I am sure you would have heard that there are ways to make money online. But how many ways do your know of, to make money on the internet?
Here are 101 ways to make money online, a sort of collection of the various ways that exists; for those who want to make extra cash, or even for those who want to start their own small business.
Even if you are not new to this, go through it just for inspiration, or for more ideas.
101 Ways to Make Money Online
1- Paid Surveys: Get paid to take online surveys, sharing your opinion about the products and services you use in your every day life. 40+ legitimate free paid survey sites
The idea of online survey is that you will be given a survey that has to be completed by you to earn money. This surveys is conducted by companies who are observing the community to discover the best way to market their product or services. The amount of money you can earn per survey depends on the importance or the length of survey. Some survey companies doesn’t reward you with money. Instead, they giving you prizes/gifts or entering you to a lucky draw.
2- Get Paid to: Register with a few free GPT sites and make some extra cash by doing what you already do online, shopping, visiting websites, playing games and so on. 8 legitimate GPT sites
3- Blogging: Write a blog about a subject that interests you. When you start to get some traffic, monetize it with Adsense or many other monetization methods.
4- Sell on eBay: There are many ways you can make money on eBay and with some of them you do not even need to invest any capital.
Ebay is a well known service that allows people to sell and buy products through an online auction. You can sell your antiques or stuffs that you no longer want to Ebay. Though selling your old stuffs and sell them to an online auction seems like not promising, there are actual people who has make a full time income on Ebay.
5- Craigslist: One of the most visited websites in the world happens to be a free classified ad site where you can easily make money by buying things for cheap (and sometimes even for free) and selling them right back on it for higher prices.
6- Freelance writing: You can actually make good money working online as a freelance writer. There are many websites that are more than happy to pay you for your work.
7- Affiliate Marketing: Make money by signing up free with affiliate marketing networks such as Commission Junction and MaxBounty and promote their offers.
The concept is by joining an online affiliate programs that will give you commission to sell their products and then advertise the product on sites that has Pay Per Click Advertising.
PPC Advertising is a powerful advertising campaign that charges you a small amount of money when someone click your advertisement. If that person decide to buy the product your promoting, you get profit from your commission reduced by your investment on the PPC Advertising.
The most famous PPC service is Google Adwords, run by Google. Just be sure that your investment on the PPC service doesn’t exceed the amount of commission you get from the affiliate program.
8- Start a Membership Site: Start a membership site around a topic you are an expert on and charge people for your premium content and services.
9- Email List Marketing: Buy or rent lists from webmaster and promote a product or services to the subscribers.
10- Create an AdSense Site: Pick a small niche with not much competition and create a website around it covering every aspects of it. Then monetize the site using Google Adsense.
11- Buy and Sell Domains: Use domain auction sites like GoDaddy to find and buy good domain names for cheap. After a while sell them back for higher prices.
12- Publish a book: These days thanks to sites like amazon, you can easily self publish a book.
13- Start a Podcast: Create a podcast on an interesting topic and sell it on iTunes.
14- Create a plugin: if you are good at it, why not create plugins and tools for webmasters and bloggers.
15- Craft work: Most people do craft work as a hobby. You can take it one step further and sell your crafts on sites like
Etsy.
16- Stock Photography: Good at taking pictures? Use stock photography sites like iStockPhoto.com to make money selling your images. Get Paid for Photos
17- Fiverr.com: A fairly new micro freelancing site that has caught on like wild fire. You can sell any kind of service you can imagine for $5.
You can also offer your services on sites such as Fiverr (a huge marketplace for services). On these sites you can offer your services, referred to as ‘gigs’ beginning at a cost of $5 per job performed. You may offer to write articles, do online marketing, make graphics, and much more.
18- Watch TV: Install the Viggle app and get paid for watching your favorite TV programs!
19- Tutoring: Use what you know to make some money. Teach people a new language, history, math or whatever else you are good at.
20- Build Small Niche Websites: Find long tail low competition keywords and create niche websites around them. Get the sites to a good point and sell them on Flippa.
21- Install Software: There are lots of people who need help when it comes to installing softwares. You can offer to help for a fee.
22- Use your talent: You can make and sell Twitter and MySpace backgrounds and eBook covers with ease thanks to so many great free softwares that are out there.
23- Use Amazon’s Mechanical Turk: You can get paid to do small tasks that machines can not do. The pay for each hit is not much, but then each hit takes only a few seconds or so.
24- Become a Life Coach: Know how to direct people and get them on track with their life? Why not sell your services as a life coach.
25- Becomes a Virtual Assistant: Many webmasters and bloggers and online business will gladly pay you to help them online.
26- Be a Reviewer: There are many sites that will pay you to review products and even other websites.
