I’ve cycled around the world for the last ten years. I started my trip with only $10,000 which I made with a Canadian working holiday visa in Canada, and I didn’t get any money from my family. I’ve learned many ways to make money online and I would like to share about them.
I will introduce 25 ways to make money online. To be honest, it’s not easy to make money on the internet that you have to put lots of effort into. Also, many of them are not worth money if you are living in developed countries. If you are interested in one of them, you can search for more details on Google. Please read to the end because I will share how much money I’ve made in nine different ways, and I will tell you what the most efficient thing is in my experiences so far.
Before starting, I want to add a little explanation for the first four ways. In Southeast Asia, many foreigners stay there for cheap living costs and make money online. They are programmers, graphic designers, writers, and so on. From the first to fourth things, it’s another popular thing between digital nomads in Southeast Asia.
1 Affiliate Marketing
You get the commission when people buy a product from the link you give. To get the commission, you must join the Affiliate Program from their website. There are different kinds of Affiliate Programs such as Amazon, eBay, Airbnb, Booking.com, and so on. The commission rate is around 1%~10% or more. In general, you can’t make good money unless you are extremely popular or you make the website only for Affiliate links. This kind of website must have a good S.E.O like a tag, website address, and right keywords. Personally, I do not like this kind of website as they are on the top of research mostly but never helpful true information.
2 Dropshipping
You are connecting between the supplier and the customer without handling the items like packing and sending. When the customer orders the product from you, the supplier will send the product to the customer’s house directly. You can make the drop shipping website with Shopify or you can use online shopping stores like eBay, Amazon, Aliexpress, and others. You have to deal with the customer when there is something wrong. Personally, I don’t like the idea that people are just selling random things without checking items that customers must face problems such as wrong products, longer delivery times,s and so on. For example, I ordered the fan for my laptop, but it did not fit as the seller doesn’t know what they are selling exactly. And to be honest, I won’t buy the product from the dropshipping website as usually there is no such a safe system to protect the customer unlike a big online store, eBay.
3. Writing eBook by anonymous
You scrap all the information from the internet and make a book like “How to do”. Then get the picture from a website like Shutterstock to make it look professional and publish it as anonymous. And then make so many different books like this at a cheap price.
4. Making an agent website.
I will just give you a simple example of what an agent website is like. For example, you make a website for the customer who is looking for graphic design. Then you hire people from low GDP countries where the labor fee is cheap and then use the picture from Shutterstock to make it look professional. There are several websites to help this kind of thing. Just to remind you, most rich companies don’t make the product in their own country. Also, some popular American brand’s mobile apps with 50 million downloads are not made in the US. Sometimes when you call customer service, you have to hear a very thick accent because they are not in the US. This is how rich companies make money these days.
[So far these four things are another popular thing between digital Nomads. If you go to a digital nomad’s hotspot in Southeast Asia, you can learn many things about them as they hold the event often and have lots of meet-ups. Only 1% will make huge money like $30,000 a month, some people will make around $1,000-$2,000 a month, and other people will hardly make any money. Those four ways are the ones I’ve learned when I was in Chiang Mai, Thailand for several months. I decided not to make money like those four ways except Affiliate link as I didn’t like those ideas, however, I just introduced it as it’s not illegal. From now on, I will just talk about other ways.]
5. eCommerce
You sell something at online stores like eBay and Amazon or you make your own online store. Buy the product from the supplier and store them at your house and ship to the customer. It’s impossible to do while traveling though and there is the risk that you broke when you can’t sell.
6. Online Data Entry.
It’s a simple job where you check the data on the computer. I met a digital nomad who worked online data entry for Google in Thailand. So, when we search something on Google, they show the summary on the top. His job was checking those data. He didn’t make good money, but it was enough to survive in Southeast Asia. There are many online data entry jobs you can search. The payment is not good but anyone can work as it’s an easy job. There is a very good video about it that you can check out.
7. Teaching languages
You can teach languages by skype through different kinds of platforms like italki. It doesn’t need to be only English as those platforms are focusing on different customers all around the world.
8. Counselling or coaching
Many people are looking for advice on different things. If you have some degree or talent at a specific thing, you can do counselling or coaching them online.
9. Writing for the magazine, newspaper, and company
You can send the letter to offer the story. For me, a Korean magazine found me and asked me to write a story every month.
10. Writing the book.
You can write your own book and sell it on Amazon.
11. Photographing
Take the picture or the video and sell directly to the customer or company. You can try to sell at websites like Shutterstock, Getty Images, iStock, and so on. But you can’t make good money there easily, even to register is not easy, and you must provide high-quality pictures with good keywords which you have to research. I’ve found a post about someone’s income on a blog. He uploaded 2,500 pictures for three years and he made like $100 monthly. In total, he made $3,500 for three years after working hard like editing pictures and writing lots of good keywords.
12. Build the website (Advertise, Donation, Patreon, Sponsor posts)
Make some good quality of the website. One of the cyclist travelers I’ve met was a math teacher from Europe. He made a website to explain mathematics for students. It was a simple website without fancy graphic design, but I saw he had many visitors. He quitted the job and traveled the world thanks to his website. He made the money from the advertisement. Probably he could have the donation too. It was lower money compared to his income as a teacher in Europe but it was enough to make him cycle the world.
