10 Fast Ways To Make Money Online
11 Ways to Make Money Online and Earn a Solid Income
“I’m gonna be an astronaut!”
That was my response at age seven when my mother told me I could do whatever I wanted when I grew up (thanks, mom!). She didn’t like my response and told me being an astronaut was risky. She said going into outer space was too dangerous.
This broke my heart.
By age ten, my plans had shifted. I wanted to be a professional football player, but my mom’s response was pretty much the same.
“Playing in the NFL is too dangerous! You’re gonna get injured out there and lose your brain cells!”
This made me shrug. I felt like all the occupations I wanted were the risky ones. By fourteen, I realized that I wanted to be an entrepreneur and run my own business. When I told my mom, finally I got a positive response.
“Now that sounds like a better plan.”
anton kraly
With my wife, mom, and sister touring around Rome.
So that was it. Being an astronaut or a professional football player were too risky, but being an entrepreneur was okay. I had made up my mind at fourteen.
I get a ton of emails from people telling me that they’re not sure making money online is a viable option. They think it’s too risky, and they’re not sure it’s legitimate and they’re not sure it can be a legitimate source of income.
It’s never been easier to make money online, and it’s only going to get easier. CLICK TO TWEET
It’s going to get more competitive, but whether you’re looking to work from home or from a coffee shop on the other side of the world, there have never been as many opportunities for you to do so than the second you are reading this post. Yes, you!
11 Best Ways to Make Money Online That Still Work in 2017
If you’re looking for ways to make money online, then this post will give you plenty of ideas to get started. In each section, we’ve also added some resources/courses that will help you get started. These resources were chosen because they are the best ones out there, not because we make money off of them. There are no affiliate links included in this post.
We didn’t include every option, but we laid out eleven to get your thoughts churning, so get ready.
1. Make Money Freelancing a Skill
This could be an entire article in itself, but if you learn a skill that people are willing to pay for, you’ll find it’s possible to make a nice living online. With sites ranging from Fiverr to Upwork, there are thousands of ways to get people to pay you for your skillset. Here are just a few ideas get you thinking:
Podcast editor: With the podcast industry booming, show hosts are happy to outsource the editing to someone else so they can focus on the content. Don’t believe me? Just ask Ben Krueger who built a business off editing podcasts.
Writer: Blogging, social media writing, copywriting, email marketing, there are so many ways you can get paid for your words these days. Danny Margolis is a classic example, who made over $110,000 in one year as a freelance copywriter.
Designer: Whether it’s websites, graphics, or logos, it has never been easier to make money as a designer. Jake Jorgovan managed to make over $1,000 a week doing website design and his background at the time had nothing to do with building websites.
how to make money on upwork
We hire design freelancers all the time on UpWork. There’s plenty of jobs to get you started there.
Here are some other ideas that may not get you rich, but still can help you make money online: transcriber, video editor, translator, voice over artist, actor, and many more.
Pros: Low barrier to entry, you can get paid to do something you enjoy, flexible hours,
Cons: Trading your time for money isn’t scalable, some clients are troublesome, finding consistent work is time-consuming
Ready to jump into freelancing? Check out Seth Godin’s course on freelancing here.
If none of these skills jump out at you, then that may mean you need to start building some skills yourself. If that’s the case, no worries, everything is learnable. One great way to learn a lot of skills is to…
2. Create a Blog
We use WordPress for our blog here at DSL, but there are other options out there as well.
Blogging is not dead, ladies and gentlemen, and it’s not dying anytime soon. Starting a blog forces you to learn the basics of building a website and writing. Once you build up an audience and start getting blog traffic, you’ll find that there are many ways to monetize your blog.
Of course, we are proud of the blog here at DSL, but to show you some other success stories, Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income made $115,47.00 in profit March 2015. His blog started back in 2009 and he also has a stellar podcast as well, but it just goes to show that there is plenty of possibilities a blog can bring.
Having a blog alone won’t make you a ton of money, but pair it up with a few other tactics on this list and you can build yourself a nice business.
Pros: Easy to start, high upside for outreach, gives people a reason to visit your website
Cons: Must update regularly or it will become outdated, blogging and site maintenance takes time/money, can take a lot of time and work before you monetize it (click here to read Derek Halpern’s take on more about why most bloggers fail)
For a detailed guide on how to start a blog, check out Neil Patel’s article here.