27- Create a Twitter Network: When you get to a certain point, offer sponsored tweets to businesses.
28- Make money as a Mystery Shopper: Yes, you can actually make money by shopping. Find a legitimate mystery shopping company that offer work where you live and get paid to shop.
29- Make Money on Craigslist: The biggest classified site is the best place to offer a servcie or sell things you dont need.
30- Design Logos: Good at designing? Start making money by designing logos for online businesses.
31- Design T shirts: Use sites like CafePress to design T shirts and other personal items and sell them using their free online store fronts.
32- Use Reward Programs: Earn cash back using reward programs like MyPoints on all your online shopping.
33- Social Networking Service: If you love social networking and are good at it, then sell your expertise to small businesses who are trying to take advantage of social media and what it offers.
34- Photo Editing: Learn how to use Photoshop and start a photo editing business and sell your service to photographers, brides and anyone else who needs it.
35- Forum Moderator: There are many hundreds of online forums and all of them need moderator and are willing to pay you for doing so.
36- Participate in Focus Groups: Find focus groups in your local area or online focus groups and get paid to participate in them.
37- Data Entry: Good old data entry is still alive and well and you can make good money if you can avoid scams.
38- Create Software: Develop with softwares that can help people accomplish things easier and faster and sell them.
39- Get paid to Translate: If you do speak more than one language, you can actually make good money as a translator depending on the popularity of the languages you know.
40- Become a Paid Tester: There are many online companies that pay you to test things like new video games, softwares and even other websites.
41- Blog Commenting: Blog commenting is a form of promotion for bloggers and online business, so many of them are willing to pay others to do the job for them since its time consuming.
42- Writer and Sell PLR Articles: Write quality articles and sell them in packages as Private Label Right articles.
43- Jury Duty: Yes you can get paid to do jury duty.
44- Become an Online Editor: Everyday hundreds and thousands of new websites and blogs are born. Not everybody is a good writer. You can charge them a fee and proofread their work.
45- Create Apps: Apps are becoming increasingly popular. Create some and test the waters.
46- Sell Research: Have a lot of time on your hand? Why not use it to do online research for people who need it!
47- Do Voice Overs: Got a great voice? Offer your voice over service to people online.
48- Blog: Start a blog about a topic you are passionate about and when you start to get some traffic, monetize it.
49- Get Paid to Surf: There are many paid to surf programs online that will pay you to surf the web. Not much money but its money!
Yes, only by reading emails and click the advertisement inside or by signing up to various free to join programs or surfing on the internet you can make money online. Although the money you can earn isn’t much, this is the most convenient way to make money.
50- Facebook: There are Facebook apps that will allow you to easily make money on Facebook.
51- Online Used Book Store: Build a small site and sell used books you have laying around the house. Buy more form second hand stores or get them for free on Craigslist and sell them for higher prices on your site.
52- Write For eHow: Make money by writing how to articles for eHow.
53- Get Paid for Photos: Good at photography? Then take as many pictures as you can and sell them on stock photography sites like iStockPhoto.com.
54- Answer Questions: You can make money by answering people’s questions on sites like JustAnswer.com
55- Play Games: Yes, you can make money by simply playing games using sites like PaidGamePlayer.com.
56- Get Paid to Read Emails: Sites like InboxDollars pay you to read email ads.
57- Earn Cash with Social Networking: Yes, you can now get paid to socialize online thanks to sites like Gather.com.
58- Get paid to Tweet: Tweets are becoming an increasingly popular way of promoting products. So, websites like SponsoredTweets.com pay you to become a paid tweeter.
59- Upload Files: Have lots of files dusting on your computer? Why not upload them to sites like DocStoc.com and get paid every time someone downloads them.
60- Get Paid to Search: You can make a little extra cash by searching on search engines like SwagBucks.com.
61- Get Paid to Post in Forums: New forums take a long time to take off, so forum owners pay people to become active members of their forum and help the forum attract more real members.
62- Summarize: Watch as many movies and read as many books as you can and then get paid to summarize them for websites like SparkNotes.com
63- Become a Paid Traveler: Love to travel? Now you can actually get paid for doing so thanks to sites like Lonely Planet.
64- Sell Recipes: Know how to cook a lot of different kinds of food? Create recipes and sell them to food related blogs.
65- Record Songs: If you really have some talent in this area, record songs and sell them on sites like Arkade.com
66- Sell Artwork Online: If you are talented and are good at drawing, painting, sketching, then try to sell your art work online.
67- Make Videos: Create videos on any topic you like and upload them to ad revenue sharing sites like Revver.com.
68- Site Audit: Offer an auditing service to webmasters and bloggers where you perform content and SEO audit of their sites.
