How To Make Money Online Helping Others

The simplest business on the internet is answering questions. Not in a customer service call center, not in a classroom. Online, on your own schedule, using questions millions of people are already typing into Google and YouTube every single day. People want to know how to draw a shark, how to thicken chili, how to make their headphones louder. They are searching right now. You could be the one who answers them.

In this post you will see exactly how to find those questions, what kind of content to create, and three separate ways to get paid for helping people. Alston covers all of it with live keyword research using Ahrefs, real channel examples, and specific revenue models you can apply starting this week.

What You’ll Walk Out With

The “how to” keyword method: how to surface over 1.2 million low-competition questions using Ahrefs
What a keyword difficulty score of 5 or less means and why new creators should target it
Real niche examples pulled from live keyword data: drawing, cooking, headphones, relationships
Content formats that work without showing your face or buying expensive equipment
How the YouTube Partner Program pays you once you hit the subscriber and watch-hour threshold
How affiliate marketing turns niche content into commissions using Amazon and similar programs
How to package what you know into an ebook or course using Teachable or ClickFunnels
How to find your specific platform and topic match at finder.platformproof.com

Why Helping People Is the Business Model

There are thousands of ways to make money on the internet, but helping people is the one with the clearest demand signal. Every time someone types “how to” into a search bar, they are raising their hand. They have a problem they cannot solve on their own and they are looking for someone to answer it. That person could be you. Ahrefs shows over 82 million monthly searches just for “how to” keywords with a difficulty score of five or less. That is not a small corner of the internet. That is the core of it.

What that 82 million number tells you is that the demand is enormous and the competition for each individual keyword is manageable. You do not need to beat a channel with 2 million subscribers. You need to answer a specific question better than the 17,000-subscriber channel that is currently ranking for it. That bar is much lower than most people assume, and keyword research shows you exactly where to find it.

The one caveat Alston makes clear: you have to create something. Helping people online requires content. It can be free content like a YouTube video or a blog post. It can be paid content like a course. But you have to produce something in order to help someone. The good news is that the content does not need to be expensive, polished, or filmed with your face on camera. It just needs to answer a question that people are already searching for.

The “How To” Discovery Method

The starting point Alston uses is straightforward. Open Ahrefs, go to the Keywords Explorer tool, type in the phrase “how to,” and filter the results to show only keywords with a difficulty score of five or less. That single search returns over 1.2 million keywords, each one a question someone is already asking.

Ahrefs offers a 7-day trial for $7. Alston recommends starting with the trial because a focused keyword research session in those seven days can produce a content list that keeps you busy for months. You can export or write down 50 to 100 keywords in a single session, cancel the trial if needed, and use that data to guide everything you create next. The $7 is an investment in knowing exactly which questions to answer before you spend time making content.

This approach is not limited to YouTube. The same keyword list works for a blog, a TikTok account, a Facebook group, or an Instagram page. Wherever people can search for content, your answers can appear. Pick one platform to start, build consistency there, and expand later.

Reading the Ahrefs Numbers

Three columns matter when you run this search in Keywords Explorer. The keyword itself is what people are typing. The keyword difficulty score runs from 0 to 100, with numbers closer to zero being easier to rank for. You want 5 or less. The volume is the number of monthly searches for that exact phrase, and this is what tells you whether the keyword is worth creating content for.

A keyword difficulty of 5 does not mean the topic is small or unpopular. It means the pages and videos currently ranking for that keyword are not highly authoritative. A new creator who publishes a thorough, well-structured answer has a genuine shot at appearing in the top results. This is the window that exists for new channels and new websites, and it is bigger than most people realize because there are over a million of these questions waiting to be answered.

The volume column is where you find your sweet spot. You want enough monthly searches to make the content worth producing, combined with low enough competition that you can rank. Across the 1.2 million results that come back from this search, there are thousands of keywords hitting that combination in almost every topic area.

Real Examples From the Keyword Data

In the video, Alston scrolls through live results to show how diverse the opportunity actually is. The examples cover a range of topics that have nothing to do with each other, which is the point: the “how to” method works across all of them.

Drawing niche: “How to draw a fish,” “how to draw a shark,” “how to draw a hammerhead shark,” “how to draw a cow,” “how to draw a bear.” On YouTube, Alston finds 15 to 20 to 30 different videos teaching people how to draw a shark. Each one gets views. Each one is monetizable. A creator could build an entire channel around drawing tutorials, working through the keyword list one video at a time, and rank for dozens of low-competition search terms in the same niche.

Headphones niche: “How to make your headphones louder” gets around 2,000 searches per month. Alston checks this keyword on YouTube and finds the top result has 147,000 views with a 17,000-subscriber channel. The second result has 172,000 views from a channel with only 261 subscribers. That second video is two minutes long, shot vertically, no face shown. A simple answer to a simple question. No studio. No equipment budget. No large audience needed to get six-figure views.

