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How to make money online: 10 formulas that work in 2020

How to make money online: 10 formulas that work in 2020

So you want to make money online.

You have probably already found a lot of bloggers who explain how to do it. And probably most of them are not earning a single euro (run away from whoever tells you to fill out surveys or click on ads to generate income).

Not to mention those who only make money selling courses where they teach how to make money. Paradoxical, right?

Is not my style. I have spent years living on the Internet, generating thousands of euros and learning the ins and outs of online business.

First of all, you should know that making money online is not easy or fast. It never has been, despite what you read or wants to sell you.

I have had to put in a lot of effort and sacrifice a lot of my free time. I have spent sleepless nights, I have spent hundreds of hours learning and I have given up my vacation while trying to earn my first euros.

But it was worth it.

The great advantage is that technical knowledge is no longer necessary. Before you should know how to program to create a website, but today there are systems so intuitive that even a child would know how to do it.

So the opportunity is now.

In this article, I am going to reveal to you the 10 best ways to earn money on the Internet for its economic potential, simplicity and ability to generate income in a stable way. And since I want to be totally transparent with you, I will also show you my own results.

I remind you that here you will not find high-risk systems or ridiculous income such as completing online surveys or playing poker. If you want to make real money, you're going to have to work it out for yourself.

Active versus passive income

Before starting, you should know that there are two ways to make money online: active and passive systems.

Assets are those that require that you have to be doing something to generate income, such as selling crafts made by you, translating texts or playing poker.
Liabilities are those that, once created, require virtually no further action on your part. Think about the advertising revenue generated by website readers or the dividends you get with an investment. After the initial effort, then you don't have to do practically anything else.
The latter is the most desired.

Thanks to passive systems you can continue to generate income while you sleep, are on the road or spend your time on anything else. They not only give you money: they also give you freedom.

And it's not that active systems are bad, but the Internet is like a storefront that never closes. It's always up and running, and you can take advantage of it to get a steady stream of income.

How to make money online: 10 formulas that work

Let's now see the best ways to earn money online for their economic potential, simplicity and reliability, and the results I have achieved with them.

1. Make money with affiliate marketing

This is the system with which I earned my first euros, and in my opinion, it is one of the most affordable ways for any beginner who wants to generate passive income.

It hardly requires knowledge, the investment is almost nil and its earning potential is very high. Also, once assembled you can practically forget about it: only minimal maintenance will be necessary.

Affiliate marketing consists of creating a website where you will publish analysis and product recommendations. In these analyzes, you will put links to other web pages where they sell the product. If you end up buying it, the seller will give you a commission for referring a customer.

Logically, you must first have come to terms with those web pages. Luckily, today there are affiliation platforms (the best known is Amazon Affiliates) where you only have to register to be part of that agreement.

Let's say you are passionate about photography. You could create a web page where you would post reviews of different cameras or lenses with a link to the product page on Amazon for readers interested in buying.

This, for example, is an affiliate link.

Your website would appear in search engines like Google when people search for analyzes or comparisons of those cameras. They would enter your item, click on the affiliate link, and if they ended up buying, Amazon would give you a percentage.

Do you see where the grace is? You create a web page, publish articles and, once they have visited, it becomes an automatic system that you should not be constantly attending to.

The income potential of this system depends on the market you have chosen (the more that category of products is sold online and the more expensive they are, the better), but also on the time you invest.

Basically, these are the tasks you will need to do:


  1. Create a website. You can do it in 15 minutes with this tutorial.
  2. Write analyzes, comparisons and recommendations. You will spend most of your time here. You can pay someone to do it, but I recommend that you write first to gain knowledge and practice.
  3. Position your website in search engines. Although in the less competitive markets your website can position itself practically, sometimes you will need to present your website in other places on the Internet to make it more visible.

Okay, but how much money are we talking about?

I like that you ask me this question. So you can see what this system is capable of, this is what two of my affiliate websites generated during the month of July.

This is the oldest website (I am very fond of you), is a technology niche:

And this one is barely 11 months old, but it is already around 3,000 euros per month:

Amazon Affiliate Revenue 2
If I add the rest of the websites, the figure exceeds 7,000 euros per month on autopilot.

As if that were not enough when Christmas arrives the income multiplies by two or even by three. This is what I gained with a single website during the month of December:

Amazon affiliates December
Earning some money with affiliation is relatively easy, but if you want to bill figures like these, you will have to spend a lot of time and effort.

So forget about anyone who sells you that you can set up such a system on a Caribbean beach overnight. To earn more than a dozen euros a month you will have to sacrifice a large part of your free time.

The good news is that, after the initial effort, you can dedicate yourself to picking the fruits. Not to mention that you can keep the system at a distance, working from anywhere in the world (something important for a travel lover like me).

2. Create a website and monetize it with Adsense

Another of the best ways to earn money online passively is to monetize web pages with advertising.

The concept is similar to that of affiliate marketing: you create a web page on a topic, you attract readers and once they are there you earn money when they perform a certain action.

The great advantage of advertising is that you do not need the reader to buy for you to take a commission. The most common is that you earn money when the reader clicks on an ad (known as PPC -Pay Per Click-).

In fact, this is how the world's largest ad network works: Google Adsense.

Google Adsense
Adsense is so popular thanks to its ease of use and number of advertisers. You simply sign up and, once your request has been approved, you can already place ads on your website by inserting a small code.

