Starting a blog “how to get rich online” post, or anything for that matter is very hard. There’s this blank white space, an open void if you will, and you have to make something out of it. But sometimes you “just see it”, for lack of a better word. Many simplify this vision and call it inspiration while Michelangelo, among many things, had this great quote that sums it up:

“The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.”
— Michelangelo

Before you shut me down, I’ll point out immediately that in order to get rich online as this title suggests, you still need to work very hard. Sometimes, for some things, extremely hard. Michelangelo didn’t say “I visualize, and the statue of David appears”. He specifically said, “I just have to chisel away”. And chisel away he did because chiseling is what he does best. Before I turn this into another Michelangelo post let me explain what I mean by “How to get rich online”.

So what are some ways of getting rich online?

Here are 16 real ways how you make serious money and get rich online

1. Affiliate programs from any company with an affiliate program (web hosting, email marketing, software, etc)
2. Popular affiliate programs from large corporations (Amazon, eBay)
3. Affiliate marketing platforms (Commission Junction, Clickbank, ShareASale, Awin, etc)
4. Display ads networks (Google AdSense, Media.net, AdNow, etc)
5. Selling ads, sponsored articles and other promotion on your website, blog, podcast, Youtube channel or Instagram
6. Selling and flipping websites that generate revenue (also known as cash flow websites)
7. Investing in domain names, and then parking them or selling them
8. Starting a SaaS, app, gaming or a widget company
9. Build and sell physical products on your website (Woocmerce, Shopify)
10. Build and sell physical products on a marketplace (Etsy, Amazon)
11. Create and sell digital goods like stock photography, vector illustration, stock video (Shutterstock, Creative Market, Adobe Stock)
12. Source a product from the factory, and have them ship it to the buyer, or Amazon (Dropshipping, Amazon FBA)
13. Selling eBooks, courses or other educational material on your website
14. Selling eBooks, courses or other educational material on marketplaces such as Amazon, Udemy, Appstore
15. Offering your freelance services (graphic design, writing, SEO, coding) directly or via marketplaces such as UpWork (here you are trading your time for money, so I wouldn’t advise it)
16. Trading with high-risk assets such as crypto, forex or stocks (too risky, and macro trends that are often out of our league, so I wouldn’t advise it)

Simple brainstorming task that will help you to get rich online

Pull out a sheet of paper, or open a notepad on your computer. You can do this after you read this post, or you can do it simultaneously and double-check my logic on this. Here’s what you need to do, list all the things you want in your life. I am not kidding, list absolutely everything you want to purchase in your life.

You know the drill, you rub the lamp, a genie appears and grants you three wishes. Your first wish is that you can have infinite wishes. And then you go on to create your list of things that are about to come to life.

You can list free stuff (like eat more plant-based food), but these things you can afford right now. I want you to list stuff you think you can’t afford. Here’s my list to start your juices flowing. If you don’t like my list, just skip it, and create YOUR perfect list!

Travel list

If you are wondering, what does a travel list have to do with getting rich online, for me it has to do everything. For you it may be something else (check other lists below). If traveling is not your thing, just skip this list.

