Last updated on January 6th, 2025 at 12:11 am
When business gurus talk about making money online, they often do so in the context of becoming a millionaire.
However, if you have never made a single cent by selling something on the Internet, the idea of somehow building a seven-figure net worth that way can seem like a pipe dream.
That’s why today we want to focus on a much more achievable goal: we are going to share three proven strategies that can help you make $3,000/month!
Strategy #1: Make $3,000 a Month With an Online Service Business
Sell a Service That Can be Provided Remotely
First of all, you need to decide on the service that you are going to sell.
It needs to be something that:
- Has a proven demand
- Can be done remotely at a relatively low cost
- You are either competent at already or can see yourself becoming competent at
Popular online services include content writing, copywriting, audio editing, video editing, various types of marketing, web development, and user interface design. You can definitely make $3,000 a month with any of these!
Niche Down: Who are Your Dream Customers?
Once you pick a service, you need to decide who you are going to sell it to. In other words, you need to define your dream customers.
Ideally, you want to go the B2B route and sell to businesses as opposed to going the B2C route and selling to individual people.
For example, you might choose to become an email copywriter for SaaS companies.
Start by Working for Free to Acquire Social Proof
Social proof is the evidence that you can do what you say you can do, such as client testimonials and case studies.
Here’s a conundrum that every freelancer has to solve: in order to get clients, you need to have social proof, but in order to get social proof, you need to have clients.
The easiest way to get around this is to work for free to get social proof and then use that social proof to land paid clients.
If you already have some experience using that same skill in a work context, you might be able to skip this step.
For example, if you have spent the last few years working as an in-house email copywriter for a SaaS startup and you have a good reference from your previous employer, that might be enough social proof to land your first paid freelance client.
However, if you have never done something like that before, you should focus exclusively on acquiring social proof for the first 6-12 months.
First, go to Fiverr, find a lead generation expert, and buy a list of 100 leads that meet your dream customer criteria.
Then, do some work for those dream customers, email it to them, and let them know that they can use it for free if they like it.
For example, you can start writing email welcome sequences for SaaS businesses and sending them to the founders of those companies. Tell them that if they like the sequence, they can use it for free.
Once someone takes you up on this, offer to do more work for free.
To continue with the previous example, you can offer to write a weekly newsletter for free for the next 6 months. If they like your welcome sequence, they will probably agree to this.
Once you complete the free work you promised, ask them if they could give you a testimonial!
See if You Can Convert Free Clients to Paid Clients
The easiest way to get paid clients is to pitch your services to your free clients once they give you a testimonial.
Offer them a price that is relatively low compared to what established freelancers and agencies are charging.
If you did a good job with your free work, they will probably be willing to pay you in order to retain you!
Use Cold Email to Get Paid Clients
You can use cold email to get paid clients:
- Make sure that your subject line looks casual but piques curiosity. For example, “a quick question” seems to perform well.
- Introduce yourself and mention something that shows that you have done your homework (e.g. congratulate them on their recent venture round).
- Explain how your service is going to benefit them. What will they get out of it?
- Present your most impressive piece of social proof. Ideally, you want to briefly describe the results you got for one of your previous clients and link to a detailed case study.
- End the email with a clear call to action: ask them if they would be interested in discussing this on a Zoom call and provide a link to your appointment calendar.
- Add a “P.S.” section and tell them that if they would prefer to not receive any more emails from you, they should let you know.
Once you have sent the initial cold email, you want to follow up once a week until you get a “yes” or “no” answer. Include that “P.S.” section in every message so that the recipient would know that they can opt out of these follow-ups anytime.
Keep in mind that cold email is a numbers game: if you send 100 cold emails, you might schedule 10 calls and close 1 sale.
Strategy #2: Make $3,000 a Month by Bootstrapping Software Products
Learn to Code + UI/UX Design
If you don’t know how to code, you will need to learn HTML, CSS, and Javascript in order to build web apps.
Here are four web development courses that can help you do that:
- “The Complete 2024 Web Development Bootcamp” by Dr. Angela Yu.
