
If you have visited my website before, you will know that I am mainly writing about how to make some extra money on the side – usually with free methods.
Today I will, however, be focusing on something a bit different. I often mention in my articles that doing paid surveys and other free online micro-tasks can be a great way to make some extra money, but it will not make you a full-time income.
Some people are just interested in making some extra cash, and these options are the best and easiest way online, and one of the only ways that are 100% free.
But I am often also asked if there is a legit way to make a living online.
So, in this article, I will tell you more about how to make a full-time income online and whether it is even possible.
I can tell you right away that it is definitely possible to make a very good income online if you are willing to make an effort. I am doing this myself and have started from scratch.
Therefore, I today want to go into this topic and explain what, in my opinion, is the best approach to building an online income if you are serious about this and want to make a living online.
Disclosure: Some articles on this website contain affiliate/sponsored links. Click for more info.
Myths about making money online
Before getting into the best way to make money online, I want to give a few warnings and bust a couple of myths.
If you are not aware of these, you can end up approaching making money online with an approach that will ultimately make you fail and, in some cases, even lose a lot of money.
With the right approach, you will instead have a great chance of success, no matter what your experience or background is.
Myth 1 – It is quick and easy to make money online:
If you are expecting to be able to just do a few clicks online and then you will be rich, I am sorry to disappoint you.
Of course, there are stories of people being extremely lucky, but most people who become successful online have done a lot of work to get there.
Anyone who tries to sell you the idea that it is easy to become rich online and you do not have to make an effort to get there is NOT telling you the truth and is probably just trying to get you to buy something he/she is getting paid to promote.
Myth 2 – You will become rich overnight:

I am not saying that this never happens. If you are very lucky, it can happen that you will become rich in a very short time from working online.
But if you think this is the norm, I am sorry to disappoint you again. An online business/income, like any other business, takes time to develop and make a real profit from.
If you want to be rich, that is also great, and it definitely can happen online. However, people who are expecting this to happen overnight are often also too impatient to put in the work that is really required to make it happen.
Instead, they will easily get attracted to the next shiny online thing that promises them this. That is why there are so many online scams that promise you will get rich in no time – many of us are looking for an easy solution.
Easy solutions can be nice if they are really solutions. But just be aware that often a quick fix/solution is, in reality, not really a solution, but more a distraction.
So do not expect to become rich overnight, and be patient if it does not happen.
And be careful about joining the programs that promise you to become rich instantly and with no effort – most of the time, they are scams, where you will end up losing your money instead, and be pushed into investing a lot of money before you realize you will never make any money yourself.
I just wanted to get that out of the way, as expecting working online will make you rich overnight and, with no effort, will keep you from actually succeeding. So if you are still interested, then let's get into how it can then be done:-)
What opportunities are there to make money online?
If you have looked a bit around to find out how to make money online, you will probably also have seen a lot of suggestions.
It can, for example, be casinos, trading of stocks or currency, MLM, binary options, crypto, and many more.
Some of these can definitely be a way to make money online if you have the necessary skills, while others (especially binary options or MLM) can end up giving big losses instead if you are not careful.
If you want to start making money online, I would suggest you consider building an online income through affiliate marketing and having a website.
It might sound a bit scary if you have never worked with websites before. But it does not have to be, so let me explain a bit more about that option, so you can see if it might be for you, no matter your previous experience.
What is the best way to build an online income?
As mentioned above, I would recommend looking into building an online income through affiliate marketing and a website/blog, if you are serious about wanting to make money online.
If you are willing to put in the work to build a good website, it can be very profitable, and you can get started very cheaply (or even free).
At the same time, this is a great way of making money from a passion or hobby of yours and doing the work whenever it fits into your schedule – and that is probably why many of us are interested in building an online business, right?
It might sound difficult, but it does not have to be. The process of making money through a website can very shortly be explained in these 4 steps:
- Find a topic/niche:
This is a topic that you are passionate about and preferably also have some knowledge about. That will make it easier to eventually make a website about a topic that you are passionate about.
If you need help finding a topic, the platform I recommend to learn all the steps (more about this later) has some great tools and training that will make this step very easy and fast.
A niche can be any topic, and you can build an income in almost any niche once you learn the right approach. - Make content:
You need to make content to get traffic to your website to make money from it later. Content can be articles, reviews, videos, social media, etc. In short, it needs to be interesting content that helps people. So if you focus on helping people, you will automatically make great content. - Get traffic for the site:
Once you have content on the website, you need to get people to visit the website. There is a number of ways to make sure this happens through YouTube, SEO, social media, and more. I will mention below where you can find more information about this, as it is too big a topic to go into detail with here. - Make money from your website traffic:
Once you have traffic, there are a number of ways to monetize the traffic. It can be from ads, selling products, affiliate marketing, and many more options.
