I know you guys are tired searching for the best ways to make money online. I mean, not your mistake because there are still a lot of videos which talk about, oh, you should try affiliate marketing. You should try captions, subtitles. I mean, shut up. These things don’t work in 2025.

So, here are the only real ways that you should try to make your first dollar online. We’ll talk about over 25 different ways and divide them into four different buckets:

1. The first bucket is trash – The things that you should never try
2. The second bucket is easy things – Which take under 3 months with an earning potential of $500 to $600 per month
3. Moderate things – Which take under 8 months with an earning potential of $2,500 per month
4. The difficult bucket – Takes around 2 to 3 years with a potential of $12,000 to $25,000 per month. Crazy amount of money.

So without wasting any more time, I welcome you to the real ways of making money online in 2025.

Bucket 1: Things You Should Never Try (The Trash Bucket)

One of the major reasons why students don’t end up making any money online is because they get stuck trying the things which actually don’t work, and it’s not your mistake because you have constantly been misguided by multiple people online. So once and for all, here’s the list of the things that you should never try:

1. Captions and Subtitles

I mean, this used to be a decent way to make money online before 4 to 5 years, but AI has completely killed it.

2. Online Surveys

I mean, this is so stupid that I don’t even want to talk about this.

3. Affiliate Marketing

I mean, this is one of the biggest traps for students. You see some random YouTuber showing you screenshots of making over $12,000 through affiliate marketing. So you think you can do it too? For affiliate marketing to work, you need followers, subscribers, and most importantly trust. I mean, you can’t just drop links and expect money to flow in.

4. Low-Level Data Entry Jobs

I mean, you won’t believe me, but this is even a full-time job for a lot of people even in 2025. And this is so sad because AI is going to eat you up all the life. So, if you currently have a data entry job, this is my official warning. Please watch this video till the end and start learning some of the skills because in the next 2 years, you’ll definitely lose your job due to AI.

5. NFT Flipping

6. Website Testing

Don’t even go near them.

7. Microtasks on Platforms

This is just okay if you’re too free. If you don’t know what to do and you immediately need $15 to go out, but rest apart, this is not a good idea.

8. Trading

Trading is okay if you have good initial capital to invest. But don’t be stupid that you can make thousands of dollars by trading with $15-$20. I mean, you can invest, you can do index funds, but rest apart this is a very bad idea.

9. Drop Shipping

Experts are using AI to identify the winning products and most of the successful drop shippers that you see are full-fledged ecom businesses with very large teams. So it’s basically better for beginners like you to not even get into this. But if you still want to try, you can just let me know in the comments below and I’ll talk about how can you do drop shipping with AI in one of my future videos.

The Pattern

Now, if you look at all these things, there’s a pattern. There’s something in common. They’re either outdated in 2025 or they have been automated or dominated by AI. And I feel bad for all the students who waste 6 to 8 months of their time trying these stupid things, feeling discouraged, and then entirely giving up on the idea of making money online because in reality, there are some sure shot ways to actually make money online. And that’s what we’re going to talk about right now. Let’s start with the first bucket.

Bucket 2: Easy Methods ($500-$600 Per Month in 3 Months)

What if I told you that you can make your first $500 online in just 3 months? There are six things in this bucket which are relatively easy to learn. You don’t need like a fancy degree or years of experience. You just need to put in two to three hours of work every single day for the first 1 month and the next month to find your first set of clients.

1. Short Form Video Editing

You don’t need to learn everything about video editing. If you’re just going to edit shorts or reels for someone, pick a video editing software like Adobe Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve and learn how to do the basic cuts, few transitions, text overlays, music, and some sound effects. Understand the color psychology and how to pair fonts. All these things together will take you somewhere around 45 days if you practice them every day for 3 to four hours.

And once you feel confident about your skill, make a list of five good reel edits that you see on social media and try to replicate editing them. And then make a portfolio website by using the same edits that you have made by using Carrd.io, Notion, probably even Wix. Now you can use the same portfolio that you’ve made to approach people on LinkedIn, Instagram, or even by sending emails.

2. Social Media Script Writing

And this is actually easier than you think it is. Choose any domain that you’re passionate about. It can be anything: tech, science, lifestyle, or even self-help. Now divide the entire script into three parts: the hook, the content, and the conclusion.

