How To Make Money Online In Thailand: Your Startup Guide (2024)

Welcome to the Land of Smiles, where the sun is shining and the food is spicy.

But let’s face it, as much as we love the rooftop bars and endless summers, we still need a way to make money to pay for rent, motorbike taxis and those scrumptious 7-Eleven ham and cheese toasties.

As a foreigner living in Thailand, finding ways to earn online can be a challenge.

I’m talking from personal experience.

You name it, I’ve tried it:

Surveys = total waste of time
Freelancing = selling your time for money
Dropshipping = expensive and risky
MLM/network marketing = cringe
Teaching English = just can’t stomach it anymore

Let me save you some time – if you’re looking for a way to make a steady income from the comfort of your own home (or hammock), there’s one way that stands head and shoulders above them all:

Affiliate marketing.

In this guide, I’m going to talk you through what affiliate marketing is, how it works and share with you the 4-step process I use to earn $150,000+ a year from my Bangkok condo.

And best of all:

I’ll show you how you can get started for free with our affiliate marketing crash course.

So grab a cold Singha, kick off your flip-flops and let’s dive in.

Affiliate Marketing Explained

Affiliate marketing sounds complicated but it’s simply when you recommend other companies’ products online in return for a cut on each sale.

8 out of 10 online stores like Lazada, Shopee and Amazon have affiliate programs that are free to join.

They give you a unique affiliate link and you get paid commissions every time someone clicks through your link and buys.

And because this is commission-based, all you do is send people to the online store and get paid.

There’s:

No expensive startup costs
No need to buy or ship products
No customer service issues to deal with
No need to set up an online store

And the best part is you make 80-90% profit margins because you don’t need to pay for ads, as you’re going to get visitors coming to your site for free from search engines like Google.

Read: What Affiliate Marketing Is (& How To Start) For Beginners

How To Earn Online In Thailand In 4 Steps

Follow these 4 steps, and you’ll be free to earn wherever you are with just a laptop and Wi-Fi connection.

1. Choose Your Favourite Topic
2. Build A Website
3. Attract Visitors
4. Generate Revenue

These are the exact steps we cover in detail within the free Commission Academy course.

While there are other ways to earn online as a farang living in Thailand, affiliate marketing is the most flexible and lucrative because it’s something you can do anytime, anywhere, it costs almost nothing to get started and the earning potential is limitless.

Step 1: Choose Your Favourite Topic

Making money with affiliate marketing is fun when you pick a personal passion or interest.

It could be anything:

Paddleboarding
Gaming
Travel
Bodybuilding
Food
Dog training
Fashion
Cycling

You name it, you can build a successful and profitable business around it.

In fact, the more you enjoy what you’re doing, the more likely you are to do well.

So take a minute to write out some favourite topics and choose the best one.

Use can also use these affiliate marketing niche ideas to get the ball rolling.

Step 2: Build A Website

Next up, you need to build a website that’s going to be based on your favourite topic.

Your website is where you’ll drive traffic, get people clicking on your links and generate sales. It’ll be the foundation and hub of your online business going forward.

And all you need is a domain name and hosting.

For this, I recommend Wealthy Affiliate.

They’ll give you a free domain with every premium hosting account and they also offer 24/7 technical support, daily backups as well as access to a community of 2.3 million+ affiliate marketers you can share your progress and celebrate your successes with.

Their newbie-friendly site builders also make building a website an absolute breeze.

Step 3: Attract Visitors

The third step is finding buyer-ready keywords you can target to get 1,000s and 10,000s of daily visitors to your website.

Keywords are search terms, phrases and questions people search for in Google.

By using keyword tools like Mangools, you can find out exactly how many searches a certain phrase gets searched each month and then create helpful content to nab Google’s top spot.

Let me give you a real working example.

According to Mangools, “best earbuds for running” gets googled 16,000 times a month on average, making this a very worthwhile keyword to go after:

So if you or I invest some time in creating content for this keyword that gets Google’s top spot, with this one post alone you’re going to get 16,000 a month coming to your website.

That’s exactly what the owner of Runner’s World did:

making money online in thailand ideas and example

And guess what you see when you click the website?

Affiliate links to Amazon of course! 😊

make money online in thailand guide for beginners

And the site owner is recommending Beats Fit Pro True wireless earbuds at $200 pop.

The affiliate commission rate for those is 5% which means he’s making $10 every time someone clicks his link and buys.

Now that might not sound like a lot but remember:

16,000 people per month are searching for the best earbuds for running!

Even if only 10% of people actually click through and buy this guy is earning at least $16,000 a month by targeting this ONE keyword alone.

Can you see the huge income-generating potential?

And you can repeat this ad infinitum:

The more keywords you target, the more people you’ll have coming to your site, the more clicks you’ll get on your affiliate links and the more money you will make! 🤑

Step 4: Earn Revenue

Complete steps 1-3 and you’ll have a website built around your favourite topic and you’ll be getting tons of people coming to it each day.

Now you just need affiliate products to promote to generate a steady income.

There are over 600 million affiliate products online and you can promote as many of them as you want, but if you’re looking to maximise sales then you want to choose products that are the most relevant to your audience.

You wouldn’t want to promote Barbie dolls on a site about Harley Davidson motorcycles for example!

So start looking at affiliate programs in your niche and join just one or 2 to start off with and join more over time to build multiple income streams.

Then simply add your affiliate links to your posts and start seeing the money coming in.

Check out this blog post on 5 great places to find affiliate products you can promote today.

And that’s really all there is to it!

You’ve now got a solid grasp of the fundamentals of earning a consistent income online from Thailand or anywhere else and they work every time.

Follow this simple 4-step formula and you’ll go on to earn a passive income with affiliate marketing.

Why I Needed To Earn Online While Living In Thailand

I spent years working in dull-as-hell call centre jobs in Leeds, England.

The thing is, I always had this dream of living and working in Thailand as a Christian missionary and volunteer.

I studied at Bible school in Sriracha, Chonburi for a couple of years but the problem was I always ran out of money…

I’d have to keep going back to the UK to work and save before I could come back. I knew somethign had to change if I was going to be able to live in Thailand and support myself full-time.

After getting scammed more than a few times, I found a solid affiliate marketing course that taught me everything I needed to know to become successful.

I made my first sale after 2 weeks and I was ecstatic – jumping up and down like a crazy guy ecstatic.

That was nearly 10 years ago and I’ve put in a lot of work since then.

It takes a bit of time in the beginning but I’ve gone on to earn over $1 million in commissions and I’m now free to spend my time doing the things I care about the most.

Here are just a few photos of what I get up to these days: