The Best Ways To Make Money For Creators in 2023
Reviewed: Alex Inca
Updated: September 17, 2023
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You want to learn how to make money online? You're on the right page on the internet.
The word creator is used extremely broadly nowadays. That's not a bad thing, but it's important to understand what monetization models make sense for what types of creators. If you're a fitness instructor, you could create an affiliate site, but you might be a better fit to create a YouTube channel where you share work out videos. You would have to learn keyword research, on-site SEO, and how to build backlinks before you earned a single dollar as a fitness instructor blog.
Understanding your strengths in terms of your niche, your platform, and the direction you're interested in moving towards is incredibly important before committing to a monetization approach.
With that in mind, let's jump into the best ways to make money as a creator.
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Affiliate Marketing is the internet's original monetization model. Before the internet even had payment rails and people were afraid to submit their credit information online, 'creators' in the 90's were already making money as affiliate marketers. So it's appropriate that we would start with Affiliate Marketing as our first way to monetization.
Brands give you a link. Anyone who clicks your link and signs up or makes a purchase, you get paid. That's the gist of it. Sounds simple enough, right?
There's thousands of brands you can promote. Here's a list of The Best Affiliate Programs in 2023. But before you think about who you want to promote, consider who you can promote to. Are you building a site on the internet? Are you an influencer? Do you have a newsletter? Do you own your own membership platform or a Facebook Group?
If you fall into any of these categories, affiliate marketing might be a great fit. If you're ready to dive in, you can read our How to Get Started with Affiliate Marketing in 2023.
Monetization through Display Ads is another one of the original monetization models of the internet. For as long as the internet has existed, people have been creating sites and running ads on them; that's what display ads monetization is.
However, making money from display ads is not an easy thing to do. First, you need tens of thousands of monthly visitors to your site. Second, you probably need to be getting these visitors to your site for free, which means they are either coming from Google or from a social network like Facebook or maybe Pinterest. Getting this level of traffic from Google means you're an expert in keyword research and writing great content. If this all sounds like gibberish to you, then you might be an influencer and display ads might not be the right way for your to monetize.
Display and affiliate often go hand in hand. If you can build a site to 100K monthly visitors, you can not only make money from display ads, but may also be able to add affiliate links in your content.
Finally, if you're a creator on YouTube and earn money by being in their creator program where there are ads displayed on your channel, that's display ads as well.
Sponsored Posting is what most people think of when they think of influencer marketing and monetization. How can someone with a 100K followers on Instagram or 1M followers on TikTok make money via brand deals?
The answer is that it depends on how big of a following you have. If you're a Microcreator or if you're a Macrocreator, the level of opportunities and rates you can charge will vary. It will also dictate how easy or hard it is for you to get brand deals. Generally, the larger of a creator you are, the easier it is and brands may start approaching you.
However, if you're earlier in your journey, expect to put in the work to source brand deals. You can read our in-depth guide on Sponsored Posts: How to Get Brand Deals.
User Generated Content (UGC) Creator Jobs are when brands pay a creator to create content without having to post the content on the influencer's social accounts. You can consider it as an offshoot of influencer marketing that works for anyone that is artistically or technically talented but doesn't have a following.
UGC Creator Jobs have become important to brands that run ads on TikTok, Instagram Reels and Snapchat. Brands use these creatives assets to run ads on these platforms and they need to keep testing different value propositions, storylines, creatives, etc. If users keeps seeing the same ad repeatedly, the conversion rate on that specific creative goes down. So, brands constantly need new video assets from creators.
Back in the day, these brands had to hire a creative agency that would charge them thousands or tens of thousands to create a few assets. With everyone having a phone in their pocket and apps like TikTok or CapCut, anyone can create this content for brands. There's even a strong case that videos created by influencers are more authentic and more likely to convert.
There are platforms and way to find these UGC Creator Jobs. There's an entire community around this topic on Twitter even. However, to succeed, you'll want to read our UGC Content Creator Guide. We even include a list of jobs from brands that we know are looking for creators to work with that we regularly update.
The header sums it up: you can sell anything on the internet. This opens a lot of opportunity for creators online. However, it also opens up a lot of confusion.
If you're interested in selling on Amazon, eBay or Etsy, we're not covering that just yet. There's plenty of sites on the internet that go deep on these topics.
