The sentence: How to Make Money Online is difficult to decipher as they are a hundred things that come under the word online. But some people picture a cliched side:

A teenager going viral on YouTube and then bringing in millions in sponsors and ad revenue. Or a sly person who’s got a simple idea of doing business online, and expands it into a small empire.

money gif

And then there are the bad images: people in the “gig economy” working without benefits or stable pay.

These are things that do happen, but they are the extremes of a long spectrum that includes everything else in between.

This is a long list because there are a LOT of ways to make money online, and I want to give credence to the full range of possibilities for internet income.

The items on this list concern all sorts of things and are warned that there is a fair amount of overlap. Some things are strategies to make money online. Other things are websites for selling stuff. Yet others are gig marketplaces or sites that pay you to do this or that. It’s natural to have an overlap.

NOTE: If you are thinking of making money online, you need a website for your product or service.

For less than $5 / month, you can get started with a FREE domain and Unlimited Hosting from GreenGeeks.

As you may have guessed, I am pretty experienced by now with earning money online, and I’d like to share my appreciation for all the wonderful possibilities and endless nuance the modern world has given us!

Ready? Let’s get started then.

Please note that I have placed the Upvote buttons below each option. You can vote for them and let me know the ones you like.

hostingpillHow to Make Money Online
  1. Start a blog/site and do AFFILIATE MARKETING
  2. Freelancing
  3. Sell stuff online
  4. Become garage sale millionaire
  5. The garage sale millionaire who restored stuff
  6. Sell on Amazon
  7. Sell on Facebook
  8. Sell on some other general online marketplaces
  9. Dropshipping
  10. Buy/sell on Flippa
  11. Sell on MoreCommerce
  12. Sell books
  13. Sell your electronics (general)
  14. Sell DVDS (and games and yes, even CDs) on Decluttr
  15. Sell your music
  16. Sell your music through Apple or Amazon, by yourself
  17. Make money on big music platforms by using distributors
  18. Sell ebooks on Amazon
  19. Sell ebooks on Blurb
  20. Sell your paintings (or other visual art pieces)
  21. Sell prints of your art or photos
  22. Buy/sell domains
  23. Reseller Hosting
  24. Sell your photos (general)
  25. Sell your photos to iStockPhoto and Getty Images
  26. Sell your photos to Shutterstock
  27. Sell your photos to Adobe/Fotolia
  28. Sell your videos
  29. Sell your sound effects and/or video effects
  30. Sell your voice
  31. On that note, narrate audiobooks
  32. Sell your leads
  33. Sell education courses
  34. Sell your apps on the App Store/Play Store
  35. Build and sell software (aside from mobile apps)
  36. Sell source code
  37. Sell digital products online
  38. Use marketing funnels or software to make them (Clickfunnels)
  39. Forex trading
  40. Sell signals in forex trading
  41. Invest in Bitcoin (or more likely, other cryptocurrencies)
  42. Invest and trade in stocks
  43. Take Surveys for cash
  44. Take Surveys for raffle winnings
  45. Take part in Focus groups
  46. Do micro jobs (particularly on Fiverr)
  47. Do micro jobs on Gigwalk or Zaarly
  48. Be a virtual assistant
  49. Start a coupons website
  50. Outsourcing and subcontracting
  51. HR Placements via LinkedIn
  52. Create a review website
  53. Start a blog/site and get ad revenue!
  54. Be a virtual tutor
  55. Do Guest posting
  56. Try Proofreading
  57. Do online translation
  58. Do online data entry
  59. Run Facebook ads
  60. Be an Online travel consultant
  61. Other kinds of coaching and consultancy
  62. In general, use a paid subscriber/crowdfunding site
  63. Use Patreon
  64. Or use OnlyFans
  65. Or use Ko-fi
  66. YouTube channels (in general)
  67. Specifically, be a YouTube influencer
  68. Be an influencer on Instagram
  69. Same as above, but do it with Twitter
  70. Start a podcast and get sponsors
  71. Rent home on Airbnb
  72. Rent out your car
  73. Drive for Uber and/or Lyft
  74. Online customer service
  75. Provide remote tech support
  76. Stream on Twitch
  77. Sell your advice
  78. Win a naming contest on Squadhelp
  79. Put ads on your lock screen
  80. Use Appen
  81. Rent out (or sell) your parking space
  82. Watch and rate movies for money on Swagbucks
  83. Review music for money on Slicethepie
  84. Get paid to review software with SoftwareJudge and G2C Crowd
  85. Sell clothes (and other stuff) you don’t use on Depop
  86. Become a Usability tester
  87. Review search engines
  88. Give answers on JustAnswer
  89. Try transcribing audio
  90. Use the Disney vault hack
  91. Sell your notes
  92. Sell your lesson plans to make money online
  93. Sell your hair
  94. Be a virtual ESL tutor
  95. Loan your stuff on Loanables or RentNotBuy
  96. Rent out your musical instruments on Sparkplug
  97. Use your car as a mobile billboard
  98. Get free cash (or gift cards) for being healthy with Achievement
  99. Get even more cash for being healthy with HealthyWage
  100. Sell older cell phones on Gazelle, BuyBackBoss, or OC BuyBack
  101. Best of all…be an online dating consultant!
  102. Sell on eBay and make money online
  103. Sell on Craigslist
  104. Retail on Bonanza
  105. Sell your fashion products on Tradesy
  106. Sell on The RealReal
  107. Sell niche art, collectibles, and artisan works on Ruby Lane
  108. Sell jewelry on OpenSky
  109. Sell electronics on Swappa
  110. Sell on digiCircle as an alternative to Swappa
  111. Sell your crafts on Etsy
  112. Resell tickets to make money online
  113. Do micro jobs with Amazon Mechanical Turk
  114. Use Kickstarter
  115. Use GoFundMe
  116. Use Indiegogo
  117. Do Peer to peer lending
  118. Get cash back with Rakuten
  119. Get money back on your purchases through Paribus
  120. Be an online juror to make money online
  121. Be an online notary (or eNotary)
  122. Create/help create greeting cards
  123. Win an interior design contest
  124. Sell your graphic designs skills
  125. Sell clothes with your graphic designs on them
  126. Sell your web designs to make money online
  127. Win a logo design contest
  128. Do Business Coaching to make money online
  129. Be an online fitness trainer
  130. Be an online dietician
  131. Provide nursing knowledge remotely
  132. Become an online financial consultant
  133. Be a Virtual CxO
  134. Online marketing consultant
  135. Earn with the Medium Partner Program
  136. Use SoundCloud Premier Monetization
  137. Help people with tax prep

Item 1: Start a blog/site and do AFFILIATE MARKETING

This is one of the most common ways to make money online, and you better believe it’s something I know pretty well.

This is also one of the most overhyped ways. The key thing to remember is that affiliate marketing CAN be really effective…but it’s not overnight or “easy.”

So for the unfamiliar: affiliate marketing is when you earn a commission when someone purchases a product online based on your recommendation.

In practice this typically amounts to you running a blog or site and including affiliate links to online products/services—as you may guess, for us, it’s hosting products:

recommendation

If a person purchases a product through your affiliate link, you’ll earn a commission. How much? Well as you’d expect, it varies. Typically, it’s a percentage of the sale itself. And even that varies.

Amazon usually gives somewhere between 5% commission on the lower end and 10% on the high end for links to any products sold on Amazon.

If you’re a Shopify Partner, you can take 20% of the monthly fee paid to Shopify by the person who took your recommendation.

Here’s an example of a hosting company’s affiliate program (SiteGround):

SiteGround’s affiliate program

In this example, if you get SiteGround 10 sales a month, you’ll bring in $750. If you get them 11, you’ll get $1,100, and so on.

So there you go.

You can probably see why there’s such immense appeal to affiliate marketing these days. It can bring in money, and you can exert a lot of control over the types of products/field you want to work in.

Some of the most successful bloggers (Pat Flynn, Michelle Schroeder, Ryan Robinson, LifeHacker Guy etc.), earns tens of thousands of dollars per month via their blog and affiliate marketing.

They also publish their monthly income reports for you to see how you too can make money online via Affiliate marketing. See below:

affiliate marketing

Michelle Schroeder

Ryan Robinson

Pat Flynn

In fact, Michelle also teaches Affiliate Marketing on this site.

You can definitely learn something there 🙂

Before you take off trying to make money online through affiliate links, I’ve got a couple of pointers:

First, take care to make a good site. Keep up your content’s quality, and keep in mind that you still have to bring value to your site’s visitors. You don’t create site to sell products, you create site to solve your visitors problems.

Second, don’t be afraid to be nuanced and critical when you recommend products. If you give glowing recommendations with every affiliate link, you might find you can’t sustain traffic or people begin to grow wary of your word.

Other than that, go get ‘em, tiger!

Useful Resources:


Item 2: Freelancing

This is the one I’m pretty familiar with, and the one a lot of you are going to run into the most as you find ways to make money online. MANY other items on this list overlap with freelancing, so consider this a “general” or introductory item.

In short, freelancing is a HUGE thing online these days. There are lots of people taking on freelancers for remote work, and the opportunities come and go.

There are lots of different freelance work available, but the most opportunities tend to be in site design, writing and/or editing, and marketing.

The biggest topics tend to be about financial technology (also known as fintech), cryptocurrency, ecommerce, and marketing, but hey—there’s lots of everything available.

There are A LOT of different ways you can find freelancing gigs. Some of my friends like Craigslist—they say prospective clients are more responsive on there.

You can use Upwork, which is probably the most famous of the freelance-client networks. Just remember that Upwork takes a 20% cut of whatever you make…for experienced freelancers, it’s not the best. But for beginners, it’s a great way of making sure you don’t get scammed and get some experience!

Checkout this video on how you can get your first job on Upwork or any other freelancing sites:

Other freelancing sites worth checking are Freeeup, Workana and NoDesk

Jooble is another site for freelance jobs, that you can check.

LinkedIn is another common avenue of finding clients, but you can be more proactive with LinkedIn: whereas on Upwork you would basically apply to postings, on LinkedIn you can apply to postings OR just contact people and offer them your services.

If you know the type of work you want, there are often niche sites that aggregate job postings or calls for freelance work in that field. Some of the good ones are:

  1. Flexjobs
  2. SolidGigs

In summary: freelancing is one of the most popular ways for individuals to make money online, and it’s increasingly easy to find potential clients. Freelance work includes projects that take a few hours and year-long contracts, and covers a lot of subject matter.

Which means…there are a lot of opportunities!


Item 3: Sell stuff online

Okay, you might be a little skeptical about this earning its own place on the list. Well, let me justify it:

Selling stuff online is one of the BEST ways to make money online. Just think about all the things you’ve bought online!

So there’s no doubt that selling stuff is a good way of making money online. But there are a million ways of selling stuff online. To an extent, this whole list is about selling something online: either physical goods, or your time, knowledge, and skill.

The most familiar names would be Craigslist, eBay, Amazon, Facebook, but there are MANY more.

So the next few items are going to be all about how you can sell physical products online. This ranges from places to sell your goods (such as the names I just listed) to the types of goods you can sell. Naturally, there’s some overlap, but that’s life.

Now, you might be wondering why you should sell goods online. I’m willing to bet a lot of people are on this list trying to figure out the types of gig work, freelance areas, etc.

But if you’re creative, you can get pretty far with this. You can sell just about anything online, and a lot of marketplaces do what they can to guarantee a base level of payment for you once you actually make sales.

Some examples include Upwork, which I already mentioned, but also the logo design, theme selling, or naming contests…all of which I will get to!

The things to watch out for: platform fees that come either in the form of fixed amounts or percentages of what you make, plus payment processing fees.

I promise selling stuff online is easier than you think, and the more underused a market is, the better chance you have of making sales.

Okay, ready? Let’s get into the many dimensions of selling stuff online:


Item 4: Become garage sale millionaire

The term “garage sale millionaire” became popularized by Aaron LaPedis in his book of the same name. Yes, you can become a millionaire just by selling stuff on ebay, Amazon, etc. And that’s what Aaron does to prove.

Essentially, this boils down to buying lots of things that are being undervalued by the seller, and then selling it for a higher price (what it’s actually worth and then some).

As you’d expect from the phrase, the metaphor is that you go to a garage sale and use your special instincts and knowledge to find the best things. The implication here is that you’re not buying things from a big retailer necessarily—your main focus would be on smaller and local sellers.

Note: you could do the buying online, or in person! Or better yet, both.

Another note: don’t think this isn’t for you, just because you’re not experienced in this or because you’re not confident in your ability to notice undervalued items.

I mean, don’t leap into this strategy if those things are true, that’s for sure. But you don’t need to apply this tactic to “everything”—you can apply it just to a niche you understand.

For instance: you might have absolutely no idea whether 98% of the stuff sold at a “garage sale” is underpriced or not. But, you might be a huge fan of this or that genre of science fiction, and know that the hardcover edition being sold by person X could fetch a lot more.

So as long as you’re careful about it, you stand a better chance of making this tactic work for you than you think!


Item 5: The garage sale millionaire who restored stuff

While I think a lot more people could pull off a version of the garage sale millionaire than expected, I’m not so sure about this…this really applies to people with a solid ability to repair and restore items.

The “original” garage sale millionaire (the guy who coined the term) actually also has done some restoring work on the items he buys and then flips. But, he’s very clear to note that restoring can sometimes be very costly, so he tries to keep it minimal.

That said, this can certainly be an open-ended tactic (in that it can work for a variety of items). Plus, there’s this added bonus—if you’re already skilled at repairing or restoring X type of item, there’s a fair chance you have a solid understanding of the value of that item when restored.

I’ll just be honest with you though, the most reliable area for this sort of tactic will be for electronics (phones in particular). So if you’ve got experience restoring and repairing phones, or if you think you could get good at that quickly, then you actually stand a pretty decent chance at making sales.

But once again, don’t give up hope just because that doesn’t sound like you. Restoring and then selling rare editions of books might sound risky, but it could turn some bold profits for the right person.

You could do that for VHS tapes, clothes, furniture, dishware, or really anything that people might buy. You could target people who want more affordable versions of commonplace items, or collectors who want rare items and are willing to spend extra.

Some good marketplaces would be eBay and Craigslist, though there are a lot more.

As a matter of fact, the next items on this list are all about the places you can sell!


Item 6: Sell on Amazon

Here’s another big one: you can sell directly on ecommerce sites. In particular, Amazon!

Sell on Amazon to make money online

Selling on Amazon has some challenges you might have heard on: namely, that Amazon is infamous for copying third party sellers, and then prioritizing its own Amazon brand at a lower price.

These are real and valid fears, but it’s good to keep them in check. First of all, Amazon’s third party sellers have actually had a greater and greater share of Amazon’s retail sales over the years.

Check this out:

Amazon's retail sales

It’s from Jeff Bezos’ annual letter to shareholders. Lately, the MAJORITY of physical merchandise sales have been from third parties, and that seems set to increase.