• Be like an internet entrepreneur for three weeks in Paris (Louvre, Mona Lisa Eifel tower, Notre Damme, Le Parc des Princes, Champs-Élysées)
• Visit Pisa (Leaning Tower)
• Spend three weeks in Rome (Colosseum, Pantheon)
• Spend three weeks in Barcelona (Camp Nou, La Sagrada Familia, La Rambla)
• Live for a month in Alicante (visit friends) and visit Benidorm (high skyscrapers, long beach) and Valencia (Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias): COMPLETED
• Snorkel a month in Maldives (palms, sandy beaches, bungalows)
• Make business deals for a month in Australia (Sydney Opera, friends and clients in Melbourne, Golden Coast)
• Visit Tokyo (Shibuya, Shinkansen)
• Enjoy a month in the Caribean (avoid winter in Croatia)
• Party for a month in Cancun, Mexico (avoid winter in Croatia)
• See the Niagra falls
• Experience the Grand Canyon
• Take a photo of the Great Pyramid of Giza
• Spend a month on New Zealand (Bay of Plenty, Tauranga, Auckland Sky Tower, whale watching, Lord of the Rings filming locations)
• Cruise around Rio de Janeiro (Maracana, Christ the Redeemer, Copacabana)
• Visit Venice (Piazza San Marco, Grand Canal, Vitruvian Man)
• Spend some time in Milano (The Last Supper, San Siro, New Starbucks)
• Visit Athens (Parthenon)
• Spend two weeks in Florence (Statue of David, Uffizi Gallery, Piazza del Duomo): COMPLETED
• Live 4 months in Silicon Valley (Google campus, Twitter HQ, Golden Gate Bridge): COMPLETED
• Visit New York (Manhattan): COMPLETED
• Spend two weeks in London (London Eye, The Shard, the first time in an Apple store, Gunners Museum, Zoo): COMPLETED
• Visit Berlin: COMPLETED
• Spend a week in Prague: COMPLETED

The secret to living is giving. Success, without fulfilment, is the ultimate failure.

— Tony Robbins

I think it’s going to be a while until you find wiser words than those of Tony Robbins. So, let’s create a list where we give.

The secret to living is giving – list

• Renovate my parents and my fiance’s parent’s houses
• Promote a vegan lifestyle (for example, own a website with 10,000 hits/day)
• Sponsor a major vegan, sporting and a startup event with $10,000 each
• Give 10,000 books
• Sponsor an anti-alcoholic and an anti-tobacco association with $10,000 each
• Sponsor a pro water/tea/juicer association with $10,000
• Help a local animal shelter with $10,000
• Help a local retirement home with $10,000
• Promote renewable sources of energy
• Give $10,000 to every single close family member (or help them resolve a financial challenge)

This list is quickly growing, and I am sure you are getting the hang of this. Now let’s create a list that will help finance your list. A business list. I am very sad to report, but I am obliged to provide full disclosure, my investors still haven’t seen any returns on my main business, so I have to start there in my business list.

Business list

• Return $250,000 to my investors
• Own $100,000 worth of stocks that pay dividends
• Own $750,000 worth of real estate (for living and renting)
• Collect $1,500 per month from real estate renting
• Own websites that make $10.000 / month
• Own SaaS that makes $10.000 / month
• Make $5000 / month with courses and ebooks
• Own a brick and mortar business with $5,000 / month in profits

Toys list

• Own a house on the beach
• Fancy sports car (Race red Ford Mustang, electric Porsche Taycan)
• Fancy jewelry, tech equipment, nice clothes
• Rent a yacht with a jet ski for two weeks every summer
• Rent a log house for a month during winter

I also have other lists that consist of goals like (eat plant-based food, work out 3 times per week, learn Spanish, overcome depression, write a best-seller) but these don’t require any money per se. So we don’t need to include them here in this particular exercise.

How much does an ideal lifestyle really cost?

I am not going to take the “Timothy Ferriss” route and tell you to get a big loan or rent the villa or lease the car just so that you can experience this right away. I am also not going to take the Robert Kiyosaki route and tell you to get a loan to buy an asset that will create the cash flow that then pays for all that stuff. (Which is a great idea, BTW). And no, I am not going to tell you to eat rice and beans, beans and rice for 30 years, as Dave Ramsey does, so that then maybe you can one day finally get the stuff on your list. All great advice, but I like mine much more and besides, in some cases, one does not exclude the other.

Also, nothing wrong with combining these approaches. You can still be vigilant with paying of your debts (Ramsey), get a loan in order to purchase your new cash flow (Kiyosaki), for example, a website. And every now and then (until you can really afford to), get a cheap deal in order to travel abroad or sell some old stuff in order to buy a nice car (Ferriss). Just don’t lease it, because that would contradict Ramsey’s advice.

