How to Make Money on the Internet – The Only Strategy You Need6 min read

Create good content consistently and the world will pay you back. That’s it. However, what content do you create? Where should you put this content? And how do you actually start getting paid for this content? In this post, I’ll tell you how I started making money on the internet, and what I would do if I was starting all over again, from scratch.

What Content to Make

I want to make it clear, however, that you won’t be getting paid for a long time. There are millions of people trying to cash in on the internet. As Ali Abdaal says, you have to provide value and expect nothing in return (for a while).

Here is how I thought about creating my content, I answered three questions:

• What am I “known” for?
• What do I find easy that most people find hard?
• What is my advantage, my unique insight?

I would come up with five answers for each question, and then narrow it down to a final three. Then, I also asked myself the question, what seems fun to do? What would I want to learn about from me? What kind of stuff would I click on?

I came to the answer of studying and medicine. Medicine was my unique advantage, and I wanted to niche it up as much as possible, so I began talking about something where there was a gap, where there wasn’t enough information. I talked about using Anki, a flashcard application, for medical school.

Some other ideas I had but didn’t pursue:

• Photography
• Technology such as iPhone reviews
• Vlogging every day

Answer those questions, pick something that you think would be fun, and let’s go to the next step.

Where to Put Your Content

I decided to put my content on YouTube, a website, a newsletter, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Youtube was the most successful, then my website, then the newsletter, then, much below those, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

I would definitely still put your content out on all of the above places, or at least have linked accounts there, but I would focus on one thing. One place. Give that one place everything you got. I think YouTube, or a website, is the best choice. Google is the first biggest search engine (for your website) and YouTube is the second largest search engine (for your channel).

If you want to get fancy, you can start putting out your content, or pieces of your content on those other places such as Twitter and Instagram.

If I had the time I would definitely be doing an Instagram post every week and at least one tweetstorm a month.

What I currently do is script each of my YouTube videos on these website posts, that way, I am creating two pieces of content in one go; the ol’ two birds one stone.

So, if I were starting again, I would pick YouTube or a website and start posting once a week.

If it were a website I would put at least 10 hours a week into each post, when I first started on YouTube, each video took about 20 hours of work. You are no one, no one knows you or your content. You have to be so good the internet can’t ignore you, otherwise, sorry to say, but they will ignore you. Even if your content is in the top 0.00001% in the world, in the beginning, still, no one will notice. You need to build momentum, you need a backlog of good content, you need to build trust on the internet.

Build trust, build an audience, build some true fans, then you can start thinking about getting paid.

Get Paid

YouTube AdSense isn’t the end all be all for earning money from YouTube. The amazing thing about YouTube is it’s a platform to put yourself out there. If you deliver value, consistently the world will pay you back. As your audience grows, you are building an audience that follows you. Many of these followers will follow you beyond YouTube. For example, I am followed on my:

• Website
• Newsletter
• Instagram
• Twitter

What this expanded following does is it allows you to generate income through other sources. Now I am not generating anything comparable to YouTube from other sources yet, but most seasoned YouTubers generate most of their income from places other than YouTube’s Adsense.

Ali Abdaal released his yearly income for 2020 and he made over $1 Million dollars, with only 20% of it being from YouTube Adsense. He made the rest of his money from his online course, sponsorships, and affiliate marketing.

In one of my recent posts I outlined where I made my money from on the internet, I made $40,000 after my first year on the internet:

• Adsense – $25,000
• Sponsorships – $10,000
• Affiliates – $5,000

So, here are some places where you can start making money on the internet after you’ve completed the first two jobs of coming up with content and posting it, for a while.

• Affiliate Marketing (places like Clickbank, Amazon Affiliates, CJ) – Every time someone buys something after using your link you make a percentage.
  • I’ve made about $10,000 total from Affiliates in the past 10 months.
• Sponsorships – You talk about or feature an advertisement and receive a set amount.
  • I can’t reveal my exact amount, but if you took the average creator and how much they make per sponsorship, they would make about ~$2,500 per video sponsorship, and I’ve had about 8 sponsorships at this time. I think you can do the math.
• Create or Sell something else
  • Freelance your skills on UpWork
  • Sell information or a Course – Ali Abdaal’s first round of a YouTuber course made $300,000. I plan to release a course soon on editing and how I record my videos.
  • Write a Book or Ebook – Like James Clear’s Atomic Habits (He started off as a blogger)
  • Subscription Website or Email – Like Nat Eliason Membership Community

Information is the best thing to sell. It is scalable, rapidly deliverable, and can be unique to you. If Casey Neistat and Joe Schmo released a vlogging pdf guide, and they were exactly the same, I would buy it from Casey Neistat because I know and trust him. I want to buy from Casey Neistat, not from Joe Schmo.

Another point, I want to be able to make content for a long-time, I don’t want to be a flash in the pan. This whole post will not be about making a quick buck, if you want to do that you could try a lemonade stand, dropshipping, or Tao Lopez’s most recent course, and I’m not sure how beneficial any of those things are. There will be much more value to yourself, and the internet, if you are in this for the long run.

I plan to expand my getting paid category to an internet course on editing and making YouTube videos in the near future.

Overall I’ve hope you’ve found this helpful, thanks for reading and start posting!

-Zach