Someone on YouTube posted a video claiming complete beginners can reach $100 per day online using three specific methods. I watched it and then sat down to give you my honest reaction, because after nine or ten years making money online myself, I know exactly where these methods work, where they stall out, and what most beginner guides skip on purpose.
This post walks through all three methods with my real commentary layered in. None of these are magic. All three can work. But the version you see in most YouTube thumbnails skips the friction, and I am here to put the friction back in so you can actually plan around it.
What You Will Walk Out With
- A plain-English breakdown of all three methods, including the four sub-approaches inside Method 1
- An honest read on which approach is actually beginner-friendly and which ones require upfront capital you may not have
- A clear picture of how eBay selling, affiliate marketing, and YouTube each behave differently over time
- The supply chain risk that wiped out a lot of dropshipping stores during the pandemic and why it still matters today
- Why digital products beat a faceless YouTube channel for most beginners who are starting with limited time
- A realistic timeline conversation, because most guides skip this and it is the most important thing to hear before you start
- A free 60-second tool to match you to the right method at finder.platformproof.com
The Timeline Reality Check Nobody Gives You
The creator in the original video says something important right at the top. He has been building his online income for nine or ten years. Most people watching a video titled “Make $100 Per Day as a Complete Beginner” skim past that detail. They should not. That number is the most important piece of context in the whole video.
If you think you are going to reach $100 per day in the next 10 days, making money online is probably not the right move for you right now. That is a hard thing to say and I mean it genuinely, not to discourage you but to give you something realistic to aim at. Sustained online income comes from consistency over a long period of time. The strategies below are all real. They all work. But none of them are shortcuts. The engine underneath all three is showing up and doing the work for months before most of the results arrive.
Method 1: Selling on eBay
The first method is selling on eBay. There are actually four different sub-approaches inside this bucket and each one has different requirements and tradeoffs. The original video covers all of them and so will I.
Sub-Method A: Buying Stock in Bulk
You buy products in bulk, ship them to your house, list them on eBay, and then pick, pack, and ship each order yourself when they sell. This model does work. But it requires money to buy the initial inventory and time to manage fulfillment. If you are starting from zero with no budget, this option closes before you even open the eBay app. That is not a reason to rule it out forever. It is a reason to be honest about where you are starting from right now.
Sub-Method B: Retail Arbitrage
Retail arbitrage is where you go to Walmart, Target, Goodwill, or similar stores and scan products to find items you can resell on eBay at a higher price. When you find a deal, you buy it and list it. When someone buys, you ship it out and keep the difference.
I am a parent of three kids. After work, driving to Walmart to scan products with an app while hungry kids are at home is not a realistic picture of my evening. For some people the lifestyle math works. For a lot of people, it does not. Factor in your time, transportation costs, and energy before you treat retail arbitrage like a casual side hustle. The money is real but so is the cost of earning it.
There is also an online version of retail arbitrage. You find a discounted item on a retail website, list it on eBay at a markup, and when someone buys from you, you go back to the original store to purchase and ship to your customer. The catch is that the item might go out of stock between when you list it and when someone buys. Or a sharp buyer might find the original lower-priced listing themselves and skip your store entirely. These are manageable risks but they are real ones.
Sub-Method C: Dropshipping
Dropshipping is where you list products on eBay without holding any inventory. When someone buys, you forward the order to a supplier who ships directly to your customer. You never touch the product. This used to work very well. Then the pandemic happened.
Supply chains backed up globally. Orders that used to arrive in one or two days started taking weeks. Sometimes months. Customers who had more time than usual to track their purchases got frustrated. They cancelled orders and left bad reviews at a higher rate than most dropshipping stores had built their models around. Stores that had been doing solid volume basically collapsed because one disruption in the supply chain wiped out the customer experience they were built on.
Dropshipping can still work today. But you need to understand how supply chains move, have a backup plan when they do not, and ideally know how to run paid ads to keep traffic flowing. It is not set-it-and-forget-it. One small hiccup in the supply chain can literally kill the business if you are not watching it closely.
Sub-Method D: Print on Demand
Print on demand is where you list items on eBay without making them in advance. T-shirts, hats, phone cases, and canvases are all common examples. When someone buys, your print-on-demand supplier creates the product and ships it directly to your customer. You never handle inventory or shipping yourself.
