New Ways to Make Money Online in 2024: Real Business Ideas

The world is changing faster than ever! So fast, in fact, that careers our parents proudly built may not even be viable jobs in the coming years. The rise of AI, globalized workforces, and the digital workplace have created a whole new economy for those ready to be in the right place at the right time. If you have dedication to your work ethic, some creativity, and the desire to create a real business to make money online, I have some inspirational tips for you. If you want to get rich quickly, this article won’t serve you. Actually, nothing will, because there is no way to “get rich quick” without hard work, creative ideas, willingness to take risks, and perseverance. You can be in the right place at the right time, and it can feel like everything is falling into place, but that tends to happen only if you work hard first. To take advantage of what’s coming, get started right now to create and grow your online business. Below, I’ve included some examples of online business opportunities that should do well in the coming years. I hope they help spark your big idea!

I love the quote by Roman philosopher Seneca, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

You might not be aware, but Seneca was a super-wealthy man, and he knew a thing or two about opportunity. In every time period throughout history, there have been great shifts, whether in culture, economy, and industry or ways of doing work. Whatever that shift was, it brought great opportunities with it. Those who could see the opportunity rather than the chaos of collapse came out ahead. We have gone through a lot of changes as a culture recently, and it’s going to be a really interesting ride these coming years. Get yourself into a position where your skills are valuable quickly, because the coming gaps in the market will be fabulous opportunities for those who stay focused on building what’s new as the old collapses around it.

Translation Business

Sales Professional

Coach, Trainer, Influencer

Social Media Personalities Manager

Blog Manager

Podcast Creator/Manager

AI Trainer

Human Resources (HR)

Recruiter

Translation Business – I’m not sure how long this will last, but if you can get in now while it’s available and AI still isn’t quite smart enough to translate like an actual human, you can make some great money in the right fields in the short term. Focus on legal and technical matters to get your opportunities in this ever-growing global market. The search for quality, affordable workers has expanded across borders, and legal and technical fields need translators to make sure agreements are accessible in the dominant language within the country from which a foreign business is hiring its remote workers.

Sales Professional – If you enjoy conversations with people and like the chase, then sales might be right for you. You can easily sell any services that interest you online as a channel partner or contractor for a business. Salespeople have a skill that’s very difficult to replace. But keep in mind that in these changing times, customers want more than just an order taker. You need to be a solutions expert, and you need to know your product inside and out, know your competitors in the market, and be aware of the value you are selling. Pew Research Center estimates that 81% of decision-makers are doing their own research.

That means that 81% of executives and business owners are spending their valuable time doing research a trusted advisor could be doing for them. Successful sales careers have always been about relationships, and that will prove to be more and more important. If you want to work in sales, you’d better be a knowledgeable source, an excellent demonstrator and negotiator, and, most importantly, become a trusted advisor for your clients. Otherwise, chatbots will take your job sooner than you think.

Coach, Trainer, Influencer – I’ve been hesitant about this one over the years, but it’s not a fad. It’s going to explode over the coming years, and these people are changing culture in real-time. Anyone from a sports background knows that they need a coach, and this is extending to many other occupations as well. I’ve had a personal trainer for years. Even as a kid in Belize, I knew a local bodybuilder who helped the kids learn weight training. It’s embedded in my mind that I get a better workout with a trainer than on my own. And influencer marketing is the fastest form of marketing that brands are using to share their products with instant built-in audiences.

Life coaches have grown in popularity year after year, and it’s now to the point that they are available to everyone, not just high achievers. These three are going to prove valuable in the coming years as the culture shifts, so if you resonate with any of the three professions, find your route. But, do be cautious because there are so many scams looking to take your money and provide “coaching” or “training” or even certification to become one of these cultural leaders.

Do your research and make sure if you are going to pay for a course, you have read good reviews both from their website and marketing materials, but also via a Google search of their name and reviews for potential third-party discussions or complaints. Look into the requirements for certification, as good certification programs often take 9 months to 2 years to complete the hours of professional training and practicum hour requirements. ICF certification, the certificate required to work for most corporations and companies as an in-house coach, usually requires additional hours and testing.

Don’t invest money you don’t have into courses with promises of quick turnaround. Please be wise and use your critical thinking before paying for training and courses. Credit cards are not money; they’re debt! I recently heard of a woman putting $40K on credit cards into an online course to learn to be a life coach, and then after the course, she had no idea what to do to make that money back. Please be critical, and if you think you want to choose one of these professions, make sure to take all the free training you can get to find out if it’s for you before investing in programs and look into use cases and business plans before you pay for a course. Better yet, talk with a currently practicing coach and find out what their challenges were in building a coaching practice.

 A course should add to what you already know and help you build a business with the money you already have. That said, there are great opportunities, so do the free research and business plan first. That way, when in the course, you can cross-check what you know and make sure you’re on the right path toward the way a coach should work. When you’re ready, it can be a good idea to work with a coach yourself to get an idea of what the benefits are and the different styles of coaching out there. Go into a program prepared so you’re not learning about what coaching is from scratch.