• The hook should be something that needs to be shocking, extreme, new, promising, or even contradictory.
• The content shouldn’t be something that you copy paste from ChatGPT. Charge it up with research and also add your own experience into it.

One of the best ways to learn how to write good scripts is to watch a lot of videos. Pick five to six of your favorite creators. Watch a lot of their videos. Try to understand how are they framing their sentences in the hook, in the content, and in the conclusion. You do it for like 40 to 50 videos and you’ll understand how do you write a new script all by yourself.

You can charge anywhere between $50 to $250 per one YouTube script based upon how complex it is. Writing is lucrative but only if you know how to do it well.

3. Create AI Chatbots for Small Businesses

Even eighth grade students will be able to do this by using steps from ChatGPT. Local businesses and new startups with like limited resources—they’d love to spend a couple hundred dollars so that they can automate the most asked questions on the websites. I mean, just watch a couple of videos on how to do it and then you can charge like $250 per one chatbot setup and also some maintenance every single month. I mean, the only problem in this entire process would be like to find these clients and make them understand the importance of this.

4. Designing Thumbnails

Now this one is a bit tricky and most of the people who choose this would never make any money online because they do it the wrong way. We’re talking about designing thumbnails. See, making a good thumbnail—it’s not actually about making good design. It’s about evoking that curiosity gap when the thumbnail pops up in front of the audience.

You can just watch a couple of tutorials on Canva or Photoshop to learn how to make good designs. But after that, the rest of the skill—it’s actually about understanding the psychology of making people click.

You can charge $25 to $50 per thumbnail if you’re just designing it for someone. But you can charge as high as $250 per thumbnail if you’re also ideating it and giving the creator a bunch of options to choose from. I mean, I can pay you $250 per thumbnail if you can do the ideation for me as well.

5. UGC Model/Creator

The fifth one is actually an interesting one. It’s about becoming a model, a UGC model, a UGC creator. See, this is not traditional modeling where you need to look perfect. Brands sometimes just need regular normal people like you to feature on their social media ads.

So basically, if you just have like a phone and if you can record yourself using their products, brands can actually pay you for the content that you’re recording. You don’t even need to show your face if you’re not comfortable to do it. People end up making $500 to $600 to create 15 to 20 pieces of content for like different brands per month.

6. Internships

A lot of people keep asking me how did you get an internship at a top business school in the second year of college? Back then I wanted to learn more about digital marketing because I was bored studying mechanical engineering. So I started taking random marketing courses online. A couple of free ones like HubSpot content marketing, Google AdWords certification, Google digital marketing certification, and like a few more I don’t even remember.

So then I made a list of all the professors who are in marketing departments. And once I made that list, I started writing them cold emails saying that I wanted to learn more about digital marketing and I’m like more than interested to even do a free internship under that. I sent around 40 to 50 emails. Four to five professors replied and finally one of them gave me a paid internship. That’s it.

You can also follow the same process to reach out to managers or HRs in like different startups. They would be more than happy to give you an internship if they see a potential in you.

Summary of the Easy Bucket

Now that is the end of the easy bucket. The things that you can learn in 30 to 45 days and start making somewhere around $500 to $600 per month. But here’s the problem. Not everyone would be satisfied by just making $500 per month. Some people want more. Something which can even potentially replace a full-time high-paying job.

So what if I told you that there are ways to make $2,500, $5,000, $12,000, or even $25,000 per month? Because there are people who are doing it right now without any fancy degree or without even leaving their home. And honestly, I don’t think those people are any smarter than you. They’re just like you. 18-year-old kids are making over $2,500 a month.

So, let me ask you this: What do you think is the difference between someone making $500 per month and someone making $2,500 per month? It’s not just skills, not just connections or not even luck. It’s about choosing the right direction, the right skill to pick, and having the patience to master it.

Bucket 3: Moderate Methods ($2,500 Per Month in 8 Months)

Making $2,500 per month is not as difficult as it seems to be. Follow the next five methods that I’m going to talk about. There’s a good chance that you can be one of them in the next 1 year.

