How to Get Rich Online in 2017

How Do You Define Rich?
For many people, the unlimited earning potential is a huge selling point for working online. And don’t get me wrong — unlimited income certainly does sound nice. Making gobs of money is how many people might define being rich, but it’s not the only one.

Ramit Sethi is a world-renowned personal finance expert who took his blog about money and turned it into a multi-million-dollar company that teaches people how to make money from all kinds of work (online and traditional). His approach began purely as financial advice — how to “be rich” in the monetary sense. But in the past several years, he decided that there’s more to being “rich” than just money.

He often challenges his audience to decide, individually, what constitutes a “rich life.” Sometimes that does mean high incomes from high-powered jobs, but sometimes it means something else. The ability to make ends meet working very-part-time hours so you have more time for your family. Being able to outsource some of life’s drudgery (like cooking or cleaning) so you can spend more time doing things you value. Having the flexibility to go to the gym at 3pm. Being able to give generously.

What Rich Means to You
I love this perspective of defining your own version of a “rich life” and then working toward that end. And I love making money online as a way to achieve that rich life, however you’ve defined it.

The truth is, there are all kinds of paths to riches online, and one person’s path won’t necessarily look like someone else’s. There are some similarities, for sure, and some basic principles are fairly consistent no matter what you’re doing. But if you really want to get rich online this year, this is great news, because you’ve got so many options! Take a look at your skills and interests, and always be watching for inspiration and ideas for how you can take what you already have and turn it into something that will get you to that rich life you want.

These are some “success stories” for you to consider — people who have built businesses that generate enough money for each of them to feel “rich” however they choose to define it. Each person knew what they wanted, found a way to make money that worked for them, and then made smart decisions along the way that got them to their goal. Here’s how they did it:

Teach a Skill
I’ve mentioned ProofreadAnywhere.comProofreadAnywhere.com on my blog before, in part because it’s such a great opportunity for anyone who wants to work from home as a proofreader. The founder, Caitlin Pyle, began her Proofread Anywhere blog after being a freelance proofreader long enough to know that this was a viable income opportunity. She didn’t see anyone else teaching how to do it, so she decided to do it herself.

The foundation of Proofread Anywhere is her high-level course that teaches you everything you need to know about being a proofreader, from proofreading skills to business and marketing. It’s a rigorous course with testing and exams along the way, so you’ll really know your stuff when you come out the other end. The business is robust enough that Caitlin was able to hire her husband, Ben, and they spend their time working and traveling together as much as possible.

They’ve taken what they’ve learned by building Proofread Anywhere and started a new blog, called The Work Anywhere Life. The goal of TWAL is to teach you how to create a viable online business that will allow you to — yes — work anywhere. Caitlin and Ben spent a year traveling abroad and are now back in the U.S. getting ready to build their dream home. To them, being able to work from anywhere in the world is a huge motivator.

Run a (Brilliantly Monetized) Blog
If you’ve hung around my blog for any length of time, you’ve probably seen me mention the Elite Blog Academy, the flagship program from my blogging mentor, Ruth Soukup. Ruth started a blog back in 2010. She says she started it to hold herself accountable when she was trying to get her spending under control, but ultimately the blog turned into much more than an accountability measure. She ended up developing a wildly successful planner, writing a book, becoming a speaker, and ultimately, becoming one of the premier blogging experts out there.

Ruth says right on her about page that what blogging taught her was that the definition of “living well” doesn’t necessarily have to do with the things she had in her life, but how she was living and who she was becoming. Ruth’s blogging empire is certainly lucrative, but it only took off after she realized what it truly meant to be “rich.”

If you think blogging is right for you — and it’s right for so many people — I can’t recommend her Elite Blog Academy highly enough. It’s a big investment, but if you follow the training and do the work, you’ll recoup the investment quickly and go on to have a hugely successful business (as well as a lot of fun!).

Offer a Valuable Service
Have you heard of Create Your Laptop Life? It’s an online training and mentorship program run by Julie Stoian and Madelaine Corke, two online entrepreneurs who were able to start at their own personal “bottoms” and turn their individual VA businesses into something incredible. Together they have a digital marketing agency called Pipe & Lime, and they also run CYLL to teach other up-and-comers how to be wildly successful.

Julie said in a recent interview that being a VA is a great way to become rich online, but that you have to be strategic about it. You can’t just offer the same-old, same-old VA skills and expect to bring in more than about $35/hour. And while that’s pretty good money for a lot of people, it also puts a pretty big limit on your income when your true limits could be much higher.

The secret to making a lot more money as a VA, Julie says, is to offer skills that are highly valuable and therefore can earn you a much higher hourly rate. She’s talking about things like Facebook ads, sales funnels, copywriting, web design, and more. These are all skills that come with a much higher price tag, and they’re all skills that you should be able to learn.

Create Your Laptop Life is all about teaching you those skills, and Pipe & Lime is all about doing those things for other clients. By combining teaching and done-for-you services, Julie and Madelaine have been able to generate multiple-six-figures as, essentially, high-level VAs.

Sell With Amazon
I shared an interview here on the blog with Jessica Larew, an Amazon FBA seller who makes six figures just on Amazon (not to mention her other online work). You can check out that interview right here to see how she does it — and how she managed to hire her husband out of his full-time job so they could both spend significantly more time with their son. That, to her, is what having a rich life means, and she found a way to make it happen.

Direct Sales
Direct sales are a HUGE opportunity for making money — including big money — online and offline. Running a successful blog or website can go a long way toward boosting your bottom line, especially if you know how to market it well and convert the leads you get.

Not all direct sales is about your online presence, though. There’s a big element of in-person interaction, which why direct sales can be so much fun for so many people. Jennifer Tegnerud is one woman who has a really interesting direct sales success story. She quit her job to be a stay-at-home mom and then decided that she needed to do something “grown up” to keep in touch with her “pre-mom” self and make staying home more feasible. What that turned into is a fascinating success story that you can read about right here. Jennifer works part-time hours as a Stella & Dot Stylist to make a full-time income doing something creative and exciting, that really taps into her strengths and interests.

Now It’s Your Turn
If you’ve been looking for ways to get rich online, you may have checked out many of these options, but the primary thing you need to know is why you’re looking in the first place. Once you know that, you’ll have a much better idea of what type of online work will be right for you.