When you lack the luxury of time, making money on or offline can seem like an impossible task. How are you supposed to do that when you're working at a life-sucking nine-to-five job? While the stability of full-time employment might allow most to sleep well at night, it doesn't empower your creative juices to search for new income-producing strategies.
No matter what method you end up using to generate an income on the web, you need to adjust your mindset to help empower rather than discourage you. The truth is, making money online can be fraught with avoidable pitfalls. Cancel the noise by keeping a few fundamental guiding principles in mind.
If you're at all serious about generating a full-time income and possibly more from your online activities, then you need to focus on
passive income as opposed to active income. Sure, the active income will help you survive. That's the scarcity mentality at play. But it's the passive income ideas that will help you thrive.
Related: 2 Ways to Make Money Online This Month
Considering that you have a finite amount of time, passive income should make up a large part of your work. If you're serious about generating any semblance of income online, then passive income should be one of your sole goals and ambitions. Why? Wouldn't you prefer to do the work one time and get paid repeatedly as opposed to relying on your time to generate that income? Invest the time at the front-end so that you can reap the benefits on the back-end. This means putting in a bit of sweat equity and not getting paid today. Rather, you'll get paid somewhere down the road. And you'll continue getting paid whether you keep building that passive income stream or you stop.
Anyone interested in making money online should be pursuing passive income, while also working on active income. There are loads of ways to generate an income passively on the internet, many of which start at the foundation of having a blog, generating substantial traffic and building an audience and a list. It's not easy, but it's worth it.
That doesn't mean you need to start a blog to make money online today. You could opt for a non-blog-starting route, but if you're looking for longevity in your income-producing abilities on the internet, then a blog should be your primary aim.
1. Leverage the app economy
If you're looking to address some immediate financial needs, then the app economy is likely right for you.
Uber or Lyft: If you're in a locale where you can find Uber or Lyft, or one of the many competitors around the world such as China's Didi, the hours are flexible and you can work as you see fit, making it perfect, even if you currently have full-time employment but are looking to make some money on the side.
Postmates: You don't even need a car in some locations to make money with this app. In some major metropolitan areas like Manhattan, a bike would suffice.
iBotta: Earn cash back rewards by purchasing featured products at major retailers. All you have to do is add rebates, go shopping, then snap a photo of your receipt to earn your cashback. Simple and effective.
Task Rabbit: Another simple and straightforward app for making a bit of
side-hustle income is the Task Rabbit app. Tasks can be anything from simple repairs to more exhaustive undertakings. The app carefully vets each service provider to ensure the highest quality, and it's a great way to make some extra income on the side on your own terms.
Ebates: This app offers a simple way to make money online by buying whatever you're already buying and then getting a cash-back reward. With eBates, there is no scanning receipts. Simply click a link in the app and buy it from the store. You'll automatically be credited with your cash rewards upon purchase along with receiving an email confirmation.
Swagbucks: With Swagbucks, there are a number of ways you can make money. You can shop online, watch videos, answer surveys and surf the web. The app gives you both cashback and gift cards as a reward for your efforts.
Inbox Dollars: Another app you can use to make money online is Inbox Dollars, which pays you for watching television, taking surveys and shopping. There are cash offers here and it's relatively similar to some of the other apps in this arena.
2. Use existing websites
You could also opt to use existing websites for making money. These include both active income and passive income methods. For example, you could sell some used items or invest in creating some digital designs that then can be sold on merchandise. Again, devote a sizable portion of your time to passive income so that you can slowly build up earnings that will arrive on autopilot without any extra added effort.
Of course, a large portion of these sites do have their own respective apps. But these are certainly less involved in the gig economy, and more so in the longer-term projects that exist in the fields of photography,
online marketing, graphic design and web development, for example.
Craigslist: This site has been the go-to resource for over a decade now for people that are looking to make a bit of extra money online. You can easily sell your used stuff, rent out a spare room in your home or apartment, and offer up your services to the world.
Upwork: This website offers a great marketplace for selling just about any professional service. You don't need a merchant account, a website of your own or anything else for that matter. All you need to do is be able to provide a high-quality service at a reasonable price. But be informed, you will have to compete with many others that are constantly bidding on open jobs.
Cafe Press: This website allows you to create digital designs that can then be sold on the platform. You'll earn a commission for everything that sells and you'll never have to deal with logistics like printing, warehousing and customer service. If you have some graphic design skills, then this is a great potential source for your web-based income.
