If you have visited my website before, you will know that I am usually writing about how to make some extra money on the side – mainly 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 then 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 more about how to make a full-time income online and if 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.
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 that become successful online have done a lot of work to get there.
Anyone that 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 that 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, 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 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 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 for the website:
You need to make content for the website in order to later be able to make money from it. Content can be articles, reviews, videos, etc. Shortly explained, 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. 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 is a number of ways to monetize the traffic. It can be from ads, selling products, affiliate marketing, and many more options. You can click the link below to learn more about the different options.
==>Click here to watch a video about the 4 steps in creating an online income<==
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 Affilate where you can sign up for a free starter account.
With the free starter account, you will get access to 10 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 and training, 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 and 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, and it daily has 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 to 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.
Pozdravljeni!
Moram reči, da se z anketami zelo rada ukvarjam, imam pa problem, da prihajam iz države, kjer pride v poštev zelo malo anketnih portalov. Vidim, da so večinoma odlični portali z dobrimi anketami, nalogami, s katerimi bi kar nekaj dobila denarja ali bonov, vendar … Prihajam na žalost iz neprimerne države. Mi lahko kdo posreduje naslov portalov z anketami, ki so primerni tudi za majčkeno državico, po imenu SLOVENIA?
Hi Silva,
I just replied to your question on the other post you left a comment on earlier. Let me know if you cannot find it.
Hi Mikael,thanks for this extremely useful information. I wish to know that if I start a free blog and later decide to upgrade to a paid version, will I be able to retain the same domain name ? If not, then how can I drive my traffic to the new website? Please guide me.
You can in most cases not keep the same domain name if you start a free blog and want to then upgrade to an actual domain name. The reason for this is that there is no guarantee the URL is available. So it would depend on that.
However, all your content, traffic, etc. you build up will be able to be moved to the paid version.
About how to get traffic, then that is a big question. That is what the training I recommend in the article is all about. So I cannot just quickly describe all the steps here. You would need to sign up and take the time to learn the steps in details to build up the traffic.
Hope this helps.
Thanks, Mikael.
I plan to start a blog soon. If I write articles related to education, science and maths teaching, child behaviour etc; do you think I can be successful ? Will it be a profitable niche ?
sounds like that could be a good niche. Just to make sure to find a good angle and do not go too broad. And then with quality content, it is definitely possible to make it profitable over time.
That’s a great content bro. You and roope are wonderful. Love you guys.
Happy to hear you like my content.
Please I wantto know if they are sites that pays with bitcoin in Ghana????
You can see the best ways to earn free Bitcoin here.
I want to know if they are sites that pay in Ghana bank
You can check out this list of the best international sites which are the ones you should go for.
I just tried to sign up on the wealthy affiliate website and I am told the “Free starter account is not available in my country.
It is available in almost all countries – But there are a few countries the free starter membership is not available in because there has been too much fraud. If you live in one of those countries, you would have to go directly to the paid membership to join.
Hi Mikael
I am reading Day 4 of your training on paid surveys and I got distracted by this link on how to make a decent income online for a living! I was immediately attracted when you mentioned Wealthy Affiliates. I subsequently read all of this article including the comments made by your readers. I am impressed especially by the way you reply to their concerns. You are a good man Mikael, I can see that. I am glad I found your blog and am learning a lot from your writings.
I agree with you completely that building an online business is very very hard work. Especially if you are like me, you do not understand the language used in the instructions. This was my experience with Wealthy Affiliates. I joined them way back in 2018 when I thought I could make money online by clicking a few buttons. I learnt that it is not so. I followed WA free training to the extent that I took up their offer and registered my first website. I then had a problem understanding what a domain is and how to maintain a domain. Also I did not have the money to pay for the hosting of the domain, so I gave up. That is when I started paid surveys but all I could get were sites that were paying too little for my effort. That is why I went searching for someone like you who can direct me to the good paying survey sites. I agree with you it is better to do surveys and use the money to pay for the domain hosting at WA.
Now I want to know from you if it is possible to link my account at WA with you though I did not join under you.
Thank you. Very happy to hear you find my info helpful. I appreciate your feedback.
About your WA account, it is not possible to connect it to mine since you did not join through my invitation link. You would have to create a new account to do that.
Just let me know if you have any other questions.
Would you reccommend I open a new account and start from stretch? No I do not think so Mike. Can’t you help me through this communication?
Anyway I need to make money from paid surveys first before I re-activate my account at WA.
Cheers Mike
I am not recommending you to do that or not – you just asked if there was a way to link your account to mine and I just said that this is the only way.
I can answer some overall questions here. But more personal help, feedback, and mentoring is something I only offer to people that have joined through my link.
Anyway, hope you will enjoy the survey sites and quickly earn some extra cash to re-invest.
Thanks Pal, I understand.
Keep well and God bless!
you too
Sir.
I watch several of your videos regarding online earnings. Your presentation is really a beauty. Thank u for excellent presentation. Also thank u for not to mislead innocent people.
I want to join your affiliate downline. But confused about potential earnings. Is it really possibly to earn at least $250/m from this kind of marketing?
Please tell me detail about how and how quick I can make money .
The earning potential of affiliate marketing is huge and many people make A LOT more than $250 per month. There is not as such an upper limit. However, it all depends on how much effort you put in and you need to be willing to work hard before you will get results. You need to first learn the skills and then build the foundation and then slowly you will start to earn if you stay consistent. And then you can grow it from there.
But it is not a quick fix and will require time and effort but if you are willing to do that, it can be a really great way to earn.
Exactly how long it will take to start earning is very difficult to say as it depends a lot on the effort you put in. But realistically, you should expect to work on it for at least 3-6 months to build the foundation, and then it can grow from there. If you are desperate to make money here and now, it is not the right option for you. Then it is better to get a job. But if you are willing to work hard to build your own online income, it has huge potential.
Hi Mikael, thanks for this informative post. I would like to know if Wealthy Affiliate provides an option to get paid for posting blog comments. I read about it in some blog posts. Please let me know.
Potentially yes. But you should not join if that is your main goal on the platform because then it will not work. It is a part of the tools but you should only join if you are interested in actually using the training and tools there to build an online business and income.