With Adsense, you do not choose what type of ads appear: Google is responsible for doing it automatically according to the theme of your website and the profile of the reader. In this way you can show personalized ads for each reader, which has three benefits:


  • Maximize the money you can earn from advertising. The more relevant and specific an ad is, the more likely the reader will click on it.
  • It saves you from having to contact any advertiser directly. There are hundreds of thousands of companies advertising through Adsense.
  • That the ads do not seem forced. Being personalized for the reader and thematic of the web, they integrate quite naturally into the pages.

Unlike affiliate marketing, here the idea is to create a web page that provides general information on a certain topic instead of publishing comparisons and analysis.

For example, you could create a website where you would publish cooking recipes or information about dogs or even dinosaurs (like this website).

The potential of this system depends fundamentally on three things: the theme you have chosen, the number of visits the website has and the percentage of those visits that click on the ads.

Adsense Ads
Adsense ads on a dog website.
The first point, the theme, is essential because according to that you will earn more or less money per click.

For example, on a cat website, perhaps Adsense will advertise cat food. However, on a website about university courses, there will surely be advertisements for postgraduate and master's degrees that cost a fortune.

Which one would you earn the most money when a reader clicked?


Indeed, in the second. Because the advertised product is more expensive, the advertiser is willing to pay more money.

To find out what potential a theme has with Adsense, use the Keyword Planner. Enter the theme there and see if it is something that is searched a lot in Google, and how much advertisers will pay you per click (which is called bidding).

A part of the bid (68%) is left by you and the other (32%) by Google, so the higher the bid, the more money you can earn with a website on this topic.


For example, if you created a website with information on recipes, each click of your readers would generate between 0.16 (68% of 0.24) and 0.19 euros (68% of 0.28). This is an average of 0.175 euros per click.

The percentage of readers who click on an ad is usually around 1.5%. Therefore, if you had two thousand page views a day, the monthly income calculation with Adsense would be the following:


  • 60,000 page views / month x 1.5% clicks x 0.175 euros = 157.5 euros / month

In this case, the click is paid little, so to earn a good figure you would need to have a huge volume of visits.

If you created a website with information on forex and currency trading, with the same number of visits you would earn much more money:

Forex Adwords
Each click would generate about 7.8 euros (68% of the average of the bids), so 60,000 page views per month would translate into:


  • 60,000 page views / month x 1.5% clicks x 7.8 euros -> 7,020 euros / month

In addition to what you get paid per click, the income potential is determined by the number of visits the website has. And that depends on the number of people who search for information on this subject on Google.

Fortunately, Google's Keyword Planner also offers a rough range of how many times a month a particular word or phrase is searched for 🙂

I know first-hand people who bill thousands of euros a month with Adsense. In my case, I have used it as a complement in poorly paid topics and still, it provides me with almost 1,400 euros per month:


Although this topic pays little, I make up for it with the volume of visits.
Monetizing web pages with Adsense is relatively simple, but the most profitable topics are usually VERY competitive. To generate thousands of euros you must choose a topic with high potential and work hard creating content and positioning it in Google.


3. Sell courses and services with your blog

If the previous two were two of the best ways to earn money online, this is the BEST way to earn money online.

But like everything, the more money something can generate, the more effort it requires.

It is about creating a blog on a specific subject, positioning yourself as an expert in it, and selling your own paid online courses.

Course sales page
Sounds difficult? It requires effort, but it is not that complicated. The key is to choose a topic that you master, where there are people interested, and build a reputation by publishing content.

The advantage of online payment courses is that they can become totally passive systems because once created it costs you the same to sell one as two hundred. You just have to publish it in video or PDF format and sell it through an automated system to your subscribers.

This is what I do on my blog social skills.com. As I am passionate about social psychology, a few years ago I decided to start a blog offering scientific and practical information to shy people looking to improve their social relationships.

At first, it had hardly any readers, but little by little it became popular. Today I monetize it with online courses where I teach to overcome social fears and achieve a more charismatic personality.

Every time someone subscribes to the blog, a sequence of emails is activated, sending them valuable information. After a week, you receive an email presenting the premium video course in case you want to register.

In this way, I bill on autopilot an average of 1,000 euros per week with something that makes me feel proud.

Weekly earnings
There are blogs and online courses on almost any topic you can think of. From courses to learn to read faster, family finance management or Excel for letter students.

The only requirement is that you fix a problem that your audience would be willing to pay for.

Generating money with this system is not fast since you will have to work hard to earn the trust of the readers, but you will be building a long-term, solid and differential online business.

The biggest obstacle is not technical (today it is extremely easy to create a blog), but mental: many people believe that they have nothing to teach, are afraid of exposing themselves to criticism, or spend months wondering about which topic to choose.

You should know that the vast majority of bloggers have started with these doubts. But they took the step, and as they created content for their blog, they gained more experience and knowledge.

So if you think you have something to contribute, no matter how small it is (there will always be someone who knows less than you), and you are not afraid to expose yourself publicly, this is your best option.

4. Offer your services on specialized pages

If you do not have or do not want to create a blog or a website (although anyone without technical knowledge can do it today), another way to get a handful of euros online is by doing small online services.

The operation is very simple:


  1. You register on one of the online platforms that put you in contact with potential clients
  2. You publish your service and put a price on it
  3. You wait to be hired

The jobs that are usually offered on these platforms are simple things, such as translating a text, editing a video, designing a logo, writing a resume or preparing a PowerPoint presentation.

