While money can’t buy happiness, there’s a saying that it’s more comfortable to cry in a Ferarri than in a Fiat Uno. In this article, I’m going to go through 4 ways that I have personally used to make money from home. They all work, but the key thing is the first dollar you earn then when you get to a dollar ever day and then … well you get the idea. This is like gold, because you prove it to yourself.
There are heaps of ways to make money from home. In this article I cover the following ways each proven and each with tips for how you can do the same:
Affiliate Marketing
Online Business
Forex Trading
Online Poker
Why make money from home?
More Money – Yes, having enough money can make a world of difference to your freedom, the amount of time you have available to spend with the people you care about and to do the things that you love doing. Having a second income from home can make a huge difference, and anything you can do at home to make money is great because you can more easily easily fit it in around your other commitments.
More Options – The cool thing is that once you know how to make money for yourself, you can be much less concerned about what the economy is doing at a particular point in time or how well your job is going, what is happening with the unemployment rate or inflation because you start to stand more surely on your own 2 feet.
More Skills – Even if you have a job, learning about making money from home is a skill that is highly transferable. More and more people are learning how to make money from home, which is something that has become much easier now through the advance of technology and the internet, even though fewer people (percentage wise) are actually doing it.
More Impact – In the online business section below, you will see that as an individual in the 21st century, you have the power of reaching literally millions of people all around the world through your computer and internet connection. You don’t need staff, fancy equipment or a physical building to sell thousands of dollars worth of products or services to people.
How To Make Money From Home: Affiliate marketing
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is the selling of other people’s products or services for a commission. It’s just like being a rep for a company and being out on the road all day to get leads, except affiliate marketing is all online which is why it’s such a good way how to make money from home.
You can buy pretty much anything you want online and pretty much all of these things offer affiliate programs. This means you can sign up as an affiliate, get a unique tracking link and start promoting that link to as many people as possible. When you make a sale through your link, you’re automatically credited for that sale.
Is it safe and do you get paid? Many people who have never heard of making money on the internet think that affiliate marketing is a scam and you’ll never get paid. That’s not true at all. Affiliate marketing accurately tracks your visitors and sales, and I’ve never had problems with an affiliate program not paying me the commissions I’m due. I get commission checques sent to my mailbox ever 2 weeks.
Want proof?
The main concept behind successful affiliate marketing is to find a “hungry” niche, a popular product with a good affiliate program to sell to that niche, and then promoting your affiliate link to as many people as possible.
If you’re creative there are endless ways to promote your affiliate links online. You can create websites around your affiliate product and direct visitors from search engines or paid adverts to that website. You can add your affiliate link in your email. You can put your affiliate link in your signature and post on forums, message boards and websites. You can create videos on Youtube and add your affiliate link at the end of the video.
Pros Of Affiliate Marketing
1- Affiliate marketing allows you to work without a boss or employees. If you do need a helping hand, it’s very easy to outsource various tasks to one of the thousands of freelancers looking for odd jobs online.
2- Affiliate marketing allows you to work from anywhere with a computer and internet access. This means you can work at any hour you choose, whether it be midday or midnight, a normal Monday or on Christmas day.
3- With affiliate marketing you don’t have to create products, deal with customer service or do any shipping or packaging. All you do is match the product you’re promoting with someone who needs that product, and you get your commission.
4- Affiliate marketing is scalable and can be automated. It’s scalable because there is no limit to your earnings. The more sites you create and the more people you promote to, the more money you will make. It can be automated because once you have a profitable site set up that’s getting free constant traffic from search engines, the commission you make from sales literally happens automatically. You can then use this money to build more sites or expand, which in turn increases your income, which you can then use to expand further.
5- You don’t need any qualifications for affiliate marketing and it’s something that you can learn very easily.
Cons Of Affiliate Marketing
There are only two downsides to affiliate marketing that you should know about:
1- When someone refunds a purchase, you lose your commission. Usually refund rates are pretty low and negligible but if you promote a low-quality product you could experience much more refunds and thus loss of commissions.
2- The competition is fierce. There is of course always room for hard-working and persistent people to make money with affiliate marketing but you definitely can’t expect to work for a few hours and start making money.
Want To Start making Money From Home With Affiliate Marketing?
Getting started with affiliate marketing is rather easy. Think of a niche where people would be likely to spend money on a solution (e.g. how to lose weight, how to save a relationship, etc.) and type “your niche + affiliate program” into Google search (e.g. how to lose weight affiliate program).
You’ll be given an endless list of products related to your niche with affiliate programs, and you can simply go and sign up to get your unique affiliate link to promote that product and start making sales.
From there it’s just a matter of getting as many targeted people to click on your affiliate link as possible. You do this trough email, websites, social media, videos, articles and whatever other creative ways you can come up with to connect your prospects with the product you’re promoting as an affiliate.
