When it comes to making money online, there are a ton of ideas that people hear about every day on various platforms like Blogs, YouTube, Twitter, or Tik Tok.
In fact, even on Google search, the number of monthly searches relating to making money online is almost 100 thousand (or more.)
Want to see for yourself? Just use a search keyword tool like SemRush, Ubersuggest, Moz, or Ahrefs to find out.
The bottom line is because the topic of making money online is so popular, you’ll find a lot of content and ideas out there about how to do it.
The problem with this is that a lot of the information in my opinion over simplifies just how easy it is to make a successful living by making money online with either a side gig or a full-time business idea.
The truth about making money online is that it can be easy for some people, but harder for others. Most of the time, it’s hard for people to start making money right away, especially if you have no business experience at all.
There is good news however, with enough dedication and hard work, it’s possible in the end for just about anybody to be successful!
With that said, in today’s world, everyone should be cautious about any new money-making opportunity that is presented to them, until they have time to research all of its ins and outs.
You need to take even more caution on new making money opportunities that are presented in a way to make it look easy!
Below I’m going to give you a list of some money-making online ideas that you should be the most cautious about.
Day Trading Stocks, CryptoCurrency, or FOREX With No Finance Background
Trying to make money online by day trading the Stock, FOREX, or Crypto Currency markets is a bad idea if you are a beginner.
Day trading is an especially bad idea if you saw an online course telling you how easy it is to make money. Lots of people take these online courses and pay a lot of money to learn the ins and outs of day trading with the dream of getting rich.
Then, they fail at it.
The sad reality is that less than 1% of day traders actually make any kind of net profit when you account for all of the trading fees you have to pay. When I researched this percentage rate for successful day traders, it was a big surprise to me, to say the least, I actually thought it would have been at least 10%, boy was I wrong.
I recommend you check out this article from Current Market Valuation to read more about the success rate of day traders.
With Cryptocurrency day trading, your odds of making money would be much worse than stocks due to its extreme volatility. Now, that’s just my opinion and I don’t actively trade in crypto as of right now. But, according to this article by CoinTelegraph, 95% of all Bitcoin (BTC) day traders lose money.
If you are trying to make money day trading with Forex, your odds are also not in your favor according to this article by The Balance. The article states that 90% of all beginner forex traders lose money and give up.
Joking aside, Your chances of making money might actually be better at a casino, than trying to make money as a day trader.
So for you to be successful with either day trading stocks, forex, or cryptocurrency, you’ll need a lot of experience and time working in the finance industry so you can learn the ropes. Unless you are just extremely lucky and a natural at it.
Making a Mobile App (For iPhone or Droid)
I see a lot of technology professionals having a dream of making money online by selling a mobile app of some kind.
And while you might have a great idea and the technical resources for getting the programming completed for making an app, there is no guarantee that it will make any kind of money or be a success.
Currently, the market for mobile apps (for either iPhone or Droid phones) is very saturated. That not only makes it hard for marketing your app, but also getting people to download it.
The statistics for making money with a Mobile app are not very promising according to this article by StartUp Grind, where it states that “9,999 out of 10,000” mobile app projects fail.
Additionally, that StartUp Grind article lists the top three reasons for apps failing, they are the following:
- Mobile Apps are too expensive to build and go over budget.
- The market is oversaturated with too many mobile apps.
- Lots of Mobile apps are free now, so it’s hard to charge money.
The bottom line, if you have a dream and unique idea, I’d encourage anyone to chase their mobile app-building dream, if you have the technical know-how. Just be prepared however that your mobile app may flop in the end, if people (your target audience) don’t find it interesting or entertaining.
If you don’t have a technical background and are going to invest money in someone else’s mobile app project, be very very cautious!
Mobile Apps that solve a problem for people or have a very high amount of potential for going viral will have the best chance of success!
Buying and Selling Expired Domains
Making money by buying and selling expired domain names on the internet is very popular with SEO and Blogging Professionals in the Digital Marketing Industry.
The idea is that by purchasing an older domain that has expired, you’ll be able to take advantage of all the aged backlinks and search engine history acquired through that domain name.
Essentially, the domain is primed and ready for SEO search traffic!
After you acquire an aged domain name, you can do two things with it.
- You can quickly rank a new blog or business idea and get lots of search engine web traffic fast.
- If you don’t want to use that domain for business, you can resell it (flip it) for a profit to someone else.
The problem that people run into with buying an expired domain is that a lot of the names are not good from a commercial standpoint. Either the name was too long or it just sounded really weird and generic. (So keep that in mind.)
There is a bigger problem that looms however, and that is a domain name that was a commercial success, but for whatever reason is now penalized in the search engines, and all of its SEO potential is now gone. The most likely cause for this happening would be due to the previous owner using black hat SEO strategies on it.
For example, a very popular black hat SEO strategy is backlinking that domain name to a link farm or private blog network (PBN.)
If you don’t understand how to pick a good domain name or research its dark past of Black Hat SEO practices, you run the risk of getting burned by buying an expired domain. Whether you wanted that domain name for yourself or to flip it to someone else.
To get started buying and selling expired domains, definitely research on Google, Learn about SEO, and check out the following sites where you can purchase expired domain names.
There are many metrics you want to consider on an expired domain name before you purchase it, so make sure you do your research!
Sports Betting
In recent years, sports betting apps and websites have been getting very popular.
You’ll often hear all kinds of success stories about professional sports bettors who have developed a full proof system for picking. All you have to do is sign up for their special access and they’ll give you the odds and best statistics for placing sports bets.
Another option you’ll hear even more about is using an app like Draft Kings or Fan Duel, in which they market the ease of placing bets through the app.
The bottom line for sports betting or any betting for that matter, it’s a horrible way to make sustainable money online.
For recreation, sports betting can be fun if you have money you don’t care about losing and you want to place a bet on your favorite football team. Just don’t let it go to your head, and absolutely don’t do any betting if you can’t control the amount of money you put on the line.
Here is an article from the Washington Post which explains more on why most people lose at sports betting, than win. Sports betting ads make winning look easy – Most people lose.
Starting an Amazon FBA Store
Starting an Amazon FBA Store is an easy business model for resellers, Amazon stores your inventory and does all the fulfillment and shipping to your customer.
Making money online with a Fulfillment by Amazon store is a perfectly legitimate opportunity if you know how to source merchandise or have connections for wholesale deals.
For the 95% of people who don’t have good opportunities for sourcing however, starting out is a different story and you will most likely fail trying to make money with this idea. So as a beginner you have to be cautious, regardless of how easy others will make it seem.
Recently I wrote a guide about how to make money selling on eBay. In that guide, I explained that eBay has essentially made selling merchandise online an easy streamlined process. Sites like Amazon, Etsy, and Mercari have also done the same.
Modern-day online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay have made listing products, shipping, and finding buyers extremely easy for anyone who wants to sell online. You don’t have to build a website, set up a shopping cart, and spend money to bring buyers (web traffic) to your own eCommerce store.
So with that said, the only remaining business activity that is hard for resellers is sourcing products to sell. It gets even harder than just finding sources though, you still have to find good products that are in demand, where you can make a decent profit margin on. This is the part of reselling that is extremely hard and causes 95% of people to fail.
Many think sourcing is easy and you can simply go to sites like Alibaba or AliExpress to buy your products, then list them on an Amazon FBA store and watch the profits roll in. It’s just not that easy when you are sourcing from mainstream sites like Alibaba or AliExpress where your competition can buy the same products as you.
In some rare cases, you might get lucky and find newer products on Alibaba or Aliexpress where the demand is high enough to make a profit selling something, but as your competition does research and sees what you are selling, they’ll buy it too then undercut you on price.
Then, eventually, that product has saturated the market and no profit is left to be made!
So be careful with doing any kind of Amazon reselling, and make sure you spend a lot of time finding good wholesale and sourcing partners.
If you can master sourcing good products with high-profit margins and low competition from other resellers, you’ll do just fine.
Final Thoughts
When you decide to start your adventure for making money online, it can be confusing trying to sort out all of the opportunities presented to you. Especially with all the business gurus online telling you they have a secret proven way of making money online.
The reality is that there is no secret to getting started, it just takes hard work and time for you to learn all the ins and outs on how to master your business idea.
I hope this list of “making money ideas to be cautious about” gives you some insight into which ideas you should consider (or not consider) for starting your next online business venture. Over time, I plan on adding more ideas to this list. Thanks for reading.