How do you get started with making money online?

The above process sounds very simple, and it actually also is. It does, however, take some effort.
And you might still wonder how to actually practically do every single step the right way to make sure you will succeed. If you have not worked with websites before, you might need some more training and help.
In that case, there are many online resources where you can find information.
I have tried many of them, and I find that the best online training platform is the learning platform Wealthy Affiliate, where you can sign up for a free starter account.
With the free starter account, you will get access to the first lessons that will get you started with your website and online business and tell you what to do step by step.
You will also get a free starter website, so you can actually start building from day one while doing the training. So, this can be a great way to get started and find out if it is the way you want to go.
You can stay a free member as long as you want, but if you at some point want even more support, training, and tools, Wealthy Affiliate also offers a premium membership. You can read more about that in my full Wealthy Affiliate review here.
If you already have experience with websites, it can still be great to check out the link above, as it gives some very valuable information about building an online income that is very difficult to find in other places.
I myself had worked with websites for many years before joining this training platform, and I still learned a lot of new things and learned exactly how to apply my knowledge to also start making money from it.
Is building an online income for everyone?
I would say that it is possible for anyone to create a successful online income. However, to be honest, not a very big percentage of people trying to make money online actually succeed. Mainly because of the myths or the wrong approach, I mentioned at the beginning of this article.
To succeed, you have to know that it will not just happen by itself overnight. You have to be willing to make an effort and put in some work, and be a bit patient.
If you are willing to do this, you can also succeed. So, approach making money online with dedication and be willing to put in the effort. The effort can, in the long run, give you the freedom to work for yourself, whenever you want, and wherever you want.
But do not approach making money online as something you will just try for a few hours and then move on to the next program that promises you can make money the first day. If you have this approach, you can end up wasting a lot of time and money joining scams that promise this is possible.
Where can you get more knowledge and help?

As mentioned above, there are many online resources that offer advice on how to build an online business. Not all of them are, however, of very high quality.
The best platform for getting support and continuous training is, in my experience, Wealthy Affiliate.
It offers extensive training to build the foundation of your online income, great tools to move forward as fast as possible (including AI tools and training about the newest and best ways to use AI), and it has daily new high-quality training about various online business topics and a community of members that are always ready to help (myself included).
If you want to try out Wealthy Affiliate for free, you can click the link below. By clicking, we will also automatically be connected inside the platform, and you can then contact me personally with any questions or help you need. I will be happy to share my experience with you and help you succeed.
==>Click here to start learning at Wealthy Affiliate for free<==
If you have any comments or questions, feel free to leave a comment below, and I will get back to you asap.
Hello Mikael
I have to agree it is definitely possible to make a full time income online. But having been in internet marketing for many years, I also know it takes a lot of work.
You have to be committed and put in a lot of effort before your achieve success.
You mention Wealthy Affiliate as a great place to start, and as I have been a member for over three years, I agree with you on that as well.
Anyone who would really like to be their own boss and have their own business would have to search a long time to find a better one.
To your success Mikael.
Regards
Robert Allan
Thanks for your comment Robert.
Yes, it is very important to remember that it takes an effort to become successful. And great to hear about your experiences with Wealthy Affiliate as well.
I do believe a major reason why some people do not succeed in making a successful business online is that they have unrealistic expectations, and think it will be possible to become rich in no time. If people want to make money online and are willing to make an effort and learn, I do however believe that it is definitely possible for anyone.
Mikael
You are correct when you say that you can’t make a full-time income doing surveys. Many people don’t realise this and waste hours filling these forms out.
Not only that, but it is extremely boring doing surveys. I like your idea of building a website. That sounds way more creative.
How long will a website take to build, and how soon can you make sales?
Hi Michel,
Thanks for your comment. I must say that I do actually like paid surveys, and have made some nice extra pocket money on it myself. So I do not think it is a waste of time, but before doing it, it is important to know that it cannot make you rich or a full time income. If that is the goal, then it is something else that needs to be done – like for example building a website.
How long it takes to build a website depends a lot on how dedicated you are. But to set up a basic website can be done very quickly. After that it is then an ongoing process and development to achieve results. If you follow the training I link to in the post above, it takes you through the process step by step. In general it can take 4-6 months before you will start making money with a website. Many factors comes into play – especially the time you dedicate to it yourself. But some people also manage to start making money a lot faster amd for some it takes longer. However, as a general guideline, it is good to give yourself 4-6 month with continous work before things will really start happening.
