12 Powerful Ways To Make Money Online in Australia (Updated 2024)
Christopher and Laura
12 Powerful Ways To Make Money Online in Australia (Updated 2024)
There's no better time to learn how to make money online in Australia in 2024 than by leveraging the power of the internet and making money online while you sleep.
If you had asked your parents or grandparents if they ever thought that people could make money by selling digital products and online surveys and see the money flow in whilst you sleep; they would have thought you were crazy, right?
Heck you probably found yourself here because there's a part of you that still needs a little convincing..
It can be difficult to weed out the legitimate courses from the bad ones, who's trying to promise the world and rip you off versus courses or products that actually deliver a return and allow you to earn money online in Australia.
Coming from ordinary people who have worked tirelessly to develop multiple income streams across many platforms, we understand the power and ways to make money online, and in particular how to make money online from home in Australia.
Read on to find out how YOU can start making money online.
12 powerful ways to make money online in Australia
This 'new' style of making a living has become extremely attractive to those wanting to either surplus their existing income or replace their current income entirely, who doesn't want a bit of extra cash right?
Whilst this isn't an exhaustive list we have made every attempt to cover our favourite ways to make money online, some of which we personally use ourselves and others that we can recommend as alternate methods of earning an income from the comfort of your own couch.
Whilst the concept of 'passive income' gets used a lot these days, it's incredibly important to remember that 'passive' has been interpreted by some as either easy or effortless.
Passive income streams become passive EVENTUALLY, however there is a lot of hard work involved in first establishing an online platform and making money online.
It takes time, but with the right money mindset and determination you too will enjoy making money online.
Start affiliate marketing business
Now here is the absolute golden ticket when it comes to how to make money from home in Australia and the answer is in affiliate marketing. What is affiliate marketing you ask?
It's a type of business model where an individual makes a commission on a product or service they promote and sell for another business.
For example promoting travel tours for certain destinations or activities on behalf of another company and receiving a commission off the sale.
Whilst the commissions are generally around 2-5%, the more traffic you drive to your affiliate marketing business, the more conversions and therefore sales you make. This is a great way to make money online in Australia because it's highly scaleable.
Some of the best affiliate companies on the web that we personally use:
All of these businesses in some way run affiliate partnerships where you can start to make money online from the beginning.
Best Affiliate marketing courses in Australia
Having trialled our fair share of network and affiliate marketing courses in Australia this is hands down our MOST favourite course to get behind.
This is an extremely popular online course that we started out with many years ago. The course gives your EVERYTHING you need to know about successfully running and selling an online course.
It's run by an Australian couple but is available for anyone in the world to join.
From email marketting to money mindset, setting up advertisements, building your own website and developing your personal brand and learning about funnelling this is in our opinion the best affiliate marketing course on the web.
Why not give it a go for yourself and check our their free masterclass
Freelancing websites
Freelancing is essentially working for yourself and not for another company, in which you offer your services to them in exchange for agreed upon pay.
Freelancing is a great way to earn money online in Australia because it allows you the freedom to choose your own hours, set your own professional rates of pay and have the flexibility to work remotely.
Depending on your skill set you can choose to reach out to companies and offer your services directly for a set rate or contract, or you can join a freelancing website and join a pool of applicants ready to have work offered to them.
Some common freelancing jobs include:
Photography
Writing
Video editing
Website design
Graphic design
Translation
Audio to written transcription
You will need to get a free ABN (Australian business number) to work on these websites to be paid and comply with the rules of the websites and local government business policies.
The best ways to make money online from freelancing is by having a look at these three best freelancing websites:
Fiver- a great online platform that helps you earn money online by offering clients a wide range of jobs including video and animation, copywriting, digital marketing or graphics and design.
Upwork - we've personally used this website multiple times to out-source work for our projects and offers a similar style of work to that of fiver, with the option to set an hourly rate for your work, or charge a fixed contract amount within your own hours from the comfort of your own home.
Freelancer - with over 22 million job postings across 1800 categories this is one of the best ways to make money online in Australia.
