10 Creative Ways To Make Money Online
If you’d claimed it was possible for the average guy on the street to make millions of dollars online just a decade ago, the chances are good you’d have heard nothing but laughter in response. Today, though, there are countless Internet millionaires who turned a great idea into obscene profit, used the power of the web to promote their offline business or simply worked their butt off to sell their skills online.
While it’s unlikely that you’ll ever earn enough to buy your own private island, there’s nothing to stop you from using your skills to make a comfortable living online. In fact, while the media would have you believe that online success stories are limited to just a few lucky, hard working people who stumbled on a great idea that went on to make millions, the reality is that there are tens of thousands of people who make a living exclusively online. Here are just ten ways you can join them.
How To Make Money Online
1. Sell Stock Photography
The Internet has caused an explosion in the demand for stock photography. As the number of media and commercial outlets has increased dramatically with the growth of online media there’s an enormous need for high quality stock photos.
Yuri Arcurs is the man everyone turns to for their stock photo needs. As the world’s top selling stock photographer he sells an image every 8 seconds, 24 hours a day (that works out to over 4 million images each year). Arcurs makes millions of dollars each year simply by being the best at what he does. There are lots of great photographers in the world and the barrier to entry is as low as ownership of a camera, but Arcurs has managed to build a reputation online for consistent, high quality and imaginative images.
If you’re a professional photographer (or even just a hobbyist) you should consider the possibilities of selling stock images online.
2. Tweet For Sponsors
SponsoredTweets.com is an online platform that allows you to make money on Twitter by charging sponsors for communicating their advertising messages to your followers. You set the amount you want to get paid for every tweet you make, choose a category and select keywords you want to work with. You then wait for advertisers to contact you and take you up on your offer, paying you the amount you specified for each tweet that you make.
All throughout the process, the tweeter has full control over his or her account, and may choose the wordings of the tweets, or may choose to reject the tweet altogether.
3. Blog for Ad Revenues
If, however, you already have a blog with a devoted following it should be easy for you to leverage your readers into hard cash. Ad networks such as Google AdSense pay big money to place their ads on your site, and you’ll receive a payment every time a reader clicks one. While it’s easy to go overboard and fill every spare pixel, if you place your ads well it’s possible to make a comfortable income from your site.
One of the most successful bloggers around today is John Chow, a Canadian blogger who makes more than $40,000 a month through ad sales and other revenue streams. Ironically, his blog is about ways to make money online.
4. Sell Affiliate Products
If you have a flair for sales copy you could try your hand at selling products for affiliates. While many people take the seedy route of selling diet pills and penis enlargement products, if you want to keep your conscience clear you’ll find that Amazon runs a very successful affiliate program that allows you to make money advertising any of the products for sale on their site. eBay also have a pretty good affiliate setup, with their top affiliates earning $1.3 Million a month, WOW!
5. Write an e Book
In recent years the self-publishing world has exploded online to the point at which you don’t even have to run your own site in order to promote a book. Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kobo are just a few of the sites on which you could self-publish today, with commission rates of around 70% available on every sale.
The number of eBooks on Amazon reached 8 million last year, and Amazon stated that eBooks are outselling hard backs 2 to 1, 62% of ebook sales fell into the Thriller and Mystery genre, so if you feel that you could pull this style of genre off then you will be in for a good chance of sales.
26 year old self published author, Amanda Hocking from Minnesota makes more than $2 Million a year from her ebook sales. Amanda Hocking’s stories about, trolls, vampires and zombies and ‘supernatural teen romances’ sell for $2.99 or for as little as $.99.
6. Become a Virtual Assistant
Every small businessman would love to hire a full time assistant to take care of the little things, but many simply can’t afford one. Thanks to the Internet, though, they can now hire part time assistants who work for a whole host of clients, and all at a much lower cost than a full time staff member.
If you work from home this may be a perfect opportunity to make a consistent income. Virtual assistants can earn $20 an hour in return for booking travel tickets, interacting with clients and dealing with the daily needs of small businesses.
7. Lease Your Skills
Most people have at least one skill that carries a market value, though until now that skill may have been impossible to monetize in the traditional job market.
Sites such as 99Designs, Elance, Freelancer and iWriter allow people to hire out their skills as writers, coders, designers, translators and lots more on a contract basis. Freelancing sites are a great way to boost your income in your free time, and with enough motivation and hard work you could find yourself earning a comfortable full time income from them.
8. Selling on eBay
eBay is a great way to turn your unwanted things into a little spending money, but it isn’t just a place to sell your old Star Wars action figures. In fact, eBay’s global marketplace can offer a great way for canny traders to buy and sell their way to profit. By buying wholesale you can sell anything with a mark up. Even better, if you have the skills to make things people want to buy you could start your own home-based craft business, selling to customers around the world.
Matt & Amanda Clarkson are a successful couple who so far have managed to make over $8 Million in eBay sales.
9. Become A Mobile App Tester
People that are rather uncertain of their application development potential can still make some money through the usage of iPhone apps.
People that have the time and desire to test iPhone apps and discover bugs can be rewarded payments for their efforts. uTest is one such application. Individuals that have signed up will also build some reputation on the basis of the testing they have done so far.