Getting rich online is about increasing your income and then investing that income into creating new streams of income.

We need to put a $ sign on every item on this list. For me, a trip to Venice is cheap, but a month in New Zealand for me and my love would probably cost around $6,000. The flight tickets are around $2,500, Airbnb around $1,500, food for a month I suppose around $500 and everything else would squeeze into $1,500. Have you noticed how I am not “cheating” like Timothy Ferriss by saying that the flight tickets are $100 because of XYZ? This is a legit, full-price that I found in March 2019. Surely I can try to get a better deal but for this particular exercise, I don’t have to. Let’s not waste time while gaining momentum. You can research in detail later.

Your dream beach house, log house or penthouse, your fancy sports car, or a yacht are the biggest purchases. But even with those, I am willing to bet that your total would fall at around $1,500,000 dollars. This sum largely depends on the biggest item (house, or should I say villa). And the price of the villa largely depends on it’s location. You wouldn’t believe the villa you can get on an island in the Adriatic for $750.000 but this same villa in La Jolla California might as well be 3X this price.

Also worth noting is this spectacular list wouldn’t include owning a house on each continent (in my opinion idiotic move unless they are generating cash-flow) or owning a 100 feet (30m) yacht. You rent a yacht for two-three weeks and move on! Trust me, you do not want to own and take care of your yacht for 365 days so that you could use it for 21 days. It’s just wasteful, it cost too much, and besides, this way, you can rent a different boat, in a different location, every summer.

$1,500,000 really? Now what?

My freak list above falls in the $1.5 million range. If you remove the item “Own $750,000 worth of real estate (for living and renting)” then it falls under the one million mark. Even if you donated 10% of all your funds ($150,000) you could practically see all the major sights in the world, help everybody you hold near and dear, and buy all the toys you can think of. How crazy is that?

So, now that we’ve hopefully established that you don’t need a billion dollars or $100,000,000 dollars or even $10,000,000, let’s get to the other part. How do we get that $1,500,000? More importantly, how long will it take us to reach this goal? Yes, that is the hard part, especially if you consider that in the United States which are considered one of the richest countries in the world, but the majority of people barely have $1000 saved, and are making less then $60,000 per year.

Even if no one else sees it for me, I must see it for myself.

— Les Brown

Can you wait 7 years for everything you ever wished for?

Let’s divide $1,500,000 with 84 months (7 years). We get $17.857 every month. In theory, that’s the monthly cash flow that’s required in order to fund your list. Before you start booing and close this tab, give me a chance to open your eyes. What have you got to lose? First of all, this is not 70 years, it’s 7 years. Some people go to college that takes 7 years to finish. If you are 25, you could be 32 by the time you are done. If you are 50, you could be 57. As one of my favorite quotes goes…

Time not important. Only life important.

— The Mondoshawan

If you are still with me, you are probably curious. So, how do we create $17.857 every month? I am glad you asked. Here we go!

In order to get rich online, you need multiple streams of income

If like me you have an extremely capable spouse, it’s easier to create multiple streams of income, but also, everything has more sense because you have someone to share your success with. So I suppose if you lack in that department, step #0 would be, find someone who completes you. Find someone where 1 + 1 = 3. Since this is a “how to get rich online” guide, and I don’t want to give marriage advice, I’ll proceed like you are Han Solo. Well, Han Solo, if there were two of you, you could immediately split the $17.857 in two and you would have to figure out only $8.928 per month. Haha! All joking aside, finding good people (like employees) is going to be a tough challenge for most. But Mr. Solo, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, and proceed one step at a time.

Let’s create another list, shall we? Let’s create a list of potential streams of income. While you are making your list, have in mind that my list might be slightly different depending on the skillset, amount of money you are able to invest, and other factors.

