What is trading?
In terms of online business, trading is when you try to profit from financial markets using short-term strategies.
Trading is one of 19 types of online business and considered a Level X online business, according to our framework.
6 Levels and 19 Types of Online Business
Level 1 = Novice
Okay for side income or beer money, but hard to earn a living.
Level 2 = Intermediate
Best for earning a living online when you’re starting out, but hard to scale.
Level 3 = Advanced
Easier to scale and higher income potential, but you usually need significant investment of time and/or money upfront.
Level 4 = Superior
Even more scalable and even higher income potential, but also more complex / difficult / expensive.
Level 5 = Distinguished
Most complex / difficult / expensive, but the rewards here can be massive.
Level X = Wildcard
These are the misfits. Many aren’t even considered businesses in the traditional sense, but they are all ways to make money online. You typically need a lot of time, money, or luck to succeed with anything here.
How can you make money online with trading?
Here are the legit ways I’ve found to make money online with trading…
Day Trading / Swing Trading
This usually means buying and selling stocks within a few minutes, hours or days.
You’ll find the occasional success story here, like Ryan Roots quickly earning thousands of dollars on trades via the Robinhood app…
Ryan Roots
- Co-founder of Ralli Roots
- $8,000+ profit from 16 days of trading
However, the largest studies done on day trading show that you’re unlikely to earn any money this way.
Poor Donnie here is representative of the typical day trader…
Tommy Trader
- Day Trader
- $0 or even less
Forex Trading
Here you’d be buying and selling currencies online (eg. US Dollars or Euros), aiming to sell for more than you buy so you can earn a profit.
Justin Mueller has had some good results with this…
Justin Mueller
- Serial Entrepreneur
- $31,224 forex profit in 2 months
Crypto Trading
This is like forex except you’d be trading cryptocurrencies (eg. Bitcoin or Ethereum) instead of traditional currencies.
Tony from JRNY Crypto is one of the few regular crypto traders I’ve seen doing well…
Tony JRNY
- Founder of JRNY Crypto
- $3,802 profit in 3 weeks trading crypto
Pros and Cons of Trading Businesses
- Potential for fast returns.
- Easy to believe that you’re some kind of badass digital Wolf of Wall Street character… for a few hours at least.
- High risk.
- Very little passive income potential.
- Lots of fake gurus and scams promising quick and easy success.
Is trading a good way to earn a living online?
From what I’ve seen, lots of people try to earn a living by trading online, but very few seem to succeed.
If you poured the same time and effort into building a true online business – see Levels 2-5 – I suspect you’d get much better results.
Trading Courses
Here are some courses you may want to consider…
🏆 Best Trading Courses 🏆
Trading Resources
- JRNY Crypto YouTube channel
The most reasonable crypto trading videos I’ve seen. No hype. - DueDilly
Helps retail traders figure out whether to trust the people posting trading ideas on Reddit.
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