465 ways to make money online

 James Johnson Updated on Jul 29, 2016 Tutorials 93 Comments

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Today I am going to show you how to make money online with some practical advice based on my own experiences. I have tried lots of ways to make money online with varying degrees of success and now I am going to share that knowledge with you.

Honestly, I cannot put into words how freeing it is to learn how to make money online.

Like, seriously. It’s great.

And thanks to the internet, you can make money online in lots of different ways. The possibilities are absolutely endless.

From freelancing to photography, virtual assisting to viral articles, sponsored Tweets to selling on Amazon and everything in between.

If you enjoy it, or think you might enjoy it, there’s always a way to make money from it online.

And in this article, I’ve covered them all.

So whether you’re strapped for cash, looking to grow your business, or want to quit your job and travel the world, you have no shortage of options to choose from.

What You Will Learn

• The 5 quickest ways to make money online
• Every legal way to make money online, ever
• How much money you can make by doing them
• Weird & wonderful ways you didn’t know existed
• Everything you need to know about how to make money online

How To Make Money Online

This article is really long. And there are going to be some methods of making money you don’t care about (I’d be the worst virtual assistant ever in the history of the world, for example).

So I’ve tried to make this list as easy to navigate as possible.

Simply click one of the links below and as if by magic, you’ll be transported to the section of your choice:

• The 5 Quickest Ways To Make Money Online
• Freelancing
• Blogging
• Social Media
• Selling Other People’s Products
• Selling Your Own Products
• Finance
• Surveys, Trials and Cashback
• Online Gambling
• Work At Home Companies
• Advice And Questions
• Content Mills
• Miscellaneous
• Scams You Need To Avoid…

Before We Begin Looking At Ways To Make Money Online

This is a little disclaimer, from me to you, right now:

I haven’t tried all of the methods on this list. I’m a writer and I only do stuff that involves writing.

But all of these methods have given success to someone. As in, someone, somewhere, right now, is making money online from them.

There are no scams or pyramid schemes or Nigerian Princes looking for money here. However, I can’t account for the intentions of all the sites owners.

So if you do come across a scam, or they ask you on a date or for weird pictures of your dog, please let me know.

Right, enough chit chat from me, let’s get stuck into the list, shall we?

The 5 Quickest Way To Start Making Money Online

Okay, you can consider this the quick start version of the article. Just for you, I’m going to summarise the five most effective ways of how to make money online fast. Like, right now…

#1: Freelancing

Freelancing is the easiest business for you to start on the internet. You can get started, right now, and head out to start making $15-$20 an hour as an entry level freelancer simply by signing up to a site like UpWork or Freelancer.

You can make money this way if you’ve got skills in:

• Writing: Copywriting, Journalism, Blogging or Ghostwriting
• Design: Graphic design, illustration, WordPress Themes
• SEO: All aspects of it
• Programming And Development: PHP, App Development and everything in between.

#2: Blogging

You can set up a WordPress blog and mailing list in very little time at all. And for completely free if you keep it WordPress hosted and use a beginner MailChimp membership.

For example, Jeff Goins learned a new skill, set up a new blog and made his first sale with 48 hours (without using any of his current influence). It might only have been $9.99, but if you can do that in two days, imagine what you could earn in two months?

#3: Selling Your Own Stuff

Selling your own stuff takes absolutely no time at all when you have sites like eBay, Craigslist and GumTree at your disposal.

You can have an account created and your product online in a matter of minutes. In fact Ramit Sethi outlines how to go from zero to sale in less than 37 minutes in this guide right here.

#4: Surveys And Research

This isn’t a lucrative way to make money online, but it is almost instant. If you sign up to a site like Swagbucks, you can start earning points and dollars for completing surveys and watching videos in less than five minutes.

Spend a couple of hours here and you could be looking at being $10-$15 richer for doing not much hard work at all.

#5: Questions And Advice

Like the above, you’re not going to make millions doing this. But you can start earning in a matter of minutes by using sites like KGB, where you can get $0.25 just for answering questions about a chosen topic.

You can easily rack up a decent amount of money by answering 15-20 questions in a day.

Part #1: Freelancing

Freelancing is the exchange of time for money. If you’re not working, you’re not making money. But while it may not be a passive income, it can be quite lucrative.

For example, many Freelance SEOs will charge $150-$200 USD an hour. And some freelance copywriters are making up to six figures a year. Heck, even Seth Godin is a freelancer.

Most of these are skill-based jobs. But they’re a great way to make money online from home.

To make this a success you need a talent or an ability other people don’t possess. You’ll find this is usually your hobby or interest that you can turn into a job.

I love it as a way to make money, and if you think you might too, here’s every possible way you can do it…

1.1: Freelancing Websites

For all of the types of jobs you’re going to read about, you can get work for all of them on one of these websites. So, instead of explaining them to you 500 times throughout the article, I’m going to do it just once, right here.

I’ve also put the more specific ones in with their respective jobs.

The money you can make on all of these sites is usually pretty entry level, from $2 to $30 an hour, but it’s not unusual for prices to go above that, either.

1.1.1: UpWork

This is a one size fits all site for every Freelancer to replace the two separate sites, Elance and oDesk.

You can find work here in any field, and you can still use this article I wrote about making money on elance to build a $1,000+ a month business in just a matter of weeks.

1.1.2: Fiverr

Another of the ‘if you can do it you can charge for it’ websites. Prices here all start at $5 an hour but can go way beyond that if you do it right. There’s a tutorial right here on how to make the most from Fiverr.

Fiverr used to be one of many $5 job sites, but they all appear to have dropped off the face of the internet. So, stick to Fiverr if this is your preferred style.

1.1.2: Guru

Guru is a lesser-known site but still good for you beginner Freelancers. It’s got a little less competition than UpWork does, especially now they’ve merged two sites together. So, it can be good to get a little experience under your belt.

While reports and strategies for making money with Guru are few and far between this in-depth look from SparkPlugging shows how they used Guru to get their freelance business off the ground, and keep it afloat.

1.1.3: Freelancer

Freelancer is a site that tends to attract a higher calibre of client, and makes you more money, but it also has a few drawbacks in the way it will ask you to pay for basic essentials, like taking tests. Some people love it, some hate it, I’ll let you decide.

When AskEustache put Freelancer to the test, he found that he made $250 through their affiliate program, and was able to charge $30 per hour straight away.

So, not only can earn a little more than your average first-time freelancer here, you can also make a few bucks on the side recommending people to join too.

1.1.4: iFreelance

Another site similar to UpWork with an abundance of jobs in any field.

I can’t find any conclusive case studies or reports of experiments using iFreelance, but this in-depth review from Comparakeet shows that they don’t take commission from what you are earning, however they do charge you a range of membership fees.

So, it may not be the best place to head for your first month.

1.1.5: People Per Hour

One of the newer sites I’ve come across, and it’s easy to use and find clients with. But it seems that they’re geared more towards the clients – the person you’ll be working for – than to you as a freelancer.

Whether that’s good or bad though, comes down to your preference.

Again, reports on money generated from People Per Hour are pretty much non-existent, even though people are definitely making money there. But the UK TrustPilot site gives them a 7.3 star review from over 500 reviews, so they must be doing something right.

1.1.6: Microworkers

This is a different kind of freelancing, where you get paid for micro- or mini-jobs. For example, commenting in a forum or signing up for a mailing list, that takes no more than 10 minutes.

Payments vary on the client and the job, but you can quickly build up a lot of quick tasks that can make you a decent amount of money.

In recent months, up to October of 2015, case studies like this one from Paul Goodman on Hubpages, have seen a decline jobs and availability on the site.

While there is still money to be made there, it’s more of a couple of bucks on the side job, as opposed to an income replacing system.

Okay, that’s it for the non-specific freelancing sites. Now, let’s look at the different types of jobs you can do, and where else you can make money from them.

1.2: Copywriting

Copywriting is writing for, well, pretty much anything:

• Sales Pages
• Websites
• Magazines
• Leaflets

If a business, company or industry has it, and you write for it, that’s copywriting. If you think of yourself as a skilled writer this is a great way to make money. Especially because clients for copywriting are often corporate and pay in big bucks.

The best way to make money copywriting is to go directly to the business and pitch yourself. But you can also find copywriting-specific jobs posted on:

• Freelance Writing Gigs
• MediaBistro
• Morning Coffee Newsletter

How Much Can You Earn?

This can vary on your experience, the industry you work in and how many clients you build up. When you’re a freelancer you pretty much become your own little digital agency. But, an hourly rate could look like:

• Entry Level: $10-$25 per hour
• Intermediate: $30-$50 per hour
• Expert: $60-$70+ per hour

There’s also the option to charge per word, per project or on a monthly retainer. But, like Carol Tice has done, this can easily turn into a six-figure-a-year business in a short space of time.

In fact, my own personal income started out at $10 an hour in August 2014, and became $60-$80 per hour in less than 12 months. You can read about that growth from myself, right here.

1.3: Journalism

The age old profession, right?

Journalism now extends beyond the newspapers and their sites and into much bigger online-only publications, too. Admittedly, the pay here can be less frequent. But if you’ve got an itch to write, and you want to scratch it, this is a great place to start.

There aren’t any specific places I’d go to look for these jobs. I’d recommend just finding the publication you want to write for, and pitching them.

Although Sophie Lizard at Be A Freelance Blogger has an interesting free download on her site that offers some in-depth information on it.

How Much Can You Earn?

This really depends on the publication you’re writing for, how often, and the subject you’re writing about. There are publications that offer $20 per article, others $250, and some will even still pay you $1 per word.

Linda Formichelli of The Renegade Writer started off making $0.10 per word writing for publications but has been paid as much as $2.50 per word to write for national publications.

That’s $2,500 for a 1,000 word article. So, there is a lot of money to be made if you go looking for it.

1.4: Blogging

Blogging is a big industry right now. And you can make money from it in three ways:

1. Running your own profitable blog
2. Writing for blogs full time
3. Guest blogging

The first is arguably the best, and most sustainable, of them. For example, Jon Morrow’s Boost Blog Traffic makes $100,000 a month in sales, and Stuart Walker made $80,000 last year.

So it depends on how prolific you are. You can read from Matt about how to make a successful blog here, and more about owning your own blog later in this article.

The second is what I do for a living. And I easily built a $3,500 a month business from it in less than a year. You can use the methods and sites you’ve read so far but you can also find work on the ProBlogger Job Board.

Guest Blogging is only for certain publications in different niches. You’ll have to research this more yourself. But, it’s easy to make between $30 and $150 per guest post, if you find the right one.

How Much Can You Earn?

Blogging is pretty lucrative because businesses, and people, are now seeing that they need a blog to content market effectively. But there are always people who want to pay less for it too, which is part of getting started.

Hourly rates look a little like this:

• Beginner: $10-$20 per hour
• Intermediate: $25-$45 per hour
• Expert: $50-$100+ per hour

But, a little like journalism, this will depend on the publication and how you charge. For example, a Fortune 500 blogger might make $0.75-$1 per word, whereas a low-level fitness and nutrition site may only pay $20 per article.

I wrote an article for StartUpBros here about how to start a Freelance Business and build up an income from it, if you want to take this approach.

1.5: Ghostwriting

Want to know how to make money online? Get into Ghostwriting.

Ghostwriting is super lucrative, because people don’t always have time to write for themselves. And there are a lot of Gurus on the internet who don’t write their own content.

This can come in the form of:

• Books
• eBooks
• Blog posts
• Articles
• Press Releases

Or anything an author can put their name on. Again, this tends to be easily done through approaching the client directly, or looking for posts on job boards like the ones listed earlier. But the success stories are everywhere for this kind of work.

Even as far back as 2011, Kelly James-Engar made $25,000 for an 80,000 word nutrition eBook, that her client actually wrote the first 25,000 words of anyway. Which is no small amount of money to be sniffed at, eh?

You can find a really good tutorial on how to become a professional Ghostwriter from Write Non-Fiction Now, right here.

How Much Can You Earn?

Corporate Ghostwriters can make stupid amounts of money a year. Their wages can be between $59,000 and $92,000 a year, but even at a basic freelance level on a content site, you’ll be earning more than your average blogger or copywriter would.

Because you’re not getting the credit for the writing, you can charge extra on top of it. For the hourly rates I’d add an extra 20-40% of what a blogger or copywriter would earn per hour.

1.6: Graphic Design

Graphic Design is now one of the most essential industries ever, because it covers:

• Website design
• Logos
• Branding
• Printed Materials
• Interface and User Experience
• Illustrations

And that’s just scratching the surface. There are probably a hundred variations of all of those, too. But this is a service that people always need, and if I’m honest, a good reliable designer is often hard to come by. So, maybe it could be you?

You can find Graphic Design jobs at these places, or by going directly to companies or agencies:

• Design Jobs Board
• Design Jobs
• Behance
• Dribbble
• Coroflot
• Graphic River

How Much Can You Earn?

You can pick up Graphic Design work from lots of places, so the prices you can charge will vary. Most Graphic Designers I know, or have worked with, charge a per-project fee, and those fees can easily exceed $500 for a project even at a basic level.

There are even success stories, like Jacob Crass, who started out doing graphic design on the side through University and ended up becoming an award-winning, high-earning, designer. All from starting doing low level jobs.

But from research, I’ve found that an hourly rate would look like this:

• Beginner: $15-$30 per hour
• Intermediate: $35-$60 per hour
• Expert: $65-$100+ per hour

1.7: Programming And Development

The ins and outs of programming are beyond my mental capacity. The are so many TLAs – Three Letter Abbreviations – that my head might fall off if I hear another one. But, if you’re here, you understand it or have an interest it in, so I take my hat off to you.

It tends to be broken up into these seven categories, and I’ve included their median wage too:

One of my favourite stories about success as a developer comes from Spencer Foreman who went from successful freelancer, to flat broke, to six-figure freelancer in the space of a couple of days.

Through networking, persistence and not giving up on wanting to make a career of it. If you want to find work, here are some of the most prolific job boards for programming and development out there:

• Authentic Jobs
• Angel List
• Krop
• Startupers
• We Work Remotely
• Stackoverflow
• GitHub
• Android Jobs
• Core Intuition
• Remotive.io

And like the rest, you can go directly to the clients themselves as well.

How Much Can You Earn?

There are a few payment models that Freelancer Programmers follow:

• Per Project: Where you charge for the amount of work that will be done for a specific project, or piece of work.
• Project + Percentage: This is less common, but designers can take a cut on their project fee, and earn a percentage of the profits from what they’ve designed. Although, do be cautious of this (see Freelance Best Practices at the end of this section).
• Hourly: Rates for credible programmers and developers begin at $20 per hour, and finish at around the $300 per hour mark.

If you market yourself well, like Glenn Stovall did here, you can find yourself earning double or triple your starting rate in no time at all. Even if you’re learning as you go.

1.8: App Building

This is a little less common, but still a booming industry. It comes a little under the programming and development tab above, but in the interest of being thorough, it gets its own section.

Mobile apps are huge business, if you remember the success of Flappy Bird that was making $50,ooo a day, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

And independent developers have had thousands of dollars of success, like Baptiste Greve, who created the game Rolly Candy for just $20 that generated 500 downloads in its first two weeks alone.

So, now is a good a time as any to get into the freelance app building market. Who knows, you might play a part in the world’s next Flappy Bird or Clash of Clans?

You can find all of these jobs in the same sections as above.

How Much Can You Earn?

According to this thread on Quora, an iOS developer will make a minimum of $25 per hour, whereas an Android developer will start at about $20, and the prices just seem to keep rising into the $200-$300 per hour range depending on the size, or the audience, of the app.

1.9: SEO

This is a real money maker industry, and if you’ve been to Matt’s site before, you know it. People need it, but they rarely understand it.

SEO can break down into a lot of different services at the freelance level:

• Link Building
• Copywriting (different to copywriting before)
• Site Analysis
• Full campaigns
• Traffic generation

Basically anything you would do at an agency can be broken into individual services and sold at a price.

As well as the sites at the start of this section and hitting companies up for work, you can pick up jobs on these boards, too:

• Search Engine Journal Jobs
• Indeed
• Trovit

How Much Can You Earn?

For SEO, the sky is really the limit. For example, Mike Ramsay of Nifty Marketing started out as a $20-$30 an hour freelancer, and now runs an agency worth over one million dollars.

By bootstrapping, growing purposefully and setting his prices to fit the clients he wants, he was able to go from lowly freelancer to industry leader in just a few years.

I’ve found that at an entry level SEO (in all capacities) you can start comfortably at $30 an hour, but once you build a portfolio, you can start heading to the $100 an hour price range with no trouble at all.

But there are plenty of other ways you can charge for SEO services, too, as outlined in this post by SERPs.

1.10: Editing Services

Where there is a need for writers, designers, videographers and SEOs, there is as much need for editors. To check mistakes, keep creative people in check, and make sure the Internet isn’t plagued with bad writing and terrible designs.

For example this stay-at-home mum, Rachel, managed to supplement her family’s income with jobs ranging from $100-$200 each for editing blog posts, and even had the occasional $5,000+editing job on larger pieces of copy like eBooks and White papers.

You can find all these jobs on the industry-specific job boards for your chosen type of editing.

How Much Can You Earn?

Freelance Editing jobs can be a little hit and miss in terms of earnings, and the reports are vastly different all across the internet. The main figures I could find for hourly rates look a little something like this:

• Basic: $5-$10 per hour
• Intermediate: $25-$40 per hour
• Advanced: $50-$100+ per hour

1.11: Virtual Assistants

Virtual Assistants are online life savers, angels and birthday-rememberers. It’s like having an actual assistant, but online.

And if you want to make some money from helping people, you can definitely make a decent amount of money doing this.

You’ll cover lots of different things depending on who you’re assisting, but for a lot of people online it’s mainly:

• Emails and Phone Calls
• Research (for meetings, presentations, blog posts, copy etc.)
• Client relations
• Calendar/Meeting management
• Editorial work
• Remembering to send my girlfriend flowers on Valentine’s day

But there are lots of extras you could be doing to that are more specific to your client as well. And you’re often an essential part of the team.

You can find work as a Virtual Assistant on some of these jobs boards, as well as the sites mentioned earlier:

• Virtual Office Temps
• EA Help

How Much Can You Earn?

Virtual Assistants are often people willing to work for low wages from central Europe and the far east. But, there is also a growing contingent of Western virtual assistants, too.

Now while you have little control over where you’re from, you have to be aware that you’ll be in competition for the value of the cheap ones, or the quality of the second ones.

That being said, there are plenty of success stories, like this one from Michelle Mangen, who have gone from zero to six-figure VA businesses in just a couple of years. Here are some hourly rate ideas to get you started, though:

• Basic: $2-$10 per hour
• Intermediate: $15-$25 per hour
• Advanced: $30-$50+ per hour

1.12: Voice-Over Work

Got a voice that can make knees weak, angels weep and people listen? Or, just fancy yourself as a narrator or voice over artist?

Well you can sell your voice as a freelancer and make a pretty penny doing it.

In fact, I once wrote an eBook about this, and it’s far more lucrative than you’d expect. You can find work for this on these sites:

• Voice123
• Voice Bunny

How Much Can You Earn?

This is a really flexible industry, and comes down to far too many variables for me to give you an exact number.

For example, my friend Mike Jansen makes a full time living from voice over work – he’s the voice of many independent and short films, as well as the Indianapolis Colts’ stadium announcer – while there are others out there who only make enough for it to be a side project.

Meaning it depends on how you want to approach the work, and how much money you’re looking to earn.

1.13: Teaching and Coaching

Freelance teaching is a growing industry online, and offline. Because people need tutors, and location can often prevent you from finding a good one.

So, becoming one online (and accessible from the world over) is a great idea to make money.

You’ll need to be a specialist in something to make this into a job, but some viable industries are:

• Languages
• School Basics (Math, English, Science etc)
• SEO
• Programming
• Health and Fitness
• Writing
• Design
• Musical Instruments
• Life coaching

And just about anything you can find a video about on YouTube. Or, any skill you have that people could learn from you about. Remember, you don’t need to be an expert, you just need to know more than your students.

The places to find these jobs will be specific to each industry, so you’ll have to do some of your own research here. But you can start by offering services on sites like Fiverr, or by looking on Tutor.

How Much Can You Earn?

Dependent on who and what you teach, this can be anywhere from $60 a day, through to $100 an hour. I personally used to make $40 an hour as a Freelance Personal Trainer on a remote, online only basis.

And life coaches will charge anywhere between $25 and $500 a month per client.

1.14: Translation

Unbeknown to a lot of English speakers, not everybody in the world understands English. In fact, it’s safe to say most people don’t understand it.

So, there is a whole market out there for translating content from one language to another.

Especially content like:

• Blog posts
• Articles
• Legal documents
• Podcasts
• Marketing materials

If you’re bilingual, this could open up a whole new market for you. You can find a lot of translator work here at Translator Base, or you can apply with firms like Debonair Languages.

How Much Can You Earn?

This can actually be a really lucrative business if you do it right. Because, translation is a reallyin demand service.

There are some Freelancers, like Nataly Kelly, who charge the same rate per hour as a lawyer in their local area, which is in the $200 to $300 range in some places.

Because you’re not only changing words for words, but you’re also branding, copywriting and editing all as one package.

1.15: Accountancy

Where there are people making money, there are people who need accountants. And not everyone (myself included) can afford to work with a big firm or agency.

So, you can provide your services to a company or client at a discount.

Of course, you’ll need to be a chartered accountant to do this and not just own an abacus/calculator/dummies guide to accountancy.

How Much Can You Earn?

I really can’t find enough information to give a true rate on this. But, according to my friends in accounting circles in England their firms bill out between £150 and £300 per hour for a middle of the road accountant.

If you’re targeting smaller businesses, you could look around the bottom end of that scale (if not lower), or even creep higher for bigger businesses or work with firms.

1.16: Consultancy

Almost all of the jobs listed so far also leave you the option to be a consultant for them, too.

I’d just recommend that you’re of an above average skill set before you try getting into them.

Here are some consultancy job examples:

• Copywriting consultant: How to improve in-house copywriting for a business.
• SEO Consultant: As above.
• Design Consultant: You get the picture…

You’ll often have to advertise for these jobs yourself, or reach out to clients. But these jobs also show up on the freelance sites too.

How Much Can You Earn?

A little like accountancy, this is hard to define. A Freelance Copywriting consultant, like Art Copywriter, will start at around £240 per day.

But, Management consultancy can go up into the $1,000 to $2,000 range in no time at all. If you’re just getting started, an hourly rate of $30-$40 is a good place to start.

Freelancing Best Practices…

Okay, I don’t want to tell you all the good stuff, without letting you know how to cover your back, either.

Because while Freelancing is a great way to build a business, income and career online, you can also find yourself in a bad situation pretty quickly if you don’t know what you’re doing.

So, here are a few things you need to have in order to make sure everything goes smoothly…

• Set Clear Terms And Conditions: Before you agree to anything, have clear defined terms and conditions about your rates, how you work, when it will be delivered and what the end product will be like.
• Learn The Invoicing Systems In Your Country: For example, all invoices in the UK must have specific information, and your country will likely have its own variation.
• Never Accept Payment On A Product-Profit Basis: At least not as the only method of payment. This is usually a scam for free work, or ends up leaving you with a lot less than you would expect. Just don’t do it.
• Join A Union: There are people out there looking to take advantage of you, so being part of a union can help. They can advise you how to get compensated, or deal with clients who have taken your work and run with it.

You’ll learn how to adopt these for yourself as your business grows and expands, and information that is more specific to your niche. However, be vigilant and always look for ways to make sure your best interests are protected.

Part #2: Creating Your Own Blog

Blogging has already appeared on this list, but it’s also worthy of its own entire section. Because having a blog is basically the same as running your own business, or owning a shop on the high street, with a lot less of the drawbacks.

Bloggers can make anywhere from $10 to $100,000 a month. And depending on how much effort you put into it, you can take over your own current income (if you have one) in a short time.

But one of the common questions is “How do you make money from a blog?”, because you don’t really get paid for the posts you write (or do you?). So, let’s look at how to make money off your blog…

2.1: eBooks

eBooks are books that only exist online, and they’re a great way to make money from your audience.

If there’s a topic, question, or burning issue in your niche, you can write an eBook about it to sell, for example:

• How-Tos and Tutorials
• Recipes
• Workout and Nutrition
• Travel Guides

You only need to search, ‘your topic + “ebook”’ in Google to see a whole host of eBooks to give you ideas, too:

This can be a pretty good way to make money on its own, or attached to a blog, too. In this post from Arman Assadi, he interviews Saeed who is making $2,700 a month of passive incomefrom Amazon Kindle eBooks just from America alone.

But don’t worry, creating an eBook isn’t a hard task either. You can simply create them in Microsoft Word, save them as a PDF, and export them to eBook software like these sites below:

• Novisoft
• PayHip
• Amazon
• FlickRocket
• Book Baby

2.2: Online Courses

By running a blog, you become an authority in your niche. And that gives you the perfect opportunity to put together a course – video, or otherwise – for people to follow and learn from.

Take a look at this guy, Sergey Kasimov, who has started to make an income only out of selling video courses to his audience. By just using the platform Udemy to host and sell them, he’s been able to generate nearly $20,000 in sales in his first year:

It might not be record breaking amounts of money, but that’s enough to absorb a minimum wage job in the UK, and if his growth continues in that way he’ll soon be making $40,000-$50,000 a year in courses.

Now imagine attaching that power of online courses like that to a blog with 2,000 or 3,000 email subscribers.

2.3: Mastermind Groups

A mastermind is a forum for all your blog followers. They can discuss ideas, learn lessons from you, and get access to content and resources they wouldn’t be able to get anywhere else. It’s also a great sales tool to have all these people in one places, too.

For example, Stuart Walker’s Nichehacks Mastermind has over 10,000 people and keeps growing every day. That’s a lot of people to sell to.

You can set up a mastermind by:

• Creating a private Facebook group
• Adding a forum area to your site
• Creating a separate site, like Jeff Goins’s Tribe Writers, that’s totally independent

2.4: Podcasts

Creating a Podcast, kind of like creating a standard blog post, won’t make you much money. But when you throw advertising into the mix your profits can start to skyrocket, provided you have an audience that listens.

Dave Jackson of School Of Podcasting has managed to consistently make money from Podcasts, and even managed to make $1,700 from one single health and nutrition podcastthrough affiliate marketing, advertising and donations.

Starting a Podcast is a little beyond the scope of this article, so if you’re interested, I’ll have you over to this article from Pat Flynn that explains the process more in-depth.

2.5: Sponsored Posts

Native advertising – creating valuable content to advertise a product – is becoming more and more prolific. If you’re not sure what I mean, let me give you an example:

You run a blog about fishing. You have a decent sized audience and people like your style. So, Fishing Lines Inc. come along and ask if you can write an article about their product, and they’ll give you cash for it.

You create an article that will work for your audience, and provide links out to their site, as well as exposing their product to your audience. They make money, you make money, and it’s all good.

Zac Johnson of Blogging Tips took a look into Native Advertising and the company, Ayboll. While this may not be true native advertising, it’s as near as makes no difference to you as a blog owner.

When he asked them to provide some information on what people were earning for having their ads on their site, they came back with this rather impressive screenshot of one of their top performers:

Yep, that’s $212.48 in a day from having their adverts on one site. Not bad, huh?

There appear to be few credible sites selling sponsored posts anymore. But, if you run a blog, there is no doubt they’ll come to you. Or you can take the Ayboll route mentioned above and see how much you can generate from having them on your blog.

2.6: Paid Links

White hat. Black hat. Whatever. People are always going to be paying for links because as long as Google doesn’t have the power to go through your piles of receipts, and you do the link in context, there is no way they’re going to penalise you for it.

If it benefits you and your audience, you might as well cash in when and where you can. It might be risky at times, but the horror stories from bloggers are few and far between.

Now, I’d love to provide you with a case study here of people buying and selling links to make money; but most bloggers like to keep the fact that they sell links under their hat.

But I can tell you from experience I’ve been offered in excess of $300 for a link on a site before, and although I personally never take these offers, I’m sure if I did I’d have a much bigger TV in my house.

Clients tend to come to you for this, much like paid posts. But you can also buy and sell links on sites like Backlinks.

2.7: 26+ Other Ways To Make Money From Your Blog

Okay, if you’re still here, it’s pretty clear that you want to make money from a blog. So, the last six methods you read about are the main ways you can turn a profit from it. But, there are 26 more that you can do to.

For the sake of brevity, you can read about all of them in this article I wrote for Matt right here.

How Much Can You Earn From Blogging?

The income reports for bloggers are wildly different depending on where you read from, and who you read about.

The truth is that around 80% of bloggers will make zero to $100 a month from a blog, but in 2012 Nielsen Social found that there were over 181 million blogs online around the world.

Which means that based on that figure 34,390,000 bloggers will make more than $100 a month.

If you put the effort in the odds really are in your favour.

If you follow Matt’s One Year To A Six-Figure Blog guide, you could build up to a comfortable $300-$400 a month in just a few weeks. And the scope is really limitless after that.

Part #3: Getting Paid For Social Media & Platforms

Social media and building a platform is something you’re going to do anyway so why not try and make a little bit of a side income from it?

3.1: YouTube

You might think of YouTube as a social media platform, you might not. It could have its own entire section, but for the purposes of this article, it’s going to sit right here. You know where to send your hate mail if you have it.

There are a few different ways you can make money from YouTube, both in-front and away from the camera.

For example, Swagbucks will pay you to watch specific videos or take certain actions on YouTube (among other things covered later in this article). You can earn up to $40 a month from just watching YouTube videos.

It’s not much, but it’s money. Or, you can:

• Become a YouTube Partner
• Optimize Your Channel For Monetisation
• Try one of these many methods, too

YouTubers who do it properly make hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars a month doing it. And that’s without even looking at the big earners on YouTube.

How Much Can You Earn?

The real money in YouTube – those big earners I just spoke about – is in endorsements, advertising and promotions. But, it’s still possible to make $100-$200 a month from YouTube by just making videos and putting them online.

You’re going to need a lot of views to get that through advertising and CPC. However, the best way for you to make more money in the short term is through affiliate marketing, like John Chow recommends here.

3.2: Twitter

Twitter is by no means going to make you a millionaire. But, a couple of bucks here and there soon mounts up. And you need to become a ‘sponsored tweeter.’

You can make up to $50 per tweet if you have a big follower base, and $5-$10 for tweets on a smaller follower base. Which isn’t bad for 140 characters worth of work, right?

In fact, right at their conception, Zac Johnson managed to generate over $1400 from running two sponsored tweet campaigns. And celebrities have been known to make $10,000 for them.

Which means if you have a following, or can build one, you could make a nice little side earner from this.

You can sign up to these programs at:

• SponsoredTweets
• MyLikes

3.3: Instagram Advertising

It’s no secret that people advertise on Instagram. In fact, they’re pretty freaking obvious about it. If you’ve ever followed a celebrity, model or athlete, you will have seen a sponsored update like this at some point:

But the beauty is you can cash in on it too. You just need to build yourself a following in a specific niche and leave your contact details in your bio.

Pick a niche or topic, run with it, gain followers and look for opportunities. I have a friend (who prefers to remain anonymous) in the Male Fashion niche who makes up to $1,500 per advert.

So if you you build up enough of a following, you can replace any day job income with it.

3.4: Tsu

Yeah, I had that same blank look on my face when I heard the name too. Don’t worry.

But Tsu is the only remaining advertising based Social Media outlet on the internet. Bubblews has gone under, and bitLanders now offers money to charity on your behalf instead.

Basically for inviting users, sharing content and promoting yourself – and hopefully converting on adverts on your page – you can start making money from it:

Again, it’s not likely to make you a millionaire. But you can get a couple of dollars for doing what you would normally do with your friends anyway.

3.5: IZEA

IZEA isn’t another obscure social media site; instead it’s a way to connect people with large followings – social media, and occasionally blog and YouTube ones – with big brands who are looking to promote themselves.

According to Money Savvy Momma, the way it works is that you sign up the site, and you ‘bid’ on the ability to share an update based on the criteria of your audience.

Basically, if someone is looking for 30-45 year olds who are into sports cars, and your following fits that, you can bid on it. The winner of the bid gets to tweet and gets paid for it.

It doesn’t seem that there is a lot of money to be made here, but there have been tweets that have gone for $50+, so if you build enough of a following you’ll be able to earn more money.

Part #4: Selling Other People’s Products

You don’t have to be the brains behind the entire operation to make money online. You can just as easily make a more than comfortable living selling products other people have created. Here’s how…

4.1: Affiliate Marketing

Average Income: Far too many to get an average, but check out Matt’s Income Reports to get an idea.

This is the big kahuna of making a living online, right? This is where you find everyone from the Weekend Hustlers through to the $10,000 a month legends, and everyone in between.

I could turn this whole subject into an article on its own; but I won’t. Let me explain what an affiliate is, and show you a big list of places you can start affiliate marketing.

Being an affiliate is basically investing time and effort into promoting a product and making a commission every time you complete a sale.

This works best when you have a platform – like a blog, or a YouTube channel – to sell from. But, there are lots of other ways to do it too.

You can either find affiliate opportunities on certain sites that compile them all (see below), or you can go directly to your favourite products themselves and see if they have a programme.

Here are some of the best sites you can sign up to, or become an affiliate from:

• Amazon Affiliates
• Avangate
• ClickBank
• ClickBooth
• ClixGalore
• Commission Junction
• CPA Lead
• CX Digital Media
• DigiResults
• Forex Affiliate
• GetAds
• CX Digital Media
• Link Connector
• Rakuten
• Market Leverage
• OfferVault

How Much Can You Earn?

This is an industry full of variables, so instead, I’m going to point you to this income reportfrom January 2016, so you can see what’s possible and what just starting out looks like.

4.2: Advertising

These are two money making powerhouses back to back, aren’t they?

Advertising has been, and probably always will be, one of the best ways to make money online. While there are camps of people for and against it, advertising plays a role in almost everything online.

And if you’ve got the space to put adverts there, you should take advantage of it.

You’ll be able to advertise if you have a:

• Blog
• YouTube Channel
• Podcast
• Website or Niche Site
• Mailing List
• Any other platform to sell from

There are a couple of subcategories to how you can advertise, though, so let’s take a deeper look at each of them…

4.2.1: PPCC (Pay Per Click Contextual)

These sites work like Google Adsense and choose adverts based on the content of your site, and some of the habits of the user. Meaning you have a little less control over what’s seen, but a better chance of converting.

If you’ve got time (after this article), read this 1k (Almost) In One Week from Glen over at Viper Chill to see how he managed to make almost $1,000 in a week using this style of advertising. Take a look at these sites if you want to get involved:

• Google Adsense
• Media.net
• Infolinks
• Chitika
• Clicksor.com
• Vibrant Media
• Kontera
• GumGum

4.2.2: CPA (Cost Per Action)

This style of advertising pays out based on a specific action, like clicking a button or signing up to a form, and so on. People are pretty tight lipped on what works, and how much money they make, from using these methods.

But, that’s a good thing, because it shows how highly profitable for people it is and they don’t want to share their methods…yet. But you can sign up for this method using these sites:

• Neverblue Media
• PeerFly.com
• Clickbooth
• MaxBounty.com
• ShareaSale.com
• CPAlead.com
• CPAway.com
• Adscend Media

4.2.3: CPM Advertising

Instead of paying for clicks on an ad, CPM pays for pageviews. Usually a specific amount per 1,000 page views, but that will vary depending on the client.

You’ll also need quite a big following for this, so if you’re just starting out, it might be one to think about for later.

Sites that do this, much like above, are keen on keeping how much money they drive through this under wraps:

• ValueClick Media
• Tribal Fusion
• Casale Media
• ePom.com
• Adblade.com
• Advertising.com
• Burst Media
• CPX Interactive
• Technorati Media

Part#5: Selling Your Own Products

Got a product you’ve made, designed or created that you want to sell? Or, just want to shift some of the stuff from your attic?

There is absolutely nothing stopping you from doing it anymore. In fact, why are you still here? Get out there and sell it. Okay…wait a minute and read how to do it. Sorry, I’m just excitable with all this money talk going on.

Here’s how to legitimately sell your products and turn a profit…

5.1: Auctions And Marketplaces

You’ll likely know a lot of these from buying from there, but the beauty of a lot of your favourite sites is that you can sell there as well. You can sell your own products on:

• Amazon: What, have you been living under a rock?
• eBay: See above.
• Craigslist: This is proper Craigslist, not the other one with all the weird stuff going on.
• Backpage: Similar to Craigslist.
• Facebook Buy and Sell: Your local area will no doubt have a buy-and-sell auction going on where you can sell things you don’t want.
• Swappa: Focuses on tablets and phones.
• Shopify: Not directly a sales forum, but allows you to create your own shop on Facebook, your site, or anywhere else you connect with people.
• Bonanza: The best eBay alternative on the market.

You’ll need an account, and probably a PayPal account to make it all run smoothly. But these are the main ways to sell your general items.

Sites like Amazon and eBay have spawned hundreds of profitable businesses on their own, just from people selling their own products.

In this article The Guardian outlines 15 eBay business that are making at least six figures a year and have evolved into entire companies.

5.2: eBooks

eBooks are usually the realm of bloggers and internet celebrities. But, the truth is, if you have an idea for a book, anyone can create and sell one nowadays. And while it definitely helps if you have a platform to sell from, you by no means need one.

Once you’ve created your book, there are lots and lots of sites you can sell it on:

• Lulu
• PayLoadz
• PaySpree
• PayHip
• Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing
• SmashWords
• Kobo Writing Life
• BookTango
• BookBaby
• MyeBook
• Blurb
• eBookIt!
• Tradebit

5.3: Online Courses

I touched on Online Courses in the blogging section, but if you’re not a blogger, you can still make a lot of money from creating a course.

If you consider yourself a specialist, or good enough to teach, in a specific subject then you can turn it into a side career or your full time job. There are people making $100,000+ a yeardelivering online courses, so it’s lucrative if you do it right.

You can create and sell courses using:

• Udemy
• Lynda
• Eliademy
• Rcampus
• Pathwright
• Learnopia
• Moodle
• P2Pu

5.4: Your Own Website Or Domain

Websites are real estate. And no matter what your domain, people want it. In fact they’re dyingto buy it from you. And if you’ve got a well-established site, you can sell (or flip as it’s often known) it for thousands of dollars.

You’ll need to have built up a site and an established flow of traffic to get the big money here. But you can even cash in with your smaller domain for a small amount, too.

The domain flipping authority site, DomainSherpa, recently ran an interview with Ali Zandi, who made more than $58,000 in profit from buying and selling domain names in just 60 days.

Or, if you’re more into the website flipping side of things you can check out Greg Nunan’s story of how he flipped a site for $16,000 at Empire Flippers.

If this sounds like how you want to make money, take a look at one of these sites:

Website Flipping:

• Flippa
• Website Broker
• Empire Flippers
• Buy Website
• DealASite

Domain Names:

• AfterMarket
• Afternic
• Pool
• Sedo
• Bido
• GoDaddy Premium Listings
• SnapNames

5.5: Arts, Crafts And Designs

If you’re an artistic and creative soul, you can make money creating just about anything online. And by anything, I mean anything. There’s a market for everything.

For example, if you’re into art, design or illustration, you could start making money with DeviantArt.