69- Design Infographics: Design Infographics that go viral and sell them to small online businesses and bloggers.
70- Customer Support: Lots of companies pay people these days to work from their own home doing customer servcie work.
71- Online Order Processing: Many businesses pay people to process orders from home.
72- Get Paid for Forum Participation: Many online forums have a revenue sharing program where they share a percentage of their earnings with their members.
73- Domain Drop Shipping: Use sites like TuCows.com to start your very own private label domain registration business.
74- Make and Sell eBooks: eBooks are becoming ever more popular. Make eBooks about different subjects and sell them online.
75- Telemarketing: As long as you have a phone and an Internet connection, you are in business!
76- Affiliate Marketing: Sell other people’s products and make money as their affiliate.
77- CPA: Same thing as affiliate marketing but you can actually make money without having people to spend any money. Many companies will pay you to simply send people to their websites were they can subscribe to free newsletters or signup for free services.
78- Keyword Research: Learn how to use Google Analytics and a few other keyword research tools and offer a keyword research services to webmasters and small online businesses.
79- Online Newsletter: Many online business have online newsletters, but they need someone to keep it going for them. You can get paid to do that for them.
80- Personal Online Shopper: Yes, there are many professionals who don’t have time to even shop online, so they will pay you to do their online shopping.
81- Enter Sweepstakes: Start participating in online Sweepstakes. You will be surprised how much money and free stuff can come your way.
82- Better Existing Softwares: Many softwares need improvement. Create a plugin for an existing software or improve its functionality and sell them to people.
83- Your Own Search Engine: Thanks to Google API you can now build your very own custom search engines within minutes. Build one for an specific topic and monetize it with ads.
84- Sell Other Peoples Stuff on eBay: There are still many people who do not know how to sell their own stuff on eBay. You can do that for them for a fee.
85- Drop Shipping on eBay: Use a private label drop shipping company to create a virtual store on eBay and sell their products without ever having to touch or even see the products you are selling.
86- Directory Submission: Bloggers and webmaster submit their sites to web directories to get more traffic and increase search engines ranking, but its time consuming. Thats where you can come in and offer to do directory submission for a fee.
87- Install Applications: There are thousands of people who don’t know how to install applications and softwares. Charge them a fee and do it for them.
89- Create and Sell Digital Scrap Booking Templates: People love to scrapbook and these days, many people are doing it on the computer. Create great templates for different occasions and sell them online.
90- Answer Tech Questions: If you are an expert, you can get paid to answer tech related questions on sites like ExpertBee.
91- Link Building: Webmasters and bloggers need to build links to increase their search engine ranking and traffic. You can offer to be their link builder for a monthly or per project fee.
92- Convert Online Money: Charge people a percentage to convert their EGold money into PayPal and vice versa.
93- Host Live Internet Radio Shows: Use BlogTalkRadio to host your own Internet radio show and make money with ads.
94- Sell Magazine Subscription: Become an affiliate of AcclaimSubscriptions and earn a commission on every single magazine subscription you sell.
95- Give Tips: Have lots of tips and advice? Get paid for them by using sites like Daytipper.com.
96- Make Money with Old CDs and Games: Earn money by selling your old CDs, Games and DVDs using a site called MusicMagpie.com.
97- Trade Forex: This one is little risky and should be taken very seriously. That said, you can make a lot of money fast if you know what you are doing.
98- Revenue Sharing: Write for sites like HubPages and earn money with their revenue sharing program.
99- Become a Guest Writer: Offer to guest write on other people’s blogs.
100- Become an Online Tutor: Are you passionate about helping other people succeed with their education? Combine your passion with economy and make money by becoming an online tutor on sites like Tutor Vista.
101- Start an Online Consignment Shop: Use Consignmom.com to start an online consignment shop and sell all the junk that is laying around your house. You can expend this and charge other people to sell their stuff on your online consignment shop
Popular Online Money Making Jobs
Here are some of the popular online money making jobs, techniques and opportunities, along with the pros and cons of each.
These can give you a decent pocket-money to start with, and over time have the potential to give you a decent income, something that can replace even a full time job.
As with most things in life however, it requires efforts!
It is possible to make a good living working online, but you have to be willing to put in the effort. You don’t have to fall for those scams that promise you easy money without any investment or work.
The reach of internet today is huge, and thousands of people come online to take advantage of this opportunity. Many of them are able to make money on the internet instead of working for someone else. You can read about true stories online of how people went from having nothing but are now quite wealthy.
