1. Earn Money Online by Blogging
Blogging is a nice way to make free money.
Obviously, this was going to be the first on my list (I am also a professional blogger after all!). Professional blogging is one of the best known method of getting income from computer based jobs. We all arrive at blogs while surfing and we see advertisements on many blogs. So, we can easily know that the owner of that blog is earning some amount of money from writing the blog content.
If you have only little time, you can also
Find Small Micro Jobs Online
There are a number of good and free blog sites where you can easily setup your blog. After setup, you should write about things that really interest you. Once your blog is adequately settled (let's say when it begins to receive 100 visitors a day), then you should put online ads on it. You can use Google AdSense for getting ads (like I do on TechWelkin) or you can use ad service provided by other networks like Yahoo! Media.net. WordPress.com also provides its own ads.
To create a money making blog, I would recommend that you invest in the following tools. I am also using these tools for my blogs
Genesis framework (it makes WordPress even more powerful)
DreamHost hosting (reliable host is a must!)
Grammarly (#1 writing tool)
ShareASale (great affiliates to join)
By the way, did you know that Google makes 95% of its revenue from advertisement? Bloggers get share from this revenue if they publish Google ads on their blogs. I keep on writing articles about how to become a successful blogger. You should keep an eye on these articles.
Skills required for professional blogging: Good command on language, ability to write in an interesting way, familiarity with basic coding and other technical stuff like SEO.
How much money can you earn from blogging?
With a blog with one thousand visitors per day, a blogger can from $0.5 to $30 per day. Blogging can fetch you varied amounts of money depending upon the web traffic you receive and the monetization strategy you adopt. Many people argue that using affiliate marketing model is far better than using Google AdSense. I tend to disagree with this but certainly what works for one blog may not work for another.
Bloggers in US, UK and Canada make millions of dollars from their blogs. They are more entrepreneurial —many bloggers have actually turned their blogs into content or media companies. Huffington Post, for example, was only a blog and now it is one of the most influential news aggregator in the world. Story of Mashable is also similar.
In India, established bloggers, like Amit Agarwal, make hundreds of thousands of rupees every month. These are full time bloggers. Those who do part-time blogging, their earnings also depends on how much time they devote to their blogs.
How much money can you earn from AdSense?
Many successful bloggers and webmasters earn $100 to $500 per day with Google AdSense. Some bloggers in USA earn several thousand dollars every day from AdSense. Earning from AdSense heavily depends on the CPC rate you get from Google. In countries like USA, Canada, UK, Australia, the CPC rate is very high —that's why bloggers make much more money in these countries. So, go on and become a professional blogger!
Design themes for platforms like WordPress and Blogger.
Design themes for platforms like WordPress and Blogger.
All websites and blogs require a “theme” (also called template or skin) which dictates how the site looks like.
You can also become a theme designer if you have good sense of design and other required skills. Once a theme is done, you can sell it on theme stores or you can setup your own website through which people can buy your themes. Designing themes for platforms like WordPress, Blogger, Joomla, Drupal etc. is a lucrative business. You can earn decently income from this profession.
Skills required: Web design sense, CSS, HTML, JavaScript, Photoshop, knowledge of the target platform.
How much money can you earn from designing themes?
Usually, one copy of a theme sells anywhere between $10 to $100. So, even if you sell just one hundred copies, you may make thousands of dollars. If you design a customized theme for a specific client, you can charge even more depending on the efforts you had to put in.
You can impart knowledge and be a teacher on Internet.
You can impart knowledge and be a teacher on Internet.
Yes! you can be an online teacher. And the great thing about it is that you can teach virtually anything. So, whatever is your skill and expertise —you will be able to offer lessons to perspective students.
SkillsShare is one such service which allows you to be an online teacher. After registering, you can create courses (classes) on whatever subject you know. It could range anything from cooking to mathematics to engineering to designing to languages to whatever!
There is another similar service called Udemy. On these websites you basically sell your courses to earn money from online teaching service. You get paid when a student takes the online course developed by you.
Skills required: expertise in subject on which you're offering course. Knowledge of Photoshop and making videos is also useful as these things can make your course more interesting and easy to understand.
Writing and publishing e-books can bring you loads of money!
Writing and publishing e-books can bring you loads of money!