So while Amazon certainly poses risks, it’s still clearly one of the best places to sell online. All sellers can list products in more than 20 categories, and if you sign up for a Professional plan, you can list in another 10 categories.

That Professional plan would cost you extra:

amazon plans

But the base plan is free with the exception of selling fees (which, to be honest, you’d be paying no matter what if you’re using someone else’s ecommerce hub).

Another benefit of Amazon: aside from being a place lots of people already go to, Amazon can handle your shipping if you don’t want to do it yourself.

So it may not be for everyone, but Amazon is the biggest ecommerce company for a reason. It’s certainly an option to consider for most.

You can learn to be successful at Amazon by following the tips given below:


Item 7: Sell on Facebook

You may or may not have noticed that Facebook has a digital marketplace of its own. I basically ignored it for a while, until I started to realize just how robust it is.

If you’re skeptical, just think of the scale: basically everyone who has a Facebook account has access to Facebook’s marketplace.

Which means that over 2 BILLION people can access it. Now that doesn’t mean you have access to 2 billion prospective customers—Facebook sorts these things out by region.

So in that sense, some things about Craigslist hold true for Facebook—you’re not going to be letting Facebook fulfill lots of shipments to customers. Instead, you’re trying to entice primarily local buyers.

So you’ll have to be prepared, as with Craigslist, to handle shipping on your own or to deliver goods in person.

That said, you have a solid shot of making sales since you’re operating in a more confined area, and you don’t have to bother with platform fees.


Item 8: Sell on some other general online marketplaces

Amazon, eBay, Facebook, and Craigslist—these are giant marketplaces where you can sell practically anything. And shortly after this, I’ll go through a lot of different marketplaces that are oriented towards specific types of products.

But before that, let me show you a few more general-purpose and miscellaneous-item marketplaces. A lot of you will never have heard of these sites before, which means they are both good and bad options.

Mercari is popular compared to the other sites in this sub-list of places to sell online. It’s pretty straightforward:

Mercari

You can set up very easily, and Mercari will give you free shipping labels. Listings are free, but Mercari will take a 10% commission from all your sales.

If you use the shipping labels Mercari gives you, you’re insured for up to $200 if items get lost or damaged in transit. You can sell using the website, but it’s really app-focused.

Oodle seems like a weird crossover between Craigslist and eBay. Oodle focuses on your location and is basically an online classifieds ad (again, like Craigslist). You can sell or trade just about anything on Oodle, but you have to handle basically everything on your own.

oodle

Also, it seems to have a particular focus on pets and vehicles. But hey, anything goes.

Sell.com is fairly similar to Oodle in that it’s another classifieds listing that’s smaller than Craigslist. It usually costs $1-$3 to make a listing for anything, but it depends on the item.

sell.com marketplace

The site is very up front about what the listing fees are, and once you pay them, there are no further fees. Everything else is yours.

Another modern, sleek-looking marketplace you can look into is VarageSale. It’s exactly what it sounds like—a virtual garage sale. While you can sell just about anything on VarageSale, one key restriction is that goods need to be family friendly…and there are admins monitoring the listings to make sure!

varagesale

However, VarageSale is very hands-off. You’re basically on your own if you have issues with a buyer. But the flip side that’s really great is that VarageSale is totally free to use. No listing fees, no sales commissions.

A more unique one is Listia. With Listia, you don’t exactly earn money for what you sell…you earn “Ink,” onsite points that are basically Listia’s currency. You can spend your Ink on other stuff on Listia.

listia

If you dig deep, you can probably find others, but these are some of the sites I find most notable if you’re looking for general-purpose marketplaces outside of the big names!


Item 9: Dropshipping

A lot of you might not have heard the term “dropshipping,” but I bet most of you are familiar with the concept:

Dropshipping is when you deal in retail, but you don’t keep all your goods in stock. Instead, some other entity handles the storage and shipping of what you’re selling for you!

The essential benefits are that you don’t need to invest a lot in inventory upfront when you start your business—you don’t need to get a warehouse, for example. Your overhead expenses can be way lower, which means that the gateway for entry to retail selling is wider than before.

Now I actually already mentioned this when I talked about Amazon’s (Fulfillment by Amazon is what it’s officially called).

But Amazon is far from the only game in town, even if it’s probably the biggest in the West. Shopify, the ecommerce site builder, also caters to those who want to use dropshipping.

how oberlo works

With Shopify, the main integration is with a company called Oberlo. You pick the products you want to sell, and when a customer orders from your site, Oberlo will ship them out.

You can even dropship products from China using AliExpress

Most other site builders with ecommerce or shopping cart functionality have at least an integration or two that will help you with dropshipping, even if they don’t provide as much support to it as Shopify does.

Now, dropshipping might sound too good to be true…and it kind of is.

I’m not saying you can’t make money online off of it: people wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t profitable. But it’s not as simple as “pay little on overhead, and then reap massive profits.”

Useful Resources:


Item 10: Buy/sell on Flippa

Haven’t heard of Flippa? That’s okay.

Flippa is basically a marketplace for buying or selling online businesses.

Flippa

You might be wondering about how many people are actually buying on Flippa. At the moment, the count is somewhere north of 120,000 buyers.

That might not sound like a lot, given the scale of the internet and internet marketplaces. But here’s the thing:

Flippa buyers

Those 120,000+ buyers together have over a BILLION in available funds, and the amount of buyers grows by a few thousand every month. So the money is absolutely there, ready to purchase a business site you grew.

The hard part, of course, is that you need to already have an online business to sell an online business. That might not apply to a lot of you, but don’t get discouraged…because it could still apply to more than you think.

Well, on Flippa, instead of just abandoning your enterprise, you can make money online by selling it to someone (who, in turn, may grow your business further).

You can even buy websites / apps from Flippa and make some decent money. That’s what Priyadarshan Joshi did, when he bought an existing Mac app called SplitScreen from Flippa for just $1000 and made over $92,000 from it.

Flippa provides a lot of support, so you’re not on your own: importantly, Flippa will help you figure out how to value your business and will match you to buyers. And as with many other online marketplaces, your transaction is more secure when it’s on Flippa.

Useful Resource:


Item 11: Sell on MoreCommerce

You may not have heard of MoreCommerce. You’ve probably heard of Alibaba, though—China’s e-commerce giant.

MoreCommerce is a subsidiary of Alibaba, and it does something interesting: essentially, it’s not so much as a marketplace as it is a portal to a bunch of different marketplaces.

MoreCommerce

So all those marketplaces I’ve been going over? A lot of them can be accessed through MoreCommerce.

Now to be honest, this is a more elaborate and complicated solution that a lot of you are looking for. It’s better for more established businesses working in retail, and you can’t exclusively dropship.

Plus, the fees are high: we’re talking 15% transaction fees (usually) on orders plus a subscription plan.

But, for some of you it’s worth checking out solely for the multichannel operation. Not to mention, MoreCommerce ties into the next item I want to talk about…


Item 12: Sell books

So now I’ll be getting into some popular places for selling books online. As you’d expect, you can sell books on other platforms, but these sites are going to be particularly good options for some of you.

Onto BookScouter: it’s a site primarily for figuring out the value of your used textbooks (though any other book will usually do). It’s pretty straightforward:

boolscouter

You look up your book’s ISBN number, and BookScouter will search a bunch of sites and marketplaces to find what the prices it’s being sold at are.

It submits the ISBN to each site (which is what you’d have to do if you sold them on the site), which allows it to obtain the prices, or at least a good guess at them. You take a look at the range of offers and decide for yourself where you want to sell your books.

The limits? Some older books don’t have an ISBN, and BookScouter won’t be very helpful with them. This also rules out some antique or rare edition books, but that’s okay—you’d have to do some extra legwork to value those anyway. For rare edition books, you can anyways sell it on RubyLane (mentioned earlier)

Now, for sites that will actually get you cash directly:

AbeBooks is a reputable online marketplace for books. I’ve even bought books there for classes back when I was a university student.

abebooks.com

The books sold on AbeBooks range—for the most part just about any book is good—but there’s a particular focus on rarer books and books from independent publishers.

AbeBooks will charge you as a seller in three main ways: a monthly subscription fee, which is a tiered fee depending on the number of listings you’ve got; a commission fee on your sales; and payment provider service/transaction fees.

The subscription price? That starts at $25 a month and for up to 500 listings. $37 a month will let you list 4,000 things. It gets pretty high, with a max of $500 a month for over 500,000 listings.

You’ll handle shipping on your own, but AbeBooks does have some inventory management software to help you out, and can integrate with other inventory management software.

AbeBooks

If you’ve only got a few books to sell, the monthly subscription and commission fees mean AbeBooks probably isn’t worth it. But the thing is, AbeBooks also offers something for smaller sellers:

A book buyback service is provided via collaboration between TextbookRush.com and AbeBooks. It’s specifically for buying back small numbers of used books.

ValoreBooks is yet another place for you to sell your used or previously owned books. It’s not a marketplace, but a buyback site.

One of the big advantages is that it’s super simple:

Abebooks advantage

You can ship your buybacks for free, which is a major bonus if you’re not turning a high profit in the first place.

You can check out some of the sell back book requirements here, but it’s most about quality, not the type of book.

Aside from simplicity and free shipping, there’s one other major perk: ValoreBooks will try to give you the best price possible, and if you find a better price somewhere else, they will match it if you let them know!


Item 13: Sell your electronics (general)

Selling your electronics is a great way to make money online. After all, electronics are widely used, but also have a major problem:

They’re expensive. Think about it—many people read, and just about everyone has a smartphone. But most people can afford a nice, high end book if they buy it once in a while, and a lot of people struggle to afford even mid-tier phones.

Unless you’re an enthusiast for the latest tech, getting the latest model just isn’t worth it for most people. True, a lot of people have payment plans for pricey phones and even tablets, but a lot of people also buy phones and then add the SIM cards.

My point here is that a lot of people are interested in buying phones online, and there’s a big opportunity for you here. And of course, it’s not just phones, but all sorts of electronics—tablets, computers, cameras, TVs and miscellaneous smart devices.

If you have an old phone that you don’t use, but is still in good condition—great, you can sell that! If you have skills in refurbishing or repairing phones, then great, you can sell a refurbished phone!

The best sites for this would be the usual suspects, the major online marketplaces: eBay and Amazon. Craigslist and Facebook, less so. There are a couple smaller, tech-focused marketplaces that I’ll get to in a bit.

If neither applies to you, don’t worry: you can sell a phone back to a group that will repair/refurbish it.

That includes some of the options I’m about to go over: Gazelle, BuyBackBoss, and OC BuyBack.

Don’t worry, I won’t leave you with “selling electronics is a tried and tested way to make money online.”

But I’ll spend the next few items going over some of the specific ways you can sell tech online, meaning tech and electronic-focused sites that may offer some particular advantages to you.

Starting us off:


Item 14: Sell DVDS (and games and yes, even CDs) on Decluttr

Yes, this is a type of thing you can sell and not a specific marketplace to sell in. Well, DVDs are a little complicated. You’re probably aware that people mostly stream nowadays, even if DVDs are still used often.

You probably expect, as I do, that DVD use will shrink over the coming years as online watching takes even greater precedence.

So why am I suggesting you sell DVDs to make money online?

Simple: because people are still buying them. If anything, the fact that DVD use will probably shrink means it’s as good a time as ever to sell them while they’ll still earn you some decent money.

Though, I would personally recommend holding onto any special DVDs so you can sell them for high prices way later down the line. But that’s going to be a lot later.

For now, you can sell DVDs at reasonable prices to Decluttr. It works the same way selling back books and tech works with the other sites I showed you—enter the barcode, get a quote from the site, and then ship for free to them.

You can also sell your video games (if they’re on discs) and CDs.


Item 15: Sell your music

One of the things the internet has revolutionized is music: these days, it’s incredibly affordable for people to listen to music. One way or another, most people can listen to most songs they like for free.

This may be great for a consumer, but it also has obvious downsides if you’re a musician. You already have the burden of trying to emerge in a crowded field, and now you have to compete with free music?

I’m not pretending it’s easy, but there are ways to sell your music online. In fact, there are a lot of ways to make money online from your music.

One way is to ask your supporters to donate or contribute small amounts to you, on a crowd-funding platform. I won’t be talking about that here, but I will get to it later in this list—stay tuned!

There’s also SoundCloud…but I’ll talk about that along with YouTube and other social media sites, so stay tuned.

Now the reason I’m mentioning them in the first place, is that you can use these in coordination with your own music store. You’ll probably want to promote your music across various platforms.

You may have your own music website that allows for paid downloads of certain songs. But you can keep up a SoundCloud page and integrate it with your site, so that people can get a very solid sample of your work before deciding to pay more for it.

Now setting up an ecommerce site for yourself is something I’ve talked about before, and will continue talking about on this list. Selling on prominent platforms is different from having your own store, so iTunes will get its own section after this.

I want to shine a light on Bandcamp: it fills a great spot because it lets musicians not just sell their music on the site, but manage their own stores on the site. Plus, Bandcamp is still popular enough to attract people who just want to listen to music, so you’re not taking your fans to unfamiliar territory.

How popular? Check this out:

bandcamp

That’s right. $8 million has been paid to artists through Bandcamp in the last month alone.

Now the reason I suggest Bandcamp is because it requires way less setup than creating your own website, and it’s way easier for accessing listeners.

It’s also less complicated than Apple, and lets you keep more of the music—plus it’s more fan-friendly.

You can control basically everything about your Bandcamp store. You can choose what prices you want your songs and albums to go for, and change it whenever you want.

Here’s a neat benefit: you can set a MINIMUM for purchase…and a ton of time, fans will go above the minimum to express support.

So that wraps up selling music through your own store: aside from creating a website yourself, Bandcamp is one of the best options (in some cases, it may be preferable to setting up your own site).

Now I’ll talk more about selling on big music playing platforms:


Item 16: Sell your music through Apple or Amazon, by yourself

Let me emphasize again: using these options, you’re not exactly managing your own store. It’s an important distinction between these three and BandCamp or having your own site.

But, you’re still getting a sort of quasi-store. So there’s still some independence—let’s take a look.

With Apple, you’ll be using iTunes Connect. You have to apply and have a valid Apple ID, but getting accepted isn’t the hard part.

itunes connect

When you use iTunes, you need to price your albums and singles at certain price tiers that are already established. Tiers vary depending on your location, but there are always at least three: Back, Mid, and Front.

Back has the lowest prices, Front has the most, and Mid has…you guessed it, the middle! You can choose from the available price tiers in your country, but if you don’t, iTunes will use a default setting (usually Mid).

Now before you ask: yes, iTunes is closing down. The music part will go to Apple Music—but iTunes Connect will still be a place for you to manage your songs.

With Amazon, it’s simpler. Remember when I talked about selling on Amazon? Basically the same thing.