There are even those who offer to write irresistible Tinder profiles, your imagination is the limit!

Home Fiverr
Your income will depend on the number of hours and effort that you can dedicate to it regularly. Some people make a whole salary or even several thousand euros a month, but it will generally be useful if you need extra income.

Currently, the most popular platforms and therefore with the greatest ability to bring you clients are Upwork, Fiverr and Freelancer:


  • Upwork: It is only in English, but if you master it has enormous potential due to the number of clients it has.
  • Fiverr: it is in Spanish and it has many clients demanding services, but the prices are low.
  • Freelancer: it is in Spanish, but it has less volume of clients and it is not so easy to use.

All of them usually have around 10% of your turnover and are based on your customers' reviews to increase or decrease your popularity. The better your reputation, the more attractive you will be to users interested in services like yours.

Gig Fiverr
So the usual thing is to get a few jobs at the beginning or have to offer them at a lower price, but little by little you will have more clients and you can raise your prices.

5. Work as a virtual assistant

If you find it interesting to earn money by offering online services and you want to ensure more regularity and a more stable income, you can consider working as a virtual assistant.

The virtual assistant is one of the new professions that has brought with it the technological revolution of the internet, and whose demand is expected to continue growing in the coming years.

Workana Virtual Assistant
Basically, it consists of giving remote support to bloggers, digital entrepreneurs or even companies in relatively simple or mechanical tasks, so it does not require too specialized skills.

It is not a passive system, but in return, it offers you the freedom to work from wherever you want, a very attractive salary and also saves you from having to create a website. You could literally start working as a virtual assistant tomorrow.

A virtual assistant usually deals with the following tasks:


  • Email management
  • Dissemination of content on social networks
  • Management and organization of the agenda
  • Billing management and income and expense reports
  • Design of images and banners
  • Community management in Facebook groups
  • Writing newsletters, pages and articles
  • Video and/or podcast editing
  • Support in online courses and webinars
  • Survey analysis and reader feedback
  • Organization of face-to-face events
  • The key here is in the confidence that you can earn from your client since then he will be delegating tasks of greater responsibility to you.


The fees of a virtual assistant are usually established according to an hourly price that usually goes from 10 to 40 euros per hour worked, although some specialized or highly reputable assistants can charge considerably more.

If you want to take the step as a virtual assistant, there are three ways to get your first clients:


  • Contact directly with entrepreneurs, bloggers or small companies and present your services. Try to provide a sample of your work so they can check the quality of your services.
  • Be on the lookout for virtual assistant requests from bloggers who are starting to stand out to their subscribers.
  • Sign up for Freelancer, People Per Hour, Workana or Upwork, because many entrepreneurs look for virtual assistants there. If they are satisfied, then you can propose a long-term collaboration.

6. Work as a copywriter

Generating content that attracts and loyal readers is a fundamental pillar of any digital strategy, and this is well known by both large companies and small entrepreneurs.

So every day more than 3 million articles are published on blogs. There are posts about economics, animals, photography, food, health, marketing, video games, philosophy, politics ... Anything you can imagine.

This need to create content has led to the appearance of another professional profile in high demand in the online world: the editor.

Low Post Editor
Working as a copywriter is a very fast way to start earning money online since there is a constant demand. You don't need great skills to do it either: you just have to like writing and be good at it.

How much money can a copywriter earn?

It depends on your experience, quality of the texts and your speciality, but in general, the rates tend to be between 3 and 10 euros for every 100 words, so a 2,000-word article can perfectly be paid at more than 100 euros.

I have been working with editors for my affiliation projects for years and several of them, dedicating themselves full time, generate a monthly income of over 2,000 euros. But some can earn much more!

Copywriters who specialize in creating sales pages are usually the highest paid, as they are concerned with creating those messages that must convince people to buy. Thousands of euros have been paid for a page of this type.

If you are interested in starting to carve a path for yourself (and an income) as a copywriter, I recommend that you sign up for specialized platforms to connect copywriters with clients who need content, such as:

iWriter: one of the most popular. It doesn't pay too well, but it makes up for it with the number of customers who need content.
LowPost : Pay better and have a decent customer volume.
Textbroker: Lets you negotiate the price directly with customers, but you won't find much demand.

7. Translate content

If you consider that you lack creativity or prefer something more mechanical than working as an editor, and you have a good level with some language, you can make profitable your knowledge by performing online translation services.

There are many companies that need to translate texts from their blogs, websites or posts on social networks and who are looking for natives to do that job. Also, it is usually quite well paid.

In fact, at the time Netflix opened a few applications to find people to translate their series online through its Hermes program.

In the case of the translation from English to Spanish Castilian, they got to pay 12 dollars per translated minute, not bad!

Netflix translation rates
Now they no longer require this service, but there are also online platforms that connect translators with companies that need translation services, such as Gengo.

Gengo is an online platform that has provided translation services to YouTube or Sony, among others. You just have to register on their website and pass their level test. From there, you will advance in rank and access better-paying jobs as you translate.

The great advantage of Gengo is that you can choose what work you do and organize the schedules to your liking, which gives you enormous flexibility to earn money from anywhere.

Other interesting options are One Hour Translation (they also ask for a level test) or Textmaster.

And now the key question: how much money can you earn per month translating?

