4 best ways to make money

Whether you make money from publishing sponsored posts, hosting third-party ads, or selling your products, a blog is a great online business idea you can start at home. The opportunities to earn money online, sometimes passive, are only becoming more abundant. You could pick up freelance jobs, start a dropshipping store, create your own products, or promote other people’s products on a blog. It simply takes a little know-how and hard work to make it happen.

Blogging is one of the oldest methods for making money online. People who love writing tend to start blogs with a niche focus. For example, a blog about procrastination, cars, dropshipping, toys, etc., is often a narrow enough focus to build a loyal following and big enough that you can cover a lot of ground.

Do you know how to build an online website? Another good way to make money while working from home and starting an online business is by selling WordPress sites. You could work as a developer to build ecommerce sites, help them to get found by search engines, and help people develop their own business ideas for online web pages.

Depends on your professional background and personal preferences. The popular options include online service-based businesses (as an evolutionary step from a freelance side-hustle) and product-based online businesses such as online stores. The two require the least starting capital and can be effectively scaled over time.

Once you’ve mastered the creation of consistent content, you can make money through your blog by selling products like online courses, digital coaching, e-books or webinars. You can also sell ad space or sponsored posts. This business strategy may take a little more time and effort to monetize, but it can be very profitable in the end.

The easiest way to start a business with no money is to sell your services. Even if you haven’t mastered a specific area, being better than the average person at something means you can start a business that helps them. So, start by looking at the things you know how to do better than most people. Package that skill set into a service, such as:

Crowdfunding. This approach to raising money takes small amounts of cash from a large number of people. Ask regular people to invest in new businesses through platforms like Kickstarter, Crowdfunder, and SeedInvest. So-called “backers” get perks, such as access to pre-orders or equity, in exchange for their investment.

You could start doing this as a form of side income and slowly evolve by growing your customer base through websites such as Upwork, People Per Hour and Freelancer. You could also create your own business website. Don’t rule out a service business if you don’t have a particularly strong set of skills. Your time is valuable; busy people often pay an hourly fee for someone else to do tasks they don’t want (or don’t have time) to do.

Friends and family loans. Do you have a personal support network that can back your new business idea? Ask them to invest cash into your startup. Most will contribute in exchange for a larger return (with interest) or small equity stake. Small business loans. Get larger amounts of money from a lender, like Shopify Capital, to go toward payroll, inventory funding, or marketing. Note that loans only become an option once you start to see success. You’ll likely need proof of revenue—evidence that you’re able to pay back the loan—before being accepted.

If you know how to write really well, or how to edit videos, for example, you can sell your talents working as a freelancer for other people and companies in your free time. This is a very sought-out niche especially by those who don’t want to quit their conventional jobs, but still want to find a way to make some extra money in their free time.

Below you’ll find several options for turning your particular talents into a potential income stream. Are you looking for some extra cash to supplement your income? Do you have skills or talents you think might be marketable? If so, you should consider how to use your talents to make money. Seems simple enough, right? Pump the brakes. It takes hard work to profit from any endeavor, especially one that you love. Too often, the fun stops when you try to make money off something you enjoy. Before you quit your day job and spend your life savings on building a photography studio, for instance, you need to ensure your passion doesn’t just become the new grind. It’s a good idea to check in with yourself every couple of weeks to see how you feel. If you have a plan and pace yourself, you’ll be making money and loving it!

Coach/consult. Do you have a unique talent that others are always asking about? You can turn that into cash by coaching others on how to do what you do. For example, many people have a hard time letting their best selves shine during job interviews. As a people person with great interviewing skills, you might offer interview coaching sessions for a fee.

If you love to be in the kitchen, you could start a business based on your skills. You can fill special baking requests like a one-of-a-kind birthday cake, decorated cookies or treats with or without specific ingredients. You also could meal prep for neighbors who don’t have time or don’t like to cook.

That means you have to stay invested for the long haul to make sure you capture the stock market at its best. Adopting a buy and hold strategy can help you achieve this goal. (And, what’s more, it helps you come tax time by qualifying you for lower capital gains taxes.) Stock investments have an element of risk. High-quality stocks may be appropriate for some investments strategies. Ensure that your investment objectives, time horizon and risk tolerance are aligned with stocks before investing, as they can lose value.

However, because the markets have the potential to deliver significant gains during a long period of time, they are a logical place to invest and grow your capital. That’s why gauging your risk tolerance is so important — so you can distinguish between the right situations in which to invest and the wrong situations.

Even your stock market investments can become a little safer with stocks that pay dividends. The recovery from the financial crisis bears this out, as markets went on decade-long bull run. If you’ve got long-term goals, you can’t afford to be completely out of the markets. That being said, if you’ve got short to mid-term goals, you don’t necessarily want to expose yourself to the potential volatility that can keep you up at night.

Your risk tolerance dictates how much investment loss you can stand. Stock and bond markets are volatile, and there are no guarantees when it comes to making money during a specific period of time. The tried-and-true key to successful investing, then, is unfortunately a little boring. Simply have patience that diversified investments, like index funds, will pay off over the long term, instead of chasing the latest hot stock.

It’s important that your investments are calibrated to your time horizon. You don’t want to put next month’s rent money in the stock market and hope it’s there when you need it. When risk is appropriately managed, returns potentially follow. Focus on understanding and managing your risk tolerance, rather than chasing returns. Focus on the risk that you’re willing to take on, and appropriate returns that you can live with will follow.