In general, if you are exploring avenues to get started, you may choose to begin with one of the following:
1. Online Marketing Services
Leveraging Social Networks: On the other hand, if you spend a lot of time on social sites, you can use that knowledge to provide services to people who need them. Most website owners promote their offerings on Facebook, Google Plus & Twitter. You can help them to create accounts, create pages, get more likes, and get followers on these popular sites.
This can be a prosperous money making opportunity on the internet, if you learn the ropes, as it involves providing marketing services for other businesses. And almost all the businesses have some budget for marketing their products / services.
You’ll however need to know which social websites are popular with the various businesses. For example:
- Facebook & YouTube is used by almost everybody
- MySpace, which at one time was bigger than Facebook, is still popular with several musicians & artists
- Twitter & LinkedIn are more popular with the corporate people
Over time, it only takes a small investment to pay for the marketing of your business, in order to get people looking for what you have to offer.
The disadvantage of this method is that it does require some skills, and if you are in your thirties or forties, there could be a big learning curve.
Facebook and Twitter Jobs from Home: Growing Big time:Facebook and Twitter, the fastest growing social sites, also provide great opportunities to make money at home. The good thing is that you really don’t have to sell any stuff to people, other than offering your services to companies as a social media manager.
This is a home business where you manage social media for companies, using Facebook and Twitter and other social media networks. The goal is to help grow the social media profiles of the various clients that you work for.
Most companies are aware of the role that these social sites can play, in improving branding and creating awareness about the company and their products. But they either don’t have the technical know-how or don’t want to hire full-time employees for these kind of jobs.
That is where the opportunity lies; you work as a freelancer for such businesses. It’s not a traditional social media job, rather its a consulting business that you can do from home.
Online Surveys: Just for the sake of categorizing, I’ll include “Online surveys” in this bucket. These are easy to get started with, do not require any special skills, but can be low paying.
And because the payouts are low, it can take some time before you see the first check.
2. Technical Services
This is a variation of the above where you offer various technical services, in case you’ve got those skills.
- You could setup a WordPress site (or any other CMS)
- You could build a website in HTML
- Write code (php or any other)
- Import/Export from one platform to another
- Build an App
and so on, and get paid for it.
There are non-technical jobs as well, such as writing content for those who maintain huge websites; they need content all the time. So if you’re good at writing, you could explore this option.
There are many who also offer online marketing services along with their technical skills.
Promote Your Services: You’ll obviously need to do some self-promotion to get more work.
- Go and tell your friends & relatives about what you’re doing.
- Do some promotion online to find more customers.
- Use websites such as eLance, oDesk, Fiverr to list your services and also to look for potential jobs/assignments which you could pick up (you’ll be competing with many more for those assignments).
3. Virtual Assistant Jobs & Services from Home
Virtual assistants are independent contractors who work remotely and provide various services to clients; they usually specialize in work such as data entry services, web research, online data entry, offline data entry, marketing, graphic and web design, IT support, etc.
In an age when everything is outsourced, the concept of virtual assistants has also gained immense popularity and plenty of opportunities exist in this area.
Here’s how to find virtual assistant jobs & services. You can work from home on all these office / personal assistant opportunities.
Virtual Assistants Job Profile
A virtual assistant is someone who conducts all the responsibilities of a secretary or administrative work as is done in office, except that a virtual assistant does all this online from his/her home. There is no specific framework of what falls in the purview of a virtual assistant’s profile.
Some of the jobs undertaken are as follows by an online personal assistant includes:
- Sending out mailers or any other correspondence to clients/interview candidates on behalf of the company.
- Calling and fixing appointments on behalf of the company.
- Compiling reports, tracking sales figures, PPT presentations etc.
- Making travel arrangements for the company representatives etc.
The above are just a few examples of some of the job profiles for a virtual assistant. Depending on how big or small the hiring company is, virtual assistants can undertake a variety of roles.
Skills Required for Virtual Assistant
Unlike some other online jobs, a virtual assistant may have to juggle with many things at once, hence they will require a decent configuration computer back up at home to support them.
- Computer with good speed internet access is a basic requirement.
- Basic software’s such as Excel, Word, PPT etc will be helpful.
- A phone or a cell phone to call and communicate.
- Video chatting/conferencing software such as Skype etc.
Over and above this, the company hiring you as a virtual assistant may have some additional requirements which may be needed for smooth transactions.
Payment for a Virtual Assistant
There are no fixed rates as such that you can charge as a virtual assistant. Companies may not pay a virtual assistant as much as an office assistant but you could always quote a good amount on the basis of your knowledge, expertise and experience.
Getting Started as a Virtual Assistant
So how can one get started as a virtual assistant?
Here are some things that you can do:
- Register on free Virtual Assistant Forums, feel free to ask questions related to how to start a VA business.
- Spend time on LinkedIn, especially in the advanced search area (type in virtual assistant) and you can find some great opportunities.
- Look in Twitter, start by searching for phrases like # virtualassistant. You’ll find tweets of several people who’re looking for or dealing with virtual assistants. get in touch with them
- Check on sites such as Elance, oDesk, Freelance.com, where there are several opportunities listed.
Companies today are looking for more and more virtual assistant services. Virtual assistants work just as much as a personal assistant at work and with the help of internet and other software they are able to manage the day to day tasks by working from home. Companies in turn find Virtual Assistant Jobs & Services much more cost-effective and less cumbersome to maintain.
There are several virtual assistant jobs that pay anywhere between $5 to $30 per hour, depending on the skills that you have. Start small, look for good clients, deliver quality work, and over time you can build a profitable business as a virtual assistant.
4. Online Trading
The thing that comes to the mind when you talk about online trading is buying & selling stocks, & currency trading. I’m sure you may have heard about these, but the fact is that there are many who are doing this full-time, from home, using a computer.
When I used to work full-time, I have seen many of my colleagues taking a quick look at the charts of various companies (whenever they had free time). Most of them would track the charts just for knowledge, whereas some others had invested money.
But the fact is that this topic is quite popular with many; and they would love to do this full-time. So if this is something that you fancy doing, you can definitely explore this avenue.
Millions of dollars change hands every day in the world of online trading, and FOREX operates 24 by 7 so you can always be a part of the trading any time of the day.
The downside is that it might look easy at first glance but you could easily lose a lot of money. So spend time learning the ropes, and learn to protect your money.
5. Affiliate Marketing
Another popular method of making money online is to engage in affiliate marketing.
You need to do a small investment to pay for the domain name & web hosting, you need to put in the efforts to develop the website and do the marketing / promotion of your website.
It takes time to learn this method, but over a period of time it can take care of itself while you focus on promoting other methods/products.
6. Auction Sites
If you’ve had experience selling things (hard goods) before, you may feel comfortable with this one and there’s huge potential as well.
The best way to learn how this works is by selling items that you no longer use, just sell them on the online auction sites.
Over time, you can make a good business from buying goods on sale and then reselling them for a profit.
7. Work As a Consultant
This is where you can make most of the opportunity. Companies looking to hire part time ‘work at home’ employees who have a knowledge of marketing on social sites like Facebook and Twitter, including setting up and managing their social media accounts/connections.
You are actually more of a consultant. Bottom line, companies are ready and willing to pay you for a few hours each week, and we’re definitely not talking minimum wage here.
Servicing local companies with your social media services is one of the key ways to succeed in this industry.
So the next time you access your own personal Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google Plus accounts, think about the potential to earn money at home, just for messing around on social media sites like these and others.
If you’re looking for a way to get started on your own, then consider the fast growing industry of providing internet based services, and social media management.
What’s the Growth Potential?
Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are dominating the internet, and for the most part, they are being used by people having fun connecting with family and friends.
Despite this being true, have you noticed how many businesses – both online and offline – have a Twitter account or a Facebook page? You’ll be surprised to know that many are still not using these sites to promote their businesses.
Even corporate businesses want to keep up with the latest ways to connect with consumers and potential customers. Believe it or not, there are still many businesses – mostly local & small businesses – that are not yet ‘plugged in’ to the social media scene.
Need to Have the Right Mindset
The methods discussed here are more of self-employment opportunities rather than finding a regular full-time job. There are several opportunities available nowadays that can help you be self-employed and earn a decent living.
It is important to have the right mindset when it comes to making money online, because it takes times, there’s a learning curve, and above you need to be focused.
You need to pick up one method and master it before moving on to something else.
If you’re here thinking that you’re going to make some quick bucks working for a few hours, its really not going to happen. This is definitely not a “get rich quick” scheme. If that’s what you’re thinking, you are going to fall flat on your face.
However, with sustained efforts and taking a long-term view, it is possible to earn a good online income, and that too working from home. All you need is your computer with an internet connection.
It is best if you can find a mentor, someone who will guide you and show you how to be successful online. You can get a head-start if someone can train you and be there for you, should you have any questions.
Understand the Basics
There are several type of online jobs that you could do, but it’s important to understand which type of online business is going to offer you the most benefit, and satisfaction. You need to take a look at your strengths, what you enjoy doing, how much money you want to invest, and what chances you have of being able to offer something that consumers are looking for. Having your own online business takes commitment and a desire to succeed.
Besides, it is best to have more than one income stream coming your way, so that if one stops you can fall back on the other income streams. You want the sources of income to remain in place for a long time to come so think how you can continue to expand and grow your business. Avoid the type of online business that will become a passing trend.