1. AI Content Agency

Brands want more distribution. Founders want more recognition. But no one actually has the time to sit and record content every day. So what’s the solution? Simple. You can easily generate AI clones of anyone using Heygen and also clone their voice using 11 Labs. These are paid tools but you can easily charge 10x the amount that you’re spending on these tools to your clients.

You can clone anyone using these tools. Use basic edits, write basic explainer scripts for products or services and charge $250 to $1,000 per one explainer video. And it’s so crazy that these tools have relatively low usage from the US market. You don’t need gear. You don’t need big expensive cameras. All you need is a little bit of common sense and know how to write basic emails or a message to a potential client.

2. Advanced Video Editing with Motion Graphics

The keyword here is advanced because I’m not talking about simple cuts or transitions anymore. I’m talking about creating animations, complex motion graphics which make a video look professional. You need to first learn simple video editing either on Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve and then learn Adobe After Effects. You’ll also need to learn design much more proficiently to make these animations look much more cleaner.

See, brands pay anywhere between $375 to $1,250 for one high-quality explainer video. And you can learn all of this in just a matter of like 6-7 months. And if you can learn it well, there’s a high chance that you can easily make somewhere around $2,000 to $2,500 per month.

One more thing which separates a normal video editor from a pro is the use of AI tools in editing. I’ve literally watched over 200 videos and compiled some of the best video editing tutorials on YouTube.

You see, knowing all these things is fine, but in real life, you won’t make any progress if you’re not tracking what you’re doing on a daily basis. I mean, imagine spending hours and hours researching something, and when you look back, you don’t even remember what you’ve been doing. I mean, we’re in 2025, and there are amazing tools which can help you plan things much better.

3. Web Design Focusing on Small Businesses

There’s a lot of misconception that people talk about when it comes to web design. And some of them even be like, “Oh, now you can design websites in just one click using AI.” No, you can’t. AI can help you build websites much faster, but you’d still need a human to make the final changes.

Step one is to choose a website builder:

• If you’re a complete beginner, you have no money to spend – You should straight up go to Carrd.io. This is also the best if you’re making a portfolio website for yourself.
• If you want to build websites for clients – Go for Wix. Easy to learn, has over 900 templates and you can literally learn it in like one day.
• If you want more flexibility to design more complex websites – Then you should go for Framer. You can learn it end to end in a month and can build five to six dummy websites for your portfolio in the next 1 month.
• If you want the ultimate flexibility and want to design complex websites – Then you should go ahead with Webflow. It’ll take you 2 to 3 months to learn this end to end. But you can literally charge over $1,250 to $2,000 per month for the websites that you build with this.

Making good website designs—it’s not so easy because you need to understand colors, fonts, how to pair them. You also need to understand the psychology of where people would end up clicking on the website.

4. LinkedIn Growth Expert Powered by AI

You must have heard of LinkedIn ghostwriters, but the problem with that is that it’s really difficult to scale because you’ll be spending hours and hours researching content, writing them, posting them, doing the analytics manually all by yourself. But what if there are tools that can make your life 100x easier?

For example, you can use tools like Answer the Public to research what content is being searched the most in every single domain on every single platform and even get country level analytics. Then you can use the web browser extension to identify the top performing posts to take some inspiration. And the moment that you get a few more clients, you can reinvest that money in a tool like Taplio which will automate half of the things that you need to do to grow a LinkedIn page.

You just need one good case study that you’ve grown the LinkedIn page of someone and you can charge premium for all the new clients that you take. Being a LinkedIn growth expert is actually a very lucrative thing. But this is going to be saturated in the next couple of years. So if you’re planning to become one, you need to rush.

5. Graphic Design for Social Media

Everyone talks about this but no one actually teaches you how to do it. So here’s everything that you need to know. Start with the basic things like design psychology, colors, patterns, fonts, themes and start making simple designs using Canva. Once you understand the basics of making a good design, learn Photoshop, Illustrator, and Figma. All these things together should take you a couple of months if you practice well.

Once you learn this, the next step is to explore all the AI tools. Tools like DALL-E, Adobe Sensei, Flux AI, Midjourney, and a couple of more AI tools. See, brands and creators are ready to pay you money. It’s just that you’re not skilled enough. The moment that you understand this, you’ll realize why kids of age 15 to 16 are making $2,500 to $3,750 per month while you’re still struggling to buy a burger tonight.

