4 Basic Strategies For Earning Money Online

There has been quite a huge interest in how to earn money online for some time now. It appears so many people are searching for a way or two of earning income from the internet. My previous post on some realistic ways to earn money online has received lots of views, and continues to receive more, largely from organic search channels.

It’s not so difficult to understand why the internet is getting so much interest in ways to earn money from the internet this time. We can explain the increase we see now from three points: normal exploration, theory of diffusion of technology, and from the economic impacts of COVID-19.

People generally have always explored new ways of earning money, and some have been exploring online for business and money-making opportunities. Then in places like Africa where we’re observing expansion in mobile internet infrastructure, populations are increasingly gaining access to the internet.

Young people living in these places have learned how others are earning money on the internet, and are exploring ways they can also earn money from the internet. This phenomenon is explained by the theory of diffusion of technology. It explains the adoption of new a technology or a new idea over time.

First, there are innovators, then early adopters, early majority, late majority, and finally, laggards. So the increasing interest we in ways of earning money online may just be a normal case of diffusion of technology.

Today, is there any economy in the world today that has not been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic? Everyday we read, watch and hear in the news about the adverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on nations and economies globally. Economic production and supply chains have been disrupted by the disease and by some measures such as lockdowns instituted by countries in response the pandemic.

We’ve seen how businesses have lost customers and demand for their products, and we’ve seen those that have had their production disrupted because they cannot get inputs. Employees have lost their jobs and incomes. Naturally persons who have seen their sources of income threatened or gone would look for other means of earning incomes, and the internet is a possible place they are turning to. So, those are three factors we can say are driving the search for means of earning money online.

In this post, we shall focus on offering something online and earning money from that only, because this approach should make it easy for readers to understand the stuff in here. We know there’s so much stuff to learn on the subject but definitely can’t say all in one post, so we shall still focus on the basics, just to give you the overview you may need as you explore ways of earning money online.

Now, persons who earn money legitimately online do a number of things very well. You must be able to do same if you desire to succeed at making money online as they do.

1. Offer a product

You definitely must offer something, a product (tangible or intangible) to a market in exchange for the money.

2. Serve a Market

You should serve a defined target market, including a decision on whether you should serve a consumer market, a business market or both. You have to get a clear picture of who your customers are and what they want, and design your product to satisfy the want.

3. Persuade others to donate financially

Another way of earning money online is to persuade others to donate financially to a cause or towards executing a project. If there’s any cause you’re passionate about and investing into, (environment, health services for vulnerable people, a sport, etc.) you can persuade others to support that cause by donating financially or investing in your projects.

4. Use a platform that best supports your product offering

You should use the platform that best supports and delivers your product to the target market most efficiently.

What product do you offer?

Let’s look at what a product is. Philip Kottler, in his phenomenal books on Marketing Management, defines a product as “Anything that can be offered to a market to satisfy a want or need.” From this definition we can say that a product can be anything including physical goods you can touch or hold, services, properties, places, persons, events, information, experiences, ideas, and anything you can think of.

This blog Labone Express, for example, sells advertising space to advertisers just like a regular magazine. We create and serve quality content that our readers and audience love and monetise them. Advertisers are attracted to our audience and are willing to pay to place ads on our pages for readers to see and react to in a certain way.

In a similar fashion, YouTubers create content to share on the video sharing platform and monetise them, and earn money from Adsense, Google’s advertising/ content programme. A wide variety of content you find on YouTube are created by young, intelligent hard-working people with the objective of making money online. They create and maintain their channels by uploading fresh content, so the money may keep coming in. A lot of the music videos you watch on YouTube are created just for that purpose—to earn money on YouTube.

Celebrities and social media influencers who successfully cultivate large populations of followers on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter are paid by businesses/advertisers to use or give testimonials of their products. Do you know that some of the flashy travel photos Ghanaian celebrities, especially the ladies, post on Instagram are sponsored travels? Some do incredible things to generate buzz and attention so they can attract more followers and then improve their earning potentials from advertisers. You can check out some celebrities you know on Instagram.

Besides content monetisations, some other persons offer products music for streaming and/or download. Software, fashion, handicrafts, etc are some of the tangible goods that individuals and groups offer online, on personal blogs, websites social media pages or through advanced product/industry-specific e-commerce platforms, like Amazon, Ebay, Shopify, etc.

Which market do you serve?

One of the success factors in selling profitably is the sellers depth of knowledge of the target market and consumers and what consumers want. What professional marketing executives do is market segmentation and targeting. To succeed in earning money online, you should define who constitute your market and conducting research to understand what they demand and how best you can supply a product to satisfy that demand.

Which platform best supports your product offering?

Finally, you have to use a platform that best delivers your product to the target market segment and your consumers. What’s your product? What are you offering? Which platform works best for the product you have?

The ideas we’ve shared here should help to excite and shape your brainstorming and idea generation as you desire to begin earning money online. We shall share some more ideas in subsequent posts on payment channels you might need.

I wish you all the best in your preparations.