Make sure you understand the basics of the type of business you plan to operate. Take advantage of the several online learning opportunities, as well as the various marketing tools available. Knowing what are currently successful marketing strategies and implementing them, gives you the best chance of having a profitable business.
10 Best Ways To Make Extra Money Online In Your Spare Time
Want to make some money online in your spare time? Here are some options to consider.
Few things to remember though!
Though these online opportunities pay, to earn a substantial amount you need to build expertise and also gain trust.
So in case you are looking to get paid thousands of dollars for a few days or even weeks work, you’ll be disappointed.
But if you want some extra cash and that too quickly, these opportunities are good.
It will also help you get a feel of how things work online.
These days, almost all businesses, small and big, use the Internet to manage costs, and also to communicate well with a wider audience. Fortunately for us, it creates lots of fantastic opportunities to earn that extra money from home.
Here are some of the best ways to make extra money online part-time:
Writing for Blogs
Websites need content all the time. You can earn by writing articles for websites, blogs.
Taking Paid Surveys
Get paid to take surveys done by various companies.
Post on Forums
You can get paid to post on forums. Forums are part of any big/popular websites. But when these sites are new, they need lots of posts to make them look popular.
Manage Social Marketing
Create Facebook pages and/or generate likes for potential clients
Work on Fiverr
Fiverr.com is a fairly new micro freelancing site where you can offer any kind of service for $5.
Get Paid to Programs
Get Paid To (GPT) programs are sites that pay you to do a variety of things, such as clicking on ads, filling out surveys, signing up for websites, subscribing to free newsletters and so on.
Amazon Mechanical Turk
Amazon Mechanical Turk (part of Amazon.com) is sort of freelancing site with different kinds of projects that needs to be done by humans and not by computers/software. These tasks known as “HITS” are quite easy to perform.
Sell on eBay
Most start on ebay by selling things that they already own. You can always expand and probably start by investing 100 bucks and buy things from flea markets and thrift stores, to sell them on eBay for a profit.
Use Craigslist
You can place a free ad and offer your service to people for a fee. Always look for items to buy for cheap in the “for sale” category and the “free” section of the “for sale” category.
Freelancing
Online properties / businesses need skills such as a programming, designing, writing, translating, testing, and more, all the time. You can work as a freelancer and earn extra money in your spare time, if you have one of those skills.
These are just some of the ways (and popular ways) to make money online. Though initially it makes little money, you can always scale things up and take it to the next level. But that needs experience and you need to stick to one/few of the types for a long time.
But as mentioned earlier, set your expectations right and don’t expect to get paid a lot. But then these are good ways to make some money online in your spare time, which also helps you to learn the ropes of making money online.
Get Paid to Surf the Web
Is it Possible to Get Paid to Surf the Web? The internet is not just a place to look for information but it also provides plenty of opportunities to earn some cash. Read more here.
Till a few years back, people would only come on the internet if they were looking for some information.
Over the years, it has become a very popular medium to interact with your friends, more of social networking.
With the tremendous increase in the number of people surfing the web, and a vast majority of companies spending a considerable chunk on online advertising, there are plenty of opportunities to earn money on the Internet.
So is it really possible to get paid to just surf the internet, without having any technical or special skills?
Yes, you can. Even if you know just the basics of how to browse the internet, send emails, and know how to use word.
Here are some of the easier programs that will let you make money surfing the net.
Reward Programs
There are various sites that offer reward programs such as:
- Reward users for browsing the Internet
- Pay cash to members for participating in online offers
- Rewards members for new referrals and for signing up for special offers
- Provide a reward program to earn gift cards from merchants
Online Surveys
Again, this is pretty easy stuff to earn some cash. You just have to sign-up for receiving paid surveys.
The surveys will have simple multiple-choice questions asking for your opinion. There is no right or wrong answer, just your opinion.
Every survey that you complete will fetch you some points and when it reaches a particular threshold, they will pay you the money.
So you definitely get paid, may be not enough to pay your mortgage, but definitely can pay off some bills.
Read Email Offers
If you know how to send and receive emails, you can earn some dollars here.
There are sites which will pay surfers to read email offers from third-party companies. You just have read an email and click on links. That’s it!
You will get a few cents for every email but then if you read substantial amount of emails, you can make decent bucks.
Mechanical Turk from Amazon
Another option you can consider is checking out the MTurk program of Amazon.
Jobs that cannot be done by computers are posted here. The tasks are simple and can fetch you a few cents to about $5 for every task.
What do you need to do?
You will find various types of tasks listed there but most tasks will involve writing product description, writing reviews, posting on forums, etc.
