3 Proven Ways To Make Your First $100,000 in 2021

You’ve probably heard people saying they make six figures many times by now, but what does that actual mean? In this post, we’ll dive into real ways you can make over $100,000 per year along with proof.

I’m not going to tell you to join a marketing scheme or take online surveys. These are real businesses you can start and grow today, so that you can live on your own terms. Let’s get right into it.

How do you make $100,000?

$100,000 is a number people like to throw around to show that they make money. If you hear someone makes over $100,000, you can safely assume they live comfortably. What I’m going to focus on is the making portion of that equation, we can focus on spending afterwards.

$100,000 basically means you make about $8,333 per month, that’s close to around $2,000 per week. There’s only a few ways a person can make this type of money:

They have a good job
They have a successful business
They have a job and a side hustle or a similar combination

To put it simply, if you want to make $100,000, you have to have an in-demand skill or a business that’s making enough sales. The different methods mentioned in this post will focus on learning a skill and making that into a business.

Note: Even if you pick one of these methods, it will likely take several years of hard work before you reach $100,000. Are there people who can do it in their first year? Yes, but it’s not very likely. Can you do it in 3-5 years of hard work? Most definitely and I’ll show you examples.

1. Blogging

The first way you can make $100,000 is what I’m doing right now: blogging. Blogging is basically writing helpful content for people online and using that audience to make money. Let me break it down for you quickly.

The truth about blogging is that the vast majority of bloggers quit. This is because they don’t understand the timeframe it takes to succeed with blogging. Most bloggers will not make much money, if any, during their first year.

This is my 66th blog post and I’ve a whopping $0. If I didn’t understand how Google works or how blogging works, I would’ve easily given up. It takes close to a year to start getting significant organic traffic to your website.

Once you actually have the traffic, you can monetize it and start making money from your blog. Don’t take my word for it. Go on Google and search blog income report along with the current month. Example: “Blog Income Report March 2021”.

Here’s some of the results you will see:

Ryrob.com: $35,000
Adam Enfroy: $101,000
Prosmartreprenuer: $9,000
Bloggersontherise: $12,600

What these bloggers have in common is that they have been producing high quality content for years. As you write more quality content on Google, your domain authority will rise and you will get more traffic to your site. Feel free to go through some of the blog reports linked above and see how each of those bloggers’ journeys look like.

Will you make a $100,000 per month blogging? Maybe after 7-10 years, but you can definitely start making over $8,000 per month once you’re 3+ years in. The great thing about blogging is that it compounds. The content you write today will make you money for years to come.

How do you make money with blogging?

The great thing about blogging is you can make money in tons of ways. I’ll outline the main ways most bloggers make money.

Ads:

Unless this your first time opening up the internet, you’ve likely seen little banner ads on the bottom and sides of websites that you visit. If you pay close attention to those ads, they are often related to things you’ve searched up or are interested in.

When your blog starts to get traffic, you can apply to ad programs that will pay you to place ads on your website. Depending on how much traffic you get and the kind of audience you have, an ad company can pay you typically between $10-$30 per 1,000 visitors you have.

Assuming you have a $20 rate, you can make $1,000 per month passively if you have 50,000 viewers to your blog each month. If you’ve blogged for over two years, this is very doable.

Sponsorships:

When you build your audience, sponsors may start reaching out to you. These sponsors will pay you a certain amount to write about their company or advertise their products and services to your audience.

Depending on the niche you’re in, sponsorships can be very lucrative. There are bloggers who make thousands of dollars each month just off sponsorships alone. Since you’re the owner of the blog, you can set your rate and choose which sponsors you want to work with.

Affiliate marketing:

Affiliate marketing is when you get paid to refer one of your visitors to try a product or service. If they purchase a product with your link you get a cut. This might seem small, but if you have an audience of 50,000 readers or more each month, those affiliate sales will quickly start to add up.

Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make money blogging because it compounds. Let’s take my blog for example. I’ve published 65 blog posts so far. I can add affiliate links throughout all of my blog posts for different products or services.

As my blog ages, I will make more and more affiliate sales because I’m making more posts with affiliate links. By the end of this year, I can have 200 posts with hundreds of affiliate links. As I get more traffic, I will get more clicks and purchases to my affiliates. This ultimately results in more affiliate money for me.

There are hundreds of bloggers who make over $5,000 per month just on affiliate sales alone.

Product sales:

The last major type of revenue stream for bloggers is product sales. We just covered affiliate marketing, so imagine instead of getting the entire profit instead of a cut. That’s the power of product sales.