However, Amazon does have a couple extra programs for music sellers. One is Advantage: it’s all about helping independent artists sell CDs specifically.

The other is CreateSpace: it’s a self-publishing company that got merged with Kindle Direct Publishing (which I’ll talk about in a sec), but it still retains a music and audio side.

There’s an important distinction to note, though: there’s a difference between getting your music featured on Amazon Music (which is Amazon’s equivalent to Apple Music, Google Play Music, Spotify, etc) and selling your own music independently as a seller on your Amazon store.

In the latter, you get more control. In the former…you’re probably going to need a distributor. The same is true for Google Play Music. So onto the next item:


Item 17: Make money on big music platforms by using distributors

Selling through Apple Music/iTunes or Amazon Music is difficult if you’re a small, independent artist. So you know what most people do?

They use an intermediary. There are a handful of reputable distributors/middle-man websites designed to make it easier for small and independent artists to sell on the major platforms—because it’s pretty hard without them.

The biggest may be TuneCore:

tunecore

All you do is upload to TuneCore, and select all the platforms you want your stuff to be made available on. All money earned through those platforms will end up in your TuneCore account, from which you can withdraw.

TuneCore won’t take any percentage of your sales or streaming revenue, which is why it’s such a great option.

ReverbNation is a competitor that also won’t take any of your rights or royalties, and it distributes to the main platforms as well. Same goes for Ditto Music, and CD Baby.

reverbnationdittocdbaby

Now, there’s some variation between these distributors, but for the most part they work the same way. You get to keep everything you make, and you can distribute to basically any platform you want.

There are usually different pricing tiers to sign up for. Ditto Music has tiers per year and number of artists: $19 a year for unlimited distribution for one artist, $29 a year for 2 artists, etc.

ReverbNation has a free option that won’t let you distribute, but the Premium option at $19.95 a month will include distribution (and a lot more—it’s not solely focused on distribution).

So consider your options, but more likely than not, you’ll need a distributor if you want to get to Amazon, Google Play, Spotify, and others.


Item 18: Sell ebooks on Amazon

A lot of people sell ebooks on Amazon, and that’s because of the fact that it can work out very well for you.

One of the reasons people do this is that it’s easy: you don’t need to find an agent and get a publishing house to accept your manuscript. You just need to write something, put it on Amazon, and get people to read it.

You’ve probably noticed a lot of people sell ebooks for free on Amazon—that’s a strategy I’m not really going to focus on, but it’s essentially for blog/site promotion.

If you want to sell an ebook on Amazon rather than use your Amazon ebook for promotion, you’ll have to do things a little differently.

That being said, here’s why selling an ebook on Amazon might be the right thing for you to do…

First, it’s free.

Second, it gets to market quickly—publishing can take a few minutes and your ebook will appear in the store in a day or two.

You’ll earn up to 70% of the sales to customers in most major countries, which may not be ideal, but again the efficiency is an important factor.

Heck, you can even choose to put it to print through the program. You can learn more about Kindle Direct Publishing here.

Now, a lot of people think they don’t have the patience or energy to write a book, even if they’d go the self-publishing route.

But if you already have a lot of written material on a certain subject, you’d be surprised how easily you can combine everything and convert it into an ebook.

This is especially true for people who are running blogs. After all, your blog is most likely about a certain topic—just pick up your favorite posts after you’ve got a good portfolio, bundle them together while editing to keep things cohesive, and boom.

With KDP, the scale of Amazon is a major attraction. You can price your ebook low, super low, to the point that a bunch of people would buy it because “why not?”

And then if a bunch of people buy it…well, you don’t need me to tell you that that’s good!

Useful Resource:

self publishing formula on youtube


Item 19: Sell ebooks on Blurb

Kindle Direct Publishing is by far the most common platform for self-publishing in general, and definitely for ebooks as well.

Another popular competitor is called Blurb. Blurb’s sole focus is to allow people to create ebooks and magazines. You can also use Blurb to create physical books, but it’s mostly used for the former two.

blurb

Blurb even has free software to help you create your book or magazine, including templates and tutorials on using the tools.

Although it’s true Blurb competes with Kindle Direct Publishing, it’s also gotten widespread use because of its easy integrations with Amazon. You can create a book on Blurb, upload it on Blurb, and then get it published to Amazon much as if you used Amazon directly.

What’s more, Blurb has integrations with Apple iBooks and Barnes & Noble ebooks. And popularly, Blurb has its own bookstore.

It’s a common sight to see: small and independent creators sending Blurb links to their followers, who will then be able to purchase the ebook if they want.


Item 20: Sell your paintings (or other visual art pieces)

If you paint or are generally a visual artist, you better believe the internet has places for you to make money online.

One of the common places artists sell online is Etsy, for obvious reasons. But that’s far from the only way of doing it.

Saatchi art is one of the most popular marketplaces for original visual art. For a site dedicated only to the selling of ORIGINAL pieces, they get a lot of traffic:

saatchi art

What you get to keep is admittedly stiff: 65% of every piece. The good news is that there are very few fees and Saatchi will handle the shipping.

Another option is Artfinder, which has an audience of over 500,000. Your cut will be around 67%…though again, there are less fees.

You might be upset by the large cuts these sites take, but I’ve got rough news: first, other sites take an even bigger cut. Second, that’s just part of the struggle of selling visual art.

Now the good news is you can still take things into your own hands, and I don’t just mean through Etsy or eBay. You can also create your own website, as most web hosts and website builders have ecommerce functionality for certain plans.

Or you can just use an ecommerce site builder like Shopify or BigCommerce.

You might be wondering why I haven’t mentioned the websites you’ve heard of. Well, I’m about to get to them:


Item 21: Sell prints of your art or photos

See, this is a major point of distinction: selling your original artwork vs. selling the artwork image. Sometimes that means the same thing, but the internet is increasingly highlighting the difference.

The previous item was more about selling original works of art. However, depending on your medium, you stand a good chance of turning your pieces of art into something that can be sold more than once.

Redbubble is one of the most famous sites for this. Redbubble will handle the printing and shipping for you, so as long as you figure out how you want your art to go on prints (or t-shirts, posters, etc) you’re good to go.

redbubble

They have the unique feature of letting you set your margin: there’s a base price of your products which covers Redbubble’s service, and the addition of your margin to that base price will compose the retail price your customer sees.

Society6 is another service that’s fairly similar. As with Redbubble, you upload your art and then choose what products you want it to be on. After that, you basically just need to promote your work and let Society 6 handle the printing and shipping.

society6

On Society6, you get 10% of every sale, and you can increase your markup (though as with Redbubble, that would increase the overall price).

There’s another site that people frequently undervalue for selling prints: DeviantArt!

Most people think of DeviantArt as a site for artists that is outdated and no longer used. Well, it’s still used all the time, and basically everyone with a DeviantArt account has the option of selling prints if they want to.

Deviant Art

You’d have to upgrade to a Core Membership for some extra perks, like setting your own prices to increase earnings, but nonetheless, it’s a solid option.

Zazzle is very similar to Redbubble and Society6, in that you can just upload designs and sell products with your work on it.

zazzle

Selling prints of your visual art for wall art or clothes or household items overlaps with another area of selling visual art…


Item 22: Buy/sell domains

You would be surprised how profitable it is to sell domains online. Let me go over the gist first though:

Businesses have names. Websites, especially businesses with websites, have names. Websites don’t really have the same name—there’s not a Facebook.net that’s competing with Facebook.com.

Domain names, which you can think of as website names, are unique. Every decent site wants a solid domain name that makes it stand out.

And because a domain name is such a fundamental part of having an online presence, that means sites and businesses are willing to shell out money to acquire the right name.

If they’re lucky, they can just register a domain name on their own for a relatively low price. But that’s if they know the name they want, and they already are going to buy. That person or business may think of the right name in a year—by which time, YOU could be the owner of that domain name.

In which case, they would have to negotiate with you for a price to get the name, rather than the cheap basic price they could have had.

That’s the principle, and it only gets more complicated from there. It’s not exactly easy work: you can’t just buy “pizza.com” and sell it for a million dollars, because most of the obvious and big names are already registered.

But if you’re creative and patient, you can hold onto some names for a relatively low cost and turn them over for a high profit later.

You also do this in bulk, by the way. A lot of domain name registrars will let you register in bulk for a lower cost per name, and from there you can sell in bulk or individually as needed.

One final note: you don’t need to wait for someone to startup a company who is hoping for the name you happened to buy. That’s a long shot.

But there are a lot of people who are themselves trying to acquire the best names for the purpose of turning them over later, and who would compensate you for what you’ve got even if they themselves don’t plan on starting a site with it.

There are a bajillion domain name registrars, but here’s a list of some good ones to get you started!

Useful Resources:


Item 23: Reseller Hosting

Reseller hosting is a little similar to selling domains in that you’re supporting businesses with their online presence, but that’s about where the similarities end.

If you don’t know, web hosting is what it sounds like: the process of keeping a website up. Websites consume resources. If a website has a lot of videos, it needs storage. If a website is handling lots of visitors, it needs to be able to support good speeds and not crash.

Some big companies might host their own websites. A lot use industry-grade enterprise hosting—the most famous example would be Amazon, whose servers are used by a bunch of big companies (including a lot of its competitors in other fields).

A small to mid-sized business (SMB) will usually acquire an individual hosting package on its own, though. They can do this either through a web host, which directly sells a hosting plan, or through a website builder that will keep the site up but focuses more on site management features.

Here’s where you can come in to make money online: you can buy a reseller package straight from a hosting company. You can use whatever the package specifies to resell hosting to X number of clients.

It helps to know people, and to be good at setting up sites—after all, the best way to get people to buy your hosting over the same hosting company you bought from is to offer them help in maintaining their sites.

Success Stories:

Useful Articles:


Item 24: Sell your photos (general)

This is a great way to make money online, and I want to pay special attention to it because a huge amount of the internet is all about images and photos.

Just think about it: a huge part of social media is centered on sharing images. Whether from professionals or amateurs, photographs are a staple of modern internet culture.

There are a lot of ways you can sell photos. You can sell prints of your photos the same way I talked about selling prints of artwork earlier. You can also create your own ecommerce site and sell photographs.

And one of the great things about selling photographs on the internet, aside from the fact that there are a million places you can do that, is that you can either sell original photographs and ship prints, or you can sell high resolution downloads of your photography.

Now I should be honest with you right off the bat: as with selling your art, you can make the best profit margins by selling directly on your own site.

That’s what Sandeep Maheshwari did when he started Imagesbazaar in 2006. Now he earns millions selling his photos.

Or you can sell it via photo platforms.

SmugMug is one such platform, as is Zenfolio. You can think of these as crosses between website builders and gallery-builders…the bottom line is they’re made with you in mind.

Squarespace is another option. It’s a general website builder, but is known for emphasizing sleek design and gallery pages.

Using crowdfunding and subscription model sites is also a good tactic, but I’m going to get to that later down the line. Stay tuned!

You can also make money online selling stock photos. I’ll spend the next few items going over some options there:


Item 25: Sell your photos to iStockPhoto and Getty Images

You almost definitely have heard of iStockPhoto. Owned by Getty Images, it’s one of the biggest repositories of royalty-free stock photos (and other digital media). And you’ve almost definitely heard of Getty Images because it’s similarly famous.

They have over 200,000 contributors and serve over 1.5 million customers in just about every country.

The thing about iStockPhoto and Getty Images is that you can’t just make an account for free and start posting photos for people to buy. Your account needs to be approved first:

how to join getty images

But once that happens, things are pretty easy. Submit images whenever you want. Once it’s accepted, it’ll be available online. If a visitor/customer sees it and wants to use it, they’ll purchase a license that lets them download the file and use it.

The earnings differ by the type of license a customer buys—for example, a customer may purchase a personal-use license or a commercial-use license—but it’ll always be a percentage of the license.

Royalty rates usually start at 15% for photos and 20% for videos/illustrations on iStockPhoto. “Exclusive” contributors can earn 25-45%. With Getty images, it starts at 20% for photos. And yes, you retain copyright!


Item 26: Sell your photos to Shutterstock

You might be wondering why I even bothered putting Shutterstock as a separate item. After all, it’s about the same right?

Yeah, the fundamentals are the same. One main difference is that Shutterstock is even more accepting of different media types than Getty Images. But that’s not the main difference you’re here for.

shutterstock

Okay, I don’t want you to get too carried excited. You’re not going to be earning a massive royalty with Shutterstock. However, Shutterstock’s earnings breakdown is different from iStockPhoto and Getty Images.

Part of the reason is because Shutterstock has a subscription package option: customers can license up to 750 images a month for a regular fee. But the main reason is that Shutterstock pays you fixed royalty numbers per your level of lifetime earnings.

So if you’ve earned $0 to $500 on Shutterstock, you’ll get $0.25 a download for the monthly subscriber images I mentioned. The download of an On Demand Image of any size will get you $1.88. Shutterstock applies percentages for footage clips (you get 30%) and custom images or enhanced license images (20%).

The other earning brackets are $500 – $3,000, $3,000 – $10,000, and above $10,000. Now, it’s never going to be more than $2.85 for your most expensive downloads.

That sounds really weak, but this model has good benefits for some photographers. For one, it’s great for passive income—just let your photos do the work for you. The more you earn, the higher your chance of breaking into another tier, and so the cycle goes.


Item 27: Sell your photos to Adobe/Fotolia

Adobe Stock is a good option because it’s powered by a highly reputable software company.

I saved it for last because, simply put, it has probably the best royalties. You’ll get 33% commission for every photo or vector art download. You can request a payout immediately once you have at least $25.

Another point in favor of Adobe is that generally speaking, it’s a bit of a tier above Shutterstock and Getty Images in terms of image quality and customer clientele. Don’t get me wrong, there’s tons they have in common.

And there’s a lot of great content on the former two entities. But Adobe Stock photos are particularly pursued by people who first and foremost need quality images, as opposed to people on Shutterstock and Getty Images/iStockPhoto who just need “good” images.

Lastly, selling your images on Adobe Stock means your images will also be on Fotolia, another stock photo company that was acquired by Adobe in 2014. So your reach is expanded to another entity.

And generally speaking, Adobe Stock is considered to have better customer support. On the note of selling stock photos, though…


Item 28: Sell your videos

As you probably realized in the previous items, you can sell stock videos as well. The principle is basically the same.

And in fact, the sites you can use are the same! You can sell stock video on Shutterstock, Getty Images/iStockPhoto, and Adobe Stock.

Usually videos get a higher royalty fee than images. For example, Adobe Stock gives you 33% for images and 35% for videos, though the range can be starker with other sites.

However, you can sell a lot more than stock videos—you can sell videos with actual content.

