Of the 3, WooCommerce is easily the cheapest and you can get started for less than $3/month.
Here’s what my kids’ WooCommerce POD store looks like.
Step #4: Choose your print-on-demand provider
Once your online store is up and running, you can connect it to a POD website and add your products.
One of my favorite POD drop shippers is Printful because they give you a wide variety of product options—from t-shirts, bags, to posters.
Personally, I like Printful because of these benefits:
- Convenience — For one reasonable cost, Printful does everything for you from printing to shipping.
- No minimum purchase — Order as little as you need, even a single item. You can also get cheaper rates for bulk orders.
- Branding — For a professional touch, you can use your own logo for packaging and invoices.
When a customer buys a product, Printful will then fulfill the order and ship the item on your behalf.
Step #5: Promote your products
Valuable content is the best way to build an audience and promote your brand. Once you start attracting visitors, make sure that you try to get their email address to keep the conversation going.
If you’re a good writer with SEO skills, you can run a blog and draw in traffic from Google. (More on blogging later.)
You can also start a podcast to show more of your personality and share your knowledge.
Or you can create videos on YouTube to connect with your viewers.
For my kids’ t-shirt business, they opted to attract customers via YouTube because they are great on camera (check out their mission statement)!
3. Launch an online course
As long as you are expert enough in a topic that interests you, you can provide value to people who want to learn from you with an online course.
Similar to starting an Amazon affiliate store or a POD business, launching an online course requires little or no upfront cost.
In fact, all you really need is:
- A computer
- A webcam
- Internet access
Follow these steps to launch your own online course on a barebones budget.
Note: One of my students made over $4,000 in his first 3 months following these exact steps with no website and no audience.
Step #1: Write down what you’re good at
What things are you better at than others? What skill can you teach to improve people’s lives?
No matter how random, write them down.
For example, here’s a short list of things that I could potentially teach:
- I can teach a blogging course
- I can teach an ecommerce course
- I can teach basic web design
- I can teach a course on Street Fighter 2
- I can teach Adobe Photoshop basics
Even though I technically don’t have the “credentials” to teach these courses, I know more about these topics than the average person. As a result, I know that I can provide value and deliver great content.
In any case, jot down all of your skills and interests that come to mind. And avoid judging yourself in the process, so you don’t limit your ideas.
Imposter syndrome is real. Remember, you only have to be expert enough to be an effective teacher.
Step #2: Find your audience
Flesh out your list by figuring out what aspect of your skill people would pay to learn. What benefits can people get from your skill?
Let’s say I want to teach a Photoshop class. By taking my course, people can learn how to:
- Use Photoshop to create product infographics for an ecommerce store
- Use Photoshop to make eye-catching blog photos for Pinterest
- Use Photoshop to create high-converting images on Amazon
- Use Photoshop to create attractive t-shirt designs
The next step is to identify a common pain point of a specific group of people.
From my experience, I know that selling on Amazon FBA requires all main product photos to have a white background.
I also know that Amazon sellers pay 1–2 dollars per image for professionals to process their photos.
By teaching Amazon sellers how to process their own photos, I can help them solve a problem and save them money in the long run.
Now that I know my target audience, I can do a quick Facebook search to find Amazon groups where I can market to. You can apply these same steps to find your audience.
Step #3: Sign up for an email provider and create a landing page
With your online course idea and target audience in mind, you can start collecting contact details of potential customers.
MailChimp is an email marketing provider you can use for free up to 2000 contacts. If you have money to spare, you can sign up for more advanced solutions like Drip or ConvertKit.
After signing up, create a quick landing page.
Note: Some email providers will allow you to create a landing page for free so you don’t need a website
Within 5 minutes, I created this landing page in Drip.
Step #4: Create a video tutorial
A short video tutorial should be a “free sample” of your full-blown course. Establish yourself as an authority by demonstrating your skills and providing testimonials from people you’ve helped in the past.
By doing so, you’ll be able to entice potential customers to sign up for your email list to get more information.
Here are some free tools you can use to record your video tutorial.
- Loom
- Built in screencast software on Windows 10
- OBS Open Broadcaster Software
You can also try Camtasia, which is the software I use for my screencast tutorial videos.
When recording your tutorial, don’t worry about giving too much information away. The more you give, the more people will see your value.
Also, don’t forget to display your landing page link at the bottom of the video. Your link should also be in your Facebook or YouTube video description as well.
Then, post your video in relevant Facebook groups and start gathering email signups.
But be careful not to come across as overly promotional. Weeks before you post your tutorial, build up a good reputation in the community by sharing helpful posts, answering questions, and adding value to the group.
People will be more receptive to you once you post your tutorial. And hopefully, that will lead to email signups.
Repeat this step for all relevant Facebook groups. In due time, you’ll see your email list grow.
Step #5: Create your course or service
You don’t need many followers to make a reasonable income. All it takes is a handful of people who are eager to pay for your services.
As you are gathering email signups, remember that you don’t need to have a detailed curriculum from the get-go. You can actually launch your course before you have any recorded material.
In 2011, I announced that I was creating an ecommerce course and generated $10k through presales. It’s fine to develop your course on the fly and apply customer feedback as you go.
Once you’ve built a decent-sized email list, create your flagship course on a free course platform like Teachable.
Step #6: Give a webinar and launch your class or service
Once you have your email list and a framework for your course or service, you can start making money!
A live webinar is the best way to launch an online course without spending any money.
Giving a live webinar may sound intimidating, but think of it this way: a webinar is basically a live tutorial with an invitation to buy your full course.
Here’s how you should structure your webinar:
- Introduction — Introduce yourself and your experience for 1–3 minutes.