Product sales is creating products specifically for your audience. For example, since I’m knowledgeable on freelance writing, I can create a product on how to get your first 5 freelance clients. I only have to make the book, course, etc, one time and it will keep making passive income for me.

There are some bloggers who make 5 figures a month just off product sales.

Using a mix of affiliate marketing, product sales, ad revenue and sponsorships can definitely make you over $100,000 given enough time and effort into your blog.

2. Freelance writing

Freelance writing is another way you can make $100,000 per year. Do most freelance writers make $100,000? No, the average rate for a freelance writer is about $20 per hour according to Indeed.com.

I’ve been freelance writing for three years. It started off as a side gig and it became my full time job about a year ago. This is how my earnings have looked:

2019: $10,000
2020: $29,000
2021: $52,000 (projected at my current earnings)

As you can see, my income has risen each year as I’ve learned how to market myself better and land more work. I work roughly 30 hours a week as a freelance writer and the rest of the time I’m doing marketing work for my freelance writing business or I’m writing for this blog.

Last month, I made over $6,000 freelance writing. You can check out my report for that month here.

How do you make money with freelance writing?

The amount of money you make with freelance writing is directly tied with how many clients you work with and the quality of the clients of you work with.

In freelance writing you are paid for creating content for a client. This includes things like:

blogs
whitepapers
case studies

You negotiate with the client on how much they will pay you for each piece of work. For example, a client may pay you $100 for a blog post. If you want to make a living with freelance writing you need to get clients that want monthly work from you.

Many of the clients I work with assign me a certain number of blogs each month and that’s how I make most of my income from freelance writing. There are clients who just do one-time projects, but most of your income as a freelance writer should come from recurring work.

As a new freelance writer, you should spend most of your time reaching out to clients to find work. Once you get your first client, you continue reaching out until you get your second, third and so on. If you want to learn about freelance writing, check out a full-depth explanation here.

3. Selling on Amazon

Selling on Amazon is probably the biggest opportunity out of the 3 ways to make $100,000 in this blog. I left it as the last option for a reason.

For blogging and freelance writing, you can start out with very little money (less than $150). All you need is hosting or an email provider to actually start making money.

With selling on Amazon, it’s probably best to have a good chunk of money ($500+) to make the most impact for your business. Can you start off with less? Of course you can, but I’m looking at it from the lens of what’s the best use of time.

What is selling on Amazon?

Selling on Amazon basically means you sell products on Amazon for a profit. For example, you can find something at Walmart, ship it into Amazon and get paid when it sells.

Amazon is the largest online retailer in the U.S. They sell hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods each year. Over 50% of the items sold on Amazon are sold by normal people like me and you. This is a huge market and there are millions of sellers who sell on Amazon.

Why did I choose to include selling on Amazon in this post? Because there are over 140,000 people who have made over $100,000 by selling on Amazon. Yes, you read that right: 140,000 people. The market on Amazon is so large that this many people are earning a great living by selling products.

What’s great about Amazon is that you can ship products directly into Amazon’s warehouses. Those products become Prime products and Amazon handles all of the customer service.

The hard part about making money on Amazon is starting with some money, buying products, learning how Amazon works and reinvesting into your business. That’s literally it. Of course there are strategies that work better than others, but if you do this you will likely reach $100,000 in less than 3 years.

To learn more about how to sell on Amazon, check out this in-depth guide.

How do you make money with selling on Amazon?

Selling on Amazon is pretty straight forward. You find a product that sells well (Amazon provides this on each listing, it’s called best sellers ranking), you source it (find it at a store near you or online), you ship it to an Amazon warehouse and you get paid after it sells.

It seems complicated, but once you actually sell your first few products, you’ll learn very quickly. Once you make a sale, you don’t get paid immediately. In fact, Amazon pays out sellers every two weeks. That’s why I say it’s important to start with some money, so you’re not just waiting for the next Amazon check.

Once you sell your first dozen or so products, you’ll learn the selling process on Amazon fairly quickly. You have to keep rinsing and repeating and your business will grow. I’ve personally seen dozens of Amazon sellers who make over $1 million each year. You can check out some of them in the links below:

Final thoughts

These ways I’ve mentioned on how to make your first $100,000 are not things I’m saying for fun. This is what I do everyday for a living. I share my income reports each month and explain what I’m doing and what’s working for me. I’m currently focusing primarily on freelance writing and blogging, I’ll start doing some selling on Amazon next year. You can check out my latest income report here.