Income stream #1

10 websites, each making $1,000 per month. They are mostly passive in nature, generating income through:

• Google AdSense,
• Amazon Associate,
• various ad networks such as: MGiD, Content Ad, AdNow, Media.net, and many other
• various affiliate marketplaces: Awin, CJ Affiliate, Impact and many other
• direct affiliate deals (like the ClickFunnels 40% on all recurring payments)
• Sponsored articles, banner ads, backlinks.

Income stream #2

2 SaaS websites, one making $8,000 per month, while the other is making $2,000 per month. Software as a service is popular because it provides the business with something everybody is craving. Recurring revenue. These are mostly monthly and sometimes annual payments from other companies that use your software. More on this below when I show you some examples.

Income stream #3

Stock illustrations, photos and graphic art being sold on various marketplaces and on the website you own. Let’s say that you are making between $500 and $1000 on each of them. As you can see, by this example (the owner is making $3000 per month from Ukraine). Not from Utah, from Ukraine. And no, Ukraine is not in the EU. $3000 goes a long way there, and in many parts of the world.

• Shutterstock
• Creative Market
• iStock
• DesignCuts
• Adobe Stock (ex Fotolia)
• Dreamstime
• Getty Images
• Society6
• RedBubble

Various additional income streams #4

I understand you are not a superman. So I suppose you are going to have only 2-3 major sources of income, and then a few smaller, passive streams. Some might be your “failed attempts” or streams you left to die out but are still bringing in some money. Or some new attempts, that could in time switch into your largest income source.

Also, I’ve listed more streams of income in order to open your eyes to the possibility. Here’s how you can connect the dots!

Are you are the one who takes most photos in your family? Improve that skillset.

Do you know how to design or illustrate? Keep doing that!

If you like to write content, then write content.

Do you like to share knowledge with others? Then teach!

On top of all that, learn new skill sets, and improve the ones you already have. Here are a few potential additional income streams we haven’t talked about:

• Selling Ebooks and courses
• Selling games for mobile phones (App store)
• Widgets, plugins, downloadable software
• FBA store or drop shipping website
• Dividend payouts from stocks

What else is available in the location independent cash generators?

“Home Depot (HD), Garmin (GRMN), Sysco (SYY), Corning (GLW) and Union Pacific (UNP) rank among the best dividend stocks in 2019, marrying solid yields to strong recent performance. Top dividend stocks give a powerful boost to income and retirement portfolios.” Source: investors.com – Best Dividend Stocks In 2019: 5 High-Yield Stocks Beating The S&P 500. This is not exactly a rich-online type of a thing, but you are making the money work for you, and you are not limited with your geographical location.

As you can see from the income stream list above, many of these have the ability to cover a large portion of the $17.857. Some require more work (or chiseling as Michelangelo would say) and some require a large investment. Is it possible to accomplish this without a large investment? Well, you then need to be resourceful and it is probably going to take you more time. It is the old adage, do I buy a website for $10,000 that’s making $500 per month, or do I build it from scratch?

Which kind of brings us to the issue at hand. If you are still reading this text, but you are thinking: I am not a developer, or I don’t have any money to invest, I don’t know how to sell, I am not a good writer, I am not a designer, there is a solution for each of those problems.

If you want to get rich online, get good at providing some value!

You have to get good at something. Some people are great at watching Netflix and eating popcorn. Yes or yes? Find your rock (your reason, your why), and start “chiseling away”. As you will see below, you don’t have to find the cure for cancer, but you have to give a solution to a problem for at least a small group of people. If you sell a $100 worth of products every day for 10 years, that’s $365,000. Do you think this could be done in an automated way with a website and other software? Absolutely!

Is it really possible? Examples!

Spoiler alert, I am personally not there yet. As you can see in my list, my company owes $250,000 to their investors. But I am on this “7-year journey” I mentioned earlier. I already crossed off a few things on my list (many not included here), I am making solid income and so is my spouse. We do so with different streams of income. But more importantly, I sincerely believe this is possible! I was sitting in a beautiful old town square, on an island, overlooking the Adriatic, with our apartment (my spouse and I literally just bought it) just around the corner… And then I realized this list was possible! I was literally floored. So I took action and wrote this guide on how to get rich online because I had to share this with everybody.