This is obviously a harder endeavor for the simple fact that you have to get people to actually go through a video, which takes longer than getting someone to look at a photo. Plus you’ll be investing a lot more into making content pieces. Here are some options though:

Uscreen is a pretty unique platform. The whole purpose of it is to act as a sort of marketplace for video creators. People can rent your videos, buy them, or even buy subscriptions to your content. You can add coupons and promotions, etc, much the way a more established video creator would.

uscreen

Vimeo is the other major option: generally regarded as a place for more high-end video content, Vimeo also lets creators sell their videos. To do that, you need to have Vimeo Pro, which is $20 a month.

However, doing that gives you 1TB of storage a year, and best of all, a whopping 90% of the revenue.

Amazon is yet another frequently used option, through Prime Video Direct. The benefit of this is your content can be easily purchased by almost everyone and watched easily through anyone with a phone, tablet, or smart TV.


Item 29: Sell your sound effects and/or video effects

This is a pretty niche category so I won’t spend too much time on it, but it’s good to know about for those of you who could pull this off.

Think of all that stuff about selling stock photos and videos: you can basically do that but with video effects and sound effects.

See, major studios and production companies will have high-end sound/video effects that they handle without problem. But in the age of the internet, there are countless smaller creators who want to spice up their content but don’t have the skills or budget for it.

Remember Envato Market? That’s the company that runs Themeforest, where people buy website themes and templates.

Well, Envato also runs VideoHive, which may be one of the most reputable marketplaces exclusively for buying stock video content—much of it being special effects, animations, etc.

For those who are really good with Adobe After Effects, you can sell motion design templates on RocketStock—which, you may have guessed, is part of the Shutterstock family.

For sound effects, you can sell it on AudioJungle.


Item 30: Sell your voice

I know that this sounds super creepy, but hear me out. Everyone has a voice, but very few people realize they can make money off it without being a professional singer/actor.

There are a bunch of ways you can do this. You can try to find prospective clients who want to hire people to do voice overs for content.

For that you can go to Upwork, Fiverr, or even Craigslist.

But another option would be heading to sites specialized for voice services:

Covoco is one of the most popular: you just need to create a profile and get verified. Then you can just get straight into auditioning for projects and getting in contact with clients.

VoiceBunny is another option, and it has a small army of over 28,000 voice actors available for gigs. It works basically the same way as Covoco, though there’s also an optional contest aspect of the hiring sometimes.

Sure, it’s niche, but who knows! And if you have an interest in narrating and doing voice overs, this could both be a good stepping stone for that career and a way to make money online.


Item 31: On that note, narrate audiobooks

This is pursuant to the previous item on selling your voice, but it’s more elaborate. Before I was talking about finding calls for voices on marketplaces, which can include gigs for narrating audiobooks but usually will involve shorter term gigs.

However, you can make decent money narrating audiobooks. This is naturally a longer process: while the length of the book is what matters, you’ll probably have at least hours of recording per project.

Now luckily, there are actually a couple of websites out there for you to check out in addition to the normal and aforementioned freelance marketplaces.

ACX is my first pick. It’s a site that’s entirely dedicated to the audiobook marketplace. It connects authors, agents, publishers, narrators, engineers, and recording studios…basically everyone involved in the audiobook process.

acx

The good thing about audiobook narration in general is also the good thing about ACX: there are practically unlimited projects to narrate. Finding the books you want to narrate is the real challenge, but at least there’s no limit to the work you can do.

All you have to do is create your profile, including a bunch of samples, and wait to get noticed by authors and publishers. You can also apply and audition for books you want to narrate.

You can choose a per-finished-hour rate or 50% of the royalties, or both…which is a dang good deal in my opinion.

The other option to ACX is Findaway Voices. Like ACX, Findaway tries to hook you up with clients once you make an account, and will pay you per your set per-finished-hour rate.

Findway Voices

Projects get recommended to you based on the rates you’ve set for yourself, which is an added bonus in making sure you’re only looking at the ones that will pay you enough.

Narrating audiobooks can be a little risky because the per-finished-hour rate means you’re not getting paid for the entire time you spend on the project. If you have to do new takes or retry stuff, that time you take won’t come into play.

That’s why you’ll want to set your PFH rate high, to account for the extra time. Doing that while remaining competitive is tricky…but I’ll leave that to you!


Item 32: Sell your leads

This is something you can sell online that is sometimes complicated, and certainly requires you to already have business sense, but which is also lucrative when done well.

You might already do work for a company that involves gathering leads, or you might just be in business for yourself. It can be difficult gathering them, so keep in mind that this isn’t exactly an “easy” way to make money online.

However you acquire your leads, you can sell them in various ways: one way is by contacting various businesses in your industry and offering them your mailing lists.

Another is to use a platform meant for listing…lists! Lead Roster is a clear example, as you can browse and post different types of leads. Another, more polished option is Leadrop, or Fuelsy.

A good point about Fuelsy is that it integrates with Hubspot and Salesforce, which makes managing your existing leads much more efficient.

A key point here is that you should be careful to not abuse your power over contact information: a lead list broker will probably make sure you certify that your leads opted in to your list and that they have the right to opt out of having their info shared with third parties.


Item 33: Sell education courses

What’s good about this method to make money online is that it’s not so niche that you haven’t encountered it. For example, I’m willing to bet most people who aren’t in education didn’t know there were popular sites like TeachersPayTeachers.

But most people have encountered the presence of free and paid courses on the internet—the internet’s abundance of educational content is one of its greatest virtues, as many notes.

And even if you’re not a professional teacher, you might be an expert in something. So why not get paid to teach it?

Aside from making and selling courses on your own site, or finding people who want to hire teachers in this or that area online, you can use a platform specifically for selling educational courses.

The most famous is, of course, Udemy:

udemy

I mean, that’s an insane list of numbers. And the best to me, are the 30 million students and 42,000 instructors. That means you can reach a wide audience without repeating another instructor, as long as you know what you’re doing.

All you really need is quality audio and video recording tools, which most people have in the form of their phones. You can even screencast if you don’t want to be on camera. It takes some time for payment to get to you, as Udemy holds onto the money in case a student demands a refund.

However, you’ll get basically whatever your students are paying for, which is great. Plus, you can offer as many free/paid lessons as you want, to attract students.

Some prominent competitors include Podia, Teachable, and Thinkific . Though those are far from the only options.

You can also experiment with crowdfunding platforms, but as I mentioned before, I’ll get to those later.


Item 34: Sell your apps on the App Store/Play Store

Okay, yes: this has a high bar for entry. If you just want to make some cash online with less effort and less expertise, this isn’t it.

That being said, if you already have the ability to build an app, why not do it? You can price it low for mass consumption or price it high to target a niche of people willing to pay a little more than they would otherwise.

You can even make it free and use a funnel to get app users to pay. Sites like Twitter and Reddit are good for promoting an app, especially if it’s free and seems novel.

Want to know another “cheat” to selling apps? You can sell templates for apps online, auction style. Fiverr is one potential venue, though it’s far from the only one. Though of course you can gain the most directly by selling Apple’s App Store or Google’s Play Store.

Even if you’re not a designer, you might stand to gain by hiring someone to build an app for your existing business. Not a lot of businesses have apps, and not all of them need to, but if you can offer an app that brings value to your customers, you can boost your sales!

Success Stories:


Item 35: Build and sell software (aside from mobile apps)

This is actually a little more open-ended than building apps for mobile devices. On the other hand, you may have a somewhat tougher time getting people to install your work if it’s not as easy as downloading an app on a phone/tablet.

The good news is you can get people to check out our software in lots of different ways, and if it’s useful, a lot of people may be interested in it.

Consider also that you can create software for browsers to use—this is something that is generally easier for prospective customers to get into.

As far as places to sell software go, I’ve got to say selling it on your own is going to be one of your best bets. It definitely means you have to invest more time/energy/money, but there isn’t a ton of sites for selling software the way there are for selling clothes or photos or books.

Which makes sense. But the good news is that you don’t need to spend all your time on your site.

Using an ecommerce site builder like Shopify or BigCommerce, or even a general site builder with ecommerce capabilities (like Wix or Squarespace) will go a long way in letting you easily distribute your product.

And while I don’t necessarily think you should only offer free software, you could certainly offer free trials or free “lite” versions. Keep it useful, and people will keep paying!


Item 36: Sell source code.

This is kind of similar to selling an app or software. In fact, you are in many ways essentially selling the software you’ve made—except you’re not selling the finished version to a customer, you’re selling the source code to someone who will then distribute to customers themselves.

People are understandably willing to invest in this sort of thing, especially because an app that’s good can end up making way more money later down the line.

So while some creators would obviously prefer to keep their source code to themselves and their team, I can’t blame you if you think you can sell some code.

One of the biggest marketplaces for selling source code is Chupamobile:

Chupamobile

Another popular option is Crunchbase, as is Codester, but if I’m being frank, you can find others by Googling around and using your instincts.

And as I often say, you can figure out how to sell on your own by using freelance sites, message boards, etc.


Item 37: Sell digital products online

Okay, yes, I already covered this. When I was talking about selling your music, photos, art, apps, and even educational courses…those are all digital products.

But in those instances, I mostly talked about selling them to platforms that would make it easier for people to buy. The world of selling digital products goes far beyond that.

First way: you can sell your digital products on your own. I still kind of mentioned it a few times, but the way you would do this is by setting up your own ecommerce site. You still have to invest some money into it, but fundamentally you get to keep most of what you make.

Now, here’s the broader part of selling digital products: they don’t need to be your creations. And no, I’m not talking about stealing…think of how just about anyone can get into retail without running their own factory or shipping network.

Instead of physical items, make it digital. You can fundamentally do similar things: run a store that sells digital products made by other people. It’s certainly less common, but if you look for it, you’ll find it no problem.

In fact, you might find a lot of those digital products are still creative works, like ebooks or music. Just be sure you’re working fairly with the creators you coordinate with whose products you want to sell.

Broadly speaking, the benefits of selling digital products speak for themselves: little upfront cost, easier distribution, and the possibility of easily automating the checkout process.

The cons are that you’re competing with a lot of free content, though your niche is important here. Additionally, it may be relatively easy for someone to purchase your digital product and then distribute it to others at no cost…or cost.

You can view more details about selling digital products here!


Item 38: Use marketing funnels or software to make them (Clickfunnels)

Funnels are a very important concept for ecommerce and digital marketing. You could say they’re ubiquitous, and are used whether or not a person knows about them.

So I’m telling you because if you know what a funnel is, you can enhance it and increase sales! Plus, I’ve got a good tool worth checking out.

First of all, a funnel, also known as a marketing funnel, is basically the set of steps your visitors go through before they reach the conversion (the thing you want them to do, which is usually a sale).

It’s really that simple. The concept is useful because you can think of the specific steps in your marketing strategy and website design that lead a customer to do this or that action. Once you’re thinking strongly in those terms, you can significantly improve your funnel.

Here’s an example:

marketing and sales funnel

As you can see, the funnel encompasses a wide range of things.

Now, you might be wondering how you can get started. For those of you who are running very small businesses, especially freelancers and people who are just getting started, I’d say you should think it out yourself.

By this I mean, do research, plan, and experiment. This research can include research into how funnels work and how to optimize them, and actually looking into your site analytics.

Once you feel comfortable, think about investing in software designed just to build out and improve funnels. There are quite a few, but here are some of the best:

Keap, formerly known as Infusionsoft, is a kind of all-in-one tool. The major tools included are: a contact management tool, an automated email marketing tool, and a sales pipeline tool (which basically means a funnel). There are more tools, but those are the big ones, and each is very robust.

Whereas Keap focuses more on email (with some attention to the website), Leadpages is more strongly focused on your website itself. One of its core functions is to help you build a landing page, but it goes way above that and strongly emphasizes enhancing your funnels.

And lastly, there’s Clickfunnels. Clickfunnels can sometimes be overkill for small businesses, but for many it turns out to be well-worth it: Clickfunnels has under 100,000 users but has helped them process over $4 BILLION.

I can’t really explain it much more than by saying its sole focus is to improve your marketing, sales, and website funnels.

So wherever you are in your online business, don’t neglect strategizing about funnels!


Item 39: Forex trading

You might never have heard of forex trading. Well, you think you haven’t: forex trading just means buying or selling currencies. “Forex” is shorthand for “foreign exchange market.”

As you might expect, this is a major part of global finance, and global daily turnover is roughly over $5 TRILLION, which is the biggest number for anything I’ve got on this list. The main actors in this game are big banks, but individuals participate as well.

All transactions on the forex market involve “currency pairs”: the simultaneous trading of two currencies. The most common is the Euro and the Dollar, but that’s hardly the only pair used. A party purchases a quantity of one currency by paying the quantity of another.

So how do you make money?

This is a tricky question, and as you might guess, forex trading is volatile and risky. If you have experience trading it won’t be so bad, but if you’re a beginner…you’ll probably want to do your research and start small.

That being said, the bottom line is you’re supposed to buy a currency and sell it later for a higher price. Here’s an example of what that would look like in practice:

traders

In the example, you purchase Euros with your dollars, and then some time later, when the exchange rate is higher, you convert back to dollars.

It sounds simple, but it requires skill and good timing! The good news is that as exchange rates are always fluctuating, you’ve got a lot of chances to strike it right.


Item 40: Sell signals in forex trading

Now that you know a little more about forex trading, and I assume that with some practice you got good hands on it.

That’s when good things begin to happen. You can now start selling your signals to others.

How?

Through a site called Collective2 comes into the picture.

Once you have a good history of trades in Collective2, other users can “subscribe” to your trades. That way they get same trades executed on their account as yours and you get paid on per-subscriber basis.

This is the perfect example of solving the following problem:

They are people who have money, but no (trading) knowledge. And,

there are people who have (trading) knowledge, but no money.

And mind you, top 20 traders on Collective2 make anywhere between $58,000 to $5,78,000 on a monthly basis, just by selling signals!

top earning strategy developers


Item 41: Invest in Bitcoin (or more likely, other cryptocurrencies)

You’ve definitely heard of Bitcoin by now. In fact, Bitcoin is supposedly old news in a super robust cryptocurrency market.

First, a check-in: cryptocurrency is virtual currency. They are decentralized (or they’re supposed to be) and theoretically immune to regularly control, though that’s starting to change. Cryptocurrencies use special cryptographical functions for the transaction, hence the name.

So why invest in them? For starters, exchanging crypto online has few processing fees. They’re highly secure as well, and the nature of blockchain technology makes it easy to verify transactions.

And lastly, the “big” reason: because cryptocurrency valuations are famously volatile, you can get massive returns on investment. The key is doing it right.

First off, be ready to take risks…calculated risks. Only risk what you can afford to risk, and keep in mind that new coins come out all the time. Bitcoin was once the vast majority of the crypto-market, and these days it’s roughly half or less.

There are a lot of sites that will tell you about the market capitalization of coins, and there are lots of places to see trends and history of coin performances. CoinMarketCap is one good example.

But on a deeper level, you should do what you can to become familiar with the coins you want to invest in. Do research way beyond trend lines and numbers.