- “The Web Developer Bootcamp 2026” by Colt Steele.
- “Build Responsive Real-World Websites with HTML and CSS” and “The Complete JavaScript Course 2025: From Zero to Expert!” by Jonas Schmedtmann.
You can learn web development with any of these three options because they cover more or less the same stuff.
We recommend waiting for a Udemy sale and buying all of them. See which instructor’s teaching style resonates the most with you, keep their course, and refund the rest. Just make sure to read the refund policy before you do this.
In addition to web development, you will also need to learn the basics of user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design. You can do that by going through “Complete Web & Mobile Designer: UI/UX, Figma, +more” by Andrei Neagoie and Daniel Schifano.
There are other UI/UX design courses on Udemy but this one is the most comprehensive (26 hours at the time of writing).
Choose a Proven Business Idea and Target a Specific Niche
The most straightforward way to build a successful SaaS business is to choose a proven business idea and build an amazing product for a specific niche.
For example, when Nathan Barry launched his email marketing app ConvertKit, he initially targeted bloggers.
Building a product designed for that specific use case allowed him to compete with dominant players like Aweber and Mailchimp and steal some of their market share!
Ship Your Minimum Viable Product as Quickly as You Can
We recommend reading Eric Ries’ classic book “The Lean Startup”, familiarizing yourself with the Build-Measure-Learn loop, and using this approach to ship your products fast.
As a solopreneur, you need to learn how to go from the initial product idea to launching a minimum viable version of that product in less than three months. Just get it out there as fast as you can and then start iterating based on market feedback!
Use Cold Email to Get Your First Customers
Another book that you should read is Gabriel Weinberg’s “Traction” which is all about growth.
Consider implementing his “50% Rule” where you dedicate 50% of your time to product development and 50% of your time to customer acquisition.
As for which customer acquisition channel you should start with, cold email is probably the most straightforward way to get your first users.
You might want to read “Cold Email Overview from the Founder of LeadFuze” where Justin McGill explains how he grew his business from zero to $30k in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) in just one year.
Strategy #3: Make $3,000 a Month by Self-Publishing Fiction on Amazon
Focus on a Popular Fiction Genre and Subgenre
Literary fiction doesn’t sell well so if you want to make money, you will need to choose a popular genre (e.g. thrillers) and then niche down to a popular subgenre (e.g. Scandinavian noir).
Write Series Instead of Standalone Novels
It’s much easier to sell someone the next installment of a series than a standalone novel.
After all, if the reader likes the first book in the series, they will probably buy the second book and if they like that one, they will probably buy the third book, and so on.
Price the First Book in Your Series as Low as You Can
Give away the Kindle version of the first book for free and price the paperback so that you would break even on it.
Have Visually Appealing Book Covers and Intriguing Book Descriptions
Make sure that your book covers:
- Conform to genre and subgenre expectations
- Are professionally designed and visually appealing
In addition to that, your book descriptions need to be intriguing: you want to give away just enough information to pique the reader’s curiosity.
Create a Kindle Box Set for Each Series
Once you complete a series, you want to not only sell all the books in it separately but also create a Kindle box set so that readers can buy the whole series at once.
What is the Best Way to Market a Book?
The saying “the best way to market a book is to write another book” is true: in all likelihood, the more books you write, the more money you will make.
Successful self-published fiction authors tend to write at least one novel a year, though writing 2–3 novels a year seems to be more common.
If this writing pace sounds completely unsustainable to you, check out “How to Write a Novel in 6 Months” by Thomas Emson. It’s a super practical book full of actionable advice.
We also recommend experimenting with Amazon ads, Facebook ads and sending free paperback copies to book influencers. Just don’t let all that distract you from writing more books!
So You are Making $3,000 a Month Online. What Should You do Next?
If you want to scale your business, you’ll need to build a sales funnel for it.
Our co-founder Russell Brunson used sales funnels to take ClickFunnels from zero to $100M+ in annual revenue in less than a decade.
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His best-selling book “DotCom Secrets” is the best place to start because it covers everything you need to know in order to build sales funnels that convert.
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