If you have a story to tell or if you want to share your expertise in the form of a book, well then, go ahead and write a book! What better could be there than writing a book! You don't need traditional pen and paper. Become a completely tech-savvy author. Use MS-Word to write your book. Once the book is ready, you don't even need a publisher! You can self-publish and sell e-book versions through platoforms like Amazon's Kindle, Google Play Store and Apple's app store (iBooks). If you're in India, Flipkart, Infibeam etc. are also great choices. You can sell both e-books or printed books.
Also there are online services like Lulu where you can order print copies of your book. Buyers will be able to purchase print copies right from there or you can put print copies on sale through Amazon, Flipkart, eBay etc. Pothi.com is an Indian venture that can print self-published books.
You can sell personalized designer items online to earn money.
You can sell personalized designer items online to earn money.
Can you draw well enough? Have you ever thought that even your drawing (or even doodling) can help you make free money online?
You can print designs, drawings or photos created by you on items like coffee cups, t-shirts, bags etc. and then sell them. A friend of mine is pretty good at making designs. She created her own zazzle online shop and began to sell stuff. Here is how it works:
Create your design and fine-tune it
Register at Zazzle.com and create your own shop (it's very easy!)
Zazzle has merchandise items like cups, cards, t-shirts etc.
Customer comes to your online shop. He selects a design from your catalog and then selects a merchandise item. Customer then places order to get the item with your design on it.
Zazzle prints your design on selected item and send it to customer.
You get your share from the money earned by Zazzle.
Just to help you understand it better, here is a video that shows how Zazzle can help you in making money:
Besides Zazzle, CafePress and Threadless services are also good options for minting online income!
YouTube pays well for the monetized videos. Create interesting videos to make money from Internet.
YouTube pays well for the monetized videos. Create interesting videos to earn money from Internet.
I am sure you have watched more than one videos on YouTube. All internet users have! It is after all the world's largest video sharing service. But now enough of just watching. Create your own videos and share them with the world. What's more, you can earn money from these videos!
You can shoot small (or big!) video clips using mobile phone, handycam or professional video camera. Or you can make videos from pictures using your computer. OR you can create animated videos and tutorials. Once your video is ready, upload it on YouTube and monetize it. YouTube will show ads along with your video and share revenue with you.
A lot of people have earned great amount of money through this online work. Most of it is home-based job —but you may need to venture outside to shoot videos.
Skills required: Know how of using video camera and video editing software.
How much can you earn from YouTube?
If your YouTube channel has a million subscribers, you can earn from $100,000 to $300,000 per month. Mostly it depends on how interesting your videos are. Secondly, it depends on the how many people have subscribed to your YouTube channel. The stories of Olga Kay and Mimi Ikonn will tell you that they definitely earn more than $100,000 every year from their YouTube channels. This is the minimum. No one really knows the exact amount but many sources say that they could actually be touching one million dollars every year.
Earning huge money from YouTube sounds great. But it requires a lot of appeal, creativity and hard work. Even if you do not make millions, YouTube is a great way to make decent income.
7. Find Internet-based Jobs of Any Kind
If you're looking for providing admin or technical support to others, there are several places where you can find jobs. Just browse through them and select the one that suits you.
oDesk, for example, is one such place. Clients post job details on oDesk and job seekers like you take on the work. Mostly the work involves working through computer and internet. However, it entirely depends on the specific job. You may get work like software or web development, writing assignments, proof-reading work, business development etc. There are lots of jobs to choose from.
Other similar places are eLance and TaskRabbit. TaskRabbit also offers jobs that are not entirely online (for example, helping someone with moving their house).
Skills required: Depends on the job you select.
8. Earn Money Online by Becoming a Translator
Lots of translation jobs are available online for language experts.
Lots of translation jobs are available online for language experts.
If you know any two languages very well, there are plenty of translation jobs available online. And they pay well. You make good money from online work of translation.
Translatorsbase.com is perhaps the best website I know where you can regularly get online translation work. You will need to bid for every piece of work and if you win the bid, work is yours to do and the client pays you through the website. You can do translation work on your computer and submit the finished work through Translatorsbase.