Well, according to Gengo's own calculations, if you regularly translate from other languages ​​into Spanish, you will achieve an average monthly income of $ 435.

Gengo Fees
It's a nice bonus, but it's not going to give you a full salary, either. The great advantage is that you can do it from anywhere in the world, it does not force you to anything and you can go at the pace you need.

8. Create a YouTube channel
With the purchase of YouTube by Google and the exponential growth of the consumption of content in video format, there were people who, overnight, began to earn a lot of money with their video channel.

Yes, there are more and more competitors, but YouTube is the second Internet search engine, only behind Google, and it is expected that in a very short time it will become the first. That means that its economic potential is booming.

It is difficult to replace an entire salary, but if you can bring knowledge or fun to users and have fun in front of the camera, in the medium term it is possible to generate some extra money with a YouTube channel.

Youtube recipes channel

How much money are we talking about?


Surely you have heard that some YouTubers bill millions of euros a year. But you can count them on your fingers. For you to do your calculations, you should know that, on average, YouTube advertising pays between 0.20 and 3 euros for every 1,000 views of a video.

This figure depends on the theme of the channel since the content on Forex or health is usually paid better than channels on video games or curiosities.

Let's suppose that after 18 months you manage to build a channel with 100,000 subscribers, which is not bad.

If you upload one video a week that gets 75,000 views and YouTube pays you 1 euro for every 1,000 views, your income would be approximately 300 euros per month.

As you can see, you must publish videos consistently if you want to make money with YouTube, so it is not really a very passive system unless they go viral or have thousands of searches a day.

Fortunately, there are also alternative ways to increase income:

  • Contact companies and offer to put their advertising on your videos
  • Sell ​​personalized merchandise, such as shirts and caps with your channel's logo (when popular)
  • Accept donations with Patreon
If you already have a stable income in some other way, betting on a YouTube channel is not going to mean too much investment and over time it can give you more than a pleasant surprise.

9. Sell online through dropshipping

Another good way to earn money online is by selling products online.

I know people who are achieving more than 4,000 euros a month of profit with very simple but specialized products, so if you do it right it is possible to generate a good income.

You should know that, mainly, there are two ways to sell online:

  1. Create your own website (again, it's easier than it seems) and sell your products there
  2. Sell ​​your products on third-party platforms (such as Amazon)
If you don't manufacture products, don't worry. It is as simple as finding a manufacturer with little popularity, buying the product and selling it to the final public through your website or platform, adding your margin to the price.

For this reason, most often look for Chinese suppliers. Although you will have to carry out the import procedures, you will have a greater margin.

The main drawback is that you will have to carry out the tasks of billing and shipping the product, which can be quite a lot of work. To avoid that hassle, it is best to find suppliers that work through dropshipping.

Dropshipping Oberlo
The dropshipping system will allow you to convert your online store into a passive business. With it, you do not keep stock or take care of shipments, you just take care of sending the order data to the manufacturer (there are very simple automated systems) and he takes care of getting the product to the customer.

Note: There are already websites like Oberlo that put you directly in touch with manufacturers that work with dropshipping.

The profit margin is usually between 20 and 50%. The inconvenient? If the shipment does not arrive or a return has to be attended, customers will claim you and you will have to resolve the issue with the manufacturer.

The keys to the success of this system are:

  • Find a product with more demand than supply
  • Achieve a serious and reliable supplier
  • Have a good profit margin
  • Bring traffic to the web with organic positioning, Adwords or Facebook Ads
  • It is also possible to earn money by selling your own handmade products. If this is your case, I recommend you take a look at Etsy.

sell on Etsy
Etsy is an online store where only manufactured products are sold. You can register and create your own store where users can buy your products.

10. Sell courses on online platforms

If you are not attracted to the idea of ​​selling products online, having to find distributors and create a website, an excellent alternative is to sell your knowledge on online platforms.

The concept is simple: create a video or text course on a specific topic, upload it to platforms like Udemy, and put a price on it.

To create the course you can record yourself on video, record a presentation on your screen, or do it in text format (in pdf files), just as you would for your blog.

This type of platform receives thousands of daily visits from users looking for courses on a subject, so if yours meets any demand and meets the expectations of users, you can earn a lot of money.

Okay, but how much money can you earn?

In general, these types of courses are not usually very expensive (according to Udemy, 90% of the courses sold are priced at less than 50 euros).

Udemy also has a calculator, the Udemy Marketplace Insights, which allows you to calculate the potential of your online course according to your theme.

For example, if you were to create a course on photography for beginners, this would be the potential:

Udemy Photography Course
As you can see, most photography courses generate just over 30 euros per month, while the most successful courses exceed 400 euros per month.

Of course, there are also instructors who generate thousands of euros a month, such as this web design course that currently sells for 10 euros and has almost 20,000 registered. These cases are a tiny minority, but calculate what your author has earned!

Udemy
If you want to build a successful course on Udemy, I recommend this strategy:

  • First list those topics in which you think you know more than the population average
  • Create an instructor account on Udemy and enter your topics in the Udemy Marketplace Insights to calculate the potential of your course
  • Stick with the theme where the monthly income from popular courses is highest
  • If in addition the demand is HIGH and the number of courses MEDIUM or LOW, you are facing a good opportunity
Creating a course is laborious and not many instructors reach great numbers, but if it is of quality and the evaluations are positive, little by little you will increase your turnover.

