even bother with any other educational program, Wealthy Affiliate is the number one.

You can also find out everything about them by signing up for free. This will give you a great insight as to how much they can help you. If nothing else, join for free and create a free website to play around with. Complete the first training course and if you think it’s something you’d like to pursue, then make the financial commitment. You will find challenges along the way, but you’ll also overcome them.

The community will offer their best advice, and if you’re after something extra, read my No.1 tip for affiliate marketing.

It’ll cost you approximately half a cup of coffee per day. Here’s where you can sign up.

Wrapping Up

So, depending on how much stress you want in your life, these are two great models that allow you to make online money every day. Both can offer you a long term income stream if done correctly.

Often you’ll wonder how to build an online business from scratch, and if you’ve got the capabilities to do it. Choosing the right education platform will give you all the capabilities you need to succeed at accomplishing this.

You’ll feel just as attached to either option, with your new online adventure offering you a great opportunity to create a great new online career for yourself.

Just be careful not to fall for the scammers out there. If you read a sales pitch that says you’ll be earning $1000 in your first 2 weeks, steer clear of that program, it’s BS!