I Tested 6 Ways to Make Money Online. Only One Worked (No Experience Needed)

0:00If you've ever typed how to make money online into YouTube at 11:00 at night, then watched four videos in a row, and then somehow felt less confident about what to do than when you started, I want to talk to you for a few minutes. Because, here's what I think happened. You didn't find a lack of answers. You found too many. There was drop shipping and Amazon, crypto, AI bots, some guy in front of a rented Lamborghini telling you that his method is the easiest thing in the world if you buy his course, that is. And somewhere in there, a quiet little thought showed up. The one that

0:28goes, "Is any of this actually real, or is it all kind of a scam?" I'll be honest with you. Most of it kind of is. Not illegal scam where people get sued or go to jail, though sometimes that happens, too. No, I mean the softer version. The kind where it technically works for somebody somewhere, but for a beginner, the odds are so bad that you'd be better off just walking away. Because a scam takes your money, but a bad business model takes your time. And for most people, time is the more expensive one. So, today, I'm not going to add

0:58another new shiny thing to the pile. Another make money online business opportunity that you've got to consider. Instead, I'm going to do the opposite. I'm going to take the most popular ways people try to make money online, and I'm going to run every single one through the same five filters. Same test applied evenly, no favorites. And I can do this because over the past 10 years, I've tried all of them. And here's the promise. I'm not going to move the goal posts. We're going to use the same five questions for everything, including the thing that I'm eventually going to recommend. By the end, you'll see why

1:27almost all of them fall apart for a beginner, and which one is the only business model that I'd actually be comfortable telling a friend to start. First though, a real quick bit about me, just so you know that I'm not guessing here. Over the past 10 plus years, I built three different seven figure online businesses. I've worked with more than 1,500 small businesses, and I've run thousands of campaigns, and today, I do it all as a one-person operation with zero employees. So, the business models that I'm about to walk you through, I've tried myself, I've worked alongside people doing them, and I've seen enough of the real numbers to know where the

1:58traps are. So, here's the test. There's just five questions and every business model goes through all five. Filter one, what it costs to start. This is how much money you need before you can even get started. Because if it takes $10,000 to find out whether you're any good at it, that's not just a bad business model. That is a dangerous gamble that you don't want to make. Filter two, can a beginner actually do this? Not is it technically possible for some gifted genius out there to make it work because anything's possible. But I'm talking about realistically with no audience and no experience, can you get this off the

2:32ground and actually make money with it? Filter three, what you keep. Here we're talking about profit, actual money in your pocket. This isn't just what you sell and how much you make overall, this is far more important than that. This is what's actually left over after everyone else takes their cut. I can tell you from experience that a business can move a lot of money and look very impressive on paper, but then leave you with almost nothing, which we don't want any of that. Filter four, and this is the one that most people never even think to ask. Does it keep coming? In other words, do you get paid once and then

3:04have to start over from zero every single time or does the work that you did last month still pay you this month? That difference is the whole game. Recurring revenue is the real goal here. And filter five, and this is the one that nobody talks about and it's my personal favorite. Could you say it out

3:18loud at a dinner party without wincing? I'm serious. I want you to picture this for a second. Somebody asks you what you do and you either get to say something that you're a little bit proud of or you mumble something and change the subject because you don't want to admit it. This final filter matters more than most people admit because the stuff that you're embarrassed by is the stuff that

3:37you quietly quit, just walk away from. Okay, now that we've got a grip on these, let's run them. First up, drop shipping. This is where you set up an online store, list products from a supplier, and when somebody buys something, the supplier ships it straight to them so you never have to touch the product. Startup cost are actually pretty low, couple hundred bucks maybe. This one passes our test, so credit where it's due here. And look,

3:59some people genuinely do make this work. I'm not going to pretend that nobody's ever built a real business on it. They have. But, here's where it falls apart for a beginner. What you keep, as in your profit, is thin, like very thin. After the product cost and the shipping and the refunds and the money you spent on ads, you might only keep 15 or 20 cents on every dollar that you sell, sometimes less. So, you could move $10,000 worth of stuff and keep maybe 1,500. And there's nothing recurring about it. Every month you start over at zero and have to sell it all again. As for the dinner party test, well, try

4:32saying this one with a straight face. I run ads to sell cheap products that I don't make, don't touch, and don't control. Well, for most people, that's a fail. So, passes one filter, stumbles on four. Next, Amazon FBA, which basically means Amazon stores and packs and ships your products for you, which is admittedly genuinely nice service.

