[Updated March 2019]
There are hundreds if not thousands of ways that you can make money online. There are some ways that most people know about and others that pop up out of the blue. We have created an ever-growing list of all the ways that you make money online. It is important to note that not all methods in this list will make you enough money to survive on.
- Affiliate Marketing
- Write And Sell An Ebook
- Create An App
- Complete Micro Jobs
- Sell Your Skills
- Complete Email Marketing
- Sell Products
- Sell Your Photos
- Answer Questions
- Work As A Tutor
- Create A Video Tutorial On YouTube
- Develop An Educational Course
- Become A Virtual Assistant
- Write Articles For Other People
- Use Get Paid To Websites
- Use Paid To Click Websites
- Use High-Yield Interest Websites
- Trade Stocks Or Forex
- Trade Crypto-Currency
- Play Games
- Matched Betting
- Entering Competitions
- Get Into Dropshipping
- Be A Mystery Shopper
- Leverage YouTube
- Get Paid To Test Websites
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is probably one of the most commonly known ways to make money online. Not everyone is successful with this, but most people will have tried it at some point. Affiliate marketing is basically acting as the middleman between a product creator and the customer.
You, as the affiliate marketer, will promote the product to potential customers. When the customer decides to buy they will be sent to the seller’s website. Once the transaction has been completed you will be paid a commission for the sale.
You can check out our Getting Started With Affiliate Marketing post to learn more!
Write And Sell An Ebook
Writing and selling an ebook has never been easier with Amazon self-publish. You can write an ebook on any subject whether fiction or non-fiction and get it published. There are some tips that you need to consider when you look at publishing your own book. If you are writing non-fiction then you need to know what you are talking about because people are paying for your book.
You can learn more about how to do this with our post Writing and Selling an eBook.
Create An App
We all use apps every day and this is a great market to get into. You do not have to know how to create an app yourself because there are some companies that will do this for you. Of course, being able to create the app yourself does save you money and will give you greater control over the development process.
Creating an app will take a lot of time and you will need to be able to test it. This is not a method that everyone can do.
Learn more about the basics of Creating And Monetizing An App with this blog post!
Complete Micro Jobs
Micro jobs are small tasks such as liking a Facebook page that you can get paid for. This is not a big money maker as you are going to be paid cents for each task. Micro jobs are ideal if you have time to spare and want to do something instead of just surfing the web.
There are a number of micro job sites that you can join. Even Amazon has got into the micro job market with Mechanical Turk.
Sell Your Skills
Everyone has some skills that other people need. Maybe you can write engaging content or code a website or you are able to do bookkeeping. If you have a skill then someone else will need it and they will pay you for the use of your skills. There are a number of websites that you can use to get paid for what you are good at.
A good online job site is Upwork and you could post gigs on Fiverr. There are a lot of people who earn a living by selling their skills. You can also create a website where you offer your skills and charge people for services rendered.
Find out how to start using your skills to make money with this post!
Complete Email Marketing
Email marketing is essential if you want to make money online. Any marketer will tell you that the money is in the list. This is because you can contact the people on your list once they have navigated away from your website. To get a list you need to have an opt-in box on your website or blog. The opt-in box will be linked to an autoresponder like Aweber which will automatically send emails to the person who has subscribed.
It is important that you provide your email subscribers with valuable information and not only hard sell to them. You also need to adhere to the CAN-Spam rules to ensure that your emails do not get blocked or end up in the spam folder.
Sell Products
When it comes to selling products there are 2 options available to you. The first is to sell products that you have bought wholesale and the second is to sell a product that you have made. Each offers some pros and cons that you will need to consider.
When you sell products that you buy, you will need to have the capital for the stock purchase. You are also going to need storage space and a means of selling the item. You can easily sell your products online via Amazon, eBay and many more.
When selling products that you make, you will also have the initial costs for the materials. You are also going to need some storage space for the materials or the final products. Selling can be done offline or online through sites like Etsy, eBay and more.
Sell Your Photos
If you love photography or simply enjoy it as a hobby, you should look at making some money from it. There are a number of websites where you can sell your photographs as stock images. There are also some sites which look for specific images and will pay you if you can provide them.
Answer Questions
Everyone has questions that they need answers to and you can make money by providing good answers. There are a number of companies that employ people online to answer questions posted on their site or to send people a text message with the answer. There are also some sites where you can help people with their homework questions for cash.