13. Programming (App development, programming for the company or personal project.)
Become a programmer to travel and work. This is one of the popular jobs between digital nomads. But this is not easy as you must study to know how to program for living.
14. Graphic Designing
This is like a programmer that you can travel and work as the digital nomads. To learn designing is easier than to learn to program but still, you have to study and have some sense of the art. There are many ways to find the customer from Freelancer.com, Upwork.com, Fiverr.com, and so on.
15. Translating (For the customer, company, or friend)
There are several websites like Proz and TranslatorsCafé where you can translate for the customer and make money. In my case, a follower asked me to translate his blog from English to Korean that I’ve done a few times for him.
16. Use your talents at freelance websites.
As I mentioned above, there are websites like Freelancer.com, Upwork.com, Fiverr.com where you can find the customer. There are millions of job opportunities out there that you have to check what is the best way to make money for yourself.
17. Rent the house to others
If you try to buy houses when you are very young and work hard to pay all the mortgage, you will have your own house in your 30’s, 40’s, or 50’s. Then you can travel with the money from the rent.
18. Invest in the stock and cryptocurrency
To be honest, I’ve never met travelers who travel with investing in the stock. I myself lost money at a cryptocurrency that I don’t have any tip to give.
19. Playing poker
I’ve met two cyclists who made money by playing poker at different times. Actually, both of them said they didn’t play while traveling because they didn’t want to work while cycling the world. They said they were not addicted and they only played at specific times like office workers. I don’t know how it really works. This would be only possible by a genius at mathematics.
20. Blogging (Advertise, Donation, Patreon, Sponsor posts)
Make a blog with high-quality content. And then get the donation or find the sponsored post. You must learn about S.E.O to be on the first page on Google search.
21. Twitch Streamer
Twitch is for Livestream and it would give more money than Youtube Livestream. And it would require more regular live videos. During lockdown last year, I watched some chess on Twitch. To be honest, Youtube chatting looks way clean and easy to read. So, I didn’t like Twitch chatting. But many people do Livestream on Twitch because it has more options to increase their income.
22. YouTube (Advertise, Donation, Patreon, Sponsor posts)
There are a few ways to make money through Youtube.
First, monetizing the video. 1,000 views can give 50cents. It can go up to $4 to $10 like in some countries.
Second, Sponsorship video. I’ve noticed that the Korean Youtube market is huge. Korean creators can make more money with sponsorship videos than monetizing. It is said if they have 100,000 subscribers, one sponsorship video can cost like $5,000 to $10,000. And if they have million subscribers, it can go up to like $30,000 for one sponsorship video. Recently some foreign companies asked me to do a review video related to the bicycle industry. I asked them to pay some amount of money, but they only wanted to give a little money or just a free product. So probably sponsorship video pays very well only in some countries like South Korea or by huge brand companies.
Third, Donation. Many small channels like mine can’t make money for a living by monetizing the video. But the donation through PayPal or Patreon can help to make money for living. I’ve seen Tulok the Barbarian make around $5,000 a month on Patreon with only 500k views monthly on Youtube. If he didn’t have Patreon, he would make only $1,000 instead of $5,000. So I highly recommend you to put donation than depending on monetizing if your channel is small.
23. Podcast
It’s like Youtube but without a camera, so it would be good if you just want to talk without filming. You can use different platforms to make money such as Amazon Podcast, Apple Podcasts, Spotify for Podcast
24. Use social media to make money
If you earn lots of followers on Facebook, Tiktok, Instagram, and so on, you get the opportunity to get sponsorship with the companies.
25. Selling goods, Having Speech, and doing Online Course
Once your social media is growing, you can make money by selling goods, giving speeches, or creating online courses.
Here is my experience
I’ve done nine things out of 25 things. I made 60$ on Affiliate Marketing over 4 years. It’s not worth the money at all that I can’t take this money out even. I made $220 for translating but it was just a little job that I didn’t do regularly. I’ve made $470 for selling Selling Goods over three years. I had made $710 for building a WordPress website over two years. I’ve made $1,300 for a speech by contract and donation two times. Investing in Cryptocurrency is up and down. I’ve put $1,000 on different cryptocurrencies in 2018 and it went down to $200 in 2019 and recently it went back to nearly $700-1,000. It’s too risky to make money for me. I had made $260 monthly for writing the magazine for one year and nine months, a total of $5,460. The most successful way to get money was the donation after providing the stories through Blog, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. I’ve made $4,000 to $6,000 yearly by donation while traveling.
For me, the best money is YouTube from nine things I’ve tried. YouTube is the only one paying better recently. I’ve gained more donations between $1,000 to $2,000 monthly since my channel is picked by the algorithm. Getting subscribers and views is very difficult. I was not focusing on YouTube while cycling the world and my channel was hardly increased by that time. Since Covid19, I paused my travel and I tried to post better quality videos. As a result, now I am finally getting subscribers after 10 years on YouTube. If you really work hard on YouTube, you might start making money in half a year or one year. Remember Mr beast, one of the most popular YouTubers, had only 30,000 subscribers for the first four years. The most important thing to make money on YouTube is not to give up.
Thank you so much for reading to the end. And lastly, your donation will give me a big motivation to keep updating my YouTube and Blog.
Thanks.