In the following examples I want to show you that you do not need to “create a cure for cancer”, you don’t need to be “Elon Musk and run Tesla” you don’t need to “win the lottery” you don’t need to cheat on taxes, you don’t need to “live in America”, and my personal favorite, you don’t have to be Steve Jobs and invent the iPhone. None of that!

In theory, it works, here’s the math

Check this out. If you have a website that is making $3.33 dollars per day, and you buy or build 100 of such small niche websites, you should be a millionaire in less than a decade, just from those websites.

$3.33 X 30 days = $100 per month. $100 profit X 100 websites = $10,000 per month. $10,000 X 120 months = $1,200,000.

The question is then obvious. Is it possible to buy or build and manage 100 websites that make a modest profit of $100 per month? You can play with this in numerous ways. You can own 200 websites making only $50 a month, or own 50 websites that make $200 per month. On the other hand if $100 per month doesn’t excite you, here’s a different approach you can take.

Buying up websites, until you become a millionaire

You buy a website that’s making $1,000 per month. Current market conditions show that you should be able to get one for $24,000 (approximately). After 6 months you should recoup your $6,000, and you buy another website for $24,000, and this one is also making $1,000 per month. You repeat the process 5 times, until you have 5 websites making a total of $5,000 per month. In 36 months you should recoup all your investments, and after that, sky is the limit. With the $5,000 per month in 5 years (60 months) you should be $300,000 in the plus.

If you want to learn where are the marketplaces where you can find websites that are making money, check the list of marketplaces I gathered for you in that post. These kinds of opportunities don’t jump out of the hat every day (approximately $24,000 for a website that is making $1,000) but it is possible if you work hard to find them and negotiate them. Negotiating is a skill, just like playing Angry Birds or Fortnite. But, let’s return to finding great deals… Years go by, Google updates happen, new opportunities come and go, so in order to keep or perhaps even grow the $1,000 / month income over the years, you need to put in the work.

Examples of online entrepreneurs that are on the right track

So, let me show you a few examples. I am in no way connected to these people, I just used Google and found out about their success. Furthermore, these examples are not from buying websites. These are combinations of SaaS, niche websites, blogs and other streams of income. If you are an expert in real estate, certainly you can make that happen. I am an internet entrepreneur, so I stick with that. Plus, houses and apartments are fixed in one location and I love being location independent.

• Frances Kerr is making anywhere from $4,000 to $12,000 a month with her acne blog. This is probably her main income stream, and she probably has others (or should have).
• Lance Nelson is making $5,600 with a blog about a ski resort in Bulgaria. Not Cortina d’Ampezzo, not the Rocky Mountains. Bulgaria. Not 5,600 Bulgarian Levs, it’s $5,600 USD or to be exact around 60,000 Euros per year. Do you think you could run 3 websites like that and make $17.857 per month?
• Mitch Colleran created a SaaS called Join It. As of December 2018, Join It is making $18,000/month and growing. They didn’t get any investor funding. It’s a small company and you probably never heard of them, but they are helping organizations sell and track their memberships by automating repetitive tasks. Mitch is on his way.
• Early in 2019 Scribly.io topped $14K in monthly revenue. Daniella Mancini is a first-time entrepreneur with a fairly eclectic background. Scribly.io. delivers a subscription-based copywriting to help businesses scale, at roughly 50% of the cost of hiring in-house. It is like an agency redefined for the 21st century. They are fully remote, deliver 24 hours a day, seven days a week (thanks to having writers in almost every timezone).

These internet entrepreneurs are making money online, you can too!

Let’s take a quick break and remind ourselves that it is not important if these people had their success 5 years or 5 months ago. It is not important if these people reinvest 100% of their profits or if their revenue is much higher than the profits. These examples serve the purpose of showing us that it is possible. With a few changes, productivity hacks, or a couple more years (let’s say it’s going to take 9 years instead of 7 years) it will happen. And that’s what’s the most important thing here.