9. Transcription Jobs to Earn Money Online
In transcription, usually you need to listen to an audio or video and type out what was spoken in that. Or you may be asked to look at an image (like a receipt) and type out the text details visible in there. It may sound easy, but trust me this work requires patience, experience and skills. Being able to understand various accents, hand writings and thorough knowledge of the language is a must.
Such jobs are available through oDesk, eLance etc. But Amazon Mechanical Turks is a specialized service that offers what they call “Human Intelligence Tasks”. These are the tasks that computer can not do perfectly and therefore require human intervention. That intervention is what you provide!
Client offers a specific payment amount for every such job. You can decide whether you want to do that job of the offered price or not.
10. Affiliate Income is a Great Way to Earn Money
Affiliate Marketing is a great way to earn money from your blog or website.
Affiliate Marketing is a great way to earn money from your blog or website.
If you have a successful blog or website, you can also get affiliated with other vendors and show their ads on your website. If a customer sees an advert on your website and through that purchases an item from vendor's online store, you get a commission from the sale amount.
Affiliate advertisement is different from Google AdSense. You get paid from AdSense on clicks (cost per click or CPC model)… but in case of affiliate ads, you get paid only when customer really purchases the product through an advertisement on your website.
ShareASale is one of the best place to find affiliate advertisements. With advertisers in the network of ShareASale, you can make eye-popping money!
Commission Junction (now known just as CJ) is another good place to find affiliate ad opportunities. It is a website where you can get affiliate offers from a large number of brands and vendors. Companies like Amazon, eBay, Flipkart also run their separate affiliate programs. You can use them too. To help you even more, I have written a review of Flipkart's affiliate program. I would recommend that you select an affiliate product which is relevant to the content of your own website. Such products convert the best into real sale (and therefore into real money for you). For example, if you have a blog on books, you can show affiliate ads from Amazon showcasing only books.
11. Earn Money by Selling Your Used Stuff
There are hundreds of online services where you can easily sell your things that are no longer in use. For example, if you've an old mobile phone handset lying useless in your drawer, you can sell it on eBay or Cragilist (oh, this Craiglist thing was really useful when I was living abroad!). If you're in India you can use OLX and Quickr. These are free classified ad websites. Almost all of them have a mobile app as well. All this makes it pretty easy to convert old and useless stuff like CDs, books, clothes, stationary, toys into money.
I wonder if you would put this under “making money online” category! Well, I certainly would!
If you're a programmer, you can find ad-hoc coding jobs online. Just take the project, build it, test it, submit it and get the payment. Freelancer (formerly known as Rent-a-Coder) is out there for years. It does not matter which programming language or platform you can work on, you'll find jobs for all. Freelancer website does the job of connecting programmers with clients. There are other alternatives like Guru, oDesk, eLance and TaskRabbit.
13. Start an Online Newsletter Magazine to Earn Money
Ok, I have already told you about writing a book and also about becoming a blogger. But if you don't want to post daily (as a blogger does) or sit for weeks or months to write a book —then you can opt for the fabled Middle Path; that is to say that you can serve content as a periodical.
You can start a e-newsletter (or a e-magazine) and ask people to subscribe to it for a fee. Websites like Aweber and MailChimp can help you manage subscriptions and dispatch of your e-newsletter. If your newsletter has a wide reach, you may also be able to show ads in your newsletter and/or find sponsors for your newsletter.
14. Earn Money By Selling Creative Work Online
Many websites like ArtFire and Etsy allow you to sell whatever creative you can make. Take a look at these websites and you'll be astonished at the variety of stuff people make and sell it through Internet. Larger web stores, like eBay, also allow you to earn money from your creative instincts.
You can make interesting stuff with junk, knit wooly patterns, create funky jewellery, hand-paint vases, make stuffed toys —trust me if you try; you can really work at home and then convert it into a business with the help of the network of networks, the amazing Internet. Earning from internet is not entirely a myth after all!
Got a good voice? Record. Send File. Get Payment! There are hosts of voice-over jobs available on Internet.
Got a good voice? Record. Send File. Get Payment! There are hosts of voice-over jobs available on Internet.
Have you got a deep baritone voice? or a bubbly, chirpy one? or may be the one that has the chime and clarity of a tolling bell! If yes, you can online lend your voice as voice over artist. You can narrate stories, news and other text items. A friend of mine uses Umano and he is pretty thrilled with the experience. You can also use VoiceBunny or Voice123 for the same purpose.
