Proven ways to make money online:

1. Product

2. Service

3. Ads

4. Affiliate commissions

Basically, most online money making involves one or more of the steps above. Let me expand a bit more:

Product

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- You can build a SAAS and charge a subscription fee.

- You can sell code such as themes, plugins etc for variety of platforms including WordPress, bootstrap etc either on your own website or through marketplaces such as themeforest, wrapbootstrap etc

- You can create and sell desktop apps. E.g. Text editors such as Sublime etc.

- You can create and sell apps on smartphones/ipad/iOs/Android.

- Create "tutorials" and "how-tos" and charge for them. E.g. laracasts.com

Service

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Service can be anything really but for the HN crowd, it could be things like:

- Provide managed hosting services. E.g. Host WordPress sites for clients, provide maintenance for a fixed fee

- Become a freelancer and offer your services on fiverr.com or freelancer.com etc.

Ads

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- Create a niche blog and start writing quality articles.

- Sign up with Google Adsense and/or buysellads.com and hopefully, get a decent amount of quality hits on your blog and make money.

Affiliates

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- Signup with Amazon Affiliates and start writing about their products on your blog. You could make money by referrals

- Do you use a software product you really like ? Check if the company offers affiliate program. Signup with their program. E.g. Affiliate program through themeforest etc.

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