Other niches in the same data: “How to thicken chili” (food), “how to slide madden” (gaming), “how to open a locker” (practical skills), “how many dates before asking to be girlfriend” (relationships), “how to tell your parents you have a girlfriend” (relationships), “how to make green” (kids’ art). These are all low-difficulty, real-volume keywords sitting in the same tool, in the same search, filtered the same way. Your niche does not need to be business or finance. It can be anything people are genuinely curious about.

Content Formats: No Face, No Problem

The main reason people stall after finding keywords is they assume they need professional equipment or need to appear on camera. The headphones example above proves neither is true. 172,000 views on a faceless two-minute vertical video from a channel with 261 subscribers. The value is in the answer, not the presenter.

Alston lists several formats for creating helpful content without showing your face:

Point-your-camera: record your screen, your hands, or the object you are demonstrating without the camera ever pointing at you
Voiceover: record your audio narration over slides, screen recordings, or stock footage
Animation and whiteboard software: tools like these let you create explainer videos entirely from your computer
Blog posts: written content that ranks directly on Google without any video required

Starting equipment: your smartphone and the headphones that came in the box. That is Alston’s baseline. As the content gains traction and starts earning, you reinvest in a better microphone and camera. There is no reason to spend money on gear before you have confirmed the content concept works. The 261-subscriber channel with 172,000 views did not need a professional setup. It needed a useful answer.

Three Ways to Monetize the Help You Give

1. YouTube Ad Revenue

If you are creating YouTube videos, the YouTube Partner Program gives you access to ad revenue. The threshold to apply is 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours over the past 12 months. Once you are accepted, ads can run at the beginning, middle, or end of your videos and you earn a share of the revenue every time they play.

Ad revenue alone is not enough to build a business on in the early stages, but it is a real, compounding stream that runs without you once the videos are published. On a channel targeting low-competition “how to” keywords in a niche like drawing or cooking, views accumulate over months and years. Every view on an old video is still working for you.

2. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing lets you monetize helpful content even when your audience is still small. You find a product or service that solves the same problem as your content, sign up for the affiliate program, and include your unique link in your video description or blog post. When someone clicks and buys, you earn a commission.

Alston walks through a specific example. You are making content about how to make headphones louder. Maybe the reason someone’s headphones sound quiet is because they need cleaning. You go to Amazon, search “headphone cleaning kit,” find a product that actually helps, scroll to the bottom of the Amazon page, and sign up for the Amazon Associates program. You put your affiliate link in the video description. Now every headphones video you publish has a monetization path attached to it, independent of ad revenue and independent of your subscriber count.

This works across every niche. Drawing content links to sketchbooks and drawing tablets. Cooking content links to specific kitchen tools. Relationship content links to books or courses. Every piece of content you publish is another opportunity to place a relevant product recommendation in front of someone who already has the problem it solves.

3. Digital Products and Courses

The third revenue stream is your own product. Once you have built content in a niche, some portion of your audience will want more depth than a free video provides. That is where a digital product comes in. If you have built content around drawing, you create an ebook teaching people to draw step by step. If you have built content around cooking, you package your methods into a digital cookbook. If you have established yourself around any topic, there are people in your audience willing to pay for structured help.

Alston specifically mentions Teachable for hosting a course. You build the lessons, upload them to Teachable, and the platform handles payments, delivery, and student access. You link to the course from your YouTube channel or blog. ClickFunnels is a second option if you want to host the sales page and product yourself rather than using a third-party platform. Either approach works. Teachable is simpler. ClickFunnels gives more control.

The sequence matters. Free content builds the audience. Affiliate links generate early revenue with no product to create. Your own product is where the higher revenue comes from because you keep 100 percent of the sale. Alston recommends building at least three or four revenue streams that overlap so you are not dependent on a single source. Ad revenue plus affiliate commissions plus a digital product, all from content in the same niche, is a real business.

Not sure which niche fits your background?

Get matched to the right platform and topic at finder.platformproof.com.

Your Step-by-Step Starting Plan

Sign up for the Ahrefs 7-day trial for $7 and open the Keywords Explorer tool
Type “how to” and filter keyword difficulty to 5 or less
Scroll the results and identify one niche area that appears repeatedly (drawing, cooking, tech, relationships)
Copy or export 30 to 50 keywords from that niche before your trial ends
Create your first piece of content answering one specific low-competition question from your list
Sign up for the Amazon Associates program and find a product in your niche to recommend
Publish the content and include your affiliate link in the description or post
Repeat with the next keyword on your list, aiming for consistent publishing over 60 to 90 days
Once you hit 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours on YouTube, apply to the Partner Program
As traffic grows, create an ebook or course around your most-viewed content topic and host it on Teachable

Honest Drawbacks

This approach takes time. A keyword with 2,000 monthly searches is not going to drive thousands of visitors on day one. Alston points to channels getting 147,000 or 172,000 views on headphones videos, but those views accumulated over months. You might publish 20 videos before any single one breaks out. That is normal and expected, not a sign that the strategy is not working.

Ahrefs is useful but is an ongoing cost after the trial. The $7 trial works for a focused research session and gives you enough data to start. Free alternatives like Google’s Keyword Planner or Ubersuggest exist but show less depth. If you are on a zero budget, start with free tools, collect your initial keyword list, and upgrade when your affiliate revenue makes a subscription practical.

YouTube ad revenue takes time to become meaningful. In the early months, your primary income from this model will come from affiliate commissions, not ad checks. Set realistic expectations: the first 60 to 90 days are about building a content inventory, not generating significant income. The income follows the inventory, not the other way around.

Find Your X

Looking at a list of 1.2 million keywords and being told to “pick a niche” is overwhelming. You might see “how to draw a fish” next to “how to connect Bose headphones on a Mac” and have no idea which direction matches what you actually know or want to spend time on. That is a real friction point, and guessing wrong costs months of effort going in the wrong direction.

The Platform Proof Finder helps you cut through that by asking a few questions about your background, interests, and time availability, then matching you to a platform and topic that fits where you are actually starting from. Visit finder.platformproof.com to get your starting point instead of guessing from a keyword list.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you need a specific niche, or can you just make content about any “how to” question?

You can start by answering any low-competition question you find in the keyword data. Alston actually mentions “how to” as a niche in itself, where the subject matter is the variety. Over time, grouping your content around a consistent topic makes it easier to build a returning audience and stack affiliate commissions in a single product category. But if you want to answer questions across multiple unrelated topics at the start, that is a workable approach while you find what holds your attention.

How much does Ahrefs cost after the trial?

The 7-day trial Alston mentions is $7. After the trial, Ahrefs plans start at around $99 per month. The trial is enough to run a full keyword research session and collect a working list of keywords to start creating content. Cancel after the trial if the monthly cost is not yet practical, use the data you collected, and revisit when your affiliate revenue justifies a subscription.

What if I don’t feel like I have any skills worth teaching?

The keyword examples from the video make this easier to answer. People are searching for how to draw a bear, how to thicken chili, how to open a locker. These are not expert-level skills. You do not need credentials or a professional background. You need to know the answer to a specific question, or be willing to research it before you create the content. Most people underestimate how much they already know that someone else is currently searching to learn.

Can a channel with only a few hundred subscribers actually get views?

Yes. The example Alston shows in the video is a real YouTube result: 172,000 views on a video from a channel with 261 subscribers. The video is two minutes long, vertical format, no face shown. The views came from YouTube search and suggested videos, not from a pre-existing subscriber base. Subscribers follow content that performs well. Content performs well when it answers a question people are searching. That relationship runs in one direction: content first, subscribers second.

How do you sign up for the Amazon affiliate program?

Go to amazon.com and scroll to the very bottom of the page. Look for a link that says “Become an Affiliate” or “Associates Program.” Follow the sign-up steps, which will ask for your website or YouTube channel URL, how you drive traffic, and payment information. Once approved, you get a unique tracking link for any product listed on Amazon. Place that link in your video descriptions or blog posts and earn a commission when someone clicks through and completes a purchase.

What is Teachable and when should you use it?

Teachable is a platform that hosts online courses. You build the lessons inside Teachable, the platform handles payment processing and content delivery, and students access everything through a Teachable-hosted course page. You do not need Teachable at the start. The recommended sequence is to build free content first, then add affiliate links for early revenue, then create a course once your audience is established and you know what they actually want to learn in more depth.

How long does it take to qualify for the YouTube Partner Program?

The threshold is 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the past 12 months. There is no timeline that applies to every channel. Creators targeting low-competition keywords with consistent publishing can reach these numbers in anywhere from 6 to 18 months depending on how often they publish and how well each video performs. The more focused the niche and the more consistent the publishing schedule, the faster the threshold arrives.

What is ClickFunnels and how does it differ from Teachable?

ClickFunnels is a sales funnel builder. It lets you create landing pages, take payments, and deliver digital products from your own setup rather than a third-party platform. Teachable is built specifically for courses and handles the course structure and student experience. ClickFunnels gives more control over the sales process and works for a wider range of digital products, but it requires more setup. For a course specifically, Teachable is simpler to launch. ClickFunnels makes more sense if you want full ownership of the sales page or are selling something other than a structured course.

Sources

Ahrefs Keywords Explorer: keyword research tool referenced throughout, 7-day trial available for $7
YouTube Partner Program: requires 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours over the past 12 months to apply
Amazon Associates: affiliate program for recommending products and earning commissions on purchases
Teachable: course hosting platform mentioned as the primary option for digital products
ClickFunnels: self-hosted sales funnel option mentioned as an alternative to Teachable