You would need to have a good audio recording setup at home and that's all. Just pick a job from above mentioned websites, do it by recording your narration, upload the resultant audio file. And then get paid for your work. All this can be done from your desk at home. Dreamy? Nah! it is a good reality. Come on! jump on the bandwagon of online professionals.
16. Help Kids in their Studies
I have already mentioned SkillShare and Udemy as websites where you act a bit like a lecturer. You make courses and people buy them. But if you don't wanna get into full-fledged course development and just want to help students with their current academic issues, you're still in luck as there are several online places where you can get tuition assignments also.
Here you can help kids with their school or homework and teach them specific subjects. Tutor.com and TutorVista.com are among such websites where you can get online tuition assignments.
Photographers can sell their work through various websites.
Photographers can sell their work through various websites.
Do you love photography? Do you click good enough photos? Well, if yes, you can find a buyer on websites like iStockPhoto and CreativeMarket. Don't think that your photos are not good enough. Give it a try —and you may be in for a surprise! Folks out there need all sorts of photos for publishing online and in print. So, number and variety of photos required is never enough. Go ahead and be a professional photographer!
And, by the way, if you look great… you can even sell your selfies. But first you'll have to learn how to take good selfie photos. Then try your luck (however, you must consider privacy concerns in case of selfie.)
18. Sell Website, Domain Name or Mobile Apps
If you own a domain name or a website (even a defunct one!) or a mobile app… and you want to sell it off, you should visit Flippa or Sedo or GoDaddy Auctions. On these websites, you can set a base price for what you're selling and then perspective buyers bid in an auction format. Such a model maximizes your earning from selling domain name or website or mobile app.
I have mentioned above about building website or a blog in order to earn money online. But it is not always that people become a successful blogger. After a point of time, most bloggers feel frustrated, just call it a day and quit. What's left behind is a constructed website and a domain name. If you have no plan to proceed further with your website or blog, you can always sell it to get money from what's left.
A word of advice here, do not get into full-time blogging from the beginning. Professional blogging is a tough nut to crack and it takes quite a bit of time before you will be able to earn enough money from blogging alone. Begin as a part-time blogger and then later on switch to full-time.
19. Earn Money by Becoming a Website Tester
UserTesting is a place where crowd tests websites. Webmasters and e-commerce companies hire people like you to surf their newly built or renovated website. You surf the website and provide them with the feedback. And you get paid or this! Easy, isn't it? Well, yes, it is one of the easier online jobs. But again, you need to take it seriously. The more useful feedback you can provide to the website owner, the more jobs you'll be able to find in future.
20. Make and Sell Music to Earn Money Online
Apart from voice-over, which I mentioned above, you can do another recording based work. If you know how to touch the right chords on a musical instrument —you should compose music and then sell it online. No need to keep running after music companies. Other companies also need music. You can compose and sell smaller tunes like jingles, ringtones and even full-songs.
There are online music stores where you can directly sell music MP3 files. These stores include iTunes (oh well, you already know it! don't you?), Pandora, Amazon, Spotify, Google Play etc. There are also online services which put your music in these stores on your behalf. DistroKid and loudr.fm are among the better choices.
21. Become a Guest Writer to Earn Money Online
If you're an expert in a particular field (like technology, health, cars, business development or anything else) you can write guest posts for bloggers who run profitable blogs on these subjects. Some big bloggers who earn money from blogging, can pay good amount of money if you can write an authoritative post for them. You can even earn as much as $500 by writing just one article! I have written an article about what is guest blogging and how should be done.
Remember, however easy it may sound, but you get good money from guest blogging only if you really are an expert in your field. People do not pay for mediocre guest articles.
Can you really earn money by filling online survey forms? Years ago, I came across the first advertisement that was inviting people to fill online surveys and get paid in return. At that time, frankly, I thought it was a scam! Why would someone pay for a simple task as filling an online survey form?
But later I realized that it is indeed possible to earn money by paid surveys. Research agencies and companies of all sizes need to know what public is thinking. Do you know that surveying public for their opinion is over $40 billion industry. There are several websites that act as a bridge between surveyors and the public (that is you!). These websites bring you online surveys and pay you for for filling them.