3. Make Money Teaching An Online Course
Every wonder why college is so expensive? I surely don’t know the answer, but I know for a fact that I’ve learned more from a few months digging online than I did in my entire four years at college. That’s the reason I have no problem paying for courses and investing in my education.
Teaching is an industry that will not die anytime soon. Heck, these days you can even teach English online through Skype for money! Online courses are becoming more and more popular, and if you can create something of value, then people will pay you for it.
make money online
Here’s a sneak peek of what our training courses look like.
Some ideas to teach for those of you who can’t think of any:
How to build a website, how to start a podcast, how to speak English fluently, how to become a better writer, how to travel the world cheaply, how to play guitar, how to lose weight, etc.
The topics are endless! If you can teach others, there’s plenty of money to be made through online courses and classes.
Teaching is the main aspect here at Drop Ship Lifestyle. We sell a 7-module video course that teaches people how to build an online store and make money through eCommerce. Learning online is a market worth over $107 billion dollars as of 2015, and it’s growing at around 9%. There’s plenty of opportunities to make money teaching something online.
I don’t want to share too many specific numbers, but in 2015, we grossed over $1,000,000 in revenue. Our course is not cheap, but there are plenty of other ways to make money while teaching online.
Pros: Get paid to help others, you can make money off your passion, online courses are scalable
Cons: Marketing your courses is harder than creating the content, low barrier to entry means high competition, some students will cause a headache, must update the course regularly
Interested in creating a course? Click here to read more.
Similar to teaching, there is another legit way to make money online is…
4. Coaching & Consulting
Rather than simply teaching and providing information, you can take it a step further and make money online offering coaching and consulting services. I don’t want to get into semantics and what each word means (to be honest, I’m not sure what the difference is), but I know many successful coaches and consultants out there.
My friend Christopher Browning makes a great living doing business and confidence coaching (For those of you who came to the annual Drop Ship Lifestyle 2015 Retreat in Krabi, Thailand, you remember his inspiring presentation).
I also know a few SEO consultants that make a great living as well, and you could even run a law coaching practice online if you wanted to! With Skype, FaceTime, and the hundreds of other applications that make calls across the world easy, there’s never been a better time to run your consulting practice online.
Some other ideas: business consulting, confidence coaching, PPC consulting, personal development coaching, confidence coaching, presentation coaching, relationship coaching, career consulting, etc.
Pros: You’ll get to do rewarding work, this profession has been around for a while
Cons: Your time is limited so it’s hard to scale, can be stressful dealing with certain clients, usually require extensive background in the given field
Looking for more tips on becoming a consultant? Click here to learn more.
make money online
5. Make Money Online Writing eBooks
“But, I thought writers were broke?”
Truthfully, most are. But the ones who realize that self-publishing on Amazon is a booming industry aren’t penny-pinching at all.
Don’t think there’s opportunity here? Just ask Mike Fishbein, who used to be your average blogger. In under three years, he published over fourteen books on Amazon, including four best sellers.
Writing a book takes a lot of time and effort, but once your book is done, if you market it correctly, it can make money for the years to come. Even if you don’t want to self-publish on Amazon, you can still make money off of your book assuming you know how to market it and include some upsells as well.
Pros: Anyone can do it, provides passive income, writing a book is cheap and only takes your time
Cons: Low profit margins per sale, writing a book is HARD, marketing your book takes time and money
Interested in writing ebooks? Check out Tim Ferriss’ post: “How to make $1,000,000 selling ebooks.”
6. Affiliate Marketing
So, you don’t want to teach people and you also don’t want to sell your own products. That’s fine, enter affiliate marketing: a simple way to make money online by selling other people’s products.
Affiliate marketing is simple: If you bring a business a sale, you get rewarded. It’s that simple. I suppose it could also be called, “referral marketing” but that makes it seems like it’s only through word of mouth.
The most common way to succeed in affiliate marketing is by creating a niche site focusing on one topic. CLICK TO TWEET
A lot of businesses have an affiliate program (even Amazon), so if you able to find customers for their products, you’ll get a piece of the profit.
Tung Tran of CloudLiving.com started a niche website in July 2015 and as of February 2016, he was making roughly $100 per day from affiliate sales.