How to make money online: 10 formulas that work in 2020

How to make money online: 10 formulas that work in 2020

How to make money online: 10 formulas that work in 2020

So you want to make money online.

You have probably already found a lot of bloggers who explain how to do it. And probably most of them are not earning a single euro (run away from whoever tells you to fill out surveys or click on ads to generate income).

Not to mention those who only make money selling courses where they teach how to make money. Paradoxical, right?

Is not my style. I have spent years living on the Internet, generating thousands of euros and learning the ins and outs of online business.

First of all, you should know that making money online is not easy or fast. It never has been, despite what you read or wants to sell you.

I have had to put in a lot of effort and sacrifice a lot of my free time. I have spent sleepless nights, I have spent hundreds of hours learning and I have given up my vacation while trying to earn my first euros.

But it was worth it.

The great advantage is that technical knowledge is no longer necessary. Before you should know how to program to create a website, but today there are systems so intuitive that even a child would know how to do it.

So the opportunity is now.

In this article, I am going to reveal to you the 10 best ways to earn money on the Internet for its economic potential, simplicity and ability to generate income in a stable way. And since I want to be totally transparent with you, I will also show you my own results.

I remind you that here you will not find high-risk systems or ridiculous income such as completing online surveys or playing poker. If you want to make real money, you're going to have to work it out for yourself.

Active versus passive income

Before starting, you should know that there are two ways to make money online: active and passive systems.

Assets are those that require that you have to be doing something to generate income, such as selling crafts made by you, translating texts or playing poker.
Liabilities are those that, once created, require virtually no further action on your part. Think about the advertising revenue generated by website readers or the dividends you get with an investment. After the initial effort, then you don't have to do practically anything else.
The latter is the most desired.

Thanks to passive systems you can continue to generate income while you sleep, are on the road or spend your time on anything else. They not only give you money: they also give you freedom.

And it's not that active systems are bad, but the Internet is like a storefront that never closes. It's always up and running, and you can take advantage of it to get a steady stream of income.

How to make money online: 10 formulas that work

Let's now see the best ways to earn money online for their economic potential, simplicity and reliability, and the results I have achieved with them.

1. Make money with affiliate marketing

This is the system with which I earned my first euros, and in my opinion, it is one of the most affordable ways for any beginner who wants to generate passive income.

It hardly requires knowledge, the investment is almost nil and its earning potential is very high. Also, once assembled you can practically forget about it: only minimal maintenance will be necessary.

Affiliate marketing consists of creating a website where you will publish analysis and product recommendations. In these analyzes, you will put links to other web pages where they sell the product. If you end up buying it, the seller will give you a commission for referring a customer.

Logically, you must first have come to terms with those web pages. Luckily, today there are affiliation platforms (the best known is Amazon Affiliates) where you only have to register to be part of that agreement.

Let's say you are passionate about photography. You could create a web page where you would post reviews of different cameras or lenses with a link to the product page on Amazon for readers interested in buying.

This, for example, is an affiliate link.

Your website would appear in search engines like Google when people search for analyzes or comparisons of those cameras. They would enter your item, click on the affiliate link, and if they ended up buying, Amazon would give you a percentage.

Do you see where the grace is? You create a web page, publish articles and, once they have visited, it becomes an automatic system that you should not be constantly attending to.

The income potential of this system depends on the market you have chosen (the more that category of products is sold online and the more expensive they are, the better), but also on the time you invest.

Basically, these are the tasks you will need to do:


  1. Create a website. You can do it in 15 minutes with this tutorial.
  2. Write analyzes, comparisons and recommendations. You will spend most of your time here. You can pay someone to do it, but I recommend that you write first to gain knowledge and practice.
  3. Position your website in search engines. Although in the less competitive markets your website can position itself practically, sometimes you will need to present your website in other places on the Internet to make it more visible.

Okay, but how much money are we talking about?

I like that you ask me this question. So you can see what this system is capable of, this is what two of my affiliate websites generated during the month of July.

This is the oldest website (I am very fond of you), is a technology niche:

And this one is barely 11 months old, but it is already around 3,000 euros per month:

Amazon Affiliate Revenue 2
If I add the rest of the websites, the figure exceeds 7,000 euros per month on autopilot.

As if that were not enough when Christmas arrives the income multiplies by two or even by three. This is what I gained with a single website during the month of December:

Amazon affiliates December
Earning some money with affiliation is relatively easy, but if you want to bill figures like these, you will have to spend a lot of time and effort.

So forget about anyone who sells you that you can set up such a system on a Caribbean beach overnight. To earn more than a dozen euros a month you will have to sacrifice a large part of your free time.

The good news is that, after the initial effort, you can dedicate yourself to picking the fruits. Not to mention that you can keep the system at a distance, working from anywhere in the world (something important for a travel lover like me).

2. Create a website and monetize it with Adsense

Another of the best ways to earn money online passively is to monetize web pages with advertising.

The concept is similar to that of affiliate marketing: you create a web page on a topic, you attract readers and once they are there you earn money when they perform a certain action.

The great advantage of advertising is that you do not need the reader to buy for you to take a commission. The most common is that you earn money when the reader clicks on an ad (known as PPC -Pay Per Click-).

In fact, this is how the world's largest ad network works: Google Adsense.

Google Adsense
Adsense is so popular thanks to its ease of use and number of advertisers. You simply sign up and, once your request has been approved, you can already place ads on your website by inserting a small code.

