7 Lucrative Online Jobs That Can Skyrocket Your Income Helping people make money online is one of the best ways to make money online yourself.
By R.L. Adams Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
The digital revolution is in full swing. This behemoth that we call the internet has now made its way into even the most remote destinations on earth. Few place remain out of reach. We have access to the world's information at our fingertips, enabling us to find online jobs and remote work in nearly every sector and business regardless where we live.
Considering our vast shift to all things digital, it's no wonder so much employment is available via the internet. The burgeoning stay-at-home community is determined to create their own schedules and lifestyle businesses. They don't want to work in a stuffy cubicle in a zeal-zapping corporate office somewhere.
The trick rests in understanding which of these making money online opportunities is going to present the biggest upside with the least risk. Now, in the online world, just as it is in the real world, the bigger the risk, the greater the reward. You can't expect to have something for nothing. Clearly, that much is true. But knowing which web-based position will make or break your income.
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Top paying online jobs.
Depending on your skill set, you could easily supplement your income with an online job in a number of areas. In our so-called gig economy, it's fairly easy to leverage existing apps like Fiverr, Uber and PostMates that pay you to provide a service to a vast group of people. But how about when you're searching for something more substantial? Which online jobs will pay you the biggest amount of money for the work you'll put in?
Depending on your level of skill and expertise, there are a wide range of options that extend from business services to direct-to-consumer work. As the internet grows, it gets more complex and convoluted. Certain fundamental marketing concepts, while easy to understand, have become incredibly difficult to implement online. We're talking about increased visibility, more leads and sales, things that businesses have cared about for ages.
If you know what you're doing, the following seven online jobs can produce substantial incomes.
Related: Fiverr Introduces Service That Lets You Hire the Guy Behind F-ckJerry
1. Social Media Marketing Manager
Social media can't be ignored. It's quickly becoming one of the most important mediums for connecting and selling anything. In fact, the world's most successful entrepreneurs widely embrace platforms like Facebook and Instagram to cultivate a sense of community and grow their audience.
It's a great way to put a face to a name. And businesses know the importance of it as well. But not all of them have the skill set to leverage social media the right way. Most business owners are so busy trying to build their businesses that they look for outside help with their social media.
If you have skills in this department, this is an easy way to make money online no matter where you are in the world. You could easily make thousands of dollars per month from one client as a social media manager. And, depending on how well you can drive traffic (and influence sales), your reputation and your pay can substantially rise from there.
Related: 10 Important Skills Your Social Media Manager Needs in 2017
2. SEO Specialist
SEO and the ability to rank keywords in highly-competitive niches is a skill that very few possess. However, for those that can develop this type of skill, a potential five or six-figure-per-month income awaits. The truth is that companies will pay an exorbitant amount of money to rank organically at the top of Google's SERPs.
However, be prepared to grind. Ranking at the top is no easy feat. That's especially true for some of the most competitive keywords on the planet. Yet, with a focus on insatiable content that adds a tremendous amount of value, and doing things the right way without employing shady tactics that include PBNs and link schemes that could eventually get you banned, you'll succeed.
The best part? This job can be done online from anywhere in the world. No matter where you live or call home, people are always looking for organic search traffic. This is one of the most lucrative skills that you can develop so find a good course and learn SEO the right way.
Related: 10 Questions to Ask When Hiring an SEO Consultant
3. PPC Ad Manager
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a massive industry. It can also be incredibly complex when dealing with fine-tuning the right audience, installing pixels for re-targeting ads, and discovering other advanced methods for reaching the right people at the right time.
There are companies dedicated to this specific task alone. Whether you run this as an online agency or as a solopreneur, becoming a PPC ad manager can pay well. You can collect anywhere from 10-20 percent of the ad costs. If your ads are effective, you can expect to make a significant profit.
If you're serious about this, learn Facebook's Ad Platform and Google's. There is free training out there and you won't have to pay for actual courses, but some of the paid courses might offer information and insights that you can't find for free elsewhere.
Related: 10 Steps to Setting Up a Killer Facebook Ad Campaign
4. Web Developer
Web development is a job often performed online that pays a significant income. It's not reliant on location or any other factor. it simply boils down to skill and hustle. As a software engineer, I have spent endless hours debugging code. It's often frustrating. Unless you love what you're doing, it could seem like grunt work. But the pay is incredible.
Recently, this industry has grown considerably and there's been a lot of competition thanks to websites like Upwork that bring together developers from around the world. However, quality still trumps quantity. If you're good at web development, or you're simply looking to learn it, you could proverbially rake it in with the right work from the right clients.
If you're looking to learn web development, use a platform like Udemy to find a good course and learn it extensively. In the beginning, if you have to, take some low-paying jobs to build up a track record and gather some raving reviews, which will enable you to take on higher-paying clients later on.
Related: Want to Know Which Small Businesses Are Booming? Ask Web Developers and Designers.
5. Blogging
You can always start a blog and enjoy a location-independent lifestyle. Blogging is can be a source of passive income if you do it correctly. And if you're serious about selling something, then it's also a terrific point of entry for your sales funnels.
While starting up your blog isn't too difficult, growing it is unless you know the precise steps to take. And while there are several avenues for profit from blogging, the biggest and best is to sell relevant digital products to your audience. The trick here is to build your blog the right way if you want to generate a significant income.
Blogs don't make substantial money from advertising unless they have hundreds of thousands or millions of visitors per day. Instead, they turn to things like affiliate marketing, digital products, email marketing, courses and premium content in the form of member's areas.
Related: How to Start a Blog and Make Money Online
6. Webinar Hosting
Jason Fladlien's $100 million career in webinar hosting is a true testament to what can be done when you master the art of selling in this medium. Daniel Waas, Director of Marketing for LogMeIn, the parent company of GoToWebinar, which is the largest webinar platform in the world, says that the company has over 55,000 active customers and hosts over 2.7 million webinars every single year.
That's a true testament to the selling power of webinars. The beauty? You'll never even need to sell your own products. You could easily sell products, services and information on webinars as an affiliate as long as you have a list and can provide some significant bonuses that will make the appeal of purchasing from you greater.
There are proven scripts for webinars that work to sell virtually anything. However, this is a great platform for selling high-ticket digital products. If you have some expertise in a particular area, you could easily create a digital product and peddle it through webinars no matter where in the world you're living.
Related: 7 Tips for Hosting an Incredibly Profitable Webinar
7. Website Flipping
One massive sector online that's growing is website flipping. You can use sites like Deal Flow Brokerage and Flippa, which were founded by Matt Mickiewicz and Mark Harbottle, the same founders who created the wildly popular graphic design marketplace called 99designs, are great resources for flipping websites.
This industry has grown substantially in recent years, and knowing how to flip websites really is the key to making money with this job online. Buying the right website and make the right changes to it, with small tweaks that will boost traffic and revenue, can amount to a significant income when the website is flipped.
Joseph Carroll, director of Websites, says that valuations are based on net income and ranges on 1x to 3x annual gross revenues and 12x to 36x monthly net. If you know what you're looking for, and exactly how to analyze the numbers, the profit windfall could be substantial.