However, if you're an influencer and you're interested in creating your own brand, we can help. There are platforms like Fourthwall, Fanjoy, Supliful, Pietra Studio and many more. We reviewed all of these platforms and guide you on which one might be a good fit for you in our Everything You Wanted to Know About Creator Brands series.
Memberships just means creating an exclusive online community of your fans, or bringing people together around a certain topic or niche.
There are many tools that offer the basic functionality of being able to charge someone to join and access exclusive content or membership site. However, the most popular membership platforms include Patreon, Gumroad, Memberful and many more.
If you're interested in building your own membership community, dive into our this guide: Building and Monetizing Your Fans: Memberships.
Newsletter have become extremely popular over the last few years. The rise of newsletters perfectly mirrors the rise of the creator economy. At the same time, the tools to allow anyone to become a newsletter creator have also rapidly evolved.
There are older players like Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor but these are hardly a good fit for most creators or even small businesses. These are effectively ideal for more enterprise companies. Instead, creators should consider ConvertKit or Beehiiv. Both of which are amazing tools for newsletter creators. You can learn about all the Best Newsletter Platforms here.
If you're an influencer with a large following on one of the social networks, if you haven't consider building a newsletter, it's something you should consider. While the social networks can change their algorithms and reduce your reach, if you have access to your own subscriber base via emails, you'll never have to worry about the Big Tech Platforms. We recommend Starting A Newsletter.
Who says the only way to make money is to charge brands or people? Well, for the most part it is, except monetizing through donations and tips.
Donations and tipping have become more common in the creator world as platforms like YouTube, Reddit and TikTok have added features to allow fans to tip creators. In a way, it's a natural extension of the creator phenomena. The social networks gave creators a platform, but not a way to monetize it. However, fans naturally wanted to support their favorite creators and since this doesn't threaten the Big Tech Platform's ad business, a lot have now introduced tipping functionality.
Outside of these platforms though, there are a few additional ways to monetize through donations and tips. The most prominent is Buy Me A Coffee, which is recently shifting to a more full blown Link In Bio tool.
Consider this: Kajabi, a platform that helps creators (in this case, instructors) launch their own online courses is worth $2B, and has paid out over $5B to creators over the company's lifetime. While Kajabi is one of the biggest course platforms, there's 5 to 10 similarly sized and robust platforms. This should tell you that creating and selling courses online is a big business.
So, how do you begin as a course creator? Well, you need to pick a Course Platform first and foremost. We've research every single player in 2023 and tell you which one is a good fit for you.
We've reviewed these platforms and compared them from every single angle possible because, similar to creating a newsletter, creating an online course is one of the highest upside investments for a creator.
You have the following, now teach them something.
You some how landed on this page but only have 5,000 followers? You don't have a site either? You're out of luck. Just kidding.
We put together The Internet's Largest List of Side Hustles. Even if you're not a creator with a large following, or you don't have some sort of specialized knowledge you can start a newsletter or course with, these hustles are ways you can start earning money as early as this weekend.
No excuses. Go forth and monetize!
There are several legitimate and simple ways to make $100 a day. Since $100 is not a lot of money, one popular method is by taking online surveys, which allows individuals to share their opinions and get paid for it. This isn't sustainable, but could net you $100 in one day. Some banks offer cash bonuses for opening a new account, providing an opportunity to earn a quick buck. This is also a one-time way to make $100 and not something unsustainable.
You can explore side hustles and gig economy roles. Activities like making deliveries or driving for a rideshare company can be lucrative.
Finally, for someone with specific skills, offering freelance services in areas like writing, design, or online tutoring can be beneficial. Moreover, affiliate marketing, where one earns a commission by promoting products or services, can also be a viable option.
If you're looking to make money quickly, there are several methods you can consider. One of the immediate ways is to become a rideshare driver, allowing you to earn money by transporting passengers. Alternatively, making deliveries for various platforms can also provide instant earnings. Although, as regulations increase, there may be background checks, so you might have to wait a few days to get approved into the platform.
If you prefer more personal tasks, you can help others with simple, everyday chores or pet sitting. There are marketplaces that connect people looking for these services with people who can offer it. Some marketplaces to consider include: SitterCity, Care.com, Wag, Rover, TaskRabbit, and Papa Pals.
You can also sell things online on platforms like Amazon, Etsy or eBay. However, all of these can take time. The fastest might be selling something on Craigslist or maybe using Facebook Marketplace.
Making real easy money can be achieved through various means, but one should approach it with caution and realistic expectations.