According to Tung, it takes “at least six months to a year” to start making consistent money through affiliate marketing.
The most common way to succeed in affiliate marketing is by creating a niche site focusing on one topic. Once you do that, it’ll be easier to sell products that relate to the content on your site. If you run a site about deep water fishing, you can sell fishing equipment to your visitors.
Some niche site ideas: pet care, fitness, gluten free living, healthy & beauty, boats, makeup, 3D printing, martial arts, travel, and WAY MORE.
Pros: Income can be passive, low startup cost
Cons: Takes time to build websites and credible traffic, low barrier to entry means it’s getting more competitive over time, highly dependent on google and SEO
To learn more about affiliate marketing and how it works, check out this epic post by Authority Hacker.
7. Create a Community/Membership Site
If you enjoy bringing people together but don’t enjoy being in the spotlight, then a membership site may be for you. Membership sites have existed long before the internet in the form of fitness centers, newspaper subscriptions, religious organizations, and more. People are more than happy to pay for exclusive access, especially if you can provide value in return.
Some membership sites charge monthly, quarterly, or annually, which can be a nice recurring business model to enjoy. In this day and age, who you know matters more than what you know, and paid communities are a great way to surround yourself with rock stars from all over the globe. Most communities include a forum or some sort of group where the members can interact and answer each other’s questions.
The community is a vital component of our business here at Drop Ship Lifestyle. We have created a group of likeminded entrepreneurs from all over the world and brought them together.
The value in the community is infinite: connections are made, lifelong friendships are established, and business partnerships start.
Plus, once you build a community, you can get creative and come up with new ways to make more revenue such as launching new products, making money through affiliate sales, throwing events, or offering premium VIP membership status for additional benefits.
Besides DSL, I’m a part of a few other online communities, of them includes the Dynamite Circle, a home to many internet entrepreneurs making money all sorts of different ways.
Pros: Revenue can be recurring, passive income, scaleable business model,
Cons: Requires a lot of upkeep to keep members, the value of a community depends on its members, requires a decent amount of members to be successful
Looking to get your own membership site started? Check out this free mini course on starting your own Membership site.
8. Selling Sponsored Content or Ads
If you have a website that gets a ton of traffic, you’ll be able to make money with advertisements. How much money you make online depends on you ??
If you’re not sure how ad revenue online works, think of the internet like a giant highway system. If your road (website) gets a lot of cars driving by, you’ll be able to put up a billboard and charge a nice amount for it.
As long as you have an audience, you can get paid to advertise on many platforms. CLICK TO TWEET
This doesn’t only count for your website, though. As long as you have an audience, you can get paid to advertise on many platforms these days: Instagram, your podcast, YouTube channel, and more. In 2015, John Dumas made over $50,000 a month selling sponsorships on his podcast. He even explains how he does it here.
Pros: You can get paid to create, revenue is scaleable
Cons: Requires a big audience (which usually takes a long time), not everyone appreciates advertisements
Looking to sell ads? Check out this guide to ad sales here.
9. Brokerage: Buying and Selling
new ways to make money online
Buying and selling websites is becoming more and more common these days. As investors are looking for ways to diversify their portfolio, some are looking to invest in websites instead of pouring all of their money into the stock market.
Empire Flippers is a prime example of how this works. They act as a marketplace, buying and selling websites while keeping a percentage of every sale. Essentially, they’re a middleman, connecting buyers and sellers across the world.
If you’ve got some capital saved up, you could buy existing sites in hopes of reselling them for a profit. This is more of an investor’s play, but it’s possible to make a nice living while only connecting to WiFi. Or, if you’ve got the connections, being a middleman can also bring in some big checks as long as you can connect the right people.
Pros: High ceiling for profitability, one sale results in a nice payout
Cons: You need a list of buyers and sellers or lots of capital, the sales process can take a long time, investing has its risks
10. Online Poker
I DO NOT recommend this one, but it’s definitely a way to make money online these days.
I highly advise NOT to get into online poker or blackjack or anything of that matter, but it just goes to show that there are plenty of ways to make a living online.
bad ways to make money online
Please promise me you’ll consider other options and not pursue this. Your mother will appreciate it ??
Pros: You can get paid to play games
Cons: You can lose all of your money very quickly, the odds are (and always will be) against you, it’s highly addictive, it’s illegal in some countries
“I’m gonna be an astronaut!”