If you want to get started with affiliate marketing as a way how to make money from home, read this article I wrote called affiliate marketing for beginners and check out this course that includes everything you need to know about getting started with affiliate marketing.
How To Make Money From Home: Online Business
What Is An Online Business?
While the term ‘online business’ may sound very complex, it is in fact rather simple:
An online business is simply a method of making money online and is usually done through one or multiple websites and blogs.
I consider this blog UpgradeReality my own online business. It makes me over $1000 per month through sales of various products and services that I’m either an affiliate for or that I’ve personally created. I also make money with my online business through selling advertising space on various pages throughout my blog.
Proof?
For specific steps on how to start your own online business you should refer to my free tutorial here.
Pros Of An Online Business
There are many reasons why an online business is the ideal way to make money from home. Allow me to list them below:
1- An online business allows you to work without a boss or employees. If you do need a helping hand, it’s very easy to outsource various tasks to one of the thousands of freelancers looking for odd jobs online.
2- An online business allows you to work from anywhere with a computer and internet access. This means you can work at any hour you choose, whether it be midday or midnight, a normal Monday or on Christmas day.
3- An online business can be automated and leveraged. This means that once you set up your online business and your sales funnels, the money will come in with virtually no hard work. And once you’re at this level, you can very easily increase your income just by getting more leads into your sales funnel.
4- On online business is very easy to combine with your passions and interests. This means your business will be based around the things that you love doing, which benefits you not only by keeping you motivated and having your energy shine through in your work, it also allows you to really enjoy ‘working’.
5- An online business costs very little to set up and maintain. You can literally get started with less than $100 and even when you get bigger, your expenses are not likely to be more than a few hundred dollars per month.
Cons Of An Online Business
The cons of an online business are very similar to the cons of a brick and mortar business. As with any business, there is some risk involved that you should be aware of, but the cons of an online business are very small.
An online business is directly related to the amount of work you put in. If you don’t put in enough time or effort, your business will likely not make you money.
Depending on your online business model, you may be very dependent on certain factors and if those factors disappear your whole business could shut down. For example if your business relies on Google rankings for your leads, your business could be severely crippled should those rankings disappear.
Some people need to mentally and physically to make money from home because there are distractions which might make it hard to focus.
How To Start Your Own Online Business
For specific steps on how to start your own online business you should refer to my free tutorial here.
The most important aspects of your own online business are:
1- The Niche
You need to target a niche where the people want or need to buy items or services. If you choose a niche where people only like window-shopping or want freebies, your business is doomed to fail from the start.
An example of a niche where people spend would be hobby niches. Anyone with a hobby like surfing, woodworking or building car models is constantly going to spend money on that hobby and thus you’ll be able to make money recommending products related to the hobby or niche your business is about.
An example of a niche where people are likely to only want freebies or ‘look around’ is something like tattoos. I know this because I personally built many sites around tattoos and tattoo designs that were getting thousands of visitors per day but I just couldn’t get them to buy. I did sell the odd tattoo design membership, but the conversion rates were terrible.
Any niche where people prefer to look around or get freebies is going to doom your business to failure before you even start, so be very sure to do your research before you begin.
2- Enough Knowledge Or Ideas To Create Content
It’s crucial to your online business success that you produce content that will teach or entertain people. This means that you need to know enough about your niche to create dozens if not hundreds of articles over the space of a few years.
You need to come across as an expert and authority in your niche. This will greatly help you to earn the trust of your visitors and readers and get them to convert into subscribers or buyers of your recommendations.
3- Knowing How You’re Going To Make Money
Before you start building your online business, you need to know how you’re going to make money with it. Step 1 of choosing the correct niche plays a big role in how you’re going to make money from your online business.
You also need to have an idea of the kinds of products available in your niche. Are you going to be an affiliate for any of these products? Or are you going to create your own products and sell them to your visitors?
An online business does not necessarily need to be a blog like Upgradereality.com is. You could create a website that is an e-store, selling many different things online. You could also build a site that functions as a local directory for small businesses in your area (doctors, lawyers, plumbers etc.), get top rankings for the site and ask a monthly listing fee to all business on that site.
Do You Want To Make Money From Home With Online Business?
There are literally dozens of different models you could follow for your online business. I have good success with the model I’m following with this blog Upgrade Reality, and if you want to learn how my model works, read this free turorial.
How To Make Money From Home: Forex Trading
What Is Forex Trading?
Forex is short for foreign exchange. Thus, forex trading is the buying and selling of different currencies to take advantage of the fluctuations in exchange rates between those different currencies.
There are dozens of currencies from countries all over the world like the U.S. dollar, the Euro, the Japanese Yen, the Chinese Yuan etc. Each of these currencies has a conversion value in another currency, for example 1 Euro is worth 1.30 U.S. Dollars.