The Key Difference

Remember, the key difference between the methods that we spoke about in the first part of this video series, easy bucket, and this method—it’s not just the money, but it’s also the problem-solving ability that you bring to the table.

For example:

• A video editor who can guarantee great video retention can charge two to three times the industry standard.
• A designer who can guarantee more clicks on the CTAs can easily charge two to three times of the industry standard.
• The LinkedIn writer who can guarantee more engagement can again charge two to three times of the industry standard.

Because now people are not just paying for your time, they’re paying for the results that you drive.

Bucket 4: Difficult Methods ($12,000-$25,000 Per Month in 2-3 Years)

And now with that being said, let’s talk about the last bucket. Bucket number four, the difficult bucket. The things that you can do to make life-changing money.

Communication, understanding human emotions, building systems, automating repetitive tasks, dedication, and patience. These are a few skills that you need to build something big.

1. Building a 360-Degree Marketing Agency

The first thing in this list is building a 360-degree marketing agency—the one that I am running where we don’t just provide one or two services but provide multiple services like video production, making ads, making social media content, and even performance marketing for companies.

And if you’re a beginner, don’t start a 360-degree marketing agency directly. Start small. Choose one single skill like design or video editing. Freelance for a couple of years. Build a team and then expand to more services. It’s easier to penetrate the market deeper first and then expand horizontally than doing it reverse.

Mid-sized agency owners in the United States make anywhere from $10,000 to $37,500 per month. So much money.

2. The Traditional Startup Way

The second one in this list is probably the most difficult one in this list and that is going the traditional startup way. But this is especially wonderful if you’re also studying in a great college like MIT, Stanford, or any other tier one college because it will be easier for you to raise funds. And also at the same time, do not fall into the trap of coming up with like new startup ideas all the time. Ideas don’t really matter much in the startups. You don’t need a great unique idea. You just need solid execution and that’s what matters in startups.

3. Building Your Own Personal Brand

Now with that being said, let’s go to the last one in this bucket which is my personal favorite and that is building your own personal brand. In other words, content creation.

If you can give me the next 2 minutes, I’ll tell you how can you hit 10,000 followers on LinkedIn, YouTube, or Instagram in the next 1 year.

Let’s start with the platforms:

• LinkedIn is the easiest to crack
• Followed by Instagram
• YouTube being the most difficult one

People never grow on any of these platforms because they consider it’s luck but it’s not. It’s pure science, a set of skills that everyone can master, even you. Maybe a beautiful looking girl or a man with a six-pack can grow faster than you on Instagram. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t grow. It just means that they have some unfair advantage. So find your unfair advantage and use it for your benefit.

Action steps:

• Post two to three times a week
• Do not give up for one year
• Most of the channels or pages usually grow the most during the second year of the operation

And remember, it doesn’t matter if you’re a normal student, an engineer, a doctor, or even a lawyer. Having some kind of social presence is going to be hugely helpful for you in your life.

These methods usually take 3 to 4 years to get to $12,000 to $25,000 per month.

The Biggest Problem: Shiny Object Syndrome

But here’s why none of you would be able to reach that stage. Sounds harsh, but I mean it. The biggest problem that you guys have, the ones who are watching me right now, is called the shiny object syndrome.

You’ll first start watching a couple of videos on video editing and then you’ll start doing that for a couple of weeks and then you’ll watch videos on designing and do that for a couple of weeks and then you’ll get into trading, coding, drop shipping and you literally do everything which seems fancy.

Remember: You can do anything but not everything. And if you’re trying to do everything, you’re basically doing nothing. And please pick one thing and stick to it for 3 to 6 months. And if you still don’t see the results, then move on to something else. The real money is in doing the same boring things every day.

The Challenge

Now, here’s a fun challenge. I challenge you to pick up one skill, let me know whatever that is in the comments below. And after 3 months of trying it, come back, reply to the same comment and share your stories and progress. It’ll be an amazing thing for you because you’ll be documenting your journey, but also at the same time for other people, it’ll be a motivation creating through your success stories.

See, this year I really want you guys to win. So, please choose a skill and start working hard. All the best.