According to this poll on their forum, while not everybody does (or chooses to) make money from their site, there are plenty of people making a decent amount of cash selling there. In fact, some people are making over $10,000 a year selling there…

Take into account that not everyone will have taken the survey, but this is still a good representation

If you think you’ve got the skills to emulate that, you can sell your creations on these sites:

• Etsy
• DeviantArt
• Aftcra
• ArtFire
• Big Cartel
• Super Market HQ
• Uncommon Goods
• Dawanda
• Yakaboo
• Zibbet
• Lilyshop
• Luulla
• Made It Myself
• Not On The High Street
• Silkfair
• Storenavy
• Folksy
• iCraft

Or, if you’re a painter, you can get even more specific and sell on these sites:

• Art London
• Art Majeur
• ArtNet
• Art Web
• My Best Canvas
• Original Art Online
• Saatchi Art
• Ugallery
• Zatista
• Zazzle

5.6: Apps

Don’t fancy being a freelance app creator? Don’t fret, there’s a whole world of people who will buy the ones you’ve created from you. A little like buying and selling websites and real estate, you can create and flip just about anything here.

Carter Thomas, from Blue Cloud Solutions, went from $1,000 to $200,000 flipping apps not too long ago, and he outlines how you can do it right here.

• Flippa Apps
• Chupamobile
• Fliptopia
• Sellmyapp
• Sellmyappz
• Appbackr
• Appsplit
• Apptopia
• Binpress
• Bluecloudsolutions
• Sellmyapplication

5.7: Templates And Web Designs

If you’re creative, but you prefer to keep your designs to a more web-based format, like WordPress themes, site designs and fonts, there’s still a huge market for you.

For example, this Avada theme on ThemeForest has managed to generate over $8.5 million dollars in revenue (and counting).

Now, I’m not suggesting you’ll see the same millionaire results, but with over 22.8 billion pagesbeing read on WordPress a month, that’s a lot of sites that are going to need what you can create.

If this tickles your entrepreneurial fancy, you can sell what you’ve created here:

• ThemeForest
• StudioPress
• MyThemeShop
• Graphicriver
• ActiveDen
• 99 Designs
• Graphicle Leftovers
• Templamatic
• Fantero
• Linotype
• Myfonts
• DaFont

5.8: Music

Think your music career ended in your Aunt’s garage at 16 years old? Think again.

You can make a decent living out of the music industry online, you just need to know where to do it.

Case Studies are few and far between on this front, but I did find this Tech Crunch interview with the creator of DistroKid, that shows proof of people making money, like the duo Jack and Jack, who, thanks to the site, are now embarking on their 18-city tour of the US.

You can create and sell your music on these sites:

• Loudr
• Distrokid
• Tunecore
• The Orchard
• Slice The Pie
• Sellfy
• FetchApp
• CDBaby
• Indaba Music
• Bandcamp
• SongCast
• CashCrate

5.9: Videos

There’s a lot of money to be made in video production. It’s fast becoming the favourite content type for Facebook, and more and more video content is showing up around the Internet. You just need to know where to look to monetize your videos.

Luckily, I’ve taken care of that for you:

• Vimeo
• Shutterstock
• Pond5
• Cruxy
• Clip Canvas
• iStockPhoto
• Metacafe
• Mindbites

5.10: Photography

Got a keen eye for photographs, details and making the ordinary look extraordinary? Well, you might be able to sell your stock photos online.

I know as a blogger myself that this is an industry that people need, and will pay a lot of money for the right image. Michael Jay, a photographer from Berlin, has been able to consistently make $200 a month from Shutterstuck, Fotolia and iStockPhoto.

So, cash in while you can at one of these sites:

• ShutterStock
• 123RoyaltyFree
• StockXpert
• DreamsTime
• Fotolia
• iStockPhoto
• BigStockPhoto
• Crestock
• PhotoStockPlus

5.11: Recycling Your Old Stuff

If you’re human, you probably have a room or attic or cupboard full of stuff you’ve not seen or touched in years. If you’re not human, you’re probably not reading this. So, I’m going to assume you do have stuff to sell.

LoveMoney recently compared all the different DVD and CD recycling options in the UK, and while the results weren’t life-changing, they found you could make around £8-£10 by just getting rid of the ones you don’t watch anymore.

It’s not going to be a long term career plan, but you know, it might be a little something to make money online fast, or at least help you get out of your overdraft.

These sites are UK and US, but they’re all easy ways to get rid of your unwanted stuff pretty easily:

• Music Magpie
• Stuff You Sell
• Best Buy
• We Buy Old Books
• Ziffit
• O2 Recycle
• Costo
• Gazelle
• My Bone Yard
• Preloved

5.12: Collectibles

Where there is fandom, there is a market for collectibles. Whether it’s a 1980s Superhero lunchbox, or first edition Pokemon cards, you can buy and sell any of these collectibles online.

People actually make entire family-supporting incomes from buying and selling this stuff, so the money is always there, if not a little inconsistent. But when you can make $30,000 from a Darth Vader toy, you can see why people do it.

This isn’t just for geeks and dudes into cosplay, either. You can do this in just about any niche, from antiques, to old books and even snow globes or Dutch windmills.

Who knows, you might even have a goldmine sitting at the back of a cupboard, just waiting to be sold. And if you do, you can list them on these sites:

• TLAS
• 707 Sportscards
• Baseball Card Exchange
• BidStart
• Collectible Page
• Kovels
• iCollector
• Ruby Lane

Part #6: Finance & Property

The financial and real estate worlds are moving from the high street, and focusing more on the online market. So, now may be the time get involved and start making some money through these channels.

After all, they’re two words that are synonymous with dollar signs, right?

6.1: Peer-To-Peer Lending

Peer-To-Peer lending, or crowdfunding, is a way of making money for absolutely no work. However, it’s high risk, so you need to understand the pros and cons of doing it.

Basically, people come looking for loans from Peer-to-Peer lenders because they cut the bank out of the middle, and can get better rates. And it’s good for you as an investor, because you can often make up to 7% (or more) back on your money for doing nothing.

You often don’t need to be the sole lender, either. You can buy into different loans for smaller amounts, like $25, and still get a return when the debt is payed off.

These are all regulated and you have a lot of protections in place. So, it’s not like just giving your drunk mate $25 that you’ll never see again.

But, like I said, this can be quite risky. So, before you take part in any of these schemes, I’d take a look at this guide from Money Saving Expert.

You can get involved in lending at:

• Lending Club
• Prosper
• Funding Circle
• Ratesetter
• Zopa

There are many, many more, too. But these are the only sites I’ve seen that have been thoroughly reviewed and vetted. So, choose one of them if you’re new to all this.

6.2: Change Your Bank Account

This is only a small one, but you can earn an extra $100-$200 for doing something that reallywon’t affect your life in the long run. You can get more interest, better rates, or actual cash in hand just for switching your account(s) over.

Money Saving Expert put together a whole guide on it right here that can make the process easier, and more profitable, for you.

6.3: Forex Trading

I used to have a client I ghostwrote for who, at times, made $1,000-$2,000 per day on the Foreign Exchange (Forex) market. Like all trading – as you’ll see next – it’s a little like gambling, and is risk and reward. I’d suggest reading more from the pros right here.

Or, if this really is up your street and you want to know the ins and outs of making money this way, you can check out Viper Chill’s piece on how Campbell makes up to $10,000 a month Forex Trading.

Here are some sites for you to get involved in Forex:

• FXCM
• FOREX
• IG

6.4: Stock Trading

Stock Brokers are world renown for making (and losing) a lot of money. Now, finding a reliablecase study about online stock trading is pretty hard, because people like to keep that under their hats a little.

But as long as Wall Street is around, and sites like Ameritrade and Scottrade keep putting adverts on the TV, you know it’s a profitable industry. Instead, here’s a guide from The Guardianon the best ways to learn or get involved with stock trading.

But, if you can’t be bothered with all the shouting and punching other people in the face to buy stocks in pantyhose, you can do it all online at one of these sites:

• E*TRADE
• TD Ameritrade
• Trade King
• Fidelity
• Interactive Brokers
• Scottrade
• Sharebuilder
• Charles Schwab

Part #7: Surveys, Research And Cashback

People will literally pay you to do anything on the internet (hey, reign your dirty mind in, you!). And you can make money online from home by simply taking surveys, trials and doing basic tasks.

You won’t get rich doing this, but an extra $20-$30 dollars here and there is always nice at the end of the month.

And you can even get paid to do your online shopping. You know, that stuff you already do anyway without thinking about it. So you can build up cash back without even putting in any effort. As they say in Manchester – “winner, winner, chicken dinner.”

