Proven ways to make money online:<p>1. Product<p>2. Service<p>3. Ads<p>4. Affiliate commissions<p>Basically, most online money making involves one or more of the steps above. Let me expand a bit more:<p>Product<p>----------<p>- You can build a SAAS and charge a subscription fee.<p>- 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<p>- You can create and sell desktop apps. E.g. Text editors such as Sublime etc.<p>- You can create and sell apps on smartphones/ipad/iOs/Android.<p>- Create "tutorials" and "how-tos" and charge for them. E.g. laracasts.com<p>Service<p>--------<p>Service can be anything really but for the HN crowd, it could be things like:<p>- Provide managed hosting services. E.g. Host WordPress sites for clients, provide maintenance for a fixed fee<p>- Become a freelancer and offer your services on fiverr.com or freelancer.com etc.<p>Ads<p>-------<p>- Create a niche blog and start writing quality articles.<p>- Sign up with Google Adsense and/or buysellads.com and hopefully, get a decent amount of quality hits on your blog and make money.<p>Affiliates<p>-----------<p>- Signup with Amazon Affiliates and start writing about their products on your blog. You could make money by referrals<p>- 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.<p>-