Responding to online surveys are a good way to make quick bucks.
Responding to online surveys are a good way to make quick bucks.
Some of the good online survey websites are The Opinion Panel, OnePoll, Toluna, MySurvey, Vivatic, YouGov and SurveyBods. You can go and register on these websites. After registration, these websites will keep on sending you surveys. You need to fill them up and get your rewards.
How do you get paid for filling online surveys? Well, most of these websites offer you vouchers of popular online stores. You can redeem these vouchers and buy anything of your liking from these stores. Some websites also pay you in cash via PayPal.
You should fill these surveys with honesty. Don't take these polls just as a money making exercise. Read all the questions carefully and then enter your frank opinion.
How much can you earn from online surveys?
Usually you can earn to the tunes of $2 per survey. Filling online surveys does not pay handsome money —it is just good for earning some extra bucks. Companies involved in online surveys pay very little amounts and in many cases they don't pay cash. When you will open an account and fill surveys, these companies will award you points. When you earn a certain number of reward points, you can get an equivalent gift (and sometimes cash).
23. Earn Money by Becoming an Online Researcher
If you love to surf the Internet and if you love to read a lot on websites —then why not to use this talent in a more targeted manner and do research for others. There are all sorts of organizations out there who need to research about almost everything. They hire people who can surf the Internet for a particular topic and give them the relevant information.
In this type of online work, you don't really need to be a writer. All you need is an eye for finding relevant information and compiling it in a logical fashion. Just find the information, compile it in a specified format and send it to the organization by email. They will pay you handsomely. You will get better pay if you can dig out information that would otherwise be difficult to find on the Internet.
Making correlations among various pieces of information and deducting something out of it is a much sought after skill in this job.
24. Earn Money Online by Making News Summary / News Gist
This work is similar to doing online research. The only difference is that you would only focus on the news websites. You will be given a specific subject (for example, law and court judgements). Your job would be to skim through all the news websites and find the news items related to the given subject. Then you will need to read these news items and summarize them in a few lines. At the end of the day, you will need to send all the gist that you've made back to the company and they will pay you for this.
Top-notch decision makers need such news gist because they don't have time to find and read all the relevant news. So, they will go through the summary provided by you. They may request complete articles for the news that will particularly interest them.
For making online news gist, some companies give you a monthly salary (you can get as much as US $4,000 per month) while some other companies prefer to make payment based on the amount of work you do.
How much money can you earn from Internet?
Before I tell you about the methods, let me put a word about the expected results. If you think earning online is an easy job —if you think it is a cakewalk —you're wrong! You will have to work hard and take your online job very seriously if you wish to be successful. And how successful can you become?
Well, it depends. And it is no rocket science to understand what it depends on! The skills you have, the work you choose, how good you are in your craft and how much time you can dedicate to work —all this affects your total sum earned —just like in “real life” jobs.
If it can motivate you, there are lots of people who are earning hundreds of thousands of dollars (and even millions) from Internet entrepreneurship / profession. And yes, that too while working alone from home!
There is no such indicator as to how much you as earn. Also, in my view, you should not look for such information. Just focus on what you enjoy doing and if you put in sufficient amount of time and hard-work —soon you'll being to see the rewards. Believe me, if you don't enjoy what you're doing —then you should forget about success!
How to Get Payment After Earning Money Online
Once you have become an online entrepreneur and have setup your online business, one of the major concern becomes how to receive payment from your clients. Well, most of the services I mentioned above do pay via easy options like PayPal, checks and wire transfer. PayPal is indeed a blessing for online entrepreneurs. You can very easily send to and receive money from your clients. Functioning of PayPal is straightforward and totally hassle free.
In case you have decided to setup your own website and you're selling products or services through it, then you would need a payment gateway service. Payment gateways are services that facilitates online payments.If you use a payment gateway, you'll be able to accept payment from your customers through credit cards, debit cards, cash cards and net banking etc. You would need to give payment gateway provider a percentage of every transaction. Best payment gateways in USA are PayPal, Google Wallet, Amazon Payment and Skrill. Best payment gateways in India include Citrus Pay, CCAvenue etc.