All the Possible Ways to Earn Money Online

I started my LinkedIn content creation journey on the 1st of January this year. So far, I have shared my journey in the industry, how I got started, tried different things, failed in most of them, and succeeded in a few.

Many of you are at the same stage as I was in 2017, trying to make money online. As I have given years to the industry and tried most of the legitimate ways to make money on the Internet, I am in the right position to advise how you can try to make a sustainable living doing things online.

That's why starting today, I have decided to write about all the possible ways you can try to earn money online. In this post, I will briefly discuss those ways and go as much deeper as possible, explaining each way in the coming posts. So let's start.

In my experience, I have understood there are two positions to make money on the Internet:

1. Individual
2. Business

Now you may say I didn't get it. Let me break it down.

Individual: You can make money on the Internet doing the thing yourself alone. All the results would be derived entirely from your efforts. What I think there are primarily two ways you can make money online as an individual. 1. Selling your Skills and Time 2. Individual Content Creation

Selling Your Skills: You can make money on the Internet as an individual by offering your skills as a service. No matter from where you learned the skills, whether in college or taking an online course, or watching free YT videos, If you have the skills, you can sell it as a full-time Remote employee or as a freelancer.

Individual Content Creation: The next thing you can do is individual content creation. You can create content around your interests, skills, knowledge, and experience. I think the right time to start content creation is when you have enough knowledge about the topics you want to create content around. You can create text or video content and distribute it on multiple platforms.

Business: You can make a decent income on the Internet working individually as an employee/freelancer or creating content around your interest. But as you are the only person working, there is a limitation in what you can do and achieve. If you want to up your game and build something much bigger, then you will have to try to make money as a business. As you all know, there are primarily two types of businesses you can do 1. Services 2. Product

Services: Running a services business is like taking work from a bunch of clients and getting it done with the help of a team. It is an upgraded version of a freelancer. As a freelancer, you are the only one working, so there is always a limit on the number of clients you can work with. As soon you decide to convert it into a service business and build a team, now you can work with an unlimited number of clients. The more clients you get more team members you can do. Needless to say, you can make much more revenue this way.

Products: Services business is good, but it also has certain limitations, like depending upon clients. The real magic unlocks when you get your hands on a product business. Again there are two types of products business in 2023. 1. Media Business 2. Non-Media Business

Media Business: Content consumption is at boom; every one of us consumes a lot of content every single day. What you can do is build a business and create content at scale. Don't compare it with individual content creation. The media business is entirely different from it. As an individual, you have limitations around the content you can create. As soon as you start thinking as a media business. There is no limit on how many projects you can start and the no of team members you have.

Non-Media business: Most of the product businesses are non-media businesses. All the companies we know, Flipkart, Myntra, Zerodha, MakeMyTrip, and many more, are examples of it. At an enormous scale of things, one can build one such huge company, and I don't need to mention the wealth of the founders of these companies.

So, I understand these are legitimate ways to make sustainable income on the Internet. Suppose you are just starting your career; start from the beginning. Learn some skills get a full-time job, work as a freelancer and earn some income. When you are set in your career and have gained some experience, start individual content creation. I am saying content creation, not video content. This is only because if you don't want to face the camera, it is OK to start creating text content.

When you have passed these two individual stages of making money on the Internet, start thinking about starting a business. If you have experience working as a freelancer, start an agency business. If you have experience in individual content creation, think about starting a media business where your face doesn't matter a lot, but people know your brands.

Once you have the experience of running a media business down the line, you can even think about starting a non-media business. Even non-media businesses are heavily dependent on content marketing these days. As you will have past experience running a media business, you will find it much easier to get an audience and potential customers for your business.

So a career that started with working as a freelancer selling your time and skills can go all the way up to running a huge non-media business.

This is the mindset I wanted to explain to all of you. I hope you got a unique perspective. In the coming posts, I will explain each of these ways deeply. So no matter at which stage you are, you can try out things and grow in your career. Thanks for reading this one. Have a great day ahead!