7.1: Surveys And Trials

Payments here vary for each site, but there are people who have made $300 to $950 in a year doing this.

Okay, I’m going to be really honest here. I have no idea why people pay for this stuff. Like, no idea at all. It blows my mind. Yet, make money online surveys are actually a thing.

But they will pay you to do it, so why the heck not, right?

If you want to get paid to fill out surveys, take trials and do other little tasks around the internet, you can sign up to these sites:

• iSay
• Just The Answer
• Vivatic
• Vanson Bourne
• YouGov
• Project Payday
• Opinion World
• Opinion Outpost
• OnePoll
• MySurvey
• Crowdology
• Global Test Market
• NewVista
• Valued Opinions
• PureProfile
• MaxiMiles

7.2: CashBack

Cashback works by making you an affiliate of an affiliate, if that makes sense?

For example, DavidBuysThings is an affiliate of Target. You buy your kids birthday present through DavidBuysThings at Target. You get a percentage of his percentage of the sale.

And depending on the type of thing you purchase, you can get a lot of money. For example, buying a mobile phone contract in the UK can earn you up to £100 cash back.

These are a no-brainer for making money online, really. You’re going to buy stuff anyway, so you might as well get paid for doing it.

But I’d recommend reading this guide on cashback sites to learn some of the best practices, and to cover your own backside.

Here are some of the top cashback sites for you to choose from and make your next online purchase through:

• eBates
• Mr Rebates
• Top Cashback
• Quidco

7.3: Market Research

Don’t worry, there’s no dodgy medication or possible side effects here. Instead, there’s only money to be made. Market Research is big business, and companies spend millions of dollars on it each year. So, why not pocket some of that for yourself, too?

When they outsource that research to third party sites, they tend to pay people to enter the trials, answer questions and be part of focus groups. And you can be as blunt as you want and get paid for it. Score. Reports show people making between £200 and £800 a year for this.

Try it out at one of these sites:

• Qustodian – Read adverts on your phone
• Field Agent – Perform research tasks via an app
• Yoobic – Take photos of products in shops and marketing displays
• Streetspotr – Market research tasks

7.4: Consumer Research

Market research is pretty specific to finding what an audience likes, and tailoring a product to it. Consumer research is when the product is in the production phase and is having the kinks worked out.

It’s kind of like watching a movie before it’s released to tell the director if it’s good or not.

This could have had its own section within itself, but between you and me (and the thousand other people who will read this), it’s not as lucrative as it used to be. For example, I’ve been a BzzAgent for almost two years and have trialled a grand total of zero products.

So while it is a worthwhile way to make a little extra money, I wouldn’t suggest you turn it into a career just yet.

This can be split into loads of little subcategories, though:

• Product Testing: Testing products before release.
• Games Testing: Gameplay testing games before release.
• Music Listening: Listening to music, and quality, and reporting if you like it.
• Focus Groups: Letting companies test ideas, shows and other items on you.
• Website Testing: Testing experience, ease of use, navigation etc.
• Mystery Shopping: This is a little online and offline, you sign up online and test restaurants/shops in real life for quality of service.

Here are all the sites you can get involved with each of these…

7.4.1: Product And Games Testing

This isn’t always paid, but it often is. For example, Pinecone Research will pay around £3.00 per survey or product tested, and you usually get to keep the product afterwards.

And either way, you get to play with some cool new tech or products:

• Influenster
• Bzz Agent
• Expo panel
• Smiley 360
• Swaggable
• House Party
• Moms Meet
• GamesTesters
• Paid Game Player

7.4.2: Music Research

Despite what other sites might tell you, I’ve only found two legitimate ways of making money from listening to music.

The first is Slice The Pie, where you get paid to write reviews. The second is Music Research, where you get paid to answer surveys and questions about music.

The pay here isn’t exactly great, you’ll be looking at starting at £0.03 per review on Slice The Pie, but if you’re really in need of an extra couple of bucks, you could probably build this to a decent little saver over time.

7.4.3: Online Focus Groups

Become a part of a focus group at any of these sites:

• The Paid Focus Group Network
• Microsoft Research Panel
• Google User Research
• 2020Panel
• Focus Pointe Global
• Jebbit

7.4.4: Website Testing

This niche doesn’t pay the most, but you can get $10-$25 for five minutes work and to share your thoughts. Do a few of these in a couple of hours and you’ve made a pretty penny.

You can find opportunities for this here:

• Validately
• What Users Do
• User Testing
• Start Up Lift
• Enroll
• Analysia
• Try My Ui
• UserFeel
• Userlytics

7.4.5: Mystery Shopping

This is split between online and offline, and could be subject to location, but you can earn from $25 onwards, with your expenses covered, using one of these sites.

• ICCDS
• Intelli Shop
• Market Viewpoint
• Mystery Shoppers
• Grass Roots Measures
• HS Brands
• Shoppers
• Spies in Disguise
• Second To None
• Service Performance Group
• Rentrak Mystery Shopping
• Restaurant Cops
• Ritter Associates

7.5: Renting Property

Okay, I’m not going to recommending buying, selling or flipping actual properties on the Internet. Because, if you’re reading this article, you’re probably not in the market for that. And that’s as much offline as it is offline. However…

Renting space you do have, even just a room in your house or apartment, is an easy way to make extra cash without having to do any work (except for maybe a quick vacuum and making a bed).

For example, Evan here makes $11,000 a month for renting out his San Francisco apartment. In his words, “I get paid to simply NOT be in my apartment”. Not a bad job, eh?

You can rent out spaces on the following sites:

• 9Flats
• Airbnb
• Rentalo
• Roomoramma
• Camp In My Garden
• Easy Room Mate
• Storemates
• Wimbdu
• Park At My House
• Rent My Items

Part #8: Niche Sites

Niche Sites are specific sites that target one area of life or interest. For example, Joe’s Daily is a niche site about Men’s Lifestyle, while Sean Ogle’s Breaking Eighty is a niche site all about golf. You can always argue that owning any website is a niche site in one way or another.

But, Niche Sites get a section all of their own because they’re a little different. Why?

A niche site is:

• Specific: Only covering one topic or interest
• Authority Building: You present yourself as an authority, or personality, in that niche
• Keyword Based: Built around a couple of key words or phrase
• More Than Just A Blog: You aren’t just a blog with products, you’re a resource for people to visit

But the days of super-specific niche sites, where you only build around one keyword are long dead. They just aren’t rich enough for Google, or for people to trust to buy from, anymore. There needs to be depth of content, like in the sites I linked to above.

You can make money from these types of sites with these methods:

• Affiliate marketing
• Email Marketing
• Advertising
• Sponsored Posts
• Product Reviews
• Membership Pages
• Premium Content
• Downloadable Magazines

And many, many more I’m sure.

How Much Can You Earn?

Like everything else with money, it depends.

Your income can range from $10-$20 per month, all the way up to $6,000 and beyond. And by beyond, I mean six figures and more, if you get it right.

Starting a niche site is a little beyond the scope of this article, though. However you can find a killer guide to getting one started right here.

Part #9: Work At Home Companies

The life of a freelancer or an entrepreneur isn’t for everyone. Sometimes you want to make money from the comfort of your own home, without having to worry about how much your paycheck is going to be every month.

That’s where work-at-home companies come into their own. You can find work for companies without ever having to take off your slippers.

Here are some of the best ways to find work at home, work:

• Demand Studios: Creative professionals, from writers to filmmakers
• Liveops: Work from home call centre
• Speakwrite: A $15 transcription service
• Take Note: Another transcription service
• Lionbridge: Work contracts on a 10-hour minimum
• AQA: Online research positions
• Leap Force: Remote work agency
• Remotive.io: Easy to navigate remote work job board

But you can also discuss remote work by talking to employers, too. But that’s a little beyond the scope of this article.

How Much Can You Earn?

Most of these jobs are salaried, so you’ll get paid what the company thinks is right based on your:

• Experience
• Qualifications
• Niche

And a bunch of other factors I’ll never understand or agree with in the working world. Most of these sites don’t share their average salary for people, either, so I’m afraid you’ll have to find a job and apply for it and request that information.

