The digital world is enormous and beautiful and offers endless opportunities for growth. If you’re an entrepreneur or a small business owner and looking for additional income sources that don’t take too much time and will allow you to continue doing what you do best, here are a few ways to earn more money online.
Start your Patreon
Patreon is a website that allows creators and experts to share their art, useful tips or whatever they decide to share with ‘patrons’ – people, who pay a monthly fee to see those regular updates. You can set up different ‘tiers’ for your patrons, which are basically the different levels of access – the more they pay, the more special offers and exclusive things they will receive from you. For example, for $1 per month, you can offer access to just one post, for $5 per month patrons receive access to all your digital updates and for $10 per month they also receive a personal postcard from you four times per year.
Doesn’t sound like a lot? Well, we’ll let you know that the top Patreon account – True Crime Obsessed podcast – currently has almost 50,000 patrons, earning anywhere from $133,000 to $369,000 per month! The top earning account in Crafts & DYI section has over 2,000 patrons and earns between $7,000 to $21,000 per month. Not too bad for an additional source of income, right?
As an artist or creator, you can use this space to share something exclusive, something people won’t be able to get from you for free – be it extra chapters that didn’t make it into your book, an amazing artwork they won’t see at any expos or on your website, even funny memes that will keep your followers entertained exclusively on Patreon. Whatever it is that you’re talented in – if you’re ready to create just a little bit more of it, you should start your Patreon journey right now.
As an entrepreneur or a small business owner, you’re definitely an expert in your niche. Are you a great gardener? Do you know how to keep pets happy and healthy? How to create a couture dress for $100, paint a masterpiece or write an ‘About me’ page that will have new clients running towards you? Start sharing your tips and tricks, templates and other useful information and files on Patreon!
Sell your merch
Websites like RedBubble or Printful make it possible to create and sell T-shirts, iPhone cases, water bottles and other merchandise without investing in producing and storing them. All you need to do, is create your design, which is a really simple, intuitive process, set up your prices (both websites give you the production cost and you apply your mark-up) and choose shipping options that you find the best. Now sit back and relax. Those businesses will produce and ship the merch themselves whenever someone buys it!
If you use RedBubble, you’ll be able to publish your designs on their website for all their visitors to see, which is a great option for busy entrepreneurs, as you won’t have to invest too much time promoting this new addition to your business.
Websites like Printful only take the pressure off of producing and storing your merchandise. In order to start selling your products, you’ll have to embed them onto your website and rely on your own traffic and promo to sell them.
Add Google Ads banners to your website
If you’re already running a website, why not add a couple of banners to your sidebar? Unlike many platforms that only work with websites that get over 50K page views per month, Google is happy to place their ads regardless of the size of your website. Of course, you won’t make millions on it but it’s a headache-free, easy way to earn some passive income that can go towards covering the digital expenses of your business and, quite probably, will also help your website visitors discover the goods and services they’ve been looking for.
Become a partner on an affiliate website
Instead of trying to sell your goods yourself, you can ask other eager digital gurus to do it for you! All you have to do is register your website with one of the many affiliate platforms online – LikeToKnowIt for fashion brands, S.L.I.C.E for New Zealand traffic, Commission Factory for Asia Pacific traffic or Impact for worldwide traffic. Now OTHER people will be sharing links to your products on their blogs and websites and drive traffic to you. They will be getting a commission from each sale (normally, around 3-10%) and you will be getting new customers that otherwise may never have discovered your business!