- Step-by step-tutorial – Wow your viewers with helpful and actionable instructions and tips. Don’t hold back on sharing your knowledge. If your attendees find your webinar helpful, they’ll be more likely to buy your full course.
- Discounted offer – Invite your viewers to sign up for your course. A discount for a limited period can create a sense of urgency.
Social proof like screenshots of testimonials of your work can also win over your potential customer’s trust.
What numbers to expect from your webinar
Based on experience, here are some statistics that you might expect when running your webinar.
- 20–35% of your signups will attend your webinar live
- 5–15% of live attendees will buy your course depending on your offer and presentation skills
To demonstrate how effective this model can be, let’s throw some numbers into the mix.
Let’s say you want to make $1,000 and you sell a $250 course.
- If you want 4 sales (i.e. a 10% conversion rate), you need 40 people to attend your webinar.
- 40 is a third of 120, which means you need at least 120 people on your email list. By repeating step #4 enough times, 120 email signups should be achievable.
Remember, the numbers above are just an approximation.
With an email list of just 80 people, my student Arree Chung made $4,316 teaching people how to publish their own picture books. And today, he runs a 6-figure business selling courses.
Everyone’s an expert at something. The skills you already have could be your key to greater wealth.
4. Start a blog
Blogging is another popular way to make passive income online because it’s easy to do and requires little upfront cost.
However, building an audience and making money blogging can be a grind. And you’ll be putting in many unpaid hours to slowly build your audience.
In fact, the income trajectory for a blog looks something like this.
For example, my blog didn’t make much money at all in the first year. And it took 3 years before my blog hit 6 figures in revenue!
Here’s an overview of different ways you can make money with a blog.
Sell digital products
Digital products are useful or informative products customers can download online. For example, you can sell templates, ebooks, videos, or PDFs.
The great thing about digital products is, you don’t need any inventory to start selling.
Furthermore, digital products are easy to make and ship unlike physical products that require suppliers and warehouses.
Affiliate marketing
With affiliate marketing, you send traffic to a company and get a cut of every referral sale. Earlier, we talked about the Amazon Associates affiliate program. But there are many other ways you can do affiliate marketing as well.
First off, almost every business has an affiliate program. You just have to Google the company you are interested in followed by the words “affiliate program”.
For example, the Printful affiliate program pays you 10% for any business referred and it literally takes a minute to sign up.
Here are the exact steps on how to quickly get started with affiliate marketing:
- Find affiliate companies. Impact Radius, Awin, Amazon Associates, ShareASale, and Commission Junction are affiliate networks that aggregate companies together. Once your membership is approved, you can apply as an affiliate for a bunch of companies on one interface.
- Sign up and get approved by an affiliate network. Usually, affiliate networks approve websites that have their own domain, an about page, and a privacy disclosure page. (You MUST disclose that you have affiliate links.)
- Get a tracking link from the company. You’ll be using this link in your blog post and email marketing to refer people to the product.
- Create blog posts for products your audience would want to buy. Review posts, tutorial posts, and comparison posts are common ways to promote products.
Once you’ve made the referral, the company handles the rest! Meanwhile, you automatically get your payouts for the referral sales you make.
Learn More: 10 Tips for Affiliate Marketers to Make More Money
Sell display advertising
Display advertising lets you monetize your blog with ads on your header, footer, or sidebar. These ads are tailored to whoever is on your site.
You first need to apply to an ad network that places ads on websites. Most ad networks will approve websites that have quality and family-friendly content, a disclosure page, and a top level domain (.com, .net, and so on).
Once you are approved, you just need to add some code to your site to automatically show ads customized to your site layout.
Typically, ad networks pay you based on page views, so your task is to drive as much traffic to your site as possible. This is why display advertising is ideal for bloggers with a decent amount of traffic.
The downside of ads is that you have little control over what ads flash on your page. Ads are targeted to the reader based on their browsing history.
If a reader goes on your site and finds an ad inappropriate, you could get complaints. On top of that, ads can be distracting and slow down your site.
Overall, you must weigh the pros and cons. If your site gets thousands of page views a month, ads are an amazing way to make passive income.
A sponsored post is where a company or brand pays you money to write about their product.
There are 2 main ways to find sponsored content opportunities:
- Join a blog network where you can apply for campaigns — Sign up for collaborative blogger groups like IZEA, SHE Media, Linqia, and Social Fabric. If you have 10,000 page views a month, you can join most of these networks and apply for the campaigns you like.
- Work directly with a brand – Once you have an established website, brands will naturally start reaching out to you for sponsored post opportunities.
Start a membership site
Membership sites give members access to exclusive content. When a customer pays for a subscription, they’ll be able to log into an online members area to access the products at their convenience.
Through a membership site, you can offer the following:
- Premium content such as articles and reports
- Industry insights and trends relevant to your market
- Curated content such as daily discounts or coupons
- Digital products
You can also run a private mastermind group to help members solve problems through peer to peer mentoring.
Right now, I run a private ecommerce membership course with WordPress and a free plugin called S2Member.
It doesn’t cost much money to run a membership site. You just need to attract the right clientele.
Over to you
Overall, you don’t need a lot of money to create multiple streams of income online. Even with zero upfront costs, you can launch a sustainable side hustle that can potentially replace your day job salary.
In addition, every income stream you create will build upon itself.
For example, an Amazon affiliate store or a POD business allows you to test the market before you spend money on developing your own private label products. And in the process, you will create an audience of buyers.
As you gain experience running your side hustle, you will acquire new skills that you can teach others with an online course.
And while you make money from your various side hustles, you can create a blog to drive more traffic to all of your businesses.
But before you think about creating multiple streams of income, just start with one for now and follow through. Good luck!
Read Next: How to Make Money from Home: 35 Viable Ways