Fiverr: Israeli-based Fivver was started in 2010 by Shal Wininger and Micha Kaufam. You can offer gigs as low as $5 but also get paid much more for upgrades and add-ons.
Mechanical Turk: Amazon's Mechanical Turk is a resource for doing human-intelligence tasks, or as the site commonly refers to them, HITs. You get paid a very small fee for any given HIT and you'll need a good deal of volume to make a substantial amount of money. But it is a resource you can use in your spare time to generate a small income online.
Flippa: If you have a penchant for buying and selling, you could use Flippa, and its higher-end counterpart,
Deal Flow Brokerage to buy and sell websites for a profit. You'll need to know what you're doing here, but you could easily make a sizable income by flipping income-generating websites for profit.
Etsy: While Etsy's popularity has declined recently, it's still a great resource for selling handmade items online. No need for complex ecommerce sites or merchant accounts or any sort of automation. The company takes a commission of every sale and charges a small listing fee per item. But many still use Etsy as their primary source of income. The best part is that you can also sell digital products such as poster designs.
Shutterstock and iStockPhoto: Have a keen eye for photography? Why not sell photos on some of the leading photography sites. You'll need some design software skills to tag along. But if you do have skill in this arena, it's a great potential source for passive income.
Threadless: Similar to CafePress, Chicago-based Threadless also allows you to sell digital designs in the form of t-shirts and other merchandise such as phone cases, mugs, beach towels and so on.
Zazzle: Another great resource for selling online is to use Robert Beaver's Zazzle. The site is somewhat similar to Etsy and virtually anyone can make money online selling a variety of items here. From art to handmade items and customizable products, you can pretty much sell anything here.
3. Sell your own stuff
If you're ready to enter the ecommerce fray, you could sell your own stuff. Of course, along with selling your own stuff on your own website comes a whole slew of both responsibilities and technical configuration and requirements. For starters, you'll need a website and a hosting account. You'll also need a merchant account like ones offered by
Stripe or
PayPal. Then you'll need to design that site, build a sales funnel, create a lead magnet and do some email marketing.
You'll also need ecommerce software, fulfillment software, worry about warehousing, customer service and refunds. But that's not all. You'll also need traffic. Think
search engine optimization, Facebook ads, and other social media campaigns. It is hard work, especially on your own. You could opt for Amazon's platform, which might be an easier route. But, then again, at the end of the day, this is a serious business, which could produce significant profits. So you're either all in or you're not.
Shopify: Want to build your own storefront? You could opt to create a Shopify store. You could also install
WooCommerce as a plugin and run your ecommerce store from your blog. You'll need an SSL certificate and a way to process payments, but you might find this easier to get up and running fast to start selling immediately.
Fulfilled-by-Amazon (FBA): You could start selling on the largest online store in the world and not spend the time to build out your own infrastructure or worry about traffic. You will need to pay a commission, but most of the other processes will be automated for you.
Drop-shipping: Amazon offers one form of drop-shipping, but there are other resources for drop-shipping products that you'll never actually have to see or handle yourself. You'll simply need to close the sale. Providers like
SaleHoo,
Worldwide Brands, and many others, offer you a resource for drop-shipping your products.
High-ticket consulting or coaching: You could sell your own high-ticket consulting or coaching products from your website. You'll still need a website, merchant account, sales funnel, lead magnet and many other items. But you can easily earn a substantial amount of money from each individual customer, making it well worth the arduous setup required.
4. Sell as an affiliate
There are loads of resources for making money online as an affiliate. You could source products from
ClickBank, Commission Junction, Rakuten Marketing,
Share-a-Sale, Impact Radius and many others. Plus, many of the larger companies have their own affiliate programs as well. Do your due diligence and find the right company with a relevant product or service to your audience that you can sell as an affiliate.
In some cases, you will need an active website with substantial traffic to get approved. Selling as an affiliate isn't easy by any means, but if you do have the audience, it can definitely amount to a substantial amount of income.
5. Start a blog
If you're serious about making money online,
start a blog. Blogging is one of the easiest and most sustainable income sources. As long as the blog is setup the right way, in the right niche, with the right content targeted at the right audience, and the offer is complementary to the content, you could make a tremendous amount of passive income from a blog.
While some might think that
starting a blog is an arduous effort, when you understand the precise steps you need to take, it becomes far easier. It all starts in the decision of choosing a profitable niche and picking the right domain name. From there, you need to build your offers. You can easily sell things like mini-email courses, training sessions and ebooks.
6. Email marketing
If you're interested in online marketing, setup email software and create a lead magnet that you can use in your sales funnel. Then, build up that list. It's often said that you can expect to earn about $1 per subscriber per month. If you have a list of 10,000 subscribers, that means you can earn roughly around $10,000 per month. You will need to deliver value and not pitch them on every email, but it is a very achievable goal in a short period.
There are many ways to get people onto your list. Lead magnets are one such resource. For example, you can build ebooks, checklists and cheat sheets. But you can also do content upgrades, such as PDF versions of an article with added resources in them, four-part video training series, and more. Think about your audience and what you can offer them to better serve them, then treat them with some respect and you'll eventually reap the rewards.
7. Webinars training
Webinars are quite possibly one of the most potent ways you can make an exorbitant amount of money online. You'll need an audience to train and you'll need to know what you're talking about. Of course, this usually requires having a website and some semblance of an online presence. However, people can still do webinars without all of that. For example, you might have a sizable social media following and you train them every week on something to do with social media. But you will need a product to embed and sell at some point. Don't worry about it in the beginning. In my experience, the best webinar platform out there is
GoToWebinar.
No matter what method you choose to make money online, understand that you might be able to
make some money fast, but for the sizable returns, you'll need significant sweat equity. However, a year from now, you'll be happy you started today. Remember, time is far more valuable than money. Focus on creating passive income streams that will free up your time so that you can quit the rat race and focus on the things that matter.
1. Make Money with Online Surveys
Here you can make money by completing small surveys which takes 5 minutes to 20 minutes depending on the requirement of a particular company.
You need to write your feedback & opinion in a survey. You just have to select your choice from the question & there is no need to write anything.
You can make $1 to $20 depending on the length of the survey, your profile & the country you are living in. You can find more about paid surveys and
join 20 best survey sites.
2. Earn Money with Blogging
I have been making money with blogging from the last 7-8 years. I have made more than 1 million dollar (almost Rs. 7 Crore+) with blogging. I was so confused when I started blogging.
I had absolutely no idea about blogging when I started in 2010. I worked very hard but made no money with blogging for almost 1 year.
But I never gave up! I was doing my research on topics like, ‘how to create a blog', ‘how to write on your blog' and ‘how to promote your blog'.
And things started in my favor after 1 year. I made my first $100 from blogging in 2011. Then there was no looking back. Today I am earning $25,000 (Rs 15 Lacs+) per month from blogging.
3. Become a Captcha Solver
If you have more free time (2 hours a day) then you can add further income in your pocket by working as a captcha solver.
This is one of the easiest way to earn money online. As a captcha solver, you need to read the captcha images & type the exact characters.
You need to be very fast in order to earn better income. You can get paid up to $2 for every 1000 captchas you solve.
4. Earn with Affiliate Marketing
If you are serious about earning money online & you are a hard working guy who wants to make big income then affiliate marketing is for you.
There is more scope for affiliate marketing than before because of the high growth of online shopping.
There are hundreds of online merchants like Amazon, Flipkart, eBay, Clickbank, CJ etc. where you can signup & promote their products.
In affiliate marketing, you are simply helping customers to buy the right product by creating a simple website & in return you can earn 4% to 20% commission.
You can
signup for Free Training so that we can send you one of the best guide on affiliate marketing that can help you to earn great income.
5. Become a freelancer
Freelancing is another popular way to make money after blogging & affiliate marketing. As a freelancer, you can work with small or big companies on a temporary basis & provide them your services.
Freelancers can make $500 to $2000+ per month depending on the
type of freelance jobs you will do for your client.
You can work as a content writer, web designer, graphics designer or provide services like SEO, data entry, video testimonials, digital marketing etc.
6. Virtual Assistant
A virtual assistant is like a personal assistant who can earn money by working online for someone without being physically present.
He can do variety of tasks like taking care of websites, counseling, writing & proofreading, publishing content, marketing, coding, website & app development, research etc.
7. Writing Job
Writing is another better way to earn money on internet through writing different types of content.
You can write for blogs, companies, institutions, individual people etc. Different types of writers get paid differently.
Normally people get paid $5 to $20+ for writing 500 words content.
You can go to the sites like UpWork,
iWriter, WriterBay,
FreelanceWriting,
TextBroker, ExpressWriters.com, FreelanceWritingGigs.com to find the content writing jobs.
8. Micro-working
There are more ways that can help you to make extra income by working in part time. You can easily make $200-$300 per month by doing simple tasks on different sites.
Here you can work on variety of different tasks like identifying an object, rating & commenting on different sites, visiting some websites, finding contact details, doing small research, writing small articles etc.