Work As A Tutor
Many people think that they cannot work as a tutor because they are not a teacher. While having teaching knowledge is helpful, there are a lot of companies that are willing to take people on who have no teaching experience. These companies understand that everyone has something they can teach to others whether it is a skill or a language.
There are generally 2 types of companies that hire tutors. The first are the companies that want people to help school or university students with the subjects they are taking. You will often need to have a degree or some qualification in the subject to be accepted for these positions. The second are the companies that offer language tutoring and will accept you if you can prove you are fluent in a language that they offer. Most of these companies will be looking for English tutors.
The tutoring will often be done via Skype or an online classroom provided by the company. Some will require you to travel to your students and you need to consider this.
Create A Video Tutorial On YouTube
When someone doesn’t know how to do something the first place they turn to is Google and they will often land on a YouTube tutorial. You can create a YouTube tutorial on just about anything from how to maintain your car to troubleshooting Microsoft Outlook. If you know how to do something then make a step-by-step video and put it up on YouTube.
Once you reach a set number of views on your video, YouTube will invite you to join their partner’s program. YouTube will then put adverts on the video and you earn a share of what they make off them. You can also link your tutorial video to a website or affiliate program to increase the money you could be making.
Develop An Educational Course
There are some things that cannot be taught in a single video tutorial. If you have experience and knowledge about something more detailed, you should look at developing an education course. This could be a series of videos, a detailed book or a combination of videos and textual information. There are a number of ways that you can make money from an educational course.
The first is to set up an account with Udemy and run your course via their website. Lots of people search Udemy each day for courses that will teach them what they need to know. You can also set up a membership website where you provide your course. There is a range of possibilities and you need to choose the one that is best for you.
Become A Virtual Assistant
Have you ever worked as a personal or executive assistant? If the answer is yes then you can work as a virtual assistant where your tasks are the same only done in the comfort of your own home. Even if you have not been an assistant in the past, there are many companies who will hire you as a VA. You can also freelance as a VA through a site like UpWork, Freelancer and your own website.
Of course, if you have experience with this work, applying for these jobs will be easier. Experienced VA’s will also earn more than people just starting out, but as you gain experience you can increase your earnings.
Write Articles For Other People
There are a lot of people (not me) who do not have the time or the inclination to write their own content. This is where you could make some money as you write the content for them. There are also a lot of big companies that hire people to write the content that appears on their websites. You do not have to be an expert in the field that you write on, but for higher paying work it is recommended.
There are a number of content mills that you can sign up to at the start. However, most people find that the pay is too low and the customers can be picky considering what they are paying. If you are more confident in your writing you can apply for content writing jobs on UpWork or to the company directly.
Use Get Paid To Websites
Get Paid To websites or GPT sites should not be confused with micro job sites. These sites will pay you small amounts of money for clicking ads, completing surveys, watching videos and completing other tasks through their partners. There are a lot of these sites on the internet and many of them are scams, so you need to be careful. This does not mean that there aren’t any legit GPT sites because there are such as SwagBucks and InstaGC.
GPT sites will generally accumulate your earnings in their site currency such hulk coins on GiftHulk. Payment will vary from Paypal to gift cards and some sites will offer products.
Use Paid To Click Websites
Paid to Click or PTC websites are notorious for low pay and being scams. There are some that have stood the test of time like Clixsense and NeoBux, but most will close while you use them. As the same suggests PTC sites will pay you to click on an advert. The pay will generally be a fraction of a cent and you will only have a set amount of adverts per day. You will have to reach a payment threshold before you get your money.
While you are not going to get rich on PTC sites, they are easy to use and generally a mindless task for when you watch TV. You should be careful when investing in any sites for rented referrals because you may not make the money back. Additionally, the site could be gone when you come back the next day.
Use High-Yield Interest Websites
High-yield interest websites need to be used with caution because there are no guarantees that you will get your money. If you choose to use these websites then you will deposit a set amount with the website and after an investment period of anywhere from a day to a month, you will get the money back with interest. As the name suggests the interest is high for these websites and you could double your money.
Trade Stocks Or Forex
Most people have heard about the success stories where people have made millions on the stock and forex market. While it is possible that this could be you, trading stocks or forex takes time and you need to know what you are doing. You also need to have money when you start that you are able to lose.