Furthermore, I am deliberately avoiding smashing success stories where single business owners are making six figures in a single month or small business that are making $347,000 per employee or What’s app being acquired for more than $1 billion. You can’t control that kind of success. So let’s see a few more examples in the $10k / month range.

Examples of internet entrepreneurs making around $10,000 per month

• Back in 2014, we saw that Chris Guthrie was making $12,000 from his FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) business.
• Another Amazon FBA example is with Jon Haver. He was making $15,000 per month, and also supplementing his income, with an additional SaaS stream. As it often happens, this SaaS is for a business that makes money with FBA. This is a great example of how to create additional streams of income by combining existing ones. Read about it, or listen to his story on the Niche Pursuits podcast.

Speaking of Jon Haver, he is a great example of how it’s done. He set a goal for himself, documented it, and arrived there ahead of schedule. Lucky for us, he did it publicly and below you can see the graph. There you go, Jon made it in 3 years instead of 7.

List of successful bloggers, some are making millions

In case that didn’t do it for you, I found a great, condensed list of 104 bloggers. They reveal their income, and you will not be disappointed. Andy over at Focus and Grow Rich created this amazing list of successful bloggers. Be sure to check it out here! You will see some absurd numbers where some are making millions of dollars per year. While some have a nice combination of AdSense, affiliate marketing and their own products making very decent figures.

And the best thing about this idea is cash flow

In case you missed the general idea here’s a simple summary with a three-step process.

1. List everything you want from life and put a dollar tag on it
2. Figure out an exact amount of money you need, and divide this number by a certain number of months (example 84 months is 7 years)
3. List potential streams of income that could build the monthly income you require for this goal
4. Don’t sell yourself short!
5. Most importantly start executing!

This also brings me to the best thing about this whole idea. No, the best thing is not the fact you do not have to wait for 30, 60 or more years to have absolutely everything you ever dreamed of. And no, the best thing is not the fact you need 100 million or even 10 million dollars. And, once again, no, the best thing is not that you don’t have to be Steve Jobs in order to achieve all this.

Location independence + make money while you sleep

Is it the fact you are working on something you are passionate about? No. How about the fact you are your own boss, and you get to choose your working hours and location independence? Not even that.

The best thing with having solid cash flow (my example was set at $17,857) is once you reach that $1.5 million and spend / invest / give it all away, the money keeps coming. So in the next 7 years, when you get another 1.5 million what do you do with that?

Do you do it all over again? Do you find new ways? By then, I am sure you will figure it out. It could be that you will need a bigger vision. But that’s a topic for another time. For now, I am here just to open the door for you. Good luck!

Update

After I published “How to get rich online” part 1, I’ve shared it with some of my friends, peers and business partners. Some of them wanted to talk more about the topics and ideas I presented. Some of their comments blew my mind, and some of them made me realize I need to expand my first post. The post I published had more than 4000 words, and I touched on some topics that could have as much text as that entire first post (which could easily be turned into a workshop). I had to cut corners somewhere.

How to get rich online [Q&A]

Here are a few questions and comments that came up after discussing this post with a few of my peers, and friends.

1. Why 10 websites or 100 websites? Why not just 1 website that makes $20,000 every month?

If you can create a website that is making $20,000 every month, you absolutely should. Here are a few reasons why more than one website might be a better approach.