With Adsense, you do not choose what type of ads appear: Google is responsible for doing it automatically according to the theme of your website and the profile of the reader. In this way you can show personalized ads for each reader, which has three benefits:


  • Maximize the money you can earn from advertising. The more relevant and specific an ad is, the more likely the reader will click on it.
  • It saves you from having to contact any advertiser directly. There are hundreds of thousands of companies advertising through Adsense.
  • That the ads do not seem forced. Being personalized for the reader and thematic of the web, they integrate quite naturally into the pages.

Unlike affiliate marketing, here the idea is to create a web page that provides general information on a certain topic instead of publishing comparisons and analysis.

For example, you could create a website where you would publish cooking recipes or information about dogs or even dinosaurs (like this website).

The potential of this system depends fundamentally on three things: the theme you have chosen, the number of visits the website has and the percentage of those visits that click on the ads.

Adsense Ads
Adsense ads on a dog website.
The first point, the theme, is essential because according to that you will earn more or less money per click.

For example, on a cat website, perhaps Adsense will advertise cat food. However, on a website about university courses, there will surely be advertisements for postgraduate and master's degrees that cost a fortune.

Which one would you earn the most money when a reader clicked?


Indeed, in the second. Because the advertised product is more expensive, the advertiser is willing to pay more money.

To find out what potential a theme has with Adsense, use the Keyword Planner. Enter the theme there and see if it is something that is searched a lot in Google, and how much advertisers will pay you per click (which is called bidding).

A part of the bid (68%) is left by you and the other (32%) by Google, so the higher the bid, the more money you can earn with a website on this topic.


For example, if you created a website with information on recipes, each click of your readers would generate between 0.16 (68% of 0.24) and 0.19 euros (68% of 0.28). This is an average of 0.175 euros per click.

The percentage of readers who click on an ad is usually around 1.5%. Therefore, if you had two thousand page views a day, the monthly income calculation with Adsense would be the following:


  • 60,000 page views / month x 1.5% clicks x 0.175 euros = 157.5 euros / month

In this case, the click is paid little, so to earn a good figure you would need to have a huge volume of visits.

If you created a website with information on forex and currency trading, with the same number of visits you would earn much more money:

Forex Adwords
Each click would generate about 7.8 euros (68% of the average of the bids), so 60,000 page views per month would translate into:


  • 60,000 page views / month x 1.5% clicks x 7.8 euros -> 7,020 euros / month

In addition to what you get paid per click, the income potential is determined by the number of visits the website has. And that depends on the number of people who search for information on this subject on Google.

Fortunately, Google's Keyword Planner also offers a rough range of how many times a month a particular word or phrase is searched for 🙂

I know first-hand people who bill thousands of euros a month with Adsense. In my case, I have used it as a complement in poorly paid topics and still, it provides me with almost 1,400 euros per month:


Although this topic pays little, I make up for it with the volume of visits.
Monetizing web pages with Adsense is relatively simple, but the most profitable topics are usually VERY competitive. To generate thousands of euros you must choose a topic with high potential and work hard creating content and positioning it in Google.


3. Sell courses and services with your blog

If the previous two were two of the best ways to earn money online, this is the BEST way to earn money online.

But like everything, the more money something can generate, the more effort it requires.

It is about creating a blog on a specific subject, positioning yourself as an expert in it, and selling your own paid online courses.

Course sales page
Sounds difficult? It requires effort, but it is not that complicated. The key is to choose a topic that you master, where there are people interested, and build a reputation by publishing content.

The advantage of online payment courses is that they can become totally passive systems because once created it costs you the same to sell one as two hundred. You just have to publish it in video or PDF format and sell it through an automated system to your subscribers.

This is what I do on my blog social skills.com. As I am passionate about social psychology, a few years ago I decided to start a blog offering scientific and practical information to shy people looking to improve their social relationships.

At first, it had hardly any readers, but little by little it became popular. Today I monetize it with online courses where I teach to overcome social fears and achieve a more charismatic personality.

Every time someone subscribes to the blog, a sequence of emails is activated, sending them valuable information. After a week, you receive an email presenting the premium video course in case you want to register.

In this way, I bill on autopilot an average of 1,000 euros per week with something that makes me feel proud.

Weekly earnings
There are blogs and online courses on almost any topic you can think of. From courses to learn to read faster, family finance management or Excel for letter students.

The only requirement is that you fix a problem that your audience would be willing to pay for.

Generating money with this system is not fast since you will have to work hard to earn the trust of the readers, but you will be building a long-term, solid and differential online business.

The biggest obstacle is not technical (today it is extremely easy to create a blog), but mental: many people believe that they have nothing to teach, are afraid of exposing themselves to criticism, or spend months wondering about which topic to choose.

You should know that the vast majority of bloggers have started with these doubts. But they took the step, and as they created content for their blog, they gained more experience and knowledge.

So if you think you have something to contribute, no matter how small it is (there will always be someone who knows less than you), and you are not afraid to expose yourself publicly, this is your best option.

4. Offer your services on specialized pages

If you do not have or do not want to create a blog or a website (although anyone without technical knowledge can do it today), another way to get a handful of euros online is by doing small online services.

The operation is very simple:


  1. You register on one of the online platforms that put you in contact with potential clients
  2. You publish your service and put a price on it
  3. You wait to be hired

The jobs that are usually offered on these platforms are simple things, such as translating a text, editing a video, designing a logo, writing a resume or preparing a PowerPoint presentation.