I actually run a print-on-demand operation myself. The t-shirts you see in my videos are sold through Teespring. I come up with the idea, Teespring handles production, fulfillment, and customer issues. I collect the margin. It works and I do make money from it. But I would not call it beginner-friendly as a starting point, because finding designs that actually sell requires real research. You need to be watching trends, testing ideas, and setting up your store correctly. All of that takes meaningful time before a single dollar comes in. The margins can also be thin compared to other models, which is something to weigh carefully.
Here is the honest eBay summary: most of these approaches require money you may not have, time you may not have, or both. If you walk in with no budget and limited hours, eBay is a harder starting point than a $100-per-day headline makes it sound. It is not impossible. Just go in clear-eyed about what each path actually demands from you before you commit.
Method 2: Starting an Affiliate Marketing Website
This is where I have a genuine opinion and I will not bury it: affiliate marketing is one of the best starting points for a complete beginner. The original video focuses on an affiliate marketing website, but this concept works equally well with a YouTube channel, Instagram account, LinkedIn page, TikTok account, or blog. The platform is the delivery method. The core idea is identical everywhere.
Affiliate marketing is connecting a customer’s problem to a solution through content you create. You write an article or record a video about a problem your audience has. You include a link to a product or service that solves it. When someone clicks and buys, you earn a commission. No inventory. No shipping. No returns. No customer service calls. You do not need your own product, you do not need a direct business relationship with the brand, and you can work with name brands that already have loyal customer bases by plugging into affiliate networks like Impact Radius, Amazon Associates, or similar programs.
People will tell you affiliate marketing is saturated. Those people typically do not understand what affiliate marketing actually is. There are millions of products and services people need, want, and buy constantly. New problems surface in every niche every month. The opportunity does not expire.
The original video shows the back office of Impact Radius as an example of where these commissions live. He calls it semi-passive income. I prefer to call it return-on-investment income. You put work into creating content. On the other side, that content keeps earning long after you published it. I do not believe in passive income where you do nothing forever and money appears. But I do believe in content that keeps working after you move on to writing the next piece.
How to Actually Start an Affiliate Marketing Website
The original video walks through the steps for the blog route and I agree with the path. Pick a niche. It can be anything where people have problems and search for answers online. Basket weaving, travel planning, home repair, personal finance, pet care. If there is search volume behind the questions people ask in that space, there is room for a content site.
Get a domain name and web hosting. Platforms like Bluehost or Hostinger are solid beginner choices. Install WordPress on your hosting account. Do keyword research so you know exactly what searches your target reader is making. Write articles that directly answer those searches and include links to relevant affiliate products. Apply to affiliate programs in your niche and get approved so you can start generating your links.
Is any of that easy? Not exactly. Writing consistently for an online audience is a real skill that takes practice. But the process is as simple as what I just described. There is no hidden layer on top of it. The difficulty lives in execution and in staying consistent for months before the traffic and income compound. Most people who fail at affiliate marketing quit before the compounding starts. That is the real reason for failure, not saturation and not a broken model.
Not sure which of these methods fits your actual situation?
Take 60 seconds at finder.platformproof.com and get a clear answer instead of guessing which path to start down.
Method 3: Faceless Automated YouTube Channel (And What I Prefer Instead)
The third method in the original video is building a faceless automated YouTube channel. The idea is to pick a niche, build a channel around it without showing your face, use b-roll footage from a service like Storyblocks, and use tools like ChatGPT to help generate ideas and scripts. Then monetize with affiliate marketing or YouTube ads once you reach the program thresholds.
For the right person with the right patience, faceless YouTube can absolutely work. But let me be direct: this is one of the slower paths from zero to $100 per day. Getting a YouTube channel built, growing it, and hitting the income thresholds for ads or building enough traffic to convert affiliate clicks requires months of consistent uploads before meaningful money arrives. If speed matters to you right now, a faceless channel is probably not the starting move.
What I prefer for beginners instead is selling digital products. You can create a digital product over a weekend using something like Canva. A vacation planner, a business template, a meal prep guide, a checklist, an ebook on a topic you know well. Once it exists, you can sell it on Gumroad, list it on Etsy, or sell it directly to an audience you build on TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube. When someone buys, the file is delivered automatically. You do not ship anything physical. You create the product once and can sell it a thousand times over.