The online world offers numerous opportunities, such as freelancing on platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, and Freelancer.com. These websites cater to a range of freelance jobs, allowing individuals to capitalize on their skills from the comfort of their homes.
You can also sell unwanted clothes and accessories online, especially on platforms like eBay, Craigslist, or Facebook Marketplace, can be an effective way to declutter and earn simultaneously. You can also consider apps like OfferUp. If you own more expensive items, you can consider Depop or TheRealReal as a way to sell online.
Freelance writing can help you earn based on your writing skills, which could pay $1,000 in a short amount of time. Similarly, online tutoring is another avenue, especially if you have expertise in a particular subject. If you charge $75 an hour, you can make $1,000 within 13 hours.
While there are many ways to earn $1,000 online, none of them are fast. For instance, you can start an affiliate site, or taking on freealnce graphic design work through Fiverr or Upwork, but it will take time to earn credibility on the platforms or to learn affiliate marketing. Likewise, you also have to know these baseline skills to have a chance at success (e.g. graphic design.)
It's not easy to make $1,000 fast. If you really wanted to make $1,000 as fast as possible, outside of taking extreme risk or doing something illegal, and if you don't have high value skills (e.g. programming, graphic design, writing), you may need to reduce your expectations.
Driving on Uber or Lyft, or on delivery platforms like Postmates or Doordash, can earn you $200 a week or more, especially if you work during peaj hours to take advantage of surge rates.
To make $200 a day, if we assume 8 hours of work in a day, that's a $25 per hour rate, which is not that difficult to achieve. However, mos people asking this, might be asking for opportunities that are not normal jobs, or can be incremental to their day time jobs. Driving for Uber and Lyft, during peak hours, is one option.
Another option might be to join platforms like TaskRabbit and try to slowly build up a reputation and work your way up to doing higher value tasks.
It's very possible to make $10,000 in 3 months. To tackle this, we can break down the goal into smaller increments. $10,000 over 3 months is $3,333 per month, or about $111 per day. Making a $111 a day can be done realistically through a variety of side hustles together like driving some Uber and Lyft (during peak hours), completing some tasks on TaskRabbit or Fiverr, doing some tutoring on Wyzant or Varsity Tutors, and maybe even creating a course that you can charge $50 for.
We're compiling the Internet's Largest List of Side Hustles. Stay tuned.
$1,000 this month means an additional $33 daily, which is very achievable. You can likely make this from just 1 or 2 hours of driving on a ridesharing platform, tutoring, or a lot of other marketplace opportunities. For instance, if you own a house, you can put it on Airbnb. If you own, you can put it on Turo or Getaround. If you have a swimming pool, you can list it on Swimply. If you have extra space in your house or your garage, you can list it on Neighbor. If you do a few of these, you'll easily net more than $33 per day.
$1,500 is a large sum to get fast. While there are emergency situations that might warrant a pay day loan, if you really need this much money, it may make sense to ask a friend if it's an emergency. However, if your timeline is closer to a month or even 6 to 8 weeks, you can earn this much money more easily through side hustles.
Earning $5,000 fast is no joke. While there may be some highly lucrative side hustles, $5,000 is a large amount, which means, that to get this amount fast, you'd need to level up your efforts or utilize your resources and assets beyond your time. For instance, you could earn $5,000 as an Airbnb host if you had a place that you could charge $300 a night for for half the month. However, charging $300 a night would mean you own a full multi-room, well-furnished house in a city most likely. You would have to leave your own house for half the month to be able to put it on Airbnb. Likewise, if that's how much your charging, Airbnb will take their cut, and you'll have to pay taxes.
As a result, if you really want to earn $5,000 net after all fees and costs, you might have to think more ambitiously. This could mean that you decide you want to put multiple cars on Turo. You might think you don't have multiple cars, so is this possible for you? This is where the thinking more ambitiously part comes in. You might call local car rental companies and ask if you can put their car on a rental platform and that you'll take a small cut and they won't have to do any work. Some may bite, especially if they are experiencing low demand and are less familiar with something like Turo. Or, you could ask 5 friends if you could do the same with them. Now you're getting a cut of 5 different cars being listed on Turo. You can optimize the listings with better pictures, optimize the price, and make sure to provide top tier customer service to customers.
This is not an easy hustle, but it's one that could add up. The same thinking could technically apply to Airbnb housing. However, in each of these cases, it's important to think through regulations and things like insurance.