Manage Podcasts and Social Media Personalities – If social media and podcasts resonate with you, but you don’t want to create them yourself, then you can manage these communication outlets for others. You can make great money running and managing others’ podcasts and social media content plans. There are loads of talent management companies out there, but most are focused on the big names, leaving the medium and smaller creator names on their own as they grow.

It’s a lot of work to manage a podcast, organize it, and promote it. Too much work for talent who are mostly interested in the creative aspects. If you have skills in this area, offer to take over the business end and take a 20-30% cut from what it earns. This is fair, and with the right skills, connections, and marketing, you can help them generate way more money than they can for themselves. You can work out brand sponsorship deals, set up affiliate marketing, and promote them to a wider audience than they have time to build. If you’re organized and like talented people, this could be a great fit for you. It could be a few years of hard work to build all the connections for this work; hard but fun.

Blog Manager – I’ve featured how to create a blog on my “how to work online” list for the past 2 years. If you’re creative and you have something to share online, you can start a blog. Sure, it’s fun, but it’s also a lot of work, and you will find it all-consuming unless you have someone or a business to help out with the website or the content. Once you have it set up, you can make money from affiliate marketing, but the commissions are small, and it can take ages for enough money to come in to make it worth your time. For example, I started “Financing Sarah” in 2021, and it’s been very time-consuming, even with a marketing team, a website developer, and others to help, all of which means the website costs a lot to maintain.

My tip would be if you don’t want to start your own blog, but you do have an interest in this field, reach out to bloggers and social media personalities with over 10K followers but under 200K on Instagram or under a million on TikTok and propose to manage their website for them. You can do all the content management, publishing, organization, and promotion. Make the website nice to look at, kill it with the SEO, and gain them affiliate partners so that they can make more money and pay you more money. Charge them a monthly management fee that’s fair. It’s a lot of work and will take time, but it can be quite rewarding to see the growth from your hard work; and should be fun in the process. Please make sure to set up some good contracts with anyone who agrees to work with you. They owe you a lot for the work you do so don’t let it be easy for them to dump you, or mess with the money they owe you. Do your research and consult an attorney with a background in the industry.

AI Trainer – You can easily work anywhere training AI to accept user prompts. The more AI learns, the better user experiences are. There will be a great need for both human training to use AI and AI training to understand user prompts. This is new, so you can really beat the market on this one, get good at it, and start a business teaching corporations how to use AI applications in their business. You can even sell AI platforms that will be custom-made for companies. I had one of these AI development companies reach out to my main business this year, asking for $50K-$1 million opportunities from manufacturing customers. It looks cool, and I started reaching out to some of my customers about building chatbots for their HR departments and interfaces that work with their existing systems. There are some cutting-edge opportunities to explore.

Human Resources (HR) – I had a post written by an HR professional back in 2021. Start Your Business as a HR Professional highlights the growing need for HR. Recruiting is one of the most important needs for HR in 2023. In the coming years, there will be more and more asked from HR departments and HR consulting companies. Sure, AI may potentially take a lot of those jobs, but if you’re really specialized, then you can be an HR consultant or virtual HR manager.

This is one of those positions that can be a little tough-skinned. I saw a short film a few years ago from the YouTube channel called Dust. It started out with a team of people working in a call center as HR representatives tasked with laying off colleagues from other departments. As the film went on, I saw new systems in AI brought in to replace more and more human positions in the company until the final one, which was in HR, and the charming protagonist was tasked with closing out her own desk, her own files, then moving her belongings out of the beautiful company housing apartment to a ghetto where she was squished into a tiny apartment with several other people she laid off only months before. I know it’s Sci-Fi, but is it?

Recruiter – I’ve known some very highly paid recruiters in New York; I knew one guy who was paid 30% of his client’s million-dollar Wall Street quant acquisitions. He did dozens of these a month. Finding good help is tough in 2023, and it’s going to be tough in 2024. Get an eye for quality people and market your services in an area that’s not so common in order to stand out in the recruiting market. Network like crazy, and you will see some great opportunities fall into place. Another recruiting area is talent recruits. It’s becoming a big business to manage talent, so finding talent for these management companies can mean nice-sized commissions.

My best advice for working online in 2024 is to find a gap in the market. Figure out what you like, what you want to do, and how much money you want to make, and then do the research to make sure your expectations can meet reality. If they can’t, then start over until you figure out the right move for you. Once you figure it out, brainstorm, research, write a detailed plan, and hit the ground running. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, as the changes are happening fast and will not slow down anytime soon, so keep a steady pace of consistency and be self-aware and alert to your market as things shift. Do tons of research and keep perspective on the challenges that can exist. Stay positive, work hard, and be one of the ones the opportunity of shifting times shines on!

Stay tuned for more and visit my page often, because in 2024, I’m committed to helping others work online and start their online businesses to keep up with the changing trends. Subscribe for more business posts. Have a lovely day.