There are even those who offer to write irresistible Tinder profiles, your imagination is the limit!

Home Fiverr
Your income will depend on the number of hours and effort that you can dedicate to it regularly. Some people make a whole salary or even several thousand euros a month, but it will generally be useful if you need extra income.

Currently, the most popular platforms and therefore with the greatest ability to bring you clients are Upwork, Fiverr and Freelancer:


  • Upwork: It is only in English, but if you master it has enormous potential due to the number of clients it has.
  • Fiverr: it is in Spanish and it has many clients demanding services, but the prices are low.
  • Freelancer: it is in Spanish, but it has less volume of clients and it is not so easy to use.

All of them usually have around 10% of your turnover and are based on your customers' reviews to increase or decrease your popularity. The better your reputation, the more attractive you will be to users interested in services like yours.

Gig Fiverr
So the usual thing is to get a few jobs at the beginning or have to offer them at a lower price, but little by little you will have more clients and you can raise your prices.

5. Work as a virtual assistant

If you find it interesting to earn money by offering online services and you want to ensure more regularity and a more stable income, you can consider working as a virtual assistant.

The virtual assistant is one of the new professions that has brought with it the technological revolution of the internet, and whose demand is expected to continue growing in the coming years.

Workana Virtual Assistant
Basically, it consists of giving remote support to bloggers, digital entrepreneurs or even companies in relatively simple or mechanical tasks, so it does not require too specialized skills.

It is not a passive system, but in return, it offers you the freedom to work from wherever you want, a very attractive salary and also saves you from having to create a website. You could literally start working as a virtual assistant tomorrow.

A virtual assistant usually deals with the following tasks:


  • Email management
  • Dissemination of content on social networks
  • Management and organization of the agenda
  • Billing management and income and expense reports
  • Design of images and banners
  • Community management in Facebook groups
  • Writing newsletters, pages and articles
  • Video and/or podcast editing
  • Support in online courses and webinars
  • Survey analysis and reader feedback
  • Organization of face-to-face events
  • The key here is in the confidence that you can earn from your client since then he will be delegating tasks of greater responsibility to you.


The fees of a virtual assistant are usually established according to an hourly price that usually goes from 10 to 40 euros per hour worked, although some specialized or highly reputable assistants can charge considerably more.

If you want to take the step as a virtual assistant, there are three ways to get your first clients:


  • Contact directly with entrepreneurs, bloggers or small companies and present your services. Try to provide a sample of your work so they can check the quality of your services.
  • Be on the lookout for virtual assistant requests from bloggers who are starting to stand out to their subscribers.
  • Sign up for Freelancer, People Per Hour, Workana or Upwork, because many entrepreneurs look for virtual assistants there. If they are satisfied, then you can propose a long-term collaboration.

6. Work as a copywriter

Generating content that attracts and loyal readers is a fundamental pillar of any digital strategy, and this is well known by both large companies and small entrepreneurs.

So every day more than 3 million articles are published on blogs. There are posts about economics, animals, photography, food, health, marketing, video games, philosophy, politics ... Anything you can imagine.

This need to create content has led to the appearance of another professional profile in high demand in the online world: the editor.

Low Post Editor
Working as a copywriter is a very fast way to start earning money online since there is a constant demand. You don't need great skills to do it either: you just have to like writing and be good at it.

How much money can a copywriter earn?

It depends on your experience, quality of the texts and your speciality, but in general, the rates tend to be between 3 and 10 euros for every 100 words, so a 2,000-word article can perfectly be paid at more than 100 euros.

I have been working with editors for my affiliation projects for years and several of them, dedicating themselves full time, generate a monthly income of over 2,000 euros. But some can earn much more!

Copywriters who specialize in creating sales pages are usually the highest paid, as they are concerned with creating those messages that must convince people to buy. Thousands of euros have been paid for a page of this type.

If you are interested in starting to carve a path for yourself (and an income) as a copywriter, I recommend that you sign up for specialized platforms to connect copywriters with clients who need content, such as:

iWriter: one of the most popular. It doesn't pay too well, but it makes up for it with the number of customers who need content.
LowPost : Pay better and have a decent customer volume.
Textbroker: Lets you negotiate the price directly with customers, but you won't find much demand.

7. Translate content

If you consider that you lack creativity or prefer something more mechanical than working as an editor, and you have a good level with some language, you can make profitable your knowledge by performing online translation services.

There are many companies that need to translate texts from their blogs, websites or posts on social networks and who are looking for natives to do that job. Also, it is usually quite well paid.

In fact, at the time Netflix opened a few applications to find people to translate their series online through its Hermes program.

In the case of the translation from English to Spanish Castilian, they got to pay 12 dollars per translated minute, not bad!

Netflix translation rates
Now they no longer require this service, but there are also online platforms that connect translators with companies that need translation services, such as Gengo.

Gengo is an online platform that has provided translation services to YouTube or Sony, among others. You just have to register on their website and pass their level test. From there, you will advance in rank and access better-paying jobs as you translate.

The great advantage of Gengo is that you can choose what work you do and organize the schedules to your liking, which gives you enormous flexibility to earn money from anywhere.

Other interesting options are One Hour Translation (they also ask for a level test) or Textmaster.

And now the key question: how much money can you earn per month translating?