Statistics show that 80% of day traders will quit after 2 years and only 60% of sales are winners. If you are not prepared for this then you will have issues with trading. If you are going to trade you need to take the time to learn what to do and not think that you will make millions straight away.
Trade Crypto-Currency
Trading crypto-currency is something that many people do not consider as a means of making money. Crypto-currency is a term that covers all digital currencies such as BitCoin, DogeCoin and LiteCoin. The most well-known of these currencies is BitCoin and a single bitcoin can be worth around $1000. Owning and trading these currencies is much like trading forex or stocks where you buy the currency when it is cheap and then sell it when the price goes up. The amount you can make will vary depending on how long you keep the currency and what price you paid for it.
There are a number of ways that you can acquire these currencies. There are many people who accept bitcoin as a payment method for products or services. You can also mine bitcoin and some of the other crypto-currencies. Once you have a decent amount you can then trade it for actual cash on exchanges.
Play Games
Playing games for money is a dream for many people, but it is harder than you might imagine to make a decent amount from this. There are a number of online games that will pay you for playing them. These games generally allow you to earn game currency and this can be traded for cash or gift cards. The primary issue with this is that there are few of these games and the amount you make is very small.
Being a professional gamer is another option, but you need to be very good at the game and should be willing to enter competitions. You can also make money through Twitch where people watch you play the game. However, the hours for this can be long and there are many Twitch gamers who have stated that they have developed health problems from the long hours of gaming. Being a game tester is also an option, but this is not often an online opportunity.
Matched Betting
Matched betting is a great way to make some money online and there are many people who make thousands each month. This is not an opportunity that is available everywhere and it seems mostly geared toward the UK with some EU options. Matched betting takes advantage of offers that bookmakers offer to people from free bets to increased odds and refunds if certain situations happen.
It is not hard to get into matched better and many of the offers are completely risk-free. There are some offers that come with risks, particularly the ones where certain conditions have to be met to receive your free bet. There are a lot of guides and communities that you can join that will help you find and place your bets.
Entering Competitions
Competitions are everywhere and you could make some money with them. Entering competitions will not make you rich, but you could get some great products or cash from it. You will need to have at least an hour each day to devote to entering competitions and it is recommended that you open a new email for this. You should also look at getting a sim card dedicated to competitions because winners are often contacted via telephone.
There are some databases that you can use to find competitions. There are also forums where people post competitions that they have found. It is considered good competition entering etiquette to only enter the competitions where you need or really want the prize instead of entering so you can sell the prize later.
Get Into Dropshipping
If you want to run an e-commerce business, but do not have space for stock or want to make your own products then dropshipping is the solution. Dropshipping is when you sell a product that you do not have in your possession. You will sell the item and then place an order with the dropship company and they will ship the product to your customer.
This is a great online business opportunity because you do not have to worry about buying the stock or shipping it. Of course, you will have to be careful when choosing the company that you work with. As you do not have the products, you will not know their quality and this could be a problem because it is your business reputation on the line.
Be A Mystery Shopper
There are some people who state that they make a living from mystery shopping. Even if you do not make enough through mystery shopping to live on, you can make some decent extra cash. To be a mystery shopper, you will need to sign up with a mystery shopping company like MarketForce. They will send you information about tasks that need to be completed by mystery shoppers. These tasks will generally include going to a store and making a purchase or going to a store and asking a member of staff for help. You will then submit a form about the task and you will then get paid.
Leverage YouTube
Making a video tutorial and posting it on YouTube is not the only way that you can make money on the video sharing site. In fact, it is not the most lucrative and you need to know other methods of leveraging YouTube to make money. There are actually a number of methods that can be used for this from affiliate marketing to sponsorship. When you leverage YouTube, you will be using your reputation and presence on the site to get better paying gigs and conversions.
Get Paid To Test Websites
Website owners want to know if their websites work and are conveying the right message. The best way for them to do this will be to have real people test their website and this is where you can make some money. Testing website usability and looking for bugs is a great way to make some extra cash.
You do not have to be a coder or developer to do this testing. There are a number of companies that work as intermediaries between testers and website owners that you can sign up to. They will have training and you need to generally complete a test before you can work on real websites.