Would an extra $500 a month help you?

Most of us would probably say yes.

It’s not as hard as you think to make an extra $500 a month with an online business.

It really just takes focus, commitment, and the will to try new things, fail and not give up.

I’m not one of those Ferarri driving, bling wearing, online business gurus.

I don’t make millions, but…

I have figured out how to make a decent income online and I want to share with you some ways that you can do the same.

In this post, I’ll show you 3 basic online businesses ideas you can start today and build them up to make an extra $500 a month working on the side in your spare time.

These are not “get rich quick” ideas, but if you do it with the right Mindset, you can reach your goal of creating a cash-generating online business faster than you think.

Let’s jump in!

1) Blogging & Affiliate Marketing

Blogging is the most basic elements of a content marketing strategy today.

People today shop and learn very differently then they did just 15 years ago. They use the internet to research, learn and make decisions to buy all kinds of products and services.

Google has called the online decision-making moment, the Zero Moment of Truth, or simply, ZMOT. The ZMOT refers to the moment in the buying process when the consumer researches a product or service before purchasing.

This is the moment someone enters something like this into a Google Search:

Instagress Clones

And your blog post shows up as the top resource for that search phrase.

That one blog post you see above in the search results has made over $1000 in affiliate commissions in the last few weeks and it’s still growing.

This is the power of blogging.

Getting Started with blogging & affiliate marketing

You need to pick a niche subject you can write about and then focus as much as you can on that. Find a niche that you know has demand.

You can use Google Trends or tools like SemRush to find a niche you can enter and build a business around.

With free software like WordPress.com or for a small investment, you can set up a blog on your own web hosting server and have all the control you need.

I use my own servers for this website you’re on now at Bluehost and I also have some of my e-commerce sites hosted at Digital Ocean where I have some more high-performance servers.

Blogging is all about creating a bunch of useful articles for a niche audience so you can then monetize your blog with affiliate products that your audience would like, want and buy.

For example, If you create a fitness blog where you write about getting fit, there are many products you can promote to your audience from nutritional supplements to clothing and work out equipment. There are many companies that have affiliate programs for every possible niche.

It’s about finding that niche that works for you.

You can find a whole list of Affiliate marketing networks here. Search for products that match your niche.

You can also just use the Amazon Associates program to add products to your blog too.

The best advice you can get with blogging is to go for quality over quantity.

Yes, it’s good to have lots of blog posts, but it’s even better to have high quality, useful content your audience wants and finds value in.

2) Affiliate Marketing E-commerce site

The Amazon Associates program I just mentioned provides you with a way to make commissions off of any of the product for sale on Amazon.

There are products for virtually any niche. Some pay better commissions than others but there are millions of products you can earn commissions from.

Building an Affiliate Marketing e-commerce site is a little bit more complicated than just adding products to your blogs posts or website pages.

It can be simplified with some advanced plugins and software that you can buy fairly inexpensively but it does take some technical knowledge when it comes to WordPress plugins and the Amazon API to make this one work.

Getting started with Affiliate Marketing E-commerce site

How this works is that you set up a WordPress site with a plug-in that integrates with Amazon that can import Amazon products onto your website in a few minutes.

This plugin along with a basic WordPress website, the WooCommerce shopping cart plugin, and some time and energy allows you to create niche e-commerce sites that you get a commision from every time some one buys through your site.

I wrote a post on how to set up one of these Amazon Associates e-commerce stores where you can learn step by step on how to do that. Check it out if this idea interests you.

3) Sell products on Amazon

This is a simple supply and demand type business. You use research tools to find products on Amazon that are in high demand and that have low competition and then you source these products at a low price on a site like Alibaba and then resell them on Amazon as a seller.

You can make upwards of $500 a month in profit off of just one product that sells for just $15.99. The volume of sales for some products can be in the 1000 per day but it all comes down to the right product.

The key to this strategy is finding the right product and to do that you need research skills and the right tools.

This business idea has a few different approaches.

You can find a product category that is underserved and find a supplier to help you sell into that category or you can manufacture your own products with your own logo to sell alongside a high demand, low competition product category.

Either way is good and both will require you to be an Amazon Seller and you will also need to use Fulfillment By Amazon or FBA for short.

Do your research to find products and product categories you want  to sell in

Look at best sellers on Amason to see what is selling. Go deep into categories and make a list of product categories you want to research.

When you have a good list, you then need to use a tool called Jungle Scout to find details about the products and product categories you want to research. Their Chrome extention is what you want.

Here is a screenshot of what it can do for you. Lots of useful data to help in your research.

Jungle Scout can tell you so much about who is selling what, for what price. How many are sold in a month and so much more data to help you find the most profitable products to sell.

Closing Remarks

None of these are getting rich quick ways to make money online.

They all require time and energy and sustained focus over a long period of time to eventually build an online business that generates even more than $500 per month.

Good luck and I hope one of these ideas motivates you to get started.