Part #10: Advice And Questions

Agony Aunts (and Uncles, don’t worry fellas) aren’t only found in the back of the newspapers. In fact, there are people who will pay you to give advice and answer questions all across the internet.

It could be giving advice to someone struggling with a relationship, answering a text questions about who played Han Solo in Star Wars or just helping someone out on a forum. If you’ve got the knowledge, you could be making money from it.

By working at one of these sites, you can aim to earn between $0.25c to $25 per answer, depending on your level of expertise and the demand for answers in that niche:

1. myLot
2. JustAnswer
3. kgb
4. KnowBrainers
5. ChaCha
6. Online Psychic Network
7. Funadvice
8. Keen
9. LivePerson
10. Ether
11. Experts 123
12. Weegy
13. Help Owl
14. SmallBizAdvice
15. Chegg

Part #11: Content Mills

Content Mills – sites that create lots of content for a small fee – have a bad reputation. Not because they aren’t a good source of making money. It’s because writing purists think they’re the equivalent of wiping your b** with their manuscript.

However if you want a way to make money for writing, and you’re not fussed about making it into a full time income, then you can make a nice little side income through these sites. For example, by writing a unique 1,500 word list post for Listverse you can get $100 an article.

There’s no limit to how many you can write in a month for them, either.

You can roll your sleeves up and start writing at one of these many sites:

• Listverse
• A List Apart
• Uxbooth
• iWriter
• Textbroker
• Cracked

Part #12: Miscellaneous

Okay, this is the part of the list where things get a little disjointed. These are the weird, wonderful and erm…different, ways you can make money online. Not highly recommended, but they’re still there if you want to make a couple of extra dollars here and there.

12.1: Rent Your Bike

Like AirBnb has taken over the world of rental properties and hotels, the same tend is happening for cycling and bicycles, too.

With a huge rise in Copenhagenization – the redesigning of cities to be more bike friendly – it makes sense that this is a rising industry for tourists and locals.

If you’ve got a bike that you’re not using, it could be making you money instead of sitting in your garage. Here are some credible sites for you to list it on:

• Velib
• B-Cycle
• Call-A-Bike
• CyclOcity
• Niceride
• HZ Bike
• Social Bicycles
• Spinlister

12.2: Gambling

From Poker Tables to Bingo and everything in between, you can make a decent living from Gambling Online (or, you know, lose it all in an instant).

If you’re fan of high risk, high return income streams, then this might be a good place to start.

However remember Gambling is addictive, so please take this section carefully and make sure you only ever gamble with money you do have, and don’t get yourself into a silly situation.

Some of the best, most trusted gambling sites are here:

• William Hill
• Foxy Bingo
• Betfred
• Party Poker
• 888 Casino
• Titan Poker
• Betfair

12.3: Have A Bit Of Blue…

It’s been the elephant in the room for this whole post, and it’s still a legitimate way of making money online – albeit not for everyone – so I’m going to briefly, and in the least awkward way, approach it. You can make money from P0rn0 sites online.

People have been known to make $100 a day passive income from uploading and advertising there, and there are the people who make it themselves at home who make a decent paycheck, for work I’m sure they enjoy.

So, while I’m not going to recommend this as an industry to make money, it’s one of the most sought after things on the Internet, so it’s always an option I guess.

12.4: Sell Parts Of Your Body

Okay, I think you’re aware of just how…odd, the Internet can be. And you can sell, buy, trade and make money from just about anything you can think of.

For example, you can make $5 on this site just for selling your soul. Yes, that’s right, your soul. You can even buy one if you’re really in the mood.

You could also:

• Sell Your Hair (or sell it here if you’re in the UK)
• Become part of an Online Jury here and here
• Sell your blood

I’m not saying you should actually do any of these. But, you know, it’s always nice to have options, right?

12.5: Become A Human Billboard

Meet Billy. Billy is the Human Billboard. And he’s covered in Tattoo Advertisements, including this fetching one for Host Gator:

Now, while I’m not going to go out there and tell you to get stuff tattooed on your body (although I just text my friend telling him he should do it), it’s pretty lucrative. Billy was selling off small tattoos for between $2,000 on his chest and $20,000 on his forehead.

But, I should warn you, Billy currently wants the tattoos removed off his face. Because, well, they’re mostly p0rn0 sites that don’t exist anymore. Who knew getting that tattooed on your face could get old, eh?

The Make Money Online Scams You Need To Avoid…

Okay, I’m going to be really honest with you here:

Scammers are everywhere on the Internet. Whether it’s your first time trying to make money online, or it’s your hundredth, you’re still open to the threat of scammers.

And if you really need the money you’re trying to make online, it’s easy to be sucked into them in the hopes that everything will turn out alright.

For a lot of these methods, you’ll be safe from make money online scams. I’ve done everything I can to make sure that these sites are scam free. But, they can come in many forms:

• Fake clients
• Fake buyers
• People looking to loan you money
• People offering training courses that guarantee a job

And many, many more. So, before you do venture out into the world of online earning, make sure you’re vigilant to these scams…

The 10 Most Common Make Money Online Scams

According to research from This Is Money in the UK, these are the top 10 most common scams you need to be aware of. And as you’ll see almost all of them target your bank account in some way:

Other Scams You Need To Look Out For…

While those are the main scams that make their way around the Interwebz, there are also other, more subtle scams that you could fall victim to. Here they are under the microscope:

Fake Client Scams

If you’re looking to get into Freelancing you need to pay attention to people who pose as clients. They’ll often send poorly worded emails that look like the one below, and ask odd questions, like if you accept credit cards or bitcoin payments:

[source: TheLawTog]

You may also find that they ask you to take on work for a percentage of their profits when the business finally goes ‘live.’ If you see this, I’d cease communications altogether. While they may seem genuine, there is a good chance that they aren’t.

Fake Buyer Scams

For most sites you’ll be covered for this, so you won’t have to worry if you’re using a large site like eBay or Amazon. However do be careful if you’re using one of these sites and people ask you to sell outside of the site.

For example, they ask to buy your item at a higher (or reduced) rate outside of the site. There is a good chance you’re being targeted for a scam, and I’d recommend walking away.

Pyramid Schemes

In a world of Herbalife and Juice Plus, pyramid schemes have started to make a comeback under lots of different guises. They often call themselves Multi Level Marketing programmes, or other similar names.

Basically, you start making money by selling a product. Then you recruit someone and you start making money from what they earning. And the more people you recruit the more money you’ll make. While the premise sounds legit, these can often be really big scams.

You might be asked to:

• Purchase a batch of products
• Make an investment of a couple of thousands dollars
• Buy a ‘license’ to sell the product

And they can leave you out of pocket, with no way of getting the money back, other than to sell their products. But these companies often disappear into thin air overnight, too. Best to avoid them at all costs.

The Training Course Scam…

This is a really easy one for people to pull of with the rise in video and online courses. And it comes in two main forms:

For A Job:

These people will advertise a job – possibly remotely – that fits your niche and skills. Then, they’ll say before you can be accepted to the job, you have to complete this training course that costs you x, y or z amount of money.

You will never have to pay for training for a job, but if you’re even just a little unsure, check with the employer and do some in-depth research about the company.

False Promises:

These come in the facade of sales pages offering you skills like, “How To Make $100,000 Blogging This Year”, and they’ll come with a brilliant sales pitch and maybe even videos. But, once you purchase and click through…nothing.

You’re just $200 short and no further forward in your career.

Make sure you always do you research and look for reviews, or employer information, before you try any of these.

Wrapping It Up

Phew, there you have it, over 465 ways to make money online. Some quick earners, others you have to take for the long haul. But there are no scams, no get-rich-quick schemes and nothing scandalous that could land you in hot water.

Just one final recap before we wrap this all up:

• If you want to make consistent money: Look at Freelancing, Affiliates, Blogging or Work From Home Companies
• If you want to make quick money: Look at Freelancing, Blogging, Selling Your Own Stuff, Surveys or Questions And Advice

And be sure to be on the look out for any and all scams that could be flying around on the internet.

So now you know how to make money online – where are you going to get started?

Let me know in the comments…