Other websites to consider are Iwriter, Medium or directly contacting businesses you're interested in.
Start a Youtube channel
A great way to make money online in Australia (anywhere in the world in fact) is to create a Youtube channel and 'vlog' for an online audience.
This specifically appeals to those who have the creative flare for any given topic and dont mind being in front of a camera. We have Youtube channel that we created years ago to document our journey across the world for 12 months.
Monetising this is super simple; find a working internet connection, set up your account, decide what it is you want your channel to be about, create engaging creative content and join the Youtube partner program and enable ads on your site through Google Adsense.
You can cross promote your Youtube channel on your social media accounts by telling your followers to check out both platforms, thereby driving even more traffic to your Youtube account, making extra money online.
Here is a link to our Youtube channel we created a few years ago.
If you're interested in learning more and creating a youtube channel, click here to create an account.
Complete online surveys for cash
One of the fastest ways to make money online in Australia is joining an online surveys company and offer your opinions and insights for various companies.
Completing online surveys is one of the easiest ways make money online as it requires little effort and time to do, in fact if you carved out one hour of each day to complete online surveys you can quickly climb the ranks and earn hundreds of dollars per survey.
Here's a quick overview of the online surveys companies on offer
Attapol- One of the most trusted survey sites in Australia.
Surveyz- Help shape companies decisions by participating in their market research programs and earn great money online
Octopus Group - Specific to Australia and New Zealand and offering the highest pay outs of anywhere survey sites.
Create and sell online courses
Of all the ways to make money online in Australia this is one of our favourites and one method that can rocket-ship your digital income.
Unlike other ways of online money making in Australia, the ability to create online courses and see the sales role in day after day is incredible.
Identify first your skill and what you're really good at first, then from there select the most appropriate audience through some simple market research. Finding your niche in any online course or venture is critical to your success and ability to make money online.
We found our niche for online courses with the FREE Freedom Affiliate Masterclass that helped us get started on our online journey.
The process can take some time to establish and refine, we have found the best way to learn, make and sell courses by taking full advantage of sites like Youtube and skillshare.
Not only are these platforms fantastic as open learning platforms it also gives you a great example of the power of what you are trying to achieve.
We have used our fair share of these over the years to teach us how to build websites, use cameras and shoot cinematic footage for our travel website, and you can stop and pick it up at any point along the way.
Start making money with a Blog website
For those curious on how to make money online starting a blog can be an amazing and powerful income stream, but it does have a lot of moving parts to get it started and keep it running like a well oiled machine.
To create a website first you will need a platform to do so, the most popular sites are
Wordpress- easy to use, navigate and analyse metrics
Wix- tailored for the more artsy sites
GoDaddy - ecommerce store and affiliate marketer tailored
Squarespace- a good mix of artsy and blog enabled usage
Identifying your niche field like travel, fashion or technology reviews is the first part and you should factor in how likely you are to rank on search engines for this niche.
The rewards from a blog are enormous with minimal risk but it's downside is that it takes time to set up.
Here are the most popular ways travel blogs make money online:
Advertisement revenue - companies like MediaVine or Google adsense show ads on your site and you earn money through what the industry calls cost per view (CPV)
Affiliate marketing resellers - 3rd party resellers like GetYourGuide and Booking.com sell other companies activities, accommodations and packages and you earn a commission based off this.
Brand Collaborations - websites work with tourism boards and/or brands in exchange for commercial content and/or promotional content.
Sponsored posts - companies will pay for blog websites to travel to their state or country to promote the destination to a wide and engaged audience through a series or blog articles.
The amazing part of owning a blog is that you now have the ability to combine a number of different ways to make money online as listed above like affiliate marketing, selling online courses and even cross-promoting your Youtube channel on.
Promoting other peoples products and/or services on your website is a lucrative way to make money online in Australia and is one of our top picks.
We personally run an online travel blog called Chris and Laura Travels that you can check out below.
Sell physical products
If you have a unique idea or product to sell then why not get your product out there? Whether you make them yourself or have them mass-produced there's a massive audience for selling unique and authentic products on online marketplaces.
First, create an online store through websites like Shopify, GoDaddy or start a Wordpress website.
Again, a good internet connection and a bit of knowledge through skillshare is a good place to start.
There's a couple of ways to do this, you could try:
Drop-shipping - a way of acting as a 3rd party seller of a product without physically stocking the product yourself or..
Storing the product yourself - If you have a manufacturer who makes your product then you can either get them to sell straight to the customer or have them send you our products and your responsible for postage and packaging your item.
Facebook marketplace - You can find almost anything you need to buy right here so it would make sense that you could also sell anything on facebook marketplace, right?
The most popular sites for selling products are
Advertise your services via Airtasker
When you have time and need to take on odd jobs, Airtasker might provide a good platform to assist you.
Airtasker provides users with an easy way to post jobs or provide services. Various tasks can be undertaken ranging from simple writing jobs to websites development and ad administration.
Job offers may be done in-person or in-store. Some job opportunities are offline, including cleaning and gardening.
Tip: When starting out in Airtasker, try to find small tasks that will get you reviews before taking on bigger tasks.
Online tutoring
Welcome to the 21st century; where everybody is looking to learn their daily tasks online and this is where online tutoring comes in.
If you consider yourself qualified in an industry or a topic then why not apply to online companies to offer your tutoring skills?
This eliminates the need to travel for work and allows you location freedom and mostly time freedom. The sky is the limit when it comes to online tutoring and depending on your skill set you could tutor in
Physics
Biology
English
Mathematics
Photography or
Accounting
Take this skill set with you across the globe and you never have to stop travelling.
Here's a list of some companies that offer online tutoring that you can join today
Start a podcast
In 2024, it was estimated the podcast listening population worldwide would exceed 50 million, crazy right?
It is a popular audio format that is used to consume news, jokes or opinion. Podcasting can be an excellent opportunity to earn some extra cash. Creating a following can be done easily and efficiently by using the podcast monetisation tool.
There's a ton of background work that needs attention before setting up each episode but with opportunities to partner with brands and companies that aligns with your audience and messaging its a fantastic opportunity.
Data Entry
This topic can cover many different forms of data entry and is an easy way to make money online in Australia because all you really need is a good internet connection with a laptop. It can be a great way to make some extra income.
Data entry can come in the form of both transcribing audio from any source such as medical transcriptions or recordings of conferences and events.
Each company will pay differently but within Australia at least the pay rate is fairly good and data entry jobs can sometimes take less than an hour of our time.
Companies like Remote i.o and and HeyRemote offer varying data entry jobs from a wide array of industries where you can get started on your online money journey.
License your photography to stock photo websites
Do you like photography? You can easily earn money by selling photos in stocks such as Shutterstock or Flickr.
You can upload images to free Stocks like Burst to make your image known. After you start a stock business, start selling your pictures as printed by creating a website on Shopify.
Be a virtual assistant
Companies often prefer to outsource their help for different tasks like product and market research or e commerce website help to a virtual assistant or VA because it gives them the flexibility to hire anybody with the right skill anywhere in the world without finding local help.
This is one of the most popular ways to make money online in Australia because you're able to reach out to multiple companies and become a virtual assistant for more than one company at a time (depending on matters of conflict of interest)
Virtual assistants organise online events, assist a social media influencer with creating sponsored posts and even create online events, the list is virtually endless! (see what we did there)
The best way to advertise yourself as a virtual assistant is by creating an online portfolio for companies to see your work and a proven track record of previous work collaborations.
To start to make money online in Australia as a virtual assistant we recommend spending a few hours a day look through multiple sites like Fiver, Upwork and Freelancer.
It's one of the best side hustles in Australia and you can 'virtually' (see what we did there) anywhere in the world.
User Generated Content
This is the goldmine of the digital age in 2023 and is used by a large majority of online businesses in their marketing campaigns.
At its core, it involves creating content like reviews, blog posts, short 15-30 second videos for both Tik Tok, Instagram and Facebook for companies to use as advertisements demonstrating real world customer experience.
In Australia, many people turn this creative outlet into a thriving side hustle earning a ton of extra cash; you simply share your thoughts, expertise and passion for products in mostly video format, and as your UGC gains traction, you can begin to monetise it through advertising, sponsorships or by selling the product yourself.
For example, if you approach a company that sells outdoor hiking gear, a user generated content video would show you using and talking about the product and why you love using it in real world examples.
Companies will offer to pay you in exchange for using their product and telling the world how great it is.
Become a social media consultant
This is very 2023, but an industry thats becoming increasingly popular is the social media influencer world.
To start, you could just as easily become a social media influencer yourself if you had a following above 10k or so (not always) and start affiliate marketing through your channel.
The other way is to consult for other influencers on their social media platform like Instagram, Facebook, Youtube or TikTok. If you have an intimate knowledge of the applications and could benefit others from increasing their following you can offer consulting services.
Here are some other ways you can make extra income through social media:
Sponsored posts
Affiliate marketing commissions
Brand collaborations
User generated content (UGC)
Have your followers make coffee donations
One other way to make money online in Australia through the social media influencer route is to become a social media manager. We know people whose job it is to create content for these businesses using their media.
You simply take their photos/videos and upload it in your own creative way onto their own website or social media platforms and it is a fantastic way to make money fast because you often work on a retaining basis, meaning you get paid the same month to month continuously to do the same amount of work.
Rent your home as an Airbnb host
We have personal experience using Air BnB to rent out our home anytime we're away for extended periods of time and it's a fantastic way to make money online.
If you have a unique look to your home there can be great potential for this to become a feasable and rewarding option. You have full control of when the house is available, the nightly rate and what guests have available to them.
Airbnb is quickly becoming a popular option for traveling in today's environment.
12 ways to make money online FAQ
How can I make money online in Australia right now
Honestly if it's extra cash you're looking for then most options here are fantastic. Data entry for example promises very quick turn around because the jobs are normally smaller, but if it's long lasting and continuous cash flow while you sleep that you're after then we recommend affiliate marketing and setting up an online business.
We do both, to be precise. We started our online journey with affiliate marketing with the Freedom Affiliate Launch.
Designed by Aussies to teach you how to create an online business with all the important information you could ever want, with step by step guides, follow along video series and more!
You could be earning your first $1000 in your first few days of launching your new online business.
You can check out their free masterclass here.
I'm new to this, can a beginner make money from this?
100 percent YES!! We were in the exact same position not that long ago, having never heard or tried affiliate marketing before, we were astonished at the kind of quick results you can get from this type of online money earning platform.
Do I need experience to make money online in Australia?
Not at all. Everybody starts from somewhere and most of the ways we've listed in this article need no experience! In fact, the Freedom Affiliate Launch takes people from the very of starting your online business through to have a fully operational website and marketting/email funnel.
Can I make money sitting at home?
This is the whole point of everything we talk about - you can even make money while you travel. The idea with concepts like affiliate marketing, online surveys or selling online courses is that once the initial hard work is set in motion, the clients come to you and you wake up every morning with a shiny new pay check!
How can I start making money in Australia
Whether you're looking for a bit of extra cash or want to use multiple online platforms to completely replace your income, any ONE or a combination of the above mentioned methods of making money in Australia will get you started on your journey.
It's great practice to perform your own market research to find your niche and what works best for you before you dive straight. If you have a social media presence you could consider reaching our to companies for sponsored posts or you could research the stock market to wisely invest your money.
Creating an online store selling physical products can take a little longer to set up, as with any ecommerce store there's a bit of behind the scenes work to be done but the reward is second to none.
Disclaimer: This article contains affiliate links through which we may earn a small commission based off the purchase of these at no additional cost to you. The programs and links mentioned above our based off of our personal experience and trial and error over many years and we make every effort possible to provide you with accurate and up to date information.