4:51Except, now your startup costs jump. Unlike drop shipping here, you're buying inventory up front, often a few thousand dollars worth and sometimes a whole lot more. And Amazon takes its cut on top of your already thin margins. You got the same problem with the recurring side, too. It's one sale at a time, every time. Every successful Amazon seller I know has the same thing in common. They are obsessed. They spend hours a day checking numbers and watching rankings and adjusting prices and fighting off copycats who swarm in the second that a product works. This makes this less of a business model and more of a full-time second job that

5:26you're not allowed to take a vacation from. Now, it can absolutely work, but it is not a good beginner starting point. Then, there's software. Build an app, sell it, collect subscriptions forever. And honestly, I love this model. The margins are beautiful because once it's built, each new customer is almost pure profit, and it's recurring revenue by design. People pay every month, so this scores top marks on both of those. I'll also give it full marks on the dinner party test. I built a

5:51piece of software. That sounds great. But, the difficulty here is off the charts, especially for a beginner. Good developers cost a fortune, and cheap ones cost you far more in the long run. I mean, yes, you can vibe code it, but that means so can anybody else as well. I've got friends with very successful software companies. And so, I asked every one of them if they'd recommend this business model to someone who was just starting out. Well, the answers across the board were no, no, definitely not, and no. And not because software is a bad business model. I mean, it's a great business model. It's just that the

6:23cost, the complexity, and the learning curve are brutal when you're starting from zero. So, yes, it's a beautiful business model. It's just the wrong starting point. Now, if you've been around this world for a bit, two more are probably in your head right now, and they're legitimate options. So, I'm not going to dodge them. Let's start with freelancing. This is writing, design, editing, selling a skill on Upwork or Fiverr, and it's a real option. It's low cost to start, you keep most of what you can charge, and you can absolutely say it out loud and not feel ashamed. On three of the five filters, this is the

6:53best thing that we've looked at so far. But, look at filter number four. Does it keep coming? Well, freelancing is you renting out your hours. One hour, one paycheck. The second you stop working, the money stops with it. What this means is that you haven't built a real business. You've built a job with extra steps, and no boss to cover you when you happen to get sick. Yes, it's a great way to make money, but it's a hard way to make money that keeps coming week after week and month after month. And then, there's content creation, or in other words, becoming a creator. This is where you start a channel, build an

7:23audience, and get paid. I do this one. It pays, so I'm the last guy who's going to knock it. But, as a starting point, this fails filter two harder than almost anything on the board. Building an audience from zero is the single slowest, least predictable thing that you can do. Most people post for a year or two to an empty room, they get discouraged, and they quit. Content creation is a great way to grow something that you've already got going, but it's a rough way to start when you've got nothing yet. I'm not saying not to do this at all. I'm just saying that you don't want to bet your ability

7:52to pay rent on this being the thing that pays you next month, or even next year. So, we've run them. The popular ones, the fair ones, and if you're feeling even just a little bit deflated right now, that's normal. That's the exact feeling that sends people back to YouTube at 11:00 at night and looking for the next shiny thing. But, before you do that, I want you to know something. I didn't write this test to make any one model lose. I just kept asking the same five questions, and the models, one by one, knocked themselves

8:18out. So, now the real question is this. Is there anything that's cheap enough to start with nothing, simple enough for a beginner to actually succeed with, profitable enough to actually be worth doing, something that keeps paying you month after month, and something that you're not embarrassed to talk about? Well, obviously there is, and it's the

8:35one I haven't run yet. The agency model. Now, I know agency sounds fancy, but it really isn't. An agency just means that you provide a service to a business owner for a fee. That's it. You don't need an office, you don't need a team, you don't need a fancy brand. At the start, an agency can literally just be you solving one specific problem for one specific type of business, and they pay

8:57you for it. Usually, month after month. Let me give you an example though of what this looks like in real life. A dentist wants more patients, and he knows that getting more five-star reviews on Google is going to help him do that. But, he's not going to sit down and figure out how to go get those reviews. I mean, he's busy being a dentist, and he doesn't want to become a marketer. So, you set up one simple system that does it for him. Goes out there, gets him more Google reviews on autopilot, and for doing that, he pays you every month in order to keep it