That was my response at age seven when my mother told me I could do whatever I wanted when I grew up (thanks, mom!). She didn’t like my response and told me being an astronaut was risky. She said going into outer space was too dangerous.
This broke my heart.
By age ten, my plans had shifted. I wanted to be a professional football player, but my mom’s response was pretty much the same.
“Playing in the NFL is too dangerous! You’re gonna get injured out there and lose your brain cells!”
This made me shrug. I felt like all the occupations I wanted were the risky ones. By fourteen, I realized that I wanted to be an entrepreneur and run my own business. When I told my mom, finally I got a positive response.
“Now that sounds like a better plan.”
anton kraly
With my wife, mom, and sister touring around Rome.
So that was it. Being an astronaut or a professional football player were too risky, but being an entrepreneur was okay. I had made up my mind at fourteen.
I get a ton of emails from people telling me that they’re not sure making money online is a viable option. They think it’s too risky, and they’re not sure it’s legitimate and they’re not sure it can be a legitimate source of income.
It’s never been easier to make money online, and it’s only going to get easier. CLICK TO TWEET
It’s going to get more competitive, but whether you’re looking to work from home or from a coffee shop on the other side of the world, there have never been as many opportunities for you to do so than the second you are reading this post. Yes, you!
11 Best Ways to Make Money Online That Still Work in 2017
If you’re looking for ways to make money online, then this post will give you plenty of ideas to get started. In each section, we’ve also added some resources/courses that will help you get started. These resources were chosen because they are the best ones out there, not because we make money off of them. There are no affiliate links included in this post.
We didn’t include every option, but we laid out eleven to get your thoughts churning, so get ready.
1. Make Money Freelancing a Skill
This could be an entire article in itself, but if you learn a skill that people are willing to pay for, you’ll find it’s possible to make a nice living online. With sites ranging from Fiverr to Upwork, there are thousands of ways to get people to pay you for your skillset. Here are just a few ideas get you thinking:
Podcast editor: With the podcast industry booming, show hosts are happy to outsource the editing to someone else so they can focus on the content. Don’t believe me? Just ask Ben Krueger who built a business off editing podcasts.
Writer: Blogging, social media writing, copywriting, email marketing, there are so many ways you can get paid for your words these days. Danny Margolis is a classic example, who made over $110,000 in one year as a freelance copywriter.
Designer: Whether it’s websites, graphics, or logos, it has never been easier to make money as a designer. Jake Jorgovan managed to make over $1,000 a week doing website design and his background at the time had nothing to do with building websites.
how to make money on upwork
We hire design freelancers all the time on UpWork. There’s plenty of jobs to get you started there.
Here are some other ideas that may not get you rich, but still can help you make money online: transcriber, video editor, translator, voice over artist, actor, and many more.
Pros: Low barrier to entry, you can get paid to do something you enjoy, flexible hours,
Cons: Trading your time for money isn’t scalable, some clients are troublesome, finding consistent work is time-consuming
Ready to jump into freelancing? Check out Seth Godin’s course on freelancing here.
If none of these skills jump out at you, then that may mean you need to start building some skills yourself. If that’s the case, no worries, everything is learnable. One great way to learn a lot of skills is to…
2. Create a Blog
We use WordPress for our blog here at DSL, but there are other options out there as well.
Blogging is not dead, ladies and gentlemen, and it’s not dying anytime soon. Starting a blog forces you to learn the basics of building a website and writing. Once you build up an audience and start getting blog traffic, you’ll find that there are many ways to monetize your blog.
Of course, we are proud of the blog here at DSL, but to show you some other success stories, Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income made $115,47.00 in profit March 2015. His blog started back in 2009 and he also has a stellar podcast as well, but it just goes to show that there is plenty of possibilities a blog can bring.
Having a blog alone won’t make you a ton of money, but pair it up with a few other tactics on this list and you can build yourself a nice business.
Pros: Easy to start, high upside for outreach, gives people a reason to visit your website
Cons: Must update regularly or it will become outdated, blogging and site maintenance takes time/money, can take a lot of time and work before you monetize it (click here to read Derek Halpern’s take on more about why most bloggers fail)
For a detailed guide on how to start a blog, check out Neil Patel’s article here.