Here’s a useful guide if you’re just getting started!


Item 42: Invest and trade in stocks

It almost feels like cheating to add this in. People have been trading stocks for literally centuries…but thanks to the internet, just about anyone can do it without having to leave the comfort of their home.

Investing online is a massive topic that could earn its own article series, so I’ll just keep it brief.

Trading stocks online has fundamentally the same challenges, risks, and rewards as trading old-school. If you’re just starting out, you’ll need to do some work finding the right stock broker for you.

A broker is a person or firm (in your case, almost always a firm) that has a license to buy/sell stock. I suggest you check out this list to get an overview of the main differences between popular stock brokers.

In the meantime, a few basics on what to look for:

Whether a broker has a minimum amount required to open and maintain an account (if you’re a beginner you may not have a lot to start investing with); the amount of commission the broker takes per trade (could be fixed, a percentage, or even NOTHING); the level of customer support and educational material included.

TD Ameritrade and E*Trade are some of the most popular online brokers for beginners, and both are commission free.

In fact, these days a lot of brokers are removing their commissions to stay competitive! So if you want to get involved in the stock market, but don’t have a ton of money to invest, the current internet age is a great moment for you!


Item 43: Take Surveys for cash

This is probably one of the easiest ways to make money online (though it’s not a cakewalk). It’s a relatively straightforward concept:

Companies need information to properly market and sell their products. And researchers in academia need to know what people think about things for their subjects.

There are entire sites dedicated to hooking you up with surveys—one example being Survey Junkie:

survey junkie

These are two pretty different types of entities, but the essentials are pretty similar from your perspective as a survey taker:

You’ll find a call for survey participants—sometimes this would be labeled “research participants,” “market research,” or similar. You might find this online through Googling around, or maybe you subscribed somewhere for notifications of survey opportunities.

You also might see it in public. Either way, the sign up processes are usually pretty simple, but there’s a fair chance you won’t get approved for every study.


Item 44: Take Surveys for raffle winnings

This is obviously similar to the previous item, but it’s important to distinguish. See, a LOT of the surveys you’ll find aren’t for cash, and they’re so common that you probably ignore them. But by that token, they’re also insanely common and easy to find.

One of the best ways to find them? Just look through your email’s “spam” or “promotion” category.

Basically, these surveys aren’t offering cash right away…but take them, and you’ll be entered into a raffle or mini lottery drawing. The benefits can range, of course…sometimes it’s straight cash, sometimes it’ll be some version of store credit. Other times it’ll be a physical prize or good, which you can then sell or simply use as intended.

As with the last item, some of this stuff is for academics and science, while most of it is private sector stuff. If you’re in a university or a university setting, I can guarantee there are a LOT of under-used opportunities for survey raffles.

If not, don’t fret. There are probably surveys on your receipt when you get groceries, or buy something from a gas station!

This isn’t always cost-efficient, of course. If you do one survey that takes 30 minutes, for example, it might just be a waste of time (unless the raffle prize is big and you stand a decent chance of winning).

But suppose you do one 5-minute survey a week, or every 3 days even. You’ll probably win something at some point, and for relatively little time or energy on your part!


Item 45: Take part in Focus groups

This is fairly similar to surveys for cash, though it’s more elaborate. In some cases, these are surveys, but have more meat to them.

Note that some of them are in person, so it’s not entirely online—but some are.

As with surveys for cash or even raffles, quite a few different groups would be involved here. However, the most prominent options for you will usually be market research groups and companies handling their own research directly.

There are still plenty of opportunities for scientific research participants, but most of the gigs will be private sector.

Now where these differ from simple surveys is that focus groups involve…GROUPS. So you’re not on your own talking to a person on a screen. You’ll be with a group of people, sharing opinions and talking together.

In fact, often times, surveys are the launching point for focus groups:

get invited

When you do clinical trials—be it academic or for health companies—there’s a lot more red tape involved, so to speak. They’re not difficult, but there are naturally regulations in place to make sure participants are not harmed.

Nonetheless, they’re a solid option for those who are interested—here’s an example from one good starting point, focusgroup.com:

focusgroup.com

In summary, focus groups overlap a lot with online surveys, but they aren’t the same. A lot of them are physical, but as tech makes it more cost efficient to communicate in-depth, more and more are moving online!


Item 46: Do micro jobs (particularly on Fiverr)

Micro jobs, also known as micro tasks, are a subset of the gig economy and are a uniquely online phenomenon. The gist is what you can guess from the term: it’s a small payment for a small task.

Which means that micro jobs can include a massive range of activities. Some of them are even in the real world, and a lot of them are online. Some of them just need one person, and some are crowdsourced, which means a bunch of people do a small part.

This is a pretty broad category, so I’ll spend the next few items going over a few of the different types/formats of micro jobs and some prominent platforms for them. But before I do that, I want to talk briefly about one of the major places for micro jobs:

That would be Fiverr.com. Fiverr is most famous for being a marketplace for freelancers, rather like Upwork.

However, while Upwork and Fiverr frequently have overlapping contracts, the general difference is that Upwork is for longer term and higher paying gig work. Fiverr derives its name from the idea that a client can pay a freelancer $5, which should give you a sense of things.

While of course you don’t need to offer services for $5, the idea is that you’re a freelancer who is good at doing certain things and who can take short term gig work for a client.

Where Fiverr is similar to Upwork is that it largely relies on you as a freelancer to find prospective clients. It’s true they can find you, but you can’t rely on that until you get a strong history and reputation on the platform.

One last benefit of Fiverr: you can offer packages on your page to make it easy for prospects to purchase something from you.

For example, an entry level tier at $10 that will get someone a basic Photoshop job within 3 days, or a high level package that costs $100 but can get someone a detailed gig in a shorter amount of time.

So that’s Fiverr…but that only scratches the surface. The next few items will cover platforms that are better suited for signing up for specific tasks than selling yourself as a freelancer.


Item 47: Do micro jobs on Gigwalk or Zaarly

These are the types of micro job/gig platforms for in person tasks. So while they’re not fully online ways of making money, they’re still partially ways to make money online.

At the very least, it’s not a way of making money that really would have been around before the modern internet age. And it’s worth noting that these apps may also include gigs that are online…it really depends.

So let’s get to it:

Gigwalk is one of the most famous and popular micro task platforms around right now. A lot of its popularity is due to the fact that it’s so simple:

Gigwalk App to make money online

You just need your phone, and from there you can sign up for gigs from a list. Once you get accepted, you just need to follow the instructions and submit your work directly in the app.

The key thing, though, is that it’s really centered around operating in your area. This is bad insofar is it restricts what you can choose from, but it’s good because it saves you time searching and increases the likelihood that you’ll get picked for what you’ll apply to.

A great feature with Gigwalk is that a customer has the option of adding you to their private workforce if they like your performance: this means you get access to gigs available only to that private workforce.

Zaarly is much the same way, although it’s a little more selective about letting you join as a service provider, and has no fees except for the 10% when you get paid.

Taskrabbit is another platform that is roughly as reputable as Gigwalk. It’s pretty similar to Zaarly and Gigwalk, but tends to involve more personal gigs than professional ones.

taskrabbit to make money online

For example, you’re a lot more likely to get handyman, furniture assembly, cleaning, etc, gigs with Taskrabbit than on Gigwalk. Though that said, all sorts of people want all sorts of tasks.

And as I said before: none of these platforms are for exclusively in-person jobs! A lot of them happen to be in-person gigs that are coordinated through the internet, but there are still online gigs posted on these platforms.

Now, onto the next one:


Item 48: Be a virtual assistant

There are a million ways you can make money online as a virtual assistant online. Virtual assistants are in higher demand than you think, and you’re probably qualified for a lot of those positions!

Naturally, you should take into account the degree of involvement you want to have. Being a virtual assistant will always mean being hands on and detail-oriented, but there are still some important differences.

Some people might want a long term hire who can be effectively a secretary through the computer: someone who manages calendars, appointments, handles social media accounts, etc.

A lot of virtual assistant gigs are smaller in scope even if they’re long-term: for example, plenty of them are “social media manager” jobs or similar. You might also be asked to look after a calendar and help coordinate appointments, or plan content for a site.

While you can find calls for virtual assistants in many places, I’ve found Upwork to be particularly heavy with them. Indeed also has its fair share, and if you Google for it, you’ll probably find some recent postings in Google jobs.

Yeah, there aren’t exactly prominent marketplaces specifically for virtual assistant jobs. But they’re common enough on the sites I mentioned (plus other boards you can find on your own) that you shouldn’t have much trouble finding them.

Happy assisting!


Item 49: Start a coupons website

What is a coupons website? Answer: it’s one of the best ways to make money online from home.

Okay, here’s what that really means: a coupons site is a site that gives people coupons. Duh. People obviously love these sites because they don’t need to give much—they can save money and get special deals, without having to invest much time or money.

A lot of people don’t realize that they can start their own coupons sites, because they assume they can’t compete with big coupon sites. It’s true there’s a challenge, but if you are knowledgeable about a niche, you can create a coupon site for it.

The benefits of doing this are that it’s relatively affordable. It really depends on how much you want to invest in building your site, but by now you can make a solid site for relatively low costs.

Plus, most of the programs you’d use to offer coupons have low bars to entry—a lot of them will be free.

The main drawback is, as you guessed, the competition. Even if you’re settling into a niche, it’ll take time and work to get your site into the sun. That’s why even though running a coupons website is a good way to make money online, it’s very separate from passive online income.

Some coupons and daily deal programs that could be useful are: Coupons.com Brandcaster; CentsOff; Daily Deal Builder.

brandcaster

These are far from your only options, but they’re good places to start. They usually offer coupons and make it as easy as possible for you to distribute and promote those offers on your site. They also sometimes will help you get your site monetized with ad revenue.

In addition, you can often get affiliate commissions from some other popular sites or apps (Swagbucks, for example).


Item 50: Outsourcing and subcontracting

Pay attention here, because there’s a lot of nuance involved.

The gig economy is partially infamous for the amount of outsourced and subcontracted work that gets done.

Think of a well-off American company paying someone from Vietnam to code for their site: the American company saves money by not having to hire a part time employee at minimum wage in the US, and the Vietnamese developer makes more than average pay in Vietnam.

It sounds like everyone wins, but it’s infamous among many because people in highly developed countries lose out on jobs and have to compete with people who are qualified but asking for less. So you might be skeptical about this.

There’s certainly some truth to that, but the reality is a little more nuanced. First of all, tons of people in the U.S. and other high-wage countries can be subcontracted online.

Making money as a subcontractor or outsourced hire is sometimes difficult, but sometimes it lets you pay a lot more money proportionately to the task. A lot of businesses, for various reasons, prefer to hire people in their own countries, even if it’s online.

And if someone is paying a lot from another country…so what? Money is money. The bottom line is that as a subcontractor or outsourced hire, your client is still ultimately saving by not paying a full or part time employee.

Which means you can make more money just for doing a certain, specific task or set of tasks. You don’t need to do the work of a full-time employee, but you can still earn a proportionately high price for it because the client is still saving money.

So that’s why it’s worth looking into as a freelancer.

Now here’s the flip side: suppose you run an online business.

In that case, you make money online by being the one to outsource or subcontract. Of course this is really more a way of saving money, but hey, it’s more money in your pocket at the end of the day, right?


Item 51: HR Placements via LinkedIn

This is one of those things that is unknown to a lot of the people qualified to do it.

HR here means human resources, the same way it would at a traditional company. LinkedIn is the social network for professionals. So how do you make money online off this?

The key word is placement: your job here is basically to be a recruiter. Another slang term would be headhunter. Working as an online independent contractor, you need to find great candidates to fill particular positions within a company.

LinkedIn is a great resource for obvious reasons, but it doesn’t need to be your only resource. You can use Facebook too, or really any online site that lets you take a look at potential candidates. But LinkedIn is of course the best option.

You usually won’t need to worry about how the potential hire and the company will negotiate pay or hours or even second interviews. Your main job is to deliver a great person for a first interview.

Once you do that, you’ll get paid for finding someone by the company. Now the thing is you need to get a company to hire you first, and most of the time you’ll only get paid if you successfully deliver someone.

The good part of that is that you can get hired more easily, as it’s a safe bet for the company. The bad news is that if you fail, you don’t get paid. Duh.

Do note that some companies will only want to pay if they actually hire the person…you’ll have to be careful when negotiating with a business to make sure that point is clear!


Item 52: Create a review website

How do I know what I’m talking about? Well, you’re reading this article on my review website, right?

Jokes aside, making a review website is a good way to make money online. Easy? No. Like making a coupons website, you need to invest time, energy, and money to grow your site.

Before you cut me off, yes, the main way you’d make money online off a review website is affiliate links and possibly ad revenue. Right now I’m not talking about the technique of affiliate links, but the specific type of website that works well with them.

So, the thing about a review site is that you have to find your niche. This should be something that you enjoy, so you can work hard at it, but also something that is less common.

Once you find your niche, you’ll have to face the reality that there are more likely than not a lot of sites either in that niche or pretty close to it. That doesn’t mean your work is impossible: you don’t need to be 100% new.

After all, if enough people are buying products in that niche to get you money with affiliate links, then there will be other sites competing with yours. You can still beat out your competition by making sure your site is properly optimized for search engines (I’ve got a list of tools for that here!).

Another key aspect of running a review website is not completely isolating yourself from your competition. The simple fact of the matter is that if you play your cards well, the best option for everyone is to collaborate.

There will only be so many quality sites in your niche. If you mention other sites on your site, and they mention you on theirs, you can both gain traffic and commissions. If you comment on their posts—same idea.

One of the best affiliate programs for review websites in particular is by Amazon.

It might seem overwhelming at first, but don’t worry. Review sites are often used to make money online because they’re good at it. You can check out my massive list of blog promotion tactics to get started!


Item 53: Start a blog/site and get ad revenue!

I’ve talked more than once about using affiliate links to earn money. While that’s a tried and true method, and used for a huge number of sites, it’s clearly only one of the popular ways for blogs to get money.

The other one? ADS.

Now, ads can be useful in supplementing your affiliate income. A lot of sites earn both from ads and affiliate links.

But if your site or blog isn’t well suited for affiliate links (say, if you’re really focusing on content that doesn’t involve products) or you just don’t want to do them, advertising is absolutely a proven way of making money off your site.

Is it proven for everyone? Heck no. But here’s an overview of how it can work for you:

There are three main ways of getting ad revenue from your site. The first one is the one that’s infamous: pay per click (PPC) advertising. When you register with a PPC platform, you’ll get paid every time a user clicks on an ad. Sometimes you can get more if the click ends up in a sale.

The disadvantage of PPC is that you tend not to get a lot of money per click, so it only really pays off if you’re getting a lot of traffic. The advantage is that the ads will be tailored to your audience and in line with your blog’s content, plus it’s relatively easy on your end.

The most popular PPC platform is Google AdSense. And if you don’t want to use that (I bet you would only do that if you are unable to get AdSense account), you can even try BuySellAds.

The second way is CPM advertising: CPM here means Cost Per Mille (cost per thousand). It’s a bit similar to pay per click in that your traffic numbers are what matter most. But instead of clicks generating your money, its views. Hence the “Mille”—usually, 1,000 clicks will get you a set unit of money.

The last way is to sell ad space directly to advertisers. This can be much more lucrative, but it’s also way less certain. With PPC and CPM you can basically calculate how much you’ll earn with X amount of traffic once you sign up for a platform.

But when you reserve space for advertisers, you need to count on being able to get their interest. Some people even use agencies to persuade advertisers to put ads on their sites.

Doing this is less automated than PPC or CPM ad revenue, but like I said…if you pull it off, it can be lucrative.


Item 54: Be a virtual tutor

Being a virtual/remote tutor is one of the more common online jobs. This is as open-ended as it sounds:

You could be a tutor for a wide variety of topics, and if you’re open to it, more than one topic. Usually the way virtual tutoring works is you’ll be working with a specific person or group of people over a period of time on a specific subject.

While a lot of people want virtual tutors for their kids, plenty of the people you tutor are also the customers, meaning adults.

You can also be a tutor for certain classes at a semester length, or tutor a general skill someone wants to have. You can find someone who wants to be tutored through a job posting online, or you might have a friend or peer who wants to help learning something and would be willing to pay you.

If you’re looking for positions online, Indeed has a lot of job postings, as does Upwork. But there are some sites specifically for virtual tutoring jobs:

Of those, some notable options are Tutor.com, TutorMe, and A3 Tutors.

Pay varies between the platforms you use, clients you negotiate with, but ballpark base pay is somewhere close to $15 an hour. Getting hired through a job posting/negotiation with a client is usually going to have the potential of being more lucrative—you could get paid $40 or more an hour.

But that is of course riskier than a platform that works to protect the parties involved. Once you have some experience tutoring online, though, it’ll probably be easier for you to move into tutoring or teaching in person (if that’s what you want).

Otherwise, you could start building a freelance site for yourself as a tutor. There are endless possibilities.

Here’s another possibility:


Item 55: Do Guest posting

Guest posting is something that a lot of people know first and foremost as a blog promotion tactic.

But, it’s also a way for freelance writers to earn some extra cash while also building their portfolio. In fact, guest posting is also famous for being a hallmark of up and coming writers.

So, let’s get to it:

Guest posting is exactly what it sounds like…when you post on another person or group’s blog or magazine. Although this isn’t necessarily the case, usually you’ll be guest posting on outlets that are more popular than yours.

True, you could be posting on smaller outlets that are roughly similar to yours in size, or if you’re trying to tap into a new niche, they might be smaller. But usually guest posting is supposed to get your name and content out there to a larger audience, and thus a site with more traffic.

Now, let me be frank with you: guest posting usually doesn’t pay a ton of money. First thing’s first: most blogs and outlets that accept guest posts won’t pay you for them. Second, of the ones that do, the money is usually so-so, and you’ll have greater competition.

That said, there’s still a wide variety of sites paying for guest posts, in just about every niche and field. You can check out this list for some examples, but these things change all the time, so be sure to double check the sites you want to submit a post to.

Usually it works like this: you find a site you want to submit to, and look at their FAQs or guidelines for submitting pieces. Sometimes you might want to email them to inquire. Typically you have to give a pitch and a resume or CV of your work, so it can be challenging for beginners.

But hey, arduous as it might be for beginners, writers who are beginning to get some work out there in the world will find it is worth the effort: remember, you’re not just earning side cash, but building your resume!


Item 56: Try Proofreading

This is a type of job that doesn’t have many well-established sites or marketplaces solely focused on the niche. That’s largely because proofreading overlaps with online writing jobs.

For main challenge right off the bat is finding proofreading jobs at a rate that is acceptable for you. A lot of people are hiring for writing jobs online, and many of these jobs include the responsibility of proofreading things that the freelancer didn’t write (almost all of them require you to proofread what you write of course).

So the amount of clients out there hiring a proofreader is a little smaller. That said, they’re still out there. Usually these are people and businesses who already have content they like, but they just want an extra pair of eyes to comb through and make smaller improvements.

What I find to be most common online for proofreading jobs is smaller content producers: usually individuals, they enjoy writing their own content and wouldn’t want to hire someone to write for them…but they also don’t have the time or energy to pick apart every detail of what they produce.

And typically these people are hiring for shorter term projects.

So that’s the type of thing you’d probably find as an online proofreader. As far as good places to look are, Upwork has them all the time, but they tend to be shorter gigs. If you Google around you might find some of the most recent job postings…keep in mind these gigs come and go often.

My last word of advice is to watch out for overworking: proofreading may be simple, but it’s still time consuming and there’s a lot of pressure. If your ONLY job is to make sure there are no mistakes, every mistake that you miss is worse than usual.

So you’ll want to be thorough about it. But the reality of the situation is that because clients are hiring a proofreader, not a writer who also proofreads, they might not be inclined to pay much.

But hey, if you can find prices you’re okay with working at, all power to you!


Item 57: Do online translation

This overlaps somewhat with the previous item because a lot of online translation gigs will also involve transcription (though not necessarily).

And just as some platforms or clients hiring for transcription services will want you to take a test to prove your typing speed, most people or places that hire you for translation will need proof of your ability.

So right off the bat, a lot of translation jobs online can be found in the usual places: Upwork, Indeed, and even Fiverr.

But aside from using a general freelance marketplace to find online translation gigs, there are a few sites hiring translators you can check out. As usual, I’ll highlight a few:

Gengo is one of the most popular translation sites where you can apply. They have enough work in most of the languages.

LanguageLine is one of the largest employers of professional interpreters and has been around for 37 years. Not all of its jobs are remote, but many are—it’s worth checking out.

Verbal Ink is another prominent figure, but be warned that you will need to take tests to get hired.

Mars Translation offers language translation services ranging from Website localisation to DTP Conversion. You can start earning from your translation skills by joining them here.

Outside of larger platforms hiring translators, you can also seek out companies that you think would have a need for translators, and offer your services. Go get ‘em!


Item 58: Do online data entry

One of the biggest stereotypes of boring office work is data entry. We picture a middle aged person in a cubicle, moving around numbers on a screen unhappily.

Well, what if you could get paid to do that from the comfort of your home, working at your own hours? It wouldn’t be so bad. Luckily, you can try it out.

I already mentioned one common resource for data entry gigs: Amazon Mechanical Turk. A lot of the microjobs posted there involve data entry, and they come fairly frequently as well. Fiverr is another, although it’s less common.

Other popular venues for remote data entry jobs are the types of crowdsourcing sites and companies that also want search engine evaluators. For example, there are many data entry jobs on Lionbridge.

Lionbridge to make money online

I think one of the best spots for finding data entry jobs is Indeed and sometimes ZipRecruiter. The jobs posted here tend to be longer term than the ones posted on Upwork that you’d find on Fiverr/Craigslist.

Pay varies, but usually you’re not going to be paid a ton of money for a data entry gig. That said, data entry jobs are posted frequently enough that you’ll have opportunities when you need them, and pay will be at least reliable even if it’s not a lot.


Item 59: Run Facebook ads

This is a kind of offshoot of the marketing consultant role above.

This is much more focused on a specific thing, which means you may either be taking in less money or more depending on how you play your cards (getting a company to pay you a little money for a narrow gig, vs. getting a company to pay you a lot proportionate to your effort).

It’s all about Facebook Ads: they’re huge. They’re huge because they’re very effective. You might think an ad on Facebook has never gotten you to buy anything, but the numbers show that Facebook ads do indeed affect sales. After all, Facebook wouldn’t be one of the world’s biggest companies if their ads didn’t work.

Facebook Ads are of particular value to small businesses, because they’ve got low entry costs. Specifically, there’s no minimum amount a business needs to spend on ads.

But while Facebook Ads are great for small businesses, they’re still not used as much as they could be. And that’s because small business owners are busy running small businesses. Most small businesses simply aren’t going to hire a full time marketing expert.

But if you can run Facebook Ads for small businesses, you would be hitting a great niche. This is something that most small businesses could afford to do, particularly as they can spend however much they want.

So here’s how it would work: you reach out to small businesses, and offer your services to the ones that would like to reach new customers through Facebook Ads. Keep it simple: the company can pay you the budget they feel comfortable with.

Most of that budget will be for the ads themselves—you’ll buy them—and a small portion of it will be your fee (usually 10% to 20%).

Now run that many times over, and you can make decent cash helping small businesses grow their reach, without having to be a full-time marketing professional.


Item 60: Be an Online travel consultant

I’ll admit that this is a pretty narrow online gig, but hey, I’m sure at least some of you reading this could do it.

General qualifications: if you travel a lot, love to travel, and are pretty good at finding good prices and planning trips.

If those things are true, then I’d say a third of the battle is already won. For the rest of the battle, I would suggest building a space online for yourself to prove your abilities.

Maybe help your friends and peers get good flight and hotel deals. Then get their testimonials for your website, and ask them to recommend you to their friends if they thought you did a good job.

You can even make a Facebook group, Instagram page, or LinkedIn group for your brand. The way you get people to join? You make sure your group/page has the latest deals, always.

The good thing about this is that you can start small doing what you’re already good at, and from there build it out to the size you want.

Another alternative is to find a job online. And no, I don’t just mean finding a client or gig online, but finding an actual remote job. There are a lot of companies—usually resorts, hotels, and travel companies—who are hiring remote travel agents.

To get into the meatier “consultant” side of business, you’ll have to do some legwork, though!


Item 61: Other kinds of coaching and consultancy

I know, I’ve just listed a bunch of possible options for online consultancy and coaching. I listed them either because they were niche things you might not have thought of before, or because they’re popular things you’ve definitely heard of before.

But now I’m going to shed some light on the general field of online consulting and coaching, and some other possible options!

The thing is, as far as this field goes, your imagination is essentially the limit. If enough people do something, there’s going to be a percentage of those people who want to pay to get better at it. That might be a simplification, but it’s essentially true.

While the fundamentals for marketing yourself as a coach and getting customers might be the same industry to industry, there are some things you’ll want to watch out for, or emphasize more or less depending on the field.

If you’re offering services in a field with a lot of responsibility, like finance or medical advice, definitely have credentials and training (as I said). Some other fields where that could be useful: tax consulting (this overlaps with tax preparation, which I’ll be going over later); environmental/sustainability consulting; political and campaign consulting; real estate consulting; legal consulting.

In addition, there’s a lot of room in creative pursuits. You can teach someone how to play an instrument or how to paint. For creative pursuits, especially ones that are showy, you can really use videos and galleries to prove your skills.

While you can use Udemy or even YouTube and Instagram to host instructional videos, these mediums will be particularly effective for drawing or music tutorials.

Are you making good money online from your affiliate website? Good, then coach someone who wants to build or improve their website. Ad revenue? Same thing. While you might find a degree in business or marketing is useful here, tangible success is your biggest asset in landing clients.

Really, the possibilities are endless and I can’t list them all. If you’re entrepreneurial enough, you might even make a new type of consulting job!


You’re likely already familiar with crowdfunding: when a bunch of people chip in a small amount of money online to contribute to a larger financial goal.

Now there are quite a few sites of this sort, and I’ll spend the next few items going over them—as there are some differences I think are important.

But before that, let me explain a little more: some crowdfunding sites don’t exactly seem like crowdfunding sites, and the lines get blurry. Namely, these are the sites that aren’t focused on single projects so much as they’re focused on ongoing subscriptions for content.

Some examples would be Patreon, OnlyFans, and Kofi. YouTube is also branching into this. Some examples of project-focused sites are GoFundMe, Kickstarter, IndieGogo. Though of course the distinctions are not as neat as I make them out to be, that’s roughly true.

The advantages of these sites is that you can harness the power of big numbers through the internet, and you don’t need to ask for a lot of money. For example, you’re not trying to get someone to hire you for a few hundred. You’re trying to get hundreds (or more or less) to pay a few bucks.

It varies, but generally these sites extract a percentage of your revenue. And you have to be extremely careful to not sell your contributors BS. But that said, there’s a range of possibilities available!


Item 63: Use Patreon

Patreon is the most prominent crowdsourced subscriber platform, but despite that, a lot of people have never heard of it. Here’s the run-down:

On Patreon, people pay a monthly subscription for your content. Patreon has a 5% platform fee, and you can set goals but nothing happens if they’re not met.

Now one of the main differences between Patreon and the next two platforms is that Patreon lets you create membership tiers. Some posts can be made available for everyone, some only for a certain tier.

You can also send rewards/whatever you’re producing to people outside of Patreon, but the key is that Patreon lets you see your tiered membership list.

This means that you don’t need to find that one sweet spot that isn’t asking too much or too little of people. You can set an entry level tier that large numbers of people can afford easily, and another tier for more dedicated fans to spend extra, and so on and so on.

Note that you don’t have to have multiple tiers. The most popular creator on Patreon is a podcast that only offers one $5 tier.

Also, note that Patreon does have an alternative to the monthly subscriber model:

patreon to make money online

The per-creation model is fairly similar to the previous platforms I showed you. But Patreon is most famous and used for the monthly model.

You can use Patreon for a ton of different things, but it’s largely for creative endeavors—at least, that’s what the culture is like. Most creators use Patreon for podcasts, artwork, photography, cosplay, and music. Though, that’s hardly the limit.

Learn more here!


Item 64: Or use OnlyFans

OnlyFans is a competitor with Patreon, but it’s much simpler.

This will show you the gist:

OnlyFans to make money online

OnlyFans, like Patreon, is primarily based on a monthly subscription model for creators. However, OnlyFans is only for monthly subscriptions to regular content, and there are no tiers.

The disadvantage? You lose the flexibility of having cheaper options for larger amounts of people and pricier options for more dedicated people. You’ve got a one-size-fit all price and content for everyone.

However, the simplicity is an advantage unto itself. Your subscribers don’t need to worry about what the best deal of your tiers is—just whether paying that single price for a month is good.

Another difference is that OnlyFans has a prominent “tip” feature, where your fans can either tip your posts or just tip your account at an amount they want.

Now I can’t lie to you—OnlyFans is sort of famous for being heavily used by adult content creators. But hey, we’re adults here, and I’m just telling you that OnlyFans is an option to make money online.

Key is that OnlyFans is not only for that sector or content, and it’s still a solid option if you’re creating art or music or some of regular products.


Item 65: Or use Ko-fi

Ko-fi is less well known than OnlyFans and Patreon, at least in the U.S., but it’s fairly similar while retaining some key differences. Here are the basics:

Ko-fi’s name is based on the idea that your supporters would be buying you a cup of coffee. The prices of course vary, but essentially that’s the starting price range of support—fairly small.

