With so many “fake gurus” pushing various side hustles it’s really hard to figure out what are the actual best ways to make money online.
Moreover, if you’re from Europe, then you’ll quickly find out that many Western ways of making money online are just impossible.
Over the last 3 years, I’ve been trying out various ways to make money online, from creating courses, selling digital assets, investing & more.
In this list, I’ve compiled what I think are some of the best ways to make money online this year.
Let’s roll.
How to Make Money Online in 2024
Here are the best side hustles to make money online in Europe (and other parts of the world):
1. Create an online course without showing your face
One of the easiest ways to start making money online is to create a short online course about a skill that you have.
The best course platforms for first-time teachers are Skillshare and Udemy.
These platforms have their own audience so you won’t have to market your course.
If the course is good it will get more and more traction over time.
People buy courses because of convenience not because the information isn’t already out there.
Think about Uber.
At first glance, it seems very expensive and unreasonable to choose Uber over public transport or going somewhere on a bike, but people pay for convenience.
The same applies to online courses.
Other great course platforms (that don’t have an audience built-in) are:
- Payhip – best for hosting your course for free (5% fee on every sale). I host my Video Editing Course For YouTubers on this platform.
- Skool – best for building a community alongside your course.
- Podia – best overall (allows for selling courses, customizing their sales page, doing email marketing and creating a community as well as selling other digital products).
Here’s my ultimate guide on how to create your first online course.
2. Make amazon video reviews
Product review videos appear on product pages on Amazon.
If a person watches more than 30 seconds of your review video and decides to buy that item you will get a small commission for that sale.
Here’s how much Amazon pays in commissions:
If Amazon decides to put your video on a product that sells many times per day, you could earn a lot of money from commissions.
It’s also passive – once you make a review video it can earn you affiliate commissions for years to come.
The cost of this side hustle is free because you can record video reviews with your phone about products that you already bought on Amazon years ago.
To start making video reviews you’ll need to join the Amazon influencer program.
Currently, Amazon only allows making reviews for products in the US.
But you can sign up for the US Amazon influencer program even if you’re not from the US.
3. Start a YouTube channel without showing your face
Starting a YouTube channel can be one of the best decisions for growing your other sources of income.
If you have a course, a blog, or sell digital products, YouTube will 10x your sales and traffic.
You can make videos for free without having to buy any gear.
In order to grow a YouTube channel you’ll have to invest a lot of time and energy both in learning how to make viral videos and actually making them.
But it’s all worth it in the end.
Don’t expect your channel to grow overnight and think of it as a 2-year experiment.
“If you create useful videos, publish 1-2 times per week, and do this for 2 years, your life will change.” – Ali Abdaal
4. Do voice-overs
Just like video editors, voice-over artists are in high demand, especially for brands that make videos and for YouTube automation channels.
You can learn to do voice-overs for free on the internet.
YouTube channels like Mike Russel have countless tutorials about recording and enhancing your voice-over.
If you don’t want to search for scattered tutorials on YouTube I’ve made a Skillshare course about how to record professional-sounding voice-overs without expensive gear such as your phone. Check it out here along with a free 30-day trial for Skillshare.
(This means that you’ll be able to take any courses on the platform for the first month free of charge).
Once you learn the basics, you can record a few voice-over clips of yourself speaking, enhance them and put up a voice-over acting gig on Fiverr or Upwork.
The clips you recorded will act as samples to showcase your skills.
Companies and YouTubers test out voice-over artists and look for one that they can work with for the long term.
Which means consistent income for you.
5. Learn an in-demand skill
In-demand skills include photo editing, thumbnail design, video editing, graphic design, copywriting, or even setting up Notion templates.
People & businesses want to save time and time is money.
If a YouTuber spends 5 hours editing a video and makes $500 for that video then he would be happy to pay you $20 per hour to edit that video for him.
It’s easy to figure out which skills are in demand by looking at popular Fiverr listings and how many orders they’re getting.
There are YouTube thumbnail designers like Jay Alto who are being hired by YouTubers like Airrack making six figures a year from creating thumbnails & selling digital products about how to create thumbnails.
Of course, it’s not easy to get hired without any experience.
You have to go in through the “third door”.
This video by Ali Abdaal taught me a lot in terms of how to get accepted into a job and what employers look for in a potential candidate or a freelancer:
6. Build an audience (YouTube, Linkedin, Facebook)
An audience will 100x your online business.
It’s hard to make money online without an audience.
The best part is that you don’t have to have a huge audience – but it has to be an audience with similar interests & problems.
If you have 1000 true fans that are willing to give you $100 each, you will make $100 000.
What if you have 10 000 fans? That number jumps to $1 000 000.
That’s insane.
Best places with high potential to build a large audience:
- YouTube – video content.
- Twitter – written content.
- LinkedIn – business content.
7. Sell digital assets
Digital assets include Notion templates, video editing presets, stock photos, e-books, icons, website templates & many more.
You can list and sell your own digital products on platforms such as Payhip or Podia.
People like Elaso make $400 000/year selling Notion templates and it took him only 2 years to get to this point.
You don’t have to be a genius to create & sell digital assets (having an audience helps).
Think about what you already use in your daily life.
Maybe you created a spreadsheet for tracking your finances or gathered a list of healthy recipes that cost less than $10 to make.
You could turn these things into a digital template or an e-book.
You could also make your digital assets like Squarespace templates and sell them on Etsy. Read more about this side hustle here.
8. Invest
If you’re out of options you could invest and make your money work for you.
This is how much interest you would earn if you invested $200/month for 40 years (the total amount of money you put in is 96k):
Since you need money to invest, it’s best to combine investing with one of the side hustles mentioned before.
That way your business system (side hustle) funds your money system (investments).
It’s hard to find investment apps in Europe but there are a few options:
- Coinbase – best for crypto investing. Read more about Coinbase here.
- Revolut – best for buying individual stocks
- Your current bank – best for investing in funds & ETFs.
- Interactive Brokers – best overall investing app in Europe and the UK.
9. Sell your old stuff
Most of us have thousands of useless things around the house that we use less than once per year.
All the unnecessary stuff not only takes up space but could be a lot more useful to another person.
You can market old stuff as “vintage”.
Facebook marketplace and eBay are the best places to sell your old stuff in Europe.
10. Build an email list
A lot of people might not think so, but an email list is one of the best mediums to monetize an audience.
There are many ways to build an email list but the most popular ones are creating content on YouTube and Twitter and then sending your audience to your newsletter.
It takes time to build an email list but in the end, you’ll have an audience that doesn’t rely on a social media algorithm to be reached.
Here’s what my free monthly newsletter looks like.
And here’s a list of the best email newsletter platforms to get started.
Was This Guide on How Make Money Online in Europe Useful?
Making money online is harder than it seems at first sight.
Most people give up trying to make money online after one month, but those with patience and commitment are ultimately the ones that succeed with their online businesses.
It’s a lot easier to make money online if you have an audience, especially on YouTube.
I’ll leave you with a few killer resources to help you start your YouTube channel and start earning money online: