How To Make $500 a Month Online: Ultimate Guide

This is the ultimate guide to making $500 a month online. 

Such a guide has never existed up until now. 

It will show you EXACTLY how to make $500 a month no matter what business model you like and try.

At a certain time in your life, you might have noticed that you would prefer to make money from your computer from anywhere. 

Rather than having to brave a commute, and spend long hours in traffic. 

Also, health outbreaks like Covid, have caused many physical businesses to quickly change to an online model to stay in business.

The good news about making $500 online is that, whether you make $500 online, you can easily double, triple, and max it out as big as you want. 

This ultimate guide will explain everything you need to know and how to implement it to earn $500 a month online whenever you want.

Before I earned my first $500 online, it was a real struggle. Not only was I working on it part-time, which was hard work, but it didn’t give me life balance. I had no real idea of what to do. 

Because of that, I struggled for a couple of months and had my first $500 a month. After that, I found it possible to keep it going. For these reasons, I put together this guide so that you can make your first $500 online and continue to make it monthly.

I have been working online and learning about online business for the past two years. I have consistently made $500+ online for the past six months.

This ultimate guide is for:

• An absolute beginner, who has no experience running their own business, online or offline. 
• A person who has been learning about different ways to make money online. 
• Or, you might have made a bit of money with an online or offline business and want to learn more about how to do it every month. Also, learn how to increase your income beyond that to make it a full-time thing.

Chapter 1: Getting Started With Making $500 a Month Online

When you first get started making $500 online, you need to answer a few questions that will make the rest of your efforts much easier. 

This involves planning and choosing a niche. If somehow you already know what you want to sell. But, just want to extra tips, then move on to Chapter 2. 

It’s critical that you select a niche or service you want to offer before you can begin promoting.

It’s the old chicken and egg conundrum. Entrepreneur.com has provided a list of 101 ways to make $500 online. But, based on my experience with many businesses from this list I would recommend:

• Edit videos
• Online tutoring
• Buying and selling
• Online translation services

The reason is these are all online. You can learn these skills quickly when compared to the other things they suggested. They also will easily make you $500 a month and have the ability to grow even more significantly than that.

Other businesses that are very good to get into for online are web design and development, web application development, iPhone and Android apps, and writing. 

These all take about three months of full time learning to get proficient enough to offer it as a service. This means that if you have the option to take some classes in school or online, it will help you.

The best way to get into these industries is to learn from someone who is doing it at the moment. Most Universities and big institution teachers have never worked in the industry or have never been a business owner. So, the help and advice from professors might not be that great.

Step 1: Decide on a service or product you are going to do for customers

You likely have some skills you are already aware of. 

Write down on a Google sheet or piece of paper all of the skills you currently have. 

They can be big or small, like walking your dog once a week. Don’t get too worried if it is an online skill or not. You can decide later if you can sell a product related to it or write information about it for people.

Aim to spend 2 minutes or so writing them down. You don’t have to think hard, just write anything that comes to mind.

There is a huge demand for online services. If you are a worried about how competitive your niche is, then check out the following blog I wrote that will guide you How Do I Know if an Industry Is Oversaturated? 

It covers my method for finding out whether an industry has too much competition. 

So you can choose one that isn’t as competitive.

Step 2: Whittle down your list to some products/industries/services you could do

Now, take a look at your list and think about them from the perspective of whether you can make $500 a month with them online.

For example, say you like jumping on your trampoline. You could potentially sell trampolines online.

You can also provide helpful information online about how to choose the right trampoline. This is known as blogging. But, more on that later.

There is nothing new under the sun when it comes to what service, product, or industry you can make $500 a month from helping.

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to make a tonne of money online.

People make fortunes in selling anything from pens to chicken coops. So, don’t worry that you have to come up with something new.

Simply write down on the same spreadsheet or a new one skills you would be interested in pursuing. The main idea is not to choose an industry you hate or find boring. It will make it that much easier to earn $500 a month when you avoid boring topics. Try to stick to what you’re passionate about.

Step 3: Create a package or specific product or service you will provide

Look over the list you created in Step 2, and then think about what service or product you are going to deliver. For example, if one of your interests was horseback riding. You could offer online coaching or online videos about horseback riding.

You can look at the different people that offer these types of products and then fill a gap that they aren’t filling.

For example, there might not be anyone who is showing people about how to look after a certain kind of horse. If you can’t find something to write about, try to better the quality of information that your competition is offering. They most probably left information out that beginners would love to hear about.

You want to define a service or product that you can provide. In all cases, it’s either information or a physical product. So, see what makes sense based on your list.

Step 4: Evaluate if the market is big enough for your product or service.

When you’re looking at your topics and come down with a smaller list of really good ones. You might feel confident enough to just go ahead with it. Others might want to spend more time being more thorough.

This involves doing some rough math to figure out how you will make $500 a month. It also involves setting some goals.

As an example, let’s say you want to provide Skype or Zoom coaching for $50 an hour.

To make $500 a month, you would need to work 10 hours per month. Or 2.5 hours a week.

This clarifies how you are going to make $500 a month.

Another example is you can find a horse-related product that sells for $30. But, you can get it for $10 on Alibaba.com.

So, you will make $20 for each one you sell. Doing some math, you can figure out how many products you need to sell to reach your target of $500.

Once you’ve decided how many you can sell, then it is a good idea to assess what your competitors are doing. I would read this article: What Are Some Trending but Not Oversaturated Products?, which shows you how to do exactly that. To summarise what I’ve covered so far.

How do you make $500 a month online?

To make $500 online, you need to first create a list of skills and areas that interest you. Then you need to create a service or product you can sell that is related to your skills and interests. Finally, you need to market and deliver your product or service.

So far, I’ve covered how to create a list of skills and areas that interest you, how to turn those into a product or service. But, you still have a lot of questions about the actual running of your business. So, next I will explain how to get all the information you will need.

Chapter 2: Get the information you need

When I was brand new to making consistent money online, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And this slowed me down a lot. In fact, the more I learned, the more I realized there were key principles to being successful in life and at business.

So, it’s important to get courses, information from blogs, books, podcasts, and videos that will give you all the information you need to be successful.

So, this chapter is dedicated to making sure you get all the resources you need to do what you need to do to make $500 a month online and beyond.

Step 1. Read a lot of books in your industry

Most people will groan at this. But, if you make a regular habit of reading for 30 minutes in the evenings in your chosen field before you go to sleep. Within a few weeks and months, you will be much smarter about what you are doing and more confident.

I personally made it a habit to read for 30 mins in the morning and 1.5 hours in the evening, as recommended by Brian Tracy. There are many motivational speakers, trainers, and successful people that are extremely helpful in keeping you on track, motivated, and with a positive mindset.

With the advent of Facebook and other social media, the potential to get overwhelmed by negative thoughts and feelings that come from them is very real. Having some positive thoughts and vibes makes achieving your goal of $500 a month much easier and more pleasant.

It’s very easy to add this to your current routine, or create a routine around it. For example, I will wake up in the morning, drink some water, have something to eat, then read for 30 minutes before I do anything else.

From there, you can create a reading list of books you would like to read over the next year or six months. But, you will get excellent health, and psychological benefits from doing it, even after only a few days to a week. After that, you may need some additional training and courses, and that’s the next topic of this chapter.

Step 2. Consider taking some paid courses (buyer beware)

I’ve personally taken some expensive and inexpensive courses online, ranging from $1000 up to $4000.

Whereas some I just got one of two-month membership for around $50. Each taught me something new. I couldn’t say that the price didn’t determine the quality of the training in the course.

Some taught me everything I needed to know. However, I didn’t implement it. Others taught me what I needed to know again in a slightly different way, and I only half-implemented it.

Generally, you can find a course that will take you from start to finish with all the tactics you will need. Unfortunately, you might not recognize such a course straight off the bat. After you’ve taken a bunch, you have a frame of reference to compare them to.

For this reason I’ve put together a list below of my top course recommendations:

Making $500 a month and more from Blogging and Youtube – Income School

Consulting – Consulting.com

Before buying any course, you need to think about whether it provides you some skill that you are lacking that is stopping you from succeeding. Generally, most of the time, the answer is no. You can find everything you need to learn from people who have done it for free online.

But, buying a course will speed you along a lot faster, because they will give you a roadmap and all the information in one place. However, before buying a course you should evaluate all of your free options, which I will cover in the next section. That way, you can save some cash.

Also, there’s a wealth of free information online that will tell you everything you need to know. The free resources I recommend are:

How Do You Earn Money When You’re Bilingual?

How Can I Make Money at Home if I’m Under 18?

Is It Hard to Make $500 a Month Blogging?

How to Sell Clothes Online

Step 3. Make use of the amazing free resources available for everyone

Almost all industries have a content creator that is providing exceptional free information. You can find them by doing a Google search for ‘how to’ questions related to your new business. 

For example, ‘how to start a freelance translation business’ – when you take an hour to look through all the different people with blogs you will quickly get an idea who the best one is.

When you look for one article topic on Google and go to their website, they will almost always have articles related to the topic. That article typically answers all the questions you will have pertaining to that search query. 

So, you can get all the information you need from one website. 

But, I encourage you to look at the information provided by multiple different bloggers and Youtubers. Because when you do, you will find topics and things that they say that are the same. 

For example, they might all say that for your specific business, you should set up a profile on Upwork.com. When you find the majority of them recommending that, then you can be sure that it is good advice. 

But, when one blogger says you should only focus on your blog. But, none of the rest are really talking about that as the main priority. Then, it might just be one person trying to talk something up to sell you a course.

While operating your business and the more people you read from, you will begin to put the picture together and hopefully not get sidetracked as I have. Which I do admit is a mistake, and most people do. It almost seems like it’s a right of passage for business owners.

Once you have all the training you need, whether it’s free or you bought some books and courses, you will need to implement them. Which, in general, involves writing out a marketing plan. I will cover this in the next chapter.

Chapter 3: Write Out a Marketing Plan

Once you know how you’re going to deliver your product or service, due to all the training, now, it’s time to start talking with people about it.

If you don’t tell anyone about your service or products, then it can be very slow to make sales.

And unless you get really lucky, you won’t make $500 a month consistently. And I want you to make as much money as you can from your business.

To do that, you need a marketing plan, and in the next chapter, I will explain the ins and outs of executing a marketing plan.

As with my previous advice, now that you are reading for 30 minutes every day, you will have time to read books about marketing. This is really important as it will open your mind to strategies you can implement in your business. You can even formulate a marketing strategy for different types of business you launch.

When you have various businesses and learned from trial and error, you can always sell your expertise in a course. This is another way of making money but in the long run. So keep your notes and jot everything down because you can later make a profit from your experience.

Step 1: Create a list to store your customers contact information

Going with the flow and reaching out to people you come across is not as effective as identifying customers who are a good fit for your products and then contact them. It will save you time.

It is also easier to keep track of who you have contacted and when. This is the job of customer relationship software (CRM). A CRMS allows you to store customers you want to reach out to, and track who you contacted with and stores their details.

In my experience, you don’t need to use a paid one when you first start your business. In the initial stages, you should keep your expenses as low as possible.

However, you should use something that does what a CRM does. I personally use a Google Sheet even to this day.

That way all the information is always backed up to the cloud, and I don’t have to pay a monthly fee for it.

You want to create a list where you can store and update how many times you contacted your potential customers, which ones bought, and the date you last contacted them. You can add additional information and columns that you like to track.

Step 2: Find people who are good potential fit for your products

Over the many marketing books I have read, one thing that stood out to me was that the easiest people to sell your products or services to are people who already buy them.

It’s also people who have already bought from you before, repeat customers. However, since you’re likely just getting started, you won’t have any customers as yet. Keep this in mind when you get your first customers.

The reason is you won’t have to do much convincing. Meaning you don’t have to inform them as to why they need your product or service. If they were pleased with your customer service, they’d repeat.

They already know they need and want it because they have purchased it before. So, you only have to refresh their memory that they’ve purchased from you in the past. However, this varies by business and with different products.

Now, you’d want to look at potential customers based on their social media profiles. When you review them, you can see their personality and whether it’s a good chance they will want to purchase your product.

All business owners will report that the percentage of people that you offer your products and services too is low. Statistically speaking, somewhere in the range of 10% or less. So, keep this in mind when you feel like you’re getting rejected or ignored. Do not get discouraged.

Step 3: Decide how and what type of marketing method you will do to them.

There are many ways to market your product or service, such as cold email, cold calling, connecting with them on Facebook and Linkedin. There are also follow up templates you can use online.

They all have a similar format:

Hi ___,

Compliment about them about something or about their business (genuine).

Something about that we should Linkedin connect or be facebook friends if they are interested

Thanks,

Name

You can find some free examples of them online. Using your experience, you can come up with something natural and inviting to your potential clients.

People that give you a positive response, you can follow up and find some common ground. Then afterward, it would be natural to talk about your services and products.

A major turn off for comeback customers is to be too pushy or upfront. Depending on the industry it might work but chances are they might not return. Treat your customers as you would like to be treated. That would be the best advice, this will keep them coming back for more. 

Customers who have bad experiences, express bad word of mouth and scare other potential clients that can go your away. An example of this will be to ask them too many times if they want to buy your product. They either might buy just to not hear from you or completely block you out.

The most alienating behavior you can do is to not pay attention to the customer, be polite and courteous.

You can find many examples of outreach messages to test. You will have to test various to see which give better results. 

It’s important to track how many you send and what responses and sales you get.

Listing your products and services on large websites with lots of visitors

There are many large and well-established websites that have a tonne of monthly visitors. 

On these you can list your products and services for free. Examples are websites like Upwork.com, and Freelancer.com. 

But, there are hundreds of them. With customers posting gigs that they need to be done.

The website you are on now is an online marketplace where you can buy and sell items. They offer a free account that gives you up to 3 listings on it. 

If you are interested in listing your items, then click here go to the create account page today.

Any type of marketing you do will involve making contact with a potential customer, building a bit of a relationship with them. 

And then sending promotions to them. If you need more marketing methods, then there are many good books on the topic. 

I personally recommend any books by Dan Kennedy and Brian Tracy. The good news is you can find lots of them for free at your local library or the Kindle versions are very cheap, usually less than $20.

The final step to creating your marketing plan is to decide how many customers you will contact in a particular week or per month. 

For most people, you can reach out to about 15 to 20 new customers in a week. And out of these 15 to 20 people, you will find about one of two people who will buy your product or service.

To summarize, you want to:

• Put together a document that you can regularly update for tracking your marketing.
• Come up with a list of customers that have a type of business that needs your services.
• Decide on a method you will use to contact them and build a relationship.

Now that you’ve come up with your marketing plan, you will need to execute it. That’s what’s coming up in chapter 4.

Chapter 4: Execute your marketing plan

Executing your marketing plan is one of the key tasks you need to implement to make $500 a month online. With a new business, you need to reach out to new people consistently. Because a new company doesn’t have a reputation and only a handful of people know about it.

As you get customers by reach out and do an excellent job of delivering your product or service, this will get people to talk about it. Word of mouth is the best marketing tool out there.

When that happens, you won’t need to focus on marketing to new people as much. Naturally, potential customers will begin reaching out to you.

Now, this won’t happen in the early stages. That is why executing your marketing plan is a huge part of making $500 a month or more. Below are some steps to stay on track with your marketing.

Step 1. Plan out your time in a calendar, refer to it once a day, and plan your week in advance.

Almost all books written about success talk about being efficient with your time (doing work in focused chunks). I have seen this in any book by Brian Tracy or Steven Covey.

So, you’ll want to set aside perhaps an hour to 1.5 hours a day to just work on marketing your business. And then include that in your weekly plan that you look at in the morning.

Step 2. Set a goal for how many customers you want to contact each week. 

When you set a clear target, it’s easier to hit, and you will feel better going forward. I’ve noticed this myself, and it helped me be successful in making my first $500 online.

It’s easy to get excited and create plans for the future. However, your motivation needs to be 100% charged.

So, if you feel demotivated or don’t want to do it (which happens to us all), incorporate some ways to fire yourself up and keep moving.

Step 3. Motivate yourself daily

It is easy and possible for virtually everyone to make $500 online. But, putting in the consistent effort is where most people fail. The answer is to set it up as a routine.

For example, every morning after breakfast and before I go to work, I’ll work 30 minutes on marketing my business.

You should also listen to motivational speakers and read motivational books. In everyday life, you will run into negative people that can drain your energy.

Thus, you need to balance out these negative thoughts with positive and encouraging people. Examples are speakers such as Jim Rohn and Zig Ziglar.

One of Zig Ziglar’s famous quotes is: “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.”

So, in this chapter, you learned how to execute your marketing plan, which involves staying on track, motivated, and setting goals. Now, the next chapter is about delivering your service so that your customers stay with you and buy more.

Chapter 5: Deliver your service/fulfil your product

Now that you’ve done some marketing and got a few customers, you need to fulfill your service and deliver your product.

Servicing your first couple of customers is pretty easy. There are some additional action steps you can take as you do this, to make it easier and a better experience for you and your customers.

It will also be much more efficient and will make getting to your target of making $500 a month online easier.

Step 1. Learn from your previous customers

This is something that is mostly done by ‘failing forward.’ In other words, doing it the best you can and then improving how you do it from there. It doesn’t require any special knowledge other than this guide.

You just need to come from the mindset of doing your best to deliver what your customers will want. As the old saying goes “treat others as you would like to be treated.”

2. Optimize your processes

You will have processes in your businesses. You should think about these, and also create a spreadsheet with all of them. Think of it as a check list.

From there, you want to focus on making them more efficient. That means making them take less time to complete. 

For example, if you are providing a service, you should create a workflow. A workflow is a set of steps you take to complete a task. When you have one of these for the major tasks in your business, you become much more efficient, and your tasks take much less time. 

This is because you do not have to figure out what you have to do and do what you need to do. You are just doing it based on the workflow. For example, a web design business might have the following workflow:

1. Send a questionnaire to the customer

2. Save questionnaire to your Google Drive

3. Based on the information the customer provided, create a wireframe for their website.

3. And so on…

You can be as detailed as you like. Then once you execute it a few times, you can adjust out all the kinks. Reword certain steps, so they are clearer and more precise. Vague steps lead to tasks taking a lot longer.

3. Dealing with customer issues

You can avoid a lot of customer issues by being more clear about what it is you do. For example, if you are selling a product. You need to be honest and transparent about what it is.

If you try to confuse your customers or deceive them, you will run into negative karma.
Ooooh, karma! But, no seriously, when you are deceptive, customers can pick up on it, on a subconscious level, making fewer sales.

You may have felt this way when the salesperson oversold their product.

So, being clear about what you sell and how it is delivered will help avoid customer issues before they even happen. Eventually, this will help you come across as a trustful company, thus helping you make more sales.

However, you will run into problem customers, and no matter what you do, they won’t be satisfied. These customers are best to be given a refund. You should talk to them only the minimum amount to avoid customer backlash. As always, be courteous and kind, no matter the attitude they share. This will go a long way as they’d remember.

I’ve had various clients in my business, and I’ve only had about 2, which were a real problem. Luckily I saw their behavior early and helped them out very quickly.

One client I had tried to get me to do more work for free, to the point that it was ridiculous.

So, once I noticed what he was doing, I quickly refunded him. I offered him to keep all the work for free and told him I wouldn’t be able to continue as I was too busy. I apologized, moved one, and that was it.

I didn’t respond to him anymore after that. He tried to suck me in with bland statements trying to make me feel guilty, but I just didn’t respond.

When you’re starting your business, these problem customers can time consuming and make you miss your targets and objectives.

So, summing up in this chapter, you learned about how to fulfill and deliver your product. The key thing is to notice things that didn’t go so well and plan not to repeat them. Nobody’s perfect, so be easy on yourself.

Now that I’ve laid the groundwork for making $500 a month, I thought to include a bonus chapter about scaling your business and going beyond $500 a month online.

Bonus Chapter 6: Summing up and scaling

Once you’ve made $500 a month online, you’ll very easily earn much more. Most people would rather work online than go to a job in an office and spend an hour or so in traffic.

So, once you’ve hit that milestone, you might as well aim for a full-time income. And that’s the topic of this chapter. I will try to keep it brief as this guide is getting pretty long.

1. Outsource to virtual assistants

There are many highly qualified and hard working virtual assistants who will take on tasks for $5 an hour. This is due to the internet, which has allowed people from other countries to connect instantly and offer their service at affordable prices.

Economic and high-quality virtual assistants exist because of the difference in the cost of living between countries. Some countries have a low cost of living.

So, $5 an hour to them is like $20 an hour in the USA. You can see how abundant and good they are by looking at freelancing websites like Upwork.com.

They love to do it, and they do an outstanding job.

There are many tasks you will do as part of your business that can be outsourced. Once you start doing this, you can take on more work, expand, and make more money.

The way it works is you assign VA’s with tasks and give them a time estimate on what you think would be reasonable for each one.

And as they do them, it adds up, and then they bill you once a week or so.

So, if you have a bunch of 10-minute tasks, you can have a project management software on your website and create new tasks for them in about 30 seconds. Once you’ve gotten used to how they work, it becomes all streamlined.

This will free up a lot of time for you. It’s not a problem for you right now, but as you start making $500 a month and more, you will notice that time is very scarce, and outsourcing mundane tasks will free up a lot of this time for you.

2. Charge higher prices

This applies to both doing a service for people and selling products. Although, it’s a bit different when selling products. This step in itself will raise how much money you make, and you can keep doing it until you’ve reached a full-time income.

You want to get into a position where you can turn down work. This means you have more customers than you have time to serve. Then with new customers, you can charge a slightly higher price. You won’t be worried if they say no since you have a client base already.

With a product, you can add on additional upsells. For example, when a customer buys one product, you can send them a few emails to build a relationship and then pitch them products that you think they will like.

For example, if they bought a laptop bag, you could sell them a laptop cover. This will increase how much money you make from each customer, which is an important component of scaling.

Conclusion

This ultimate guide has explained how to make $500 a month online. Refer back to it as often as you need to. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed it and for more ideas check out 100 ways to make money online.

Please leave a comment about what type of business you are starting and any thoughts you have about it. Also, do let me know if I have missed anything in this guide.

Sources

• Entrepreneur.com: 101 Ways to Make an Extra $500 a Month While Keeping Your Full-Time Job
• Briantracy.com: Homepage
• Upwork.com: Homepage
• Freelancer.com: Homepage
• Google.com: Google Drive sign up page