However, this conversion value fluctuates all the time depending on various factors ranging from economic output of the country to political actions to global events like natural disasters, wars or disease.
As a forex trader you research and analyze various currencies to determine a profitable price level to buy and sell, aiming to take advantage of these conversion value fluctuations. Going back to the example of 1 Euro being equal to 1.30 U.S. Dollars, if you were to buy Euro’s at this price and the conversion value goes up to 1 Euro being equal to 1.40 U.S. Dollars, then you make money.
So far so good?
Okay, so now you may be wondering how on earth you could analyze currencies and determine profitable price levels to buy and sell? Especially if you have no knowledge, qualifications or experience with economics or forex.
Don’t worry. You don’t need to have any knowledge, qualifications or experience with economics or forex to become a profitable forex trader. All you need is an open mind and the desire to learn.
Thousands of forex traders all around the world (myself included) trade the forex markets based on a principle called Technical Analysis. Technical analysis is the term given to the study of the price action of markets, in this case the forex markets.
I mentioned the constant fluctuations of currencies earlier. These fluctuations get recorded by the split second, every single day of the year. As a forex trader you have access to all the data of the fluctuations of currencies, going back as far as 30 years ago.
Through your forex trading software, you’re able to pull this data up into various types of charts of all time-frames. For example, you’re able to take the data and put it into a chart that’s updated by the minute, or a chart that’s updated by the hour, day, week or even month.
Technical analysis is based on rules, indicators and patterns that have high probability outcomes, meaning that when a certain setup appears on your chart, it’s very likely (70%+ of the time) that the value of a currency will move in a certain direction (up or down).
In other words, you don’t need to be able to predict the future to make money from home trading forex, all you need to do is be able to recognize high-probability patterns and setups and buy or sell based on that. If on top of that you only risk 5% of your trading account on a single trade, there’s no doubt that you’ll be able to make great money from home as a forex trader.
If you’re interested in forex trading after what you’ve read so far, you can read more in these tutorials I’ve written:
An Introduction To Online Forex Trading
Winning Online Forex Trading Techniques
Opening Your Online Forex Trading Account
Pros Of Forex Trading
I personally love forex trading as a way how to make money from home and here are the reasons why:
1- Just like with an online business, forex trading allows you to work without a boss or employees. You make all your own decisions and you do all your own analysis.
2- Forex trading allows you to work from anywhere with a computer and internet access. This means you can work at any hour you choose, whether it be midday or midnight, a normal Monday or on Christmas day. The forex markets are only open 5 days per week which allows you to have a normal weekend without stress or needing to work.
3- Forex trading is based on a system. It’s about patterns, rules and setups. This means that there is no luck involved and that you can follow a system that will get you results time after time. No guessing and no trial-and-error.
4- With forex trading you have unlimited earning potential. Unlike a job that pays a fixed monthly salary, when you make money from home as a forex trader you are in control of your own paycheck, depending on how well you trade and how much time you put in. This allows the potential of building your trading account up to tens of thousands of dollars within a matter of months.
5- It’s challenging and fun. Personally I love the challenge of trying to profit from the forex markets and using my brain to earn my money.
Cons Of Forex Trading
There are unfortunately a few downsides if you want to make money from home trading forex.
1- Your money is always at risk. You will have losing trades and sometimes you’ll have periods where you only lose money. This is not a problem if you have strict rules about how much money you risk per trade, but the emotional aspect of losing money is not something that everyone can handle.
2- As I said above, losing money is not a problem if you have strict rules of how much you risk per trade (I suggest no more than 5% of your account per trade). However, this means that you need to be very disciplined to stick to those risk rules at all times, otherwise you’ll end up losing a lot of money and you won’t be a profitable forex trader over the long run.
If you feel you can handle losing money as part of being a profitable forex trader and if you feel you’re disciplined enough to stick to your own rules at all times, then forex trading can be a fantastic way for you how to make money from home.
Do You Want To Make Money From Home Trading Forex?
Getting started with forex trading is very easy.
First you need to learn technical analysis and I highly recommend these two books:
Click Here
Click Here
Then you need to open a trading account. I personally use eToro and they’re great because you can first open a practice account with a virtual $50,000 so you can learn to trade without risking your own money. Open your practice account here.
And the you can start trading and making money from home as a forex trader.
I really recommend you read these forex trading tutorials I’ve written:
An Introduction To Online Forex Trading
Winning Online Forex Trading Techniques
Opening Your Online Forex Trading Account
How To Make Money From Home: Online Poker
What Is Online Poker?
Poker is an age-old card game that people have been betting money with for centuries. Contrary to what most people think, poker is a game of skill and not luck.