• Traffic diversification – One website can depend on traffic from Google, other from social media, other from paid traffic, other from large email list, etc.
• Niche diversification – One website can be in the health niche, other in tech niche, other in games, and another in finance. Or even smaller niche diversification. One website can be about tea, one about protein powder, one about workouts, one about living a healthy lifestyle. It all depends on the market size.
• Monetization diversification – One website can bring in revenue from Ad networks such as AdSense, another from Amazon Associates, other from paid content, other from affiliate commissions, and so on
• In my opinion, it is easier to create 10 small websites (around $1,000 per month) in 10 different niches, than to achieve moderate success in a single niche (1 website making $10,000 per month). This niche has to be big enough, with not so strong competition.
• Today it is not as hard as before to manage 10 or 20 websites. Hint, hint, webmaster.ninja can help
• This is not a black and white thing. You can start 20 websites, with one of them you hit a gold nerve, and that one goes on to make $10,000 per month. This allows you to shut down 10 of them that aren’t generating enough revenue. With that, you are now left with 1 great website and 9 small websites. In a few years, market conditions can change, and revenue changes.

Writing, promoting or working on a single website becomes tedious

Another advantage of having multiple websites instead of one is you can avoid seasonality or take advantage of it. If you have one great website that is in the travel industry, chances are it’s probably going to bring in revenue April-November (may vary depending on location and other factors). Another example could be if you have a website that spikes only during the holidays. That’s great, but instead of resting in the off-season, how about building or buying another website?

Lastly, writing, promoting or working on a single website becomes tedious in a year. Or two, or five, or ten years. Depending on your character or work that’s involved in the project. I am sure that you have several passions or at least interests in your life.

Do you enjoy watching movies? Maybe you also like photography?

Having fun watching soccer? How about another sport?

If you like skiing, perhaps you like snowboarding as well?

It’s confusing for people and Google ranking algorithm if your website is about psychology, personal finance, marketing, startups, business, Croatia, vegan diet, soccer, games, men jewelry… Do you see where I am going with this?

2. You haven’t written anything about hiring the right people?

That’s a great point! Having the right employees, partners, investors is maybe the most critical aspect of this concept. If you don’t have the right people surrounding you, you can forget it. I remember paying a thousand dollars to several developers each to finish 1 / 100 (that’s one out of one hundred) part of a large task. There were 4 developers, so they would essentially just scratch the surface, but we wanted to start this project. That’s what the CTO explained to me is how it is supposed to be done. Eventually, we ran out of money and the task never got completed.

Years later I hired another developer, but this time entire project was finished in about a couple of weeks for two thousand dollars total (and I gave him a large bonus on top of that). That’s the power of the right people. More work in less time for less money. Before you go on blaming other people, remember one thing. Hiring the right people starts with yourself. You first have to hire yourself. If you are not good enough for the job (that pays $17,857 per month) you have to improve your skills first!

3. What about other investment vehicles such as renting real estates or REIT?

First of all, I wanted this to be a get rich online guide, so I ignored everything that was offline. Also, I don’t have experience with that industry. But I do know a little math. If I have to spend $100,000 on an apartment that will bring me $10,000 every year I am not going to be as satisfied if I spend $100,000 on a website that is making $40,000 in a year. Especially if I consider my skill set and connections. I don’t know any electricians, but in the past, I ran a small web hosting business. I don’t know how to change the windows or a faucet, but I do know how to do SEO. See where I am going with this? Essentially, I am talking about risk, which I cover in the next question.

Another reason why I am not super excited about real estate is location independence. My home country was involved in a raging war in the nineties. I was a kid then, and ever since I have this little thought in my head that says, war is possible. If you are living in Florida, that’s probably not an issue (tornados, mass shootings?), but for many people it is.

Location independence is priceless

As far as REITs go, my friend shared an old post, written by Mr. Money Mustache with me. In case you never heard of MMM, I highly recommend some of his materials on personal finance and investing!

Besides real estates, you could also get dividends from stock, start a part-time business with a partner, invest in cryptocurrency (that’s the latest trend) and there are many other opportunities. I like investing in websites because the barrier to entry is really low (for as low as $500 you can get your feet wet), but, you could also buy a website for several million dollars. In most cases, it is location independent, and you don’t have to rely solely on local talent. Furthermore, work can be easily outsourced. Another thing that’s very important for me personally, is that my core competency is within this industry, so it’s ideal for me. If you have web design, web hosting or digital marketing skills, it could be ideal for you too!