Wish you the best of luck, if you decide to go that way, and let me know if there is anything I can help with, or if you have any questions.
Mikael
Hi Mikael!
Thanks for your reply. You are really helpful.
you are welcome. Glad I could help
hello Mikael,
I want to contact you so can you send me your email through xxxxxxx. I am waiting for your answer.
If you have any questions, just ask in a comment here on my website and I will reply asap.
Hey Mikael,
great post, full of useful info!
You’re right, there are many opportunities online, all of them claiming to make you money online and navigating through this digital jungle
can be very draining, especially what your hard earned money is concerned.
I think that affiliate marketing, coupled with blogging is an excellent way to get started online and Wealthy Affiliate is an awesome platform. I’m most grateful for the fact that it caters to virtually every level of experience/expertise.
Keep up the good work,
JT
Thanks for your comment JT. Great to hear about your experiences with Wealthy Affiliate and blogging. Thanks.
Mikael
How much would it cost you to join Wealthy Affiliate or get their service in building your own website?
I think i read somewhere that you have to pay about 14$ a month for providing you tools in building your site?
How about once you build your website – do you still have to continue paying the wealthy affiliate monthly? Hope u could answer my questions. Thank u
Hi Cara,
You can join Wealthy Affiliate for free. With the free membership you get access to the first 10 lessons, and 2 free websites. But if you want to build on your own domain, you have to buy a domain, which is around $14 per year.
However, Wealthy Affiliate also has a premium membership with a monthly or yearly fee, where you get access to even more training and a lot of tools. It is not just giving you the training to build your own website, but also weekly trainings about internet marketing, help from all the other members, a great keyword tool, content writing platform, a really good hosting platform and more.
So it has two different membership options, and a lot of training and tools depending on the membership you want. I recently wrote an updated and detailed review of Wealthy Affiliate on another website – you can check that out by clicking the link to get all the details about what Wealthy Affiliate offers, prices etc.
Hope this helps, and let me know if you have any more questions.
All the best,
Mikael
I tried wealthy affiliate for free and I couldn’t get any answers anybody to help me especially the owners wealthy affiliate unless you’re paid member I think they just ignore you so I gave up and I signed out
Sorry to hear that Lilly,
In general, if you ask the questions in public inside WA and at the right location, you will get answers very quickly – often within minutes.
About the owners, they are actually extremely helpful and I can say from personal experience that they really care about the members – also the free members and they answers questions and help people every day. I have actually not seen anything like that in any other online community.
But it is also important to understand that there are more than 1 million members so sometimes it can take a bit of time for them to get back to you and sometimes it might also slip.
So sorry to hear you did not experience to get the help you needed – if you really want to succeed online and make a full-time income online, you should however not let that stop you. In my experience, WA is the best value for money and the best way to get started as a beginner but it does take a lot of work.
If you have any more questions about it, I will be happy to answer, and also if you joined through my invitation link we would automatically be connected and I would help you out with any questions you might have so you could be sure to have your questions answered.
Anyway, thanks for sharing your experience.
Mikael
Hi,
I have two issues Mentioned below.
1. I have signed Up in the below mentioned Paid Surveys sites almost a week ago but i didn’t get any reponse are survey.
a. YouGov
b. Toluna
c. Triaba
d. Ysense
2. I have also signed up on wealthyaffiliate but after registering my self they are directly demanding to pay for the Premium services.
So kindly help me out about the above mentioned issues and kindly also guide me for online full time earning. Becuase I have graduated from University and currently working as a field Engineer and I want to switch my job to online or home based jobs.
Thanks & Regads:
Ahmadyar Tajammul
I will do my best to give you answers to this:
1) There can be a couple of reasons for this. First of all, around Christmas and New Year there are always fewer surveys available so that can be an explanation.
Also, be aware that for some of these platforms you need to login to check for available surveys. So make sure to do this.
2) What country are you from? Because once you have registered and are inside the members area of Wealthy Affiliate you will in almost all countries (except Nigeria) have access to the free training. There is an option to upgrade anytime you want to and that will, of course, give more options, and you can see this very clearly but that does not mean you have to. You can just click the training button and start the free lessons without paying anything.
If you are looking for a full-time income online I would clearly recommend joining Wealthy Affiliate as the training there will teach you all the steps. Surveys are great for a bit of side cash and can cover the costs of starting an online business until it starts making money but they are not a way to make a full-time income.
But also be aware that starting an online business requires hard work and effort – with effort, it can give amazing results but it will not happen overnight. The advantage of paid surveys and similar is that they are free and you can start earning right away but the income potential is limited.
So which option is the best really depends on your long-term goals.
Hope this helps and let me know if you have any other questions.