In the game of poker you can have a significant edge over your opponent through mathematics. It’s a thinking game with statistics and odds, and this can be verified by going to a book store and picking up one of the dozens of books about the theory behind poker.
Poker used to be played only in bars and casino’s like silver sands casino and silversands casino, but through technology and the internet it’s possible to play poker online. Online poker has literally exploded in the last decade, with millions of people from all around the world busy playing every minute of every day.
Before I continue, I can tell about 2 people I personally know who turned less than $100 into hundreds of thousands of dollars playing online poker, in a matter of a few years. One of these guys is among my best friends. He was studying actuarial science at university and started playing online poker with a free $50 that a poker site offered as incentive to start playing. He got really into the game, read dozens of books about mathematics and the theory of poker, and played the game for hours every day. Within 2 years he had turned that free $50 into hundreds of thousands of dollars and now, many years later he’s still traveling the world from the money he made through online poker.
Another such example is Henri Juntilla. He also started playing online poker at a young age with a minimal amount (less than $50) and he turned it into a small fortune.
I must say that examples like these are exceptions, rather than the norm and both these guys have stopped playing poker and focus on online business. However, it’s very possible to make a few thousand dollars a month from online poker, which gives you the time and freedom to focus your energy on doing things you love or spending time with people you care about.
Pros Of Online Poker
There are many reasons why online poker is a great way how to make money from home. Let me list them:
1- Just like with an online business and forex trading, online poker allows you to work without a boss or employees. You make all your own decisions and your are a one-man (or woman) entitity.
2- Online poker allows you to work from anywhere with a computer and internet access. This means you can work at any hour you choose, whether it be midday or midnight, a normal Monday or on Christmas day. At any time there are hundreds of thousands of poker players online that you can play against.
3- There is no limit to your earnings. If you play better or put in more hours, you’ll probably make more money.
4- Your earnings increase exponentially. As your poker account bankroll grows, so do your monthly profits. The bigger your bankroll, the higher the stakes you can play at and the more you can win.
5- Poker is a game of strategy and skill. Luck does not play a deciding factor in whether you’re a profitable poker player over the long run.
Cons Of Online Poker
There are also downsides to online poker as a way to make money from home:
1- Just like with forex trading, online poker requires strict discipline and money management in order to be profitable over the long run. You need to set limits for yourself and stick to those limits religiously. You need to play well within your bankroll and risk only a small percentage of that bankroll per session or per day that you play. If you don’t have this discipline, you’re going to end up losing money.
2- Losing money goes hand-in-hand with online poker. It’s inevitable that you will lose money while playing, and this can have a big effect on you mentally and emotionally. Losing money can make you so angry that you forget about your rules and start playing bigger to get back what you lost, and then you lose much more (this is called tilting). If you’re not capable of dealing with the swings of winning and losing money regularly, online poker is not for you.
3- If you have an addictive personality or you think that you can become addicted to something easily, online poker is not for you. There are many sad stories about people becoming addicted to poker and gambling and they end up losing everything they have.
However, if you’re the kind of person who can detach yourself from your emotions and if you’re disciplined, then online poker may be a fantastic way how to make money from home.
Want To Start Making Money From Home With Online Poker?
I strongly suggest you learn the theory behind poker first, and this is a great book:
Click Here To Order on Amazon
and then it’s just a matter of signing up with an online poker site and starting to play. I’ve managed to set up a 100% bonus up to $500 on your first deposit with Partypoker. I’d suggest depositing no more than $50 (and get $50 bonus) so that you have minimal risk and potentially tens of thousands of dollars to gain. Click the link below to take advantage of the 100% welcome bonus!
To Sum Up The 4 Ways How To Make Money From Home
These are 4 proven ways that you can follow to make money from home (or anywhere else in the world for that matter). There are some risks involved, but there are also enormous benefits and rewards to be reaped.
If you’re looking to supplement your income or even replace your income by working from home in your spare time, I highly recommend the 4 ways how to make money from home that I listed in this article.
Let me sum them up again:
1- Affiliate Marketing.
Definition: Selling people’s products or services and receiving commission for every sale.
Get started here: affiliate marketing for beginners
2- Online Business
Definition: An online presence (site or blog) that allows you to sell products or services.
Get started here: read this free turorial
3- Forex Trading
Definition: Buying or selling different currencies to profit from conversion value fluctuations.
Get started here:
An Introduction To Online Forex Trading
Winning Online Forex Trading Techniques
Opening Your Online Forex Trading Account
4- Online Poker
Definition: Playing the game of poker online based on mathematical and statistical rules to profit long-term.
Get started here: Read the book The Theory of Poker
So now you know how to make money from home and that it is really possible. You can do it, just make a start. You might also like to check out our Earn Money Online Article Series
The post 4 Proven Ways How To Make Money From Home appeared first on UpgradeReality.