Here are a couple big differences:

Ko-fi to make money online

Payment is instant, and there are no platform fees. You can create fundraising goals, but it’s not required and not all-or-nothing.

Another major difference is that Ko-fi is not centered on subscriptions the way Patreon and OnlyFans are. You’d basically set up a page, showcase some work, and if people like it, they can pay you a bit as a show of support.

However, you can also offer subscriptions for a monthly income, and take commissions. However, to do those things, you’d need to pay for Ko-fi Gold. It starts at $6 a month, and also removes Ko-fi ads, lets you set the price of donations, and offer hi-res downloads (in addition to the other things I mentioned).

The fact that you can earn donations without a fee for your creative work is great, but it’s worth considering whether the $6 a month fee is more cost-efficient for a subscription model compared to Patreon or OnlyFans taking a fixed percent of your earnings.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Patreon and OnlyFans are bigger and you’re more likely to get subscriptions from people who already have accounts with those platforms—so it might be easier to get money on the bigger platforms.

That said, Ko-fi certainly has some good qualities that could help you make money online! And I think that wraps up the crowd-funding and subscription platforms section!


Item 66: YouTube channels (in general)

The thing about the last few sites I was talking about, is that they’re extra effective if you’re an internet influencer. Simply put, an influencer is someone who has a large following on the internet.

The next few items will be about how to make money online as an influencer, including on YouTube. But the thing about YouTube is that you can make money online on it even aside from the influencer sponsorship side of things.

And because everyone tries to get popular on YouTube, I’m going to talk about how you can make money off YouTube in general here and about the influencer way in the next item. Okay, ready?

First thing’s first: you can make money online on YouTube indirectly. By this I mean you wouldn’t be making money YouTube itself, but using YouTube as a vehicle for increased revenue.

In other words, you can post videos that attract people to your brand. You only need a small fraction of your viewers to greatly increase your customer count.

Second, you can make money online of ad revenue. Now this is something YouTube is a little infamous for: a lot of people complain about the big cut YouTube takes, which is a valid complaint.

And a lot of channels these days get demonetized for slight copyright or trademark infractions. Typically, the losers of this arrangement are not big companies, but individuals and small businesses—so be careful!

Nonetheless, if you do your work, you can make money online of YouTube advertising (usually called the YouTube Partner Program). The other way of making money off advertising on YouTube is to use affiliate links:

Basically apply what I said about affiliate marketing blogs earlier to YouTube channels, and there you go.

That ties into being an influencer on YouTube, which involves sponsorships and making deals with other companies. So onto the next one:


Item 67: Specifically, be a YouTube influencer

Like I said before, this isn’t something to do for a quick-buck: you have to work hard, be patient, and take risks…and really like what you do.

One of the biggest challenges will be posting good content and posting it regularly—let alone all the marketing and promotion that comes with it.

But as you start to see your channel grow, it’s worth considering ways of making money off it aside from the YouTube Partners program I told you about.

Affiliate links are tied into being an influencer because as you build your audience, you’re likely to increase your share of affiliate sales commissions. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg:

You can also use your platform to advertise and promote your business.

But one of the core elements of making money as a YouTube influencer is getting sponsored by companies to advertise products and services.

The level of advertisement you’ll do for them varies, as will pay, so I can’t really give you any general figures. However, a lot of people do it for a reason—they’ve reached the level of popularity that will get them profits.

You can check out some potential sponsors at Famebit. It’s free to use and will only charge when you get sponsored…at which point, congrats!


Item 68: Be an influencer on Instagram

While the fundamentals of influencing on Instagram will be the same as influencing on YouTube, Instagram is worthy of its own spot simply for the fact that it’s a MAJOR hub of influencer activity.

In fact, I’d say that Instagram is what most people think of when they think of the term “influencer.”

Now, I’m a little skeptical on the numbers people throw out, and I don’t think there are firmly proven figures on how profitable being an influencer on Instagram is. But, there are some calculations that seem promising.

Digitalmarketing.org tells us that Instagram influencers charge brands between $75 and $3,000 an Instagram post, with the average cost of a middle-level influencer at $271 per cost.

And a micro-influencer, meaning someone with less than 1,000 followers? The average is $83 for advertising.

Take these numbers with a grain of salt, but still take a look at them:

social media influencer cost

The point here is that even if you don’t have a million followers, you still stand a fair chance of getting a sponsorship.

The key thing is to make sure you’re at least steadily increasing your followers and that your posts are engaged with. It’s not enough to have the follower count—the posts have to do their fair share!


Item 69: Same as above, but do it with Twitter

Making money on Twitter is different in some key ways from making money on Instagram or even YouTube. While Twitter is also a social networking site, and while Twitter does have a lot of images, the focal point is the “tweet.”

We’re all familiar with how Twitter works, so I’ll jump into how you can make money off Twitter.

The big overlap with Instagram lies in your amount of followers and general reach. The more followers you have on Twitter, the most likely a sponsor will value your tweets.

As with Instagram, celebrities and big influencers can get paid a ton of money per tweet. You’ll have to do it the hard way: you’ll have to get a following that engages with you. And before I lead you on, know that Twitter generally has less sponsorship activity than Instagram.

But, there is another way to make money off Twitter!

That way is one I talked about, but for websites: affiliate links. It works the same way as it would through a website, and you can even use your site or blog in tandem with your Twitter account. Tweet summaries of your articles and include your affiliate links in them.

After all, it can be easier to get people to look at a short tweet than an entire article on your site!


Item 70: Start a podcast and get sponsors

Yes, yes, overlap, overlap…sure, there are similarities between this and the previous topics. But it’s got some major differences:

The two biggest differences: 1) you don’t have video (probably), and 2) you’re more often than not asking people to listen to something long.

Even a short podcast episode would be around 10 to 15 minutes. In the age of the internet, asking people to just consume audio for as little as 15 minutes is a hard sell. Or is it?

Remember how I said Twitch and similar platforms usually see streams go on for hours? What’s amazing is seeing how a long-form video format has become immensely popular in an age we think of as characterized by short attention spans.

Podcasts are pretty similar to streaming in that sense. Podcasts have absolutely exploded in popularity, and these days everyone has one…and people are still listening despite the fact that it’s just hours of audio.

Although you’ll want to do your own research into your niche, it would seem there is some value in getting a smaller number of dedicated people to listen to longer podcasts than a larger number of disinterested people listening to short episodes.

Although again, it really depends on your field—either could work. Are you interested in giving a daily or weekly briefing on events in your field, or long form commentary? Think in those terms about how you want your content to be formatted.

So I hope this context sets the stage for you: it’s a good era for podcasts, but there are also plenty of challenges.

A quick word on audience: everyone can listen to a podcast while they commute to work or school. But if a lot of your audience is truckers or delivery drivers, they can listen to a lot more than someone working in an office. You might want to assume everyone can find spare time to listen to something…but be careful!

Now, getting podcast sponsors is largely similar to getting sponsors on Twitch or YouTube. Generally, you can do the following: 1) sell and market advertising spots yourself, 2) wait for advertisers to come to you, 3) work with your podcast host to get sponsorships.

There’s a lot of nuances in getting advertisers and sponsors involved with your podcast, so I recommend checking out this link for further reading.

One last note: you can get sponsored by your listeners! A lot of content producers and podcasters are choosing to do this, so think of the subscriber and crowd-funding platforms I mentioned earlier. Patreon is super popular in particular for podcasters.

In fact, check out this list of Patreon’s top earners:

top patreon creators to make money online

The first one on the list? A podcast (and yes a podcast that earns nearly $140k a month). Jim C. Swim, in 4th place? He makes videos that frankly come close to the podcasting field. 5th place? A podcast.

My point here is that you can sponsored in a lot of ways with a podcast, so why not do it, and start talking about something you’re passionate about?

And just to save you time and efforts, we have the Complete Guide to Podcasting which will show you how to start, how to monetize and how to avoid mistakes.


Item 71: Rent home on Airbnb

Does this count as a way of earning money online? It might be a gray area, but I’d say so. After all, it’s not like this method of earning money was really feasible without the internet.

So, Airbnb: it’s the famous company that lets ordinary people get paid to host other people. For travelers and guests, it’s usually more affordable than a hotel, and can sometimes be more fun as well.

The benefit of Airbnb is that it’s fairly easy to host, even if you don’t have a huge house: people regularly stay in apartments that have an extra room (that is to say, they essentially share a small space with their host).

Airbnb to make money online

The process is fairly simple:

Yep. It’s mostly up to you. Airbnb can help you figure out the right price, and you can do your own research, but ultimately you choose how much you’re going to list your price for.

The pleasant thing about this is that you don’t need to bother negotiating with guests (unless they suck). The guests who stay in your place are the ones who agreed to the price you set, and paid for it. Plus, you choose the requirements you want.

The best thing about Airbnb though? It only charges hosts a flat 3% fee per reservation. Compared to most platform fees for internet businesses, that’s crazy low.

Plus, maybe you’ll make friends!


Item 72: Rent out your car

Okay, renting out musical instruments is one thing. But renting out your car? It’s understandable if you have some serious reservations about that.

But it’s part of the new digital economy, even if it’s not as practiced as ridesharing or AirBNB. So hear me out:

Basically, a customer will have the app of the car-sharing service that you’re lending to, and will book the car they need. A lot of owners offer delivery, but you don’t have to. Guest drivers/customers are usually screened before they’re allowed to use the service in the first place.

Turo (formerly RelayRides) is the biggest pioneer of the practice. Getting signed up can take less than 10 minutes, you’ll earn 65% to 85% of the trip price, and you’ll be insured for up to $1 million and protected against theft and physical damage.

Turo also offers 24/7 roadside assistance and lets you regulate your car’s mileage.

The other main competitor to Turo is GetAround, which is much the same:

GetAround to make money online

So if you are in a position to lend out your car, you can passively earn hundreds extra a month and thousands extra a year. What a new world we live in!


Item 73: Drive for Uber and/or Lyft

I know, I know—this is a bit of a cheat because you’re still making money outside of home, out in the world. On the other hand, you’re still making money through the medium of the internet and modern tech…and it’s become overwhelmingly popular.

So let’s get to it: Uber is the biggest rideshare service in the U.S., and when you drive for Uber you’ll work pretty much entirely at your own pace.

You can even drive with Uber without having your own car: Uber has vehicle partners that can provide cars for rent.

The amount that Uber takes is roughly 25% of what you earn. That’s a lot, but depending on the rides you’re taking, it might not phase you much. After all, it’s the price of flexibility.

And, Uber has been doing a better job of making driving a more tenable job: Uber is working with other companies to provide more affordable health care plans, for example. So it’s certainly worth checking out.

There’s also Lyft. Lyft is basically the same as Uber, which we all know.

And like Uber, as ridesharing has grown more popular, Lyft has been able to add some features and make ridesharing better for riders and drivers.

Lyft takes roughly 20%, but is also starting to offer some benefits that are worth looking at. For example:

lyft to make money online

This is kind of interesting and new. But even beyond that, Lyft is working on “Driver Centers” to provide more affordable car maintenance and providing English proficiency certificates.

While Lyft and Uber may be similar services, there are some important distinctions in the fees they extoll, the commissions they take, the exceptions to those rules, and the extra benefits they give…so pay attention!


Item 74: Online customer service

Know why I saved this for last? Customer service jobs are among the most popular remote jobs around. Seriously, they’re always around.

I almost don’t recommend searching job boards for this: these are common enough that if you take some time to research companies you might be interested in working for, you might find remote customer service jobs.

amazon customer service to make money online

These run the gamut. Some companies are hiring both in-person customer service representatives and online ones. Some might be hiring extra reps for a short period of time, while they implement a change to their website or business.

Others might want a long-term hire. You might be asked to work odd hours of the night, especially if your position is remote. You might only work part-time.

My point is, there are many possibilities. The main advantages of remote customer support is that you can do a job most people do in person from the comfort of your home, and the pay will be roughly consistent.

At least, it’s less of a “gig” and less “do it yourself,” compared to many of the items here, and there’s some comfort in the stability.

While I do suggest you get proactive with the search for customer support jobs, I’ll give you a resource to start with: TTEC, whose whole purpose is to connect customers with customer support. And yes, they welcome remote work.

You can also look at OneSupport, but their postings come and go.

In general, much of customer support will involve account support, refunds, special promotions, and so on.

Oh, and the big one…technical support. That’s worthy of its own category:


Item 75: Provide remote tech support

If customer support is huge for remote work, tech support is probably the biggest part of that. Sure, companies need customer support agents to handle other stuff…but a lot of customers will want help with troubleshooting and tech issues.

Tech support is invaluable to many consumers, and you should be able to find job listings for it

anywhere. Support.com frequently hires people for its tech support team. There may or may not be job openings for online tech support when you read this, but check in every now and then, as it’s kind of their thing to offer those jobs.

There’s also TTEC and OneSupport, which I mentioned earlier. But as with the previous item, I encourage you to get a little more creative and proactive for this:

The best thing is to find an industry and company you like. Is it cellphones? Cellphone service, or cellphone hardware? Accessories for smart devices? Computers? All of that?

The more you think about it, the more tech companies are at work around you. And many of them are hiring remote tech support agents.

For example, many of our websites are hosted through popular hosting companies like Bluehost, SiteGround, GoDaddy, etc, and many hosting companies hire for this line of work. You can also check out your favorite apps, streaming services, and so on, and so on.

My point is, you don’t have to rush for an Apple or Google tech support job. If you want to, that’s great, but there are many more options to consider!


Item 76: Stream on Twitch

Twitch is a platform that a lot of younger people are familiar with, but which may be unfamiliar to those outside the demographic.

Twitch is the biggest platform for streaming, which is basically when people livestream (i.e.,record themselves live, usually for hours).

The most common use of Twitch and most streaming platforms is for gaming. Although people stream while they game, they also talk about all sorts of things. People also stream while they go to events or watch them online, work on projects, and especially when they talk to other streamers.

As Twitch and other streaming platforms have become exceptionally popular—keep in mind that the audience isn’t just there for thirty seconds, but sometimes hours on end—brands have rushed to fill the area with sponsorships and ads.

The same principle fundamentally applies here as it does with YouTube though. As your channel grows, you’ll find a sponsor or two and be paid to advertise their products to your audience.

There’s actually more ways to make money online on Twitch, though: the other main way a streamer can make money online is through fans. And as far as that goes, one of the big things is tipping.

This is exactly what it sounds like: while watching your free stream, some of your fans may be inclined to donate money to your page to support you. Different streaming platforms have figured out how to make tipping a fun and rewarding process for the viewer, which means they’ve increased the amount you’ll make from tips.

The other major way to earn money through fans is to become a Twitch Partner. Once you have a STEADY following of 500 viewers, you can be a Twitch Partner for free. When this happens, you can get a “subscribe” button on your page—and every time a viewer subscribes, you’ll get paid $2.50 a month by Twitch.