3. Make Money Teaching An Online Course
Every wonder why college is so expensive? I surely don’t know the answer, but I know for a fact that I’ve learned more from a few months digging online than I did in my entire four years at college. That’s the reason I have no problem paying for courses and investing in my education.
Teaching is an industry that will not die anytime soon. Heck, these days you can even teach English online through Skype for money! Online courses are becoming more and more popular, and if you can create something of value, then people will pay you for it.
make money online
Here’s a sneak peek of what our training courses look like.
Some ideas to teach for those of you who can’t think of any:
How to build a website, how to start a podcast, how to speak English fluently, how to become a better writer, how to travel the world cheaply, how to play guitar, how to lose weight, etc.
The topics are endless! If you can teach others, there’s plenty of money to be made through online courses and classes.
Teaching is the main aspect here at Drop Ship Lifestyle. We sell a 7-module video course that teaches people how to build an online store and make money through eCommerce. Learning online is a market worth over $107 billion dollars as of 2015, and it’s growing at around 9%. There’s plenty of opportunities to make money teaching something online.
I don’t want to share too many specific numbers, but in 2015, we grossed over $1,000,000 in revenue. Our course is not cheap, but there are plenty of other ways to make money while teaching online.
Pros: Get paid to help others, you can make money off your passion, online courses are scalable
Cons: Marketing your courses is harder than creating the content, low barrier to entry means high competition, some students will cause a headache, must update the course regularly
Interested in creating a course? Click here to read more.
Similar to teaching, there is another legit way to make money online is…
4. Coaching & Consulting
Rather than simply teaching and providing information, you can take it a step further and make money online offering coaching and consulting services. I don’t want to get into semantics and what each word means (to be honest, I’m not sure what the difference is), but I know many successful coaches and consultants out there.
My friend Christopher Browning makes a great living doing business and confidence coaching (For those of you who came to the annual Drop Ship Lifestyle 2015 Retreat in Krabi, Thailand, you remember his inspiring presentation).
I also know a few SEO consultants that make a great living as well, and you could even run a law coaching practice online if you wanted to! With Skype, FaceTime, and the hundreds of other applications that make calls across the world easy, there’s never been a better time to run your consulting practice online.
Some other ideas: business consulting, confidence coaching, PPC consulting, personal development coaching, confidence coaching, presentation coaching, relationship coaching, career consulting, etc.
Pros: You’ll get to do rewarding work, this profession has been around for a while
Cons: Your time is limited so it’s hard to scale, can be stressful dealing with certain clients, usually require extensive background in the given field
Looking for more tips on becoming a consultant? Click here to learn more.
make money online
5. Make Money Online Writing eBooks
“But, I thought writers were broke?”
Truthfully, most are. But the ones who realize that self-publishing on Amazon is a booming industry aren’t penny-pinching at all.
Don’t think there’s opportunity here? Just ask Mike Fishbein, who used to be your average blogger. In under three years, he published over fourteen books on Amazon, including four best sellers.
Writing a book takes a lot of time and effort, but once your book is done, if you market it correctly, it can make money for the years to come. Even if you don’t want to self-publish on Amazon, you can still make money off of your book assuming you know how to market it and include some upsells as well.
Pros: Anyone can do it, provides passive income, writing a book is cheap and only takes your time
Cons: Low profit margins per sale, writing a book is HARD, marketing your book takes time and money
Interested in writing ebooks? Check out Tim Ferriss’ post: “How to make $1,000,000 selling ebooks.”
6. Affiliate Marketing
So, you don’t want to teach people and you also don’t want to sell your own products. That’s fine, enter affiliate marketing: a simple way to make money online by selling other people’s products.
Affiliate marketing is simple: If you bring a business a sale, you get rewarded. It’s that simple. I suppose it could also be called, “referral marketing” but that makes it seems like it’s only through word of mouth.
The most common way to succeed in affiliate marketing is by creating a niche site focusing on one topic. CLICK TO TWEET
A lot of businesses have an affiliate program (even Amazon), so if you able to find customers for their products, you’ll get a piece of the profit.
Tung Tran of CloudLiving.com started a niche website in July 2015 and as of February 2016, he was making roughly $100 per day from affiliate sales.
According to Tung, it takes “at least six months to a year” to start making consistent money through affiliate marketing.