There are many websites like mTurk, MicroWorker, SEOClerk, ClickWorker, GigWalk where you can work as a micro worker & earn extra income. After signup, we will show you how to work as Micro-worker and make money.
9. Become a YouTuber
YouTube is one of the hottest trend in earning money online. You can start your YouTube channel, upload some quality videos and then become a YouTube partner to make money online on YouTube.
You can create different kind of videos like prank videos, comedy videos, kitchen recipes, how-to-do videos, travel tips, or anything you think, is useful for people.
Once you get the videos views and subscribers for your channel then you can apply for YouTube partner program.
Once you get the approval, people will see the ads along with ads in your videos. You will make money for each views your video receive.
You can shoot videos from your smartphone or any DSLR camera.
10. Become an online seller
Online selling is not like traditional selling. You don’t have much scope of selling your items outside your local market but in online selling, you can sell your product all over the country.
There are 2 ways to sell anything online.
Either, you can create your own website and sell your products from your website OR become a seller on any famous shopping portal like Amazon, Flipkart, eBay, Snapdeal etc.
Second option is much better you will get existing customers of these popular portals.
Now you must be thinking that what can I sell when I don’t have any product?
I have seen many Amazon and Flipkart sellers who don’t have any product but still they are selling number of products on these sites.
What you can do is, roam around your city & check for the best products you can sell on these sites. You can find the wholesalers and distributors who can sell you these products at a highly discounted rates.
You can list these products on Amazon, eBay etc. and make money by selling at a higher price.
You need to try the best products that you can sell at lower than market price. Trust me, its easier than your thought. Only thing you need to do is take action.
11. Domain Trader
Domain trading is another high profit business you can do online. But here you need some investment for buying the domain.’
You must be an expert OR you should get detailed knowledge before you start this business.
You can
buy domains from GoDaddy or other domain registrar for less than $10 & sell in future to the needy person for hundreds of dollars. Your skill here is to identify great domains that are not booked yet & companies in future can try to buy that domain.
When companies don’t find the domain of their choice, they contact the domain owner for the deal & it’s in your control to fix the price. You can even put your domains on auction so that people can buy directly at your desired price.
12. Website flipping
Like domain trading, website flipping is also a hot business to earn money online. Here you don’t deal with domains but websites.
You have to create a website, work on it for 3-6 months or more so that you can start making money from the websites.
After earning for 2-3 months, you can put that site on auction on
Flippa ,
EmpireFlippers etc. You can easily get 15-20 times price of your monthly earning from that website.
It’s much easier to grow an old sites than creating a new site and the grow this new site.
Many experienced people buy websites from Flippa, work for 3-4 months on these sites and make double or triple income.
13. Provide training & consultancy
There is a big scope of earning money online if you have some good skills that people need. Like you can provide training on
spoken English, computer courses, any technical course, Feng shui, medical treatment and any other things.
You can promote your business through a website or a Facebook business page.
You need to promote your website or Facebook page in order to get the potential leads.
You can get many customers through a good follow ups.
14. Stock & Forex Trading
Stock trading & forex trading is a very lucrative way to make money for those who has good idea of the market.
There are number of free or paid courses available on internet that can train you for online trading.
You can even read newspaper like Economic times or watch TV channels like CNBC to become more expert in the field. Its risky to enter into this market without sufficient knowledge.
15. Earn money from your smartphone
There are various smartphone apps that can pay you some extra income by completing some simple tasks on your Smartphone.
There are at least
20 money making apps that if you install in your smartphone, can give an extra income of $200-$300.
You have to take simple surveys, complete offers by signup on other websites, play games, watch videos etc.
You don’t need to take any extra time to earn from this as you can make money on the go.
16. Sell photos online
This is another use of your smartphone. You can take high quality images of nature, places, people, things, dishes, homes etc. & sell them online.
There are number of big sites like
ShutterStock,
Fotolia, ,
iStockPhoto,
Photobucket where you can submit your photos. Whenever some customer wants to purchase your photos, you will get paid as per the price you fix.
17. Sell old stuff on OLX or Quikr
I am sure there may be number of things in your home that are lying unused for months & if you take little efforts, you can earn some good money.
You just need to do 2 things, i.e. find out all the items that you are no longer using, take high quality photos of these items from different angles & list these items on OLX & Quikr for sale.
Not only this, you can also ask your friends & relatives for selling their old stuff. You can help them selling these items & make some commission.
So these 18 ways can provide a perfect answer for your query ‘how to earn money online” & yes, you can shoot an email to us in case of assistance.