And yes, similar rules apply on Twitch’s rival streaming sites. In fact, even YouTube has a tip option for live streams. But ultimately, Twitch absolutely dominates the livestreaming game today.


Item 77: Sell your advice

This is a fun one—one thing the internet has made it easier to sell is advice. People have been selling advice forever, but where the internet has changed things is in allowing a lot more people to share advice.

memes

To an extent, you can consider selling educational courses the same as selling advice. But here I kind of mean advice in the quicker sense.

Now one of the reasons selling advice online is something to consider, is that there’s a fair chance you’re already really good at something. And if so, there are certainly people on the internet who would pay to hear more from an expert on the topic.

And best of all, you don’t need to invest much to sell your advice. It’s low risk and relatively easy, though you’ll still have to put in the effort.

Before you search for an online marketplace, I’d like to point out that you can do good work selling advice to people in your network. These are people familiar with your expertise in an area and are more likely to pay up if they know the person.

However, if you want to use a marketplace, Clarity.fm is almost definitely the go-to. It’s a very simple setup: you get approved as an expert in something, and a customer will search the experts until they find the right one.

clarity to make money online

Then they’ll select a few times to work with you, and you have to get back to them within a certain amount of time—if it works out, great! You’ll have a call with them and charge a per-minute rate. They’ll rate you after the exchange.

But of course, feel free to use any other advice-selling platforms. The problem with Clarity.fm is that it’s only business-related advice—you wouldn’t be able to give a musician or creative writer some input, for example, unless it was business related.


Item 78: Win a naming contest on Squadhelp

Maybe you’re a professional business consultant who wants some extra cash. Maybe you’re good with words, and you want some extra cash. Either way, you can earn that extra cash by having fun with Squadhelp.

Squadhelp is a website dedicated to helping companies get named. Businesses can do two main things: first, they can buy names. Secondly, the thing Squadhelp is famous for—businesses can launch a naming contest.

In the naming contest, hundreds of participants (in this case, you) will pitch names.

Squadhelp to make money online

The timeline is a little more complicated, but the short version is that after narrowing down the list and doing some audience testing, the business will pick a winner.

The winner gets paid. The business pays significantly less than if they hired a consultant, and you? Let’s be honest, it’ll be a solid amount considering all you did was pitch a name and wait.

Obviously, even if you’re phenomenal at coming up with names for businesses, you won’t win every contest. So this isn’t something to rely on by any means.

But hey, it could be a fun way of earning some extra cash on the side!


Item 79: Put ads on your lock screen

There’s no ambiguity about this one…here’s an item that can only get you money through the modern online world.

In short, there are several companies/apps that will pay you to view ads on your phone or tablet’s lock screen. Usually these companies are intermediaries and earn money from other companies seeking direct advertising venues.

Now I’ve got to clear one thing up right away: as far as I know, Apple does not allow these apps on the App Store. So this is only for the Android users out there.

Another thing: for the most part, these apps don’t directly pay you in cash whenever you view an ad or unlock your screen. Typically, you’ll get points that can be redeemed for a certain amount of cash.

Now, here are some of the most notable:

ScreenLift is less obtrusive compared to similar apps (smaller ads) and is fairly reputable.

ScreenLift Rewards to make money online

You customize your lock screen a little bit in the app, and then use your phone the way you would usually. Whenever you unlock your phone, you’ll unlock a small amount of points (called Lifts) which can be redeemed for a payout through PayPal or for gift cards to popular retailers.

Fronto is another option, and is one of the most popular at over 9 million downloads. Since its launch in 2012, its users have redeemed over $5 MILLION in rewards. It’s a little more interesting than ScreenLift because your rewards change depending on how you swipe:

Swipe right to unlock your phone, and you’ll get a small number of points—the usual default amount. Swipe left, and you’ll engage with the advertisement/content, and earn significantly more (usually 10x more points).

The rewards will be either through good coupons, Amazon gift cards, or cash payouts on PayPal. Your choice.

Some other options: S’more is simpler, and won’t give you extra points whether or not you engage with ads or view more ads than needed.

As you probably guessed, these are far from the only options. They’re just some of the few that are pretty notable.

I’ll give you one more quick tip on these apps: some of them can be used in tandem, meaning you can use multiple apps at once to increase your earnings significantly.

Of course, the amount you’ll earn isn’t much. People may make between $10 to $40 a month, for a rough sense of scale. But as far as passive income goes, this is as passive as it gets!


Item 80: Use Appen

You probably haven’t heard of Appen, and for those of you who just want some passive or “easy” online income, that’s alright.

But for those of you who are looking at more serious ways of making money online, Appen is important to keep in mind.

So what is Appen? Take a look at the bottom left square in this picture:

Appen to make money online

Simply put, Appen connects online contractors to companies. So what separates it from a general-purpose jobs board like Indeed.com or a freelancer marketplace like Upwork?

Well, there are many similarities between the platforms, no denying it. But Appen’s contractors, unlike Indeed, are mostly virtual/remote.

And unlike both Upwork and Indeed, Appen’s contractors are primarily sought after for technology-related tasks by technology-related companies. Even when non-tech companies use them, it’s for something related to artificial intelligence.

Here’s another thing that sets Appen apart: there are a few types of tech-related jobs available, for easy pickings:

appen to make money online

What does this mean?

It means that you can choose work that’s long-term and remote—basically a “job” job—or work that’s short term—a gig—or even work that’s extremely short term—a micro task.

But the unifying theme is that the vast majority of all these types of work can be done from the comfort of your home.

In short, Appen is a great way for finding remote work related to technology and AI, and for narrowing down jobs by time commitment.


Item 81: Rent out (or sell) your parking space

On the note of that new world we live in…yes, you can rent out your parking space online too!

So obviously this won’t apply to everyone. And there’s a fair chance that even if you have a parking spot, you won’t want to share it.

But if you do have a parking spot that you don’t use all the time, and you’re open to the idea, you might as well earn some extra cash over it. There are a few apps/sites you can use, but generally the gist is the same:

You sign up, and someone will select your spot if they need it. They’ll pay you to rent it. Some services may let you sell instead of rent. Simple!

JustPark is the most prominent of these apps, as it’s used by 3.5 million drivers:

JustPark to make money online

So far, JustPark counts over £30 MILLION earned by parking spot owners. And yes, that is British currency…but before you worry, yes, you can use it in the US!

Pavemint is a competing service that is similarly easy and also very well-established and received. Plus, you can highlight special features like an EV charger, security camera, or anything else to highlight your space above everyone else’s.

Lastly there’s SpotHero, which not only lets you rent your parking space, but sell it!


Item 82: Watch and rate movies for money on Swagbucks

Okay, I’ll clarify first: Swagbucks could fit neatly into my pieces on surveys and focus groups. But it has a bit of a different format, one that’s a little similar to Achievement, so I’ve saved it for here.

Here’s the gist: on Swagbucks, you answer surveys. When you complete a survey, Swagbucks will give you a small amount of money—sometimes as little as $0.05 and sometimes as much as $35.

These are surveys effectively created and paid for by other companies, with Swagbucks as an intermediary.

As an added bonus, some companies that offer subscription services will pay Swagbucks users or give discounted prices in the hopes of getting them to subscribe for real. So you can potentially save on some things you might have purchased anyway.

But here’s the main thing I want to talk about: Swagbucks’ video and movie content system.

This is one of the things Swagbucks’ is known for. Basically, there are lots of videos you can watch:

Swagbucks to make money online

Watch a certain amount of videos (usually video playlists, as you see above), and you’ll get a certain number of Swagbucks. Swagbucks can be exchanged for money, paid through PayPal.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: how many hours would I need to watch to get money?

It’s really not much. If you’re committed, you can consistently make $5 a day. So I strongly recommend
not
counting on watching movies on Swagbucks as a way of earning extra cash quickly—it’s just not time efficient.

The reason I’m talking about it in the first place, is that you can earn some extra cash while you go about watching videos to kill time anyway.

When you’re bored, taking a break from work or school, etc, you might watch videos online. Why not watch videos on Swagbucks and earn yourself an extra cup of coffee or ice cream every week?


Item 83: Review music for money on Slicethepie

If you love music, and you want to earn some money on the side for doing something fun and fulfilling, Slice the pie is a great option.

Slicethepie is one of the largest music review sites, with over 2 million reviewers at the current count. It has additional review categories, like fashion and phone accessories, but the music is really where the bulk of the work is.

Slicethepie is focused on up and coming artists. Here’s how it works: independent musical artists and record labels get some songs on Slicethepie. The reviewers will review it, and the artists and labels will get large amounts of feedback, which they need to appropriately improve or market the music.

One of the great benefits of Slicethepie is that you get paid directly in cash for your reviews. No need to bother with discounts or rebates or even points. You get paid per review, and the higher quality your review, the more you get paid.

Once you sign up, you choose what type of reviewing you’d like to do—in this case, music. Then you’ll start listening to songs and reviewing right away (you have to listen to at least 90 seconds of a track).

So how much will you earn? A very small amount. If you enjoy it, you can expect to do roughly $40 a month, but if you’re not doing it often, it’ll probably be way less. Note the minimum to withdraw is $10.

There are actually a few other sites that can get you paid for listening to music, but they’re less direct. You can check them out here, but they’re more oriented towards radio and points. As far as I can tell, Slicethepie is simply the best site for getting paid to listen to music.

So anyway, this kind of fits with some of the other items in this area of the list: it’s good because you can get paid to do something fun. It’s not a replacement for a job or really good for much extra income—but you might find you enjoy the work!


Item 84: Get paid to review software with SoftwareJudge and G2C Crowd

I already talked about running a review website and earn money that way. And as you can tell, I do review software on this site. But I’m not talking about getting paid that way (i.e, the hard way).

I’m talking about getting paid in a way similar to above—small amounts of cash for small amounts of work that is (hopefully) interesting to you.

In this case, the niche is software. There might be more sites worth checking out, but I’m only going to recommend two, to be safe.

The first one is SoftwareJudge.com. It’s very simple and to the point: get paid to review software. The software is posted on the home page as a sort of news feed or listing. The list of software isn’t enormous, but there’s still some to choose from.

The amount you get paid? It varies, depending on how good your review is. You’ll be paid at least $1. If you do good, the max you can net is $50. Now that’s actually some pretty decent money for a mass-review site.

Your review will be verified for honesty, by the way. Any plagiarism that gets detected will mean forfeiting payment. One of the nice things about a smaller site like SoftwareJudge, though, is that you have less competition and get a more personal feel from the site.

Downsides: you only get paid if you reach $200 minimum. If you have less, you can get freebies through SoftwareJudge, which is a nice perk for those who are interested. And it won’t take you months to get $200 minimum, so it’s not like you’re locked away from the money forever.

Now, here’s the BIG one, which everyone knows. It’s called G2:

G2 to make money online

G2 is, as you can see, used by millions of businesses, including some very high profile brands.

It’s fairly straightforward: write a review of the software. If your review is approved, you’ll get a giftcard, ranging between $5 to $10. It can sometimes be more, but that’s the usual range, and it’s usually for Starbucks or Amazon.

However, you can only earn up to 5 gift cards. So my advice? Write 5 reviews that get approved, take your gift cards (or sell them), and go. You can enjoy trying out some software and get something out of it!

Also you can earn $5 gift card on our site too. Just write a review on this page for any hosting company you had your site on and we will send $5 Amazon Gift card straight to you.


Item 85: Sell clothes (and other stuff) you don’t use on Depop

Depop is another marketplace for small retailers.

Depop to make money online

Depop is fairly open ended. You can use it to sell a wide range of personal items, but it’s mostly focused on the selling of personal items and more creative, artistic types.

Depop does not extract any fees until you make money…but the bad news is that their fees are higher than most other platforms: at the moment, it’s 10% of the total transaction (including shipping costs).

In addition, there’s usually a 2.9% PayPal transaction fee…which is pretty common for marketplaces, but that means you’re looking at losing 13% of whatever you make. The tradeoff is that Depop is very popular, especially among younger people and Instagram users.

Aside from popularity, Depop is very easy to use:

Depop how to sell an item

Depop is familiar to most people for its use on social media—it’s usually used by people trying to get rid of clothes they don’t wear/want anymore, and its aimed at relatively small audiences (that seller’s followers, who are usually people they know).

So while of course, you can take your Depop shop as far as you want, the bar is a little lower—most shops are relaxed, ordinary pictures of the items. It’s one of the most informal and easiest to set up marketplaces around.


Item 86: Become a Usability tester

This isn’t an activity that exists in the “real” world and was converted to the internet. This is something that can only be done with the internet.

In short, people need to know their websites are good, and they are willing to pay people to explore their websites and interact with things to make sure everything works.

Sometimes there are companies whose job is that of a middleman—connecting someone who wants their website tested with the user testers. Other times it’ll be an individual or small company that wants their site tested.

And sometimes your client will be a person or group whose bought a bunch of sites and wants them tested for the ultimate goal of getting them sold later.

Because you can find the latter two types of clients on your own, I’ll talk about some platforms that act as middlemen.

The first and most obvious one is User Testing. It’s by far the most reputable and most used user-testing marketplace online. Check out some of the companies that have used it:

User Testing to make money online

Now, the requirements are fairly low. You just need to be 18, articulate enough, and a solid internet connection.

You’ll have to download User Testing’s testing software, and you’ll be recorded while you test (that’s where the articulate part comes into play).

Pay can go up to $60 per test, but it’s usually $10 per test. The good news is that a test is usually about 20 minutes. Do some tests for an hour or two, and you’ve got $30 to $60 for the day.

Even User Testing does not recommend making this a full-time job…there isn’t enough work to make this full time. You’ll be given opportunities to test sites based on demographics and your quality rating as a tester.

And don’t think that User Testing is your only option! There are many other sites out there that are pretty close. To name a few: Userlytics, TryMyUI, Userfeel, and TestingTime.

There are some variations, but most of them pay roughly the same as User Testing and have similarly-lengthed tests: 10-20 minutes a test, for usually $10 a test. Testing Time is longer, with a typical test-taking 30-90 minutes, and pay varying as well but limited at €50.

None of these sites are good for making a living, and even if you use all those sites together, it’s not a good full-time replacement.

It’s still decent money as far as “easy” internet gigs go, though, that’s for sure!


Item 87: Review search engines

Just as how websites need to be tested for flaws and poor user interface, the search engines that get people need to be tested. And considering that search engines are a fundamental force of the modern internet, it’s an important job.

It’s also a job you can do at home!

The more technical term for this job would be “search engine evaluator.” There aren’t many sites dedicated solely to search engine review jobs, but some feature them more prominently than a general job board or freelance marketplace.

There is one reputable site for remote search engine evaluation: Appen. Appen is not solely focused on search engine evaluation, as I already discussed. However, it is known for having many search engine evaluation jobs.

Another prominent company is Lionbridge. But Lionbridge is not solely focused