There is definitely money to be made money surfing the web, but if you are just starting out go after the ones that sound legitimate and does not promise you tons of money overnight. Register with a few sites that offer work-online programs, stick to it for some time, and when you have made some money move on to another type of work. So enjoy getting paid to surf the web!
Online Business: What You Need to Get Started
Get Started with Online Business from Home: How much does it cost? Can it be started for FREE or requires significant Investment? All your cost related queries are answered here.
Several years back, if you had to start a business, it would mean undertaking an incredible amount of ground work.
You had to find premises. You had to source materials and buy necessary items. You had to get any number of clearances before you could go ahead and even begin to trade.
Basically, you needed to have lots of cash to get into business.
That was one of the primary reasons that many innovative people with ideas and work ethic, chose to stay away from doing business. The initial outlay and the potential loss from not having a steady income was too big a risk.
Although the Internet has made it a lot easier for people to make a start in business, it is still worth making sure that you maximize your potential as a businessperson by having all of the possible tools you could need to get things up and running.
In order to start, you need comparatively little compared with a bricks and mortar business but the better equipped you are, the more possibilities you can turn into definites.
InfrastructureThe Internet has beautifully democratized the world of business, and as a result people with ideas are benefiting. Now you can start in business as long as you have a few things, which are generally available to most ordinary people.
A computer and an Internet connection are obviously the base minimum. As you are reading this, you have access to those at least. It is then a matter of what you need to add to these. If you want to put photographs of yourself or things that you are selling onto the Internet, you will need either a digital camera (preferable) or a scanner (just about acceptable).
You will also need somewhere to put the photographs on a website (which requires you to buy webspace) or a blog (which does not). A website is more customizable, so if you have the know-how to do this, it is preferable.
AccountsTo sell things at the click of a button you can ask your bank to set up a business account with scope to take electronic payments, or you can open an eBay account. Using eBay you will be able to auction items or services off to the highest bidder, and receive payments almost instantly through PayPal. The benefits of having the Internet mean that you can do all of this from a chair just in front of your computer.
Use What You Have At Your Disposal
As long as you have your plan, you can put it into effect very quickly and make it pay for you within a very short timeframe. Having a bit of money to spend on promotion and facilities will make it easier and quicker, no dispute there.
But it is no longer essential.
Driving things forward is about harnessing what you have. If for example you want to make money as a copy writer or proof reader, you need to publicize your services wherever you can think of, and ensure that people can contact you. From there it is simply a matter of presenting a human face and a trustworthy nature to potential customers.
How Much Will It Cost?Starting an online home business can be affordable these days. When I first got attracted towards this model, the fact that you could do it for FREE got me hooked on.
But I soon figured out that FREE was not the way to go, although you could still do it.
FREE usually means something that doesn’t look professional and also it doesn’t give you a lot of control over your business/property.
That is why businesses invest in their own websites, register domain names, pay for hosting, invest in tools to collect email-addresses. Most of the tools available today are easy to use; for example, you can build a website without any technical knowledge.
So, even if your online business is based at home, there are going to be some set-up costs to get it started. But its going to be a lot cheaper compared to any offline (bricks and mortar) business.
How much you should invest will vary on various factors, including the tools you choose. But thankfully nowadays, the cost is usually less than $1 USD a day.
Around a couple of hundred dollars will get you all the essential tools to kick-start your online business from home (assuming you have access to a computer with internet connection).
There are just the ‘basics’ or ‘essentials’ for your home-based internet business (there are many more tools out there).
This is not a lot of investment, but there are many who think they don’t have to spend a penny to set up a profitable business.
Should You Try to Cut Cost?
As a beginner, this may sound like a lot, especially when you have to pay for a year upfront (one of the reasons that most don’t get started at all). But once you start using it, you’ll understand its importance in building a profitable business.
While its a good idea to look for ways to cut costs, there are some things where it “doesn’t make sense to cut cost”. By doing so, you’re only sabotaging your chances of succeeding in your online business.
Most people think that starting an online business is very difficult. But on the contrary, it is very easy to get started and doesn’t require lots of money. To make it a success however is a different ballgame altogether. It takes lots of knowledge and perseverance.
Every business needs specific & good quality tools of the trade in order to succeed. The good news is that, for your online business, you just need to invest a couple of hundred dollars to give you an opportunity to make money online.
Internet Marketing: Quick Guide
You probably know by now that you can make money online. But how does it all work? Here’s a quick overview of what is involved in Internet Marketing (IM).
Build Your AuthorityAt the most basic level, you own a web property, offer something that the users are looking for, and once you get enough visitors you monetize it.
A web property could be:
- A website (html or any other CMS)
- An App
- YouTube videos / channel
- FB page, Instagram Account, Twitter handle, Pinterest account
You could get started with some of these free ones to understand how IM works, but its always best to have your own websites (because you control them).
What Do You Have to Sell?So do you have to sell anything on your website?
You have to eventually, but when you start, you just focus on providing useful content. The more content/pages you have, the more keywords your site is likely to target, and the more visitors you’ll get. Over time, those visitors will see you as an authority on that subject. Once you have enough visitors, there are several ways to monetize (make money).
On What Topic Should You Create Your Website?Even though in the short term, its possible to target some keywords that have low competition, and get traffic to your website and make money, despite having okay/low quality content on your website.
However, for long term results, its always best to create valuable content, something that really helps the readers. To be able to do that, you should have adequate knowledge about the topics that you want to target. You can always outsource the content creation part but it will cost money. And most beginners don’t want to do that.
So if you have to write the content yourself, you need to have some knowledge on those topics.
Follow Passion or EconomicsThis is another dilemma that most novices face, whether to create something around their passion/hobbies or treat this venture purely as business and go after the niches where there’s money to be made.
And there’s no straight answer to do this one.
However, you need to realize that making money online takes time and most websites that make decent/regular income reach that stage in a few years time (definitely not in a few weeks or even in a few months).
So even though solar panels or internet security might be profitable areas, do you see yourself updating your website with relevant content even after a few years? In case you take this route, consider selling off your website (once profitable) so that you can move to other niches.
Having said that, if you’re passionate about a topic (for example, photography), do you really want to spend the next few years updating a website about cameras/photography? Why not just go out and become a freelancer or a part-time photographer instead? You can still have a website in that case, but you will primarily be operating like an offline business.
How Do You Make Money?There are several ways to make money once you get a decent stream of traffic. Most common monetization methods are:
- Contextual ads (adense, chtika, infolinks, etc)
- Affiliate income (Amazon, Clickbank)
- Selling your own products (eCourse, digital products)
- Selling advertising space, and more
These are the more common ways through which you’re likely to make money if you’ve a fairly popular website.
How Do You Get Traffic?To make a profitable blog, you need good content & backlinks to your website.
So is this all about SEO (search-engine optimization)? It is to some extent, though there are several ways to attract traffic. Remember, Google is getting good at identifying how you’re getting the backlinks. If it spots any mischief, your website will be found way down the search pages, or probably not even found.
So be natural with the link building part.
To get traffic, you need to promote your website and some of the popular ways to do that include:
- Creating YouTube videos
- Guest posting on other blogs,
- Promoting on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and so on.
So should you just own one website or many?
One of the reasons that many Internet Marketers own multiple websites is because, until some time EMDs (exact match domains) used to get ranked easily on Google. So basically, you would register an EMD, write a few pages of content, and make money once the site ranked high (EMDs used to rank well easily). That is why most of them owned hundreds of websites.
With Google’s algo changes, all that changed. Its still possible to rank EMds but it requires more effort. A 5-page website is not going to rank high for long. So its practically not possible to own many websites and maintain them, if you are doing it all alone.
You can definitely start-off with one, probably a few (once you understand how it works), and try to make them into authority websites.
What is a CMSCMS is a content management system that helps you easily create content for your website, without getting bogged down with the technicalities (html, css and so on, though it helps to understand the basics).
WordPress is a popular CMS and almost every website out there is based on WordPress.
However, it can take some time getting used to it. Also, if you’re just planning to make a small website, with just a few pages, you could directly use html to build it (or get it done by someone) instead of using WordPress. Its just easier to manage and you can focus on driving traffic to your site.
In case, you decide to go with WordPress, remember to read all about the security part, & have important security plugins installed. Several wordpress blogs (especially those using free themes) have been hacked into recently. So do remember to read the best practices regarding security (that actually applies to most CMSs).
The best way to get started is by actually doing it. Start something small to see how it all works, and then apply those experiences to your bigger ideas.
To Conclude
Do you have to own a website to be able to make money online? Not really, though from a long term perspective it does make sense to invest in online properties over which you have some degree of control. However, if you’re a newbie in this area, its good to know that there are numerous ways to make money online without needing a website. You can definitely give some of these a try to test the waters.
There are several ways to make money online without requiring a website. Each program has its own advantages and disadvantages. In order to make a significant income from these programs, you have to learn the secrets and techniques, and also learn to scale your efforts.
I can understand if some of these do not make much sense to you, and that is bound to happen if you’re a beginner. But the good thing about this list is that you can use these to plan your short term as well as long term goals. Some of these are easier to do and can make money fast, whereas others require more knowledge and experience and can also be used as a long term business plan.
Please feel free to add to this list of 101 ways to make money online by leaving a comment below.
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