The most common way to succeed in affiliate marketing is by creating a niche site focusing on one topic. Once you do that, it’ll be easier to sell products that relate to the content on your site. If you run a site about deep water fishing, you can sell fishing equipment to your visitors.
Some niche site ideas: pet care, fitness, gluten free living, healthy & beauty, boats, makeup, 3D printing, martial arts, travel, and WAY MORE.
Pros: Income can be passive, low startup cost
Cons: Takes time to build websites and credible traffic, low barrier to entry means it’s getting more competitive over time, highly dependent on google and SEO
To learn more about affiliate marketing and how it works, check out this epic post by Authority Hacker.
7. Create a Community/Membership Site
If you enjoy bringing people together but don’t enjoy being in the spotlight, then a membership site may be for you. Membership sites have existed long before the internet in the form of fitness centers, newspaper subscriptions, religious organizations, and more. People are more than happy to pay for exclusive access, especially if you can provide value in return.
Some membership sites charge monthly, quarterly, or annually, which can be a nice recurring business model to enjoy. In this day and age, who you know matters more than what you know, and paid communities are a great way to surround yourself with rock stars from all over the globe. Most communities include a forum or some sort of group where the members can interact and answer each other’s questions.
The community is a vital component of our business here at Drop Ship Lifestyle. We have created a group of likeminded entrepreneurs from all over the world and brought them together.
The value in the community is infinite: connections are made, lifelong friendships are established, and business partnerships start.
Plus, once you build a community, you can get creative and come up with new ways to make more revenue such as launching new products, making money through affiliate sales, throwing events, or offering premium VIP membership status for additional benefits.
Besides DSL, I’m a part of a few other online communities, of them includes the Dynamite Circle, a home to many internet entrepreneurs making money all sorts of different ways.
Pros: Revenue can be recurring, passive income, scaleable business model,
Cons: Requires a lot of upkeep to keep members, the value of a community depends on its members, requires a decent amount of members to be successful
Looking to get your own membership site started? Check out this free mini course on starting your own Membership site.
8. Selling Sponsored Content or Ads
If you have a website that gets a ton of traffic, you’ll be able to make money with advertisements. How much money you make online depends on you ??
If you’re not sure how ad revenue online works, think of the internet like a giant highway system. If your road (website) gets a lot of cars driving by, you’ll be able to put up a billboard and charge a nice amount for it.
As long as you have an audience, you can get paid to advertise on many platforms. CLICK TO TWEET
This doesn’t only count for your website, though. As long as you have an audience, you can get paid to advertise on many platforms these days: Instagram, your podcast, YouTube channel, and more. In 2015, John Dumas made over $50,000 a month selling sponsorships on his podcast. He even explains how he does it here.
Pros: You can get paid to create, revenue is scaleable
Cons: Requires a big audience (which usually takes a long time), not everyone appreciates advertisements
Looking to sell ads? Check out this guide to ad sales here.
9. Brokerage: Buying and Selling
new ways to make money online
Buying and selling websites is becoming more and more common these days. As investors are looking for ways to diversify their portfolio, some are looking to invest in websites instead of pouring all of their money into the stock market.
Empire Flippers is a prime example of how this works. They act as a marketplace, buying and selling websites while keeping a percentage of every sale. Essentially, they’re a middleman, connecting buyers and sellers across the world.
If you’ve got some capital saved up, you could buy existing sites in hopes of reselling them for a profit. This is more of an investor’s play, but it’s possible to make a nice living while only connecting to WiFi. Or, if you’ve got the connections, being a middleman can also bring in some big checks as long as you can connect the right people.
Pros: High ceiling for profitability, one sale results in a nice payout
Cons: You need a list of buyers and sellers or lots of capital, the sales process can take a long time, investing has its risks
10. Online Poker
I DO NOT recommend this one, but it’s definitely a way to make money online these days.
I highly advise NOT to get into online poker or blackjack or anything of that matter, but it just goes to show that there are plenty of ways to make a living online.
bad ways to make money online
Please promise me you’ll consider other options and not pursue this. Your mother will appreciate it ??
Pros: You can get paid to play games
Cons: You can lose all of your money very quickly, the odds are (and always will be) against you, it’s highly addictive, it’s illegal in some countries
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