How can you make money online?

Ask children what they want to be when they grow up, and you’ll be surprised. Among the hairdressers, veterinarians, and soccer players, there are now more and more aspiring vloggers, bloggers, influencers, and YouTubers. We might have laughed about it in the past, but nowadays, making money online is serious business.

How wonderful would it be: determining your own working hours and location, working from your passion, and being your own boss. That can be your life if you start making money online. But how do you do that? We’ll first zoom in on the different online channels you can use. Then we’ll discuss ways to turn those channels into a source of income.

Channels for making money online

There isn’t just one way to make money online. On the internet, there are various channels you can use. We’ll discuss three popular channels for generating income on the internet:

Making money online with a blog

A popular channel for making money is a blog. This is the perfect channel if you have a knack for writing and a true passion. On a blog, you can fully express yourself on a topic of your choice.

Are you in love with traveling? Start a travel blog. Do you have the best recipes? Begin a food blog. Are you always up-to-date with the latest developments in the financial market? Then you can write blogs about that. A big advantage of a blog is that you can start without any investment. You can also write blogs on commission, then you get paid directly.

Making money online with YouTube

A YouTuber is in many ways comparable to a blogger. Both create content from their passion, ideally. However, a YouTuber has exchanged the pen for the camera. Usually, this requires a slightly larger investment than blogging. Although nowadays, a phone can also serve perfectly well as a camera.

If you think YouTube is only the domain of vloggers, you’re mistaken. You can also use the channel to share video game recordings, upload in-depth interviews, or spread video essays. The most important thing is that you do something where your expertise and passion lie.

Making money online with social media

Of all these channels, social media feels the most like the new kid on the block. This channel is constantly evolving, which makes it always feel new and fresh. Social media can be divided into various platforms. You have Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, and the newest development: TikTok.

When you want to make money with social media, it’s important to know your target audience and be flexible. In 2012, all teenagers were still on Facebook. When that became too boring, they moved to Instagram, then Snapchat, and nowadays you find youth on TikTok. Make sure you are where your target audience is, and create content that interests them.

Combining channels

So there are different channels suitable for making money online. Why would you limit yourself to just one channel? Of course, you can start with one channel, but if you’re smart, you’ll also use other channels.

If you have a blog, you can promote it via social media. Additionally, you can upload videos to YouTube that provide extra depth to your blogs. Maybe you’ll become so successful that you can sell your own merchandise. You’d do that through your own webshop, of course. If you approach it well, your channels will reinforce each other. Then the money can really start flowing.

Making money online in 3 steps

However, don’t expect money to be automatically deposited into your account just because you’ve written a good blog. If only it were that easy. Perhaps you’ve had a successful blog, YouTube channel, or social media account for a long time, but the money still hasn’t come in.

Whether you want to live as a professional blogger or just earn some extra beer money doesn’t matter. The path to an online income almost always involves three steps:

  1. Become good
  2. Become known
  3. Get paid

Become Good

In an interview with Off Camera, Dave Grohl, former drummer of Nirvana and frontman of Foo Fighters, gave his most important advice to young musicians: “Be badass!” This advice doesn’t just apply to the teenager with a drum set in their garage, but also to the blogger with a laptop in their attic.

The first step towards earning money online is creating badass content. Quality should be your top priority. Always. When you start blogging, vlogging, or TikTok-ing, you’ll hear a lot of people talking about affiliate links, SEO, link building, and such things. That’s nice, but without extremely good content, it’s worth little.

Good content meets the needs of your audience. That need can be anything. From practical household tips to a philosophical interpretation of the current education system, to a funny story. Find a need that you can fulfill and make sure you become the best at it. Be creative, surprise your audience, blow them away. Be badass!

Become Known

And there you are, with your laptop in the attic and your badass blog, waiting for your money. Well, if Dave Grohl had just stayed in his garage like that, he would never have sold out the Ziggo Dome. So follow the rockstar’s second tip: “Play live.” Go out into the world, get fans, get an audience, and become known.

It’s important that as many people as possible see your beautiful content. But going to read your blogs live in the local café might not be the best way to find an audience. Leave that to the rock bands. For you, there are other ways to reach a large audience and build a loyal fan base:

Get Paid

Building an audience can take a long time. It’s hard work and may not yield a single cent for a long time. But eventually, it’s all worth it. Once you have a large, loyal, and returning audience, you can start earning money online.

Earning Money Online in 5 Ways

There are countless ways you can start earning money online. The creative entrepreneur always finds a new way to bring in money. Below, we’ll delve into some popular methods for earning money online:

Earning Money Online with Advertisements

Advertisements are to the internet what oil is to Dubai: the most well-known form of income. Quite logical. The most successful online companies – Google, Facebook, Amazon – also owe their fat bank accounts to advertisements. But how can you earn money online with advertisements?

It’s quite simple: if you gather an audience that’s attractive to companies, you can sell advertising space to them. You can do this manually, but it’s quite a hassle. Channels like YouTube therefore handle this for you.

There are also parties that work as a sort of marketplace for online advertisements. You offer advertising space on your website, and such a party automatically sells it to the highest or most relevant bidder. However, keep in mind that advertising income only becomes interesting when you have a large audience.

Earning money online with advertisements is best done on the following channels:

Earn Money Online with Affiliate Links

Do you want to have more control over the parties you work with? Then you can earn money online with affiliate links. You sign up for an affiliate program of a specific online store, such as Bol.com or Wehkamp. You can then retrieve links from these webshops that you can place in your blog, video, or social media post. Every time someone clicks on this link and buys something, you also earn a commission. How much you earn exactly varies per program.

If you want to earn money with affiliate links, it’s important to find a relevant affiliate program to sign up for. If you write a cool blog about cars, your readers probably won’t be quick to click on a Wehkamp link. So find a relevant partner and make sure you place the right links in the right places.

Earning money online with affiliate links is best done through the following channels:

Earn Money Online with Sponsors

If a company considers you (or rather: your audience) relevant, they can buy an advertisement from you. But they can also opt for a more explicit collaboration: a sponsorship deal or partnership. Sponsorship deals come in all shapes and sizes. Usually, you have to highlight the sponsor’s product or service to your audience.

For example, if you have a tech blog, you can write reviews about the products of a computer manufacturer. Do you have a big name in the beauty community on Instagram? Then you can wear clothes from a certain brand in your photos. Sometimes it can be as simple as a quick ‘promotional talk’ in your YouTube video.

Whatever your partnership looks like, always make it clear to your audience that you’re being sponsored. It’s not only polite, in many cases it’s also legally required. Also, remember that not all sponsors will pay you in money; often you get free products as a reward.

Earning money online with sponsors is best done through the following channels:

Earn Money Online with Direct Sales

Of course, you can also take matters into your own hands. Direct sales is an effective way to earn money online. You can link an online store to your blog. Here you can sell homemade items, for example. Or articles that you can buy in bulk and sell at a profit. If you have a fanatical fan base, you can earn money from your own merchandise.

Earning money online with direct sales is best done through the following channels:

Earn Money Online with Donors

Finding an audience that regularly returns for your content is often difficult enough, let alone an audience willing to donate money to you. Yet more and more people are earning money online thanks to donors. This way, you free yourself from sponsors or advertisers, things your audience usually doesn’t want anyway. Instead, you depend on your fans.

Through platforms like Patreon, fans can transfer money to you. Before they do that, of course, you need to produce extremely good and unique content. It has to be so badass that people want to pay for it. Do you have enough donors? Then you can quit your day-to-day job and fully immerse yourself in earning money online. Wouldn’t that be great?

Earning money online with donors is best done through the following channels:

Find Partners via Hulc

Just as it’s best to combine different channels, it’s also smart to combine income sources. You don’t want to be fully dependent on your fans, but also not on sponsors. You don’t want to focus 100% on advertisements, but also not on affiliate programs. If you want to seriously earn money online, you’ll need to have different sources of income.

For different forms of online income, you need partners. An easy place to find partners is our platform Hulc. Here, brands and companies looking for bloggers and influencers can offer campaigns. Then you pick the cream of the crop. Find a dream campaign that appeals to your audience and where you can earn well. Doesn’t that sound like a dream? Who knows, maybe you’ll soon be typing your blogs on the beach in Bali. Let the money come!