Well, according to Gengo's own calculations, if you regularly translate from other languages ​​into Spanish, you will achieve an average monthly income of $ 435.

Gengo Fees
It's a nice bonus, but it's not going to give you a full salary, either. The great advantage is that you can do it from anywhere in the world, it does not force you to anything and you can go at the pace you need.

8. Create a YouTube channel
With the purchase of YouTube by Google and the exponential growth of the consumption of content in video format, there were people who, overnight, began to earn a lot of money with their video channel.

Yes, there are more and more competitors, but YouTube is the second Internet search engine, only behind Google, and it is expected that in a very short time it will become the first. That means that its economic potential is booming.

It is difficult to replace an entire salary, but if you can bring knowledge or fun to users and have fun in front of the camera, in the medium term it is possible to generate some extra money with a YouTube channel.

Youtube recipes channel

How much money are we talking about?


Surely you have heard that some YouTubers bill millions of euros a year. But you can count them on your fingers. For you to do your calculations, you should know that, on average, YouTube advertising pays between 0.20 and 3 euros for every 1,000 views of a video.

This figure depends on the theme of the channel since the content on Forex or health is usually paid better than channels on video games or curiosities.

Let's suppose that after 18 months you manage to build a channel with 100,000 subscribers, which is not bad.

If you upload one video a week that gets 75,000 views and YouTube pays you 1 euro for every 1,000 views, your income would be approximately 300 euros per month.

As you can see, you must publish videos consistently if you want to make money with YouTube, so it is not really a very passive system unless they go viral or have thousands of searches a day.

Fortunately, there are also alternative ways to increase income:

  • Contact companies and offer to put their advertising on your videos
  • Sell ​​personalized merchandise, such as shirts and caps with your channel's logo (when popular)
  • Accept donations with Patreon
If you already have a stable income in some other way, betting on a YouTube channel is not going to mean too much investment and over time it can give you more than a pleasant surprise.

9. Sell online through dropshipping

Another good way to earn money online is by selling products online.

I know people who are achieving more than 4,000 euros a month of profit with very simple but specialized products, so if you do it right it is possible to generate a good income.

You should know that, mainly, there are two ways to sell online:

  1. Create your own website (again, it's easier than it seems) and sell your products there
  2. Sell ​​your products on third-party platforms (such as Amazon)
If you don't manufacture products, don't worry. It is as simple as finding a manufacturer with little popularity, buying the product and selling it to the final public through your website or platform, adding your margin to the price.

For this reason, most often look for Chinese suppliers. Although you will have to carry out the import procedures, you will have a greater margin.

The main drawback is that you will have to carry out the tasks of billing and shipping the product, which can be quite a lot of work. To avoid that hassle, it is best to find suppliers that work through dropshipping.

Dropshipping Oberlo
The dropshipping system will allow you to convert your online store into a passive business. With it, you do not keep stock or take care of shipments, you just take care of sending the order data to the manufacturer (there are very simple automated systems) and he takes care of getting the product to the customer.

Note: There are already websites like Oberlo that put you directly in touch with manufacturers that work with dropshipping.

The profit margin is usually between 20 and 50%. The inconvenient? If the shipment does not arrive or a return has to be attended, customers will claim you and you will have to resolve the issue with the manufacturer.

The keys to the success of this system are:

  • Find a product with more demand than supply
  • Achieve a serious and reliable supplier
  • Have a good profit margin
  • Bring traffic to the web with organic positioning, Adwords or Facebook Ads
  • It is also possible to earn money by selling your own handmade products. If this is your case, I recommend you take a look at Etsy.

sell on Etsy
Etsy is an online store where only manufactured products are sold. You can register and create your own store where users can buy your products.

10. Sell courses on online platforms

If you are not attracted to the idea of ​​selling products online, having to find distributors and create a website, an excellent alternative is to sell your knowledge on online platforms.

The concept is simple: create a video or text course on a specific topic, upload it to platforms like Udemy, and put a price on it.

To create the course you can record yourself on video, record a presentation on your screen, or do it in text format (in pdf files), just as you would for your blog.

This type of platform receives thousands of daily visits from users looking for courses on a subject, so if yours meets any demand and meets the expectations of users, you can earn a lot of money.

Okay, but how much money can you earn?

In general, these types of courses are not usually very expensive (according to Udemy, 90% of the courses sold are priced at less than 50 euros).

Udemy also has a calculator, the Udemy Marketplace Insights, which allows you to calculate the potential of your online course according to your theme.

For example, if you were to create a course on photography for beginners, this would be the potential:

Udemy Photography Course
As you can see, most photography courses generate just over 30 euros per month, while the most successful courses exceed 400 euros per month.

Of course, there are also instructors who generate thousands of euros a month, such as this web design course that currently sells for 10 euros and has almost 20,000 registered. These cases are a tiny minority, but calculate what your author has earned!

Udemy
If you want to build a successful course on Udemy, I recommend this strategy:

  • First list those topics in which you think you know more than the population average
  • Create an instructor account on Udemy and enter your topics in the Udemy Marketplace Insights to calculate the potential of your course
  • Stick with the theme where the monthly income from popular courses is highest
  • If in addition the demand is HIGH and the number of courses MEDIUM or LOW, you are facing a good opportunity
Creating a course is laborious and not many instructors reach great numbers, but if it is of quality and the evaluations are positive, little by little you will increase your turnover.
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