Better reputation signifies access to more profitable app testing opportunities.
10. Designing T-Shirts
Finally, if you have something of an artistic streak you could kick off the next viral sensation with your own range of funky, arty t-shirts. Sites such as CafePress allow users to upload their own t-shirt designs and sell them on their personal online store.
You can also contact distributors such as threadless.com or designbyhumans.com to release your t-shirt designs to the masses.
If your designs catch the eye you could be looking at enormous profits when they take off in a big way.
Checkout our article The Top 10 Tips On Starting Your Own Successful Clothing Line, this should give you an idea on how to kick things off.
Conclusion
As you can see, to make money online you don’t have to be particularly skilled with computers. You don’t need to be know how to build your own website from the ground up, and you don’t have to be a mogul with millions of dollars to invest in success. If you have any kind of artistic skills, creativity or business savvy you can turn it into profit.
In short, you should understand that the online world is just like real life. The same opportunities are there for the taking, but instead of drawing your customers from just your home town you can reach out with your great ideas to the far reaches of the earth.
So why not start today?
Sean
September 16, 2014 at 7:39 pm
I liked the list, it hits all the major ways to make money online but not really getting into the nuts and bolts of actually making money online.
han hye hwa
September 11, 2014 at 12:42 am
great!
Andrey
September 2, 2014 at 6:37 pm
It turns out ways of earnings on the Internet are no different in different countries. I thought in the West, opportunities to earn on the Internet much more. I’m from Russia, so sorry for bad understandable comment. Translate using the computer.
h20sdavid
August 24, 2014 at 7:25 am
Its great I have worked online for a while now, and its great to know my business has so much help.
Okechukwu Amako
August 9, 2014 at 5:46 am
Great and informative content
khar-anan bacundo
August 6, 2014 at 1:46 am
how to make it..?
Replay Run
August 5, 2014 at 8:36 pm
How to sell on Ebay? I have tried to sell on ebay but they want credit card detail…
Dean
August 9, 2014 at 8:42 pm
I sell on Ebay, and my credit card is not registered, so I am not sure where you have got that information from
Peter @ PCBUS
August 17, 2014 at 5:53 am
He probably meant paypal rather than ebay. I suppose you have to give away some credit card details when registering for any of those e-wallets
Muji
July 28, 2014 at 4:10 pm
Liked all.. thanks
Joel Brown
July 29, 2014 at 2:04 am
Gresat to hear Muji. Thanks!
Mike Burke JR
July 21, 2014 at 1:34 pm
Great post. I saw a few things in there I hadn’t thought of. I would like to add Fiverr the discussion. Here you can create small services, called gigs, that can be just about anything. People then pay you five dollars to complete the task. It can be more than five for extras such as more time, extra services, etc. It adds up. Right now I am doing a voice over gig and the order is going to pay out nearly three-thousand dollars over the next three weeks for about 30 hours of work. That’s better than any regular job I ever worked!
rakesh kumar
July 19, 2014 at 6:00 pm
Besides all these the fastest way to earn money online to create Wallpaper Website using WordPress or funny images website using wordpress. These two methods are evergreen and will generate a lots of traffic to your site, if you are able to collect some image for your website. Did you get my point
babu.g
July 17, 2014 at 9:14 am
i am an electrical engineer , how can i make profit through internet
massive money
July 18, 2014 at 7:42 pm
great article. i am earning 6 figure income by afiliate marketing and binary trading although here is no poin of trading, i thonk it should be also placed here
Mike Burke JR
July 21, 2014 at 1:29 pm
You have a nice of set options out there. You could do affiliate marketing which can be a lucrative business if done correctly. You could do handmade products and sell them Etsy. Fiverr.com is another great site where you can create services of almost anything. I have done all of these things and I now work full time from home. I had no knowledge of affiliate marketing when I started. If you learn all about it this could be something great for you.
Daniel Marcon
August 14, 2014 at 6:07 pm
Hello I’m looking to work the hours online doing what I enjoy, designing online pokie machines. How can I show my slot machine online designs to the major gaming software companies like microgaming, netent entertainment,
Aimfosys
July 13, 2014 at 5:21 pm
In my view blogging is best for me, Nice article really impressed
Josephine khoury
June 30, 2014 at 7:07 pm
I wrote a story. How can I put it on the Internet and maybe gain some money?
Mike Burke JR
July 21, 2014 at 1:22 pm
The best way Josephine is to get a blog however one story won’t get you far. If you write a post daily over time you will start to get traffic. You could also try article marketing. I would suggest before you do create post you learn the techniques involved so you can get that traffic coming. I have created videos and posts on that subject.
Adam
June 29, 2014 at 7:57 pm
Great post all these methods could be compiled into one business model maybe should do a part 2
GONZALO GONZALEZ
June 28, 2014 at 10:20 pm
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pattista01om
June 26, 2014 at 2:49 pm
Whats the best thing to sell
sandy
July 29, 2014 at 12:30 pm
How will you be paid then? I have a debit card but i’m afraid to use it for online purposes.