4. You haven’t talked about risk? Isn’t there any risk involved?

Unfortunately, I should have mentioned this. Luckily I can always update an old article, as good writers do. With your skills and connections, your risk goes down (check question before). In the first part of this guide, I share a simple formula where you buy 5 websites making $1,000 each. This formula is theoretical, it’s like saying “If I capture 1% of our market, I’ll be rich”. Sure, but capturing 1% in some markets is practically impossible. Lucky for us, buying 5 websites making $1,000 each isn’t impossible, but still there’s risk.

You probably know this already, as far as risk goes there isn’t a silver bullet solution. Making good choices means that you have experience. How do you get experience? By making bad choices. Yes, you can read about on-pade SEO, and you can watch videos about creating compelling content, and you can find a mentor to help you with website investments. But sooner or later, you are going to have to take a chance or an educated guess. Start somewhere, take the first step. Register a domain name. Set up a web hosting account. Install WordPress. Etc. Or lookup websites that are being sold, and make an offer. If you are a first-time investor, don’t spend a lot of money. Double-check your facts, and buy something cheap. My first investment was for $2,000 and I got scammed. My second investment (a few years later) was for $500, and I got that $500 back within 18 months. Everything after that was pure profit. Now, a couple of years later, my website investments are bringing me more than $1,000 every month, and one website after another is being paid off in full.

Profits are better than wages.

— Jim Rohn

5. Why cap at $17,857 per month? It is possible to make much more!

First of all, $17,857 is a lot of money, and hopefully, I’ve proved to some degree that you really don’t need more to live a dream life. Just the other day I was watching a movie where some ex-military team was robing a narco boss for more than $200 million dollars. And at the moment of the heist, one of them yelled: “I am definitely getting a Ferrari”. My immediate reaction was, dude, you can get a Ferrari for a couple of thousand dollars per month (not that I would recommend this monthly plan). But you definitely don’t need to rob a narco boss to buy a Ferrari.

I feel that many people, and as you can see this is propelled by movies and media, think they need one humongous score in order to make their dreams a reality. Not true. I was thinking the same thing years ago. I thought that I needed to make over a million dollars every year. Many books and experiences later, I learned this is not the case. Again, run the numbers yourself, I am sure you will have a blast with window shopping your dreams.

They say that making the first million is the hardest

Also, after being an entrepreneur for more than a decade, I get the feeling that to make much more than this amount, some degree of luck and mysticism is involved. Translated, I don’t think that absolutely anyone on the planet can make a ridiculous amount such as million dollars every year. The $17,857 I think is achievable for everybody with a computer connected to the Internet and some money or good knowledge of the English language. And even these requirements are being challenged more and more.

Another reason why I go for $17,857 instead of “a ton of money” or “much more money online” is something known in psychology as reticular activating system or RAS. Research have shown that our brain works better if we give it an exact target. Getting rich online is not an exact target. Making $17,857 per month from multiple streams of income, that are online, is specific.

Know “why” you want this!

I cannot stress this enough! If you don’t know why you are doing this you will fail! That’s why I started this article with a list. You have to have a list of reasons. Those reasons will get you up in the morning and awake at night. Those reasons are your fuel. Google index will never inspire you, but a Porsche Caytan might. Website monitoring will not excite you, but a trip to the Maldives could. Updating WordPress may not get you out of bed, but your sick mother probably will.

Do you think my goals suck? I don’t care! That’s the best thing about your goals, they are yours. Build an animal shelter or a school or donate 10,000 books! Whatever! Think of something that fuels you, and you are on your way.

I am really passionate about this topic (hence this article is longer than 6000 words long), and I am always excited to see how this type of lifestyle impacts other people’s lives. Location independence, being your own boss, having the opportunity to make more money every single month and perhaps most important thing, to work on something you find rewarding or fulfilling.