9:24running. Well, that's the whole business model right there. So, let's run this through the exact same test. All five filters, no special treatment here. What it costs to start? Well, almost nothing. You can begin with free tools, a simple offer, and a way to reach business owners. A social media account, which is free, a free way to take payments like Stripe or PayPal, maybe 15 bucks for a domain name if you're feeling fancy, and you can start this weekend without gambling your savings. Next, can a beginner actually start and succeed with this? Well, here's where I want to be straight with you because this is the

9:55spot where most of these videos just flat-out lie to you. Just like every other business model out there, it's not easy. Getting that first client takes real effort, not the half-assed tried for 20 minutes kind. But unlike most of the other business models out there, it is simple. You pick a type of local business, you find one problem they have, and you offer one solution. You're not building up inventory, you're not hiring developers, or waiting a year for an audience to hopefully show up. So, it's hard in the sense that it takes work, but it's simple in the sense that you always know what the next step is,

10:26and that's the difference that matters. Simple and easy aren't the same thing, and simple is what a beginner actually needs. Okay, what do you keep? Well, here you're selling a service, not a product. So, there's almost no cost to deliver it. Most of what you charge is yours to keep. And does it keep coming? Well, this is the one that freelancing just couldn't pass, but with an agency, you set it up once, so the same client pays you every month, even in the weeks that you don't touch it. You do the work once to get them results, and the payments keep showing up. That's the difference between renting your time and

10:56building something that lasts. And the dinner party test. Someone asks you what you do, and you get to say, "I run a marketing agency." or "I help local businesses get more customers." Nobody slowly sets down their glass. Nobody says, "Oh." in that tone that means I have no idea what you just said, but I'm worried about you financially. None of that happens because it's a real answer to a real question. So, we're five for five, the only one on the board. And I want to be careful here because five for five is exactly the kind of a little too perfect claim that should make you suspicious. So, let me say what it

11:26actually means. It doesn't mean that the agency model is magic, and I'm not going to tell you that it's the easiest thing in the world. You've heard that line before. Usually right before someone tries to sell you something. What I am saying is that it's one of the few models out there where the hard part is actually worth it. Software might be a better business than an agency someday and content might be incredible for you somewhere down the road. But as the place to start from zero, this is the one that doesn't fall apart. Now let me be straight with you about one more

11:53thing because I know how this sounds. The more that I talk this up, the more that it starts to sound like every pitch that you've heard before and you've learned not to trust. So, let me knock this down just a little bit. The agency model is not perfect. It takes effort and your first client won't fall out of the sky. What I'm telling you is that when you line it up against everything else, same test evenly applied, it's the one that's left standing. Cheap to start, simple to understand, you keep what you earn, it keeps coming and

12:19you're not embarrassed to talk about it. And I know I said it before, but that last one matters more than you think because you and I both know that the businesses that people are ashamed of are the ones that they quietly abandon. Pride in your work is what makes you show up on those slow days. Here's the part that I really want you to hear though because it's bigger than picking a business model. The reason I most often recommend the agency model isn't just the margins or the low startup cost. It's what you actually walk away with. You learn how to get a business its customers and once you know how to

12:47do that, like really know it, you are never fully dependent on a single paycheck ever again. That skill doesn't disappear in a layoff. It travels with you. This is the closest thing to security in a world where steady job doesn't mean what it used to. That's the real reason behind all those late night searches, isn't it? It was never really about getting rich. It was about knowing that if your paycheck disappeared tomorrow, you'd be okay. So, here's the whole thing in one sentence. Pick one type of local business near you and help them get more reviews. That's it. That's the whole business. Dentists, roofers, med spas, chiropractors, plumbers,

13:18whatever's near you. They all want more reviews and none of them want to figure out how to ask for them. So, you can be the person who handles it for them. And on the tool side, I'll keep this short because this isn't a software video. There's one platform that I run basically my entire operation on, which

13:32is how I do it all with zero employees. It's linked down below if you ever want it. But, the tool's the easy part. The model is what matters, and the model is what we just walked through. Now, there's a real question that comes right after this one, and it's the question that actually stops most people. It's not which business model, we just answered that. It's, "Okay, how do I get that very first client when nobody knows who I am yet?" That's the part that everybody skips, and it's the part that

13:55decides whether any of this works. That's why I put together a free training that I've got linked up right here that's going to walk you through exactly how to get that first client without quitting your job, without burning anything down, just building something of your own while you've still got that steady paycheck behind you. It's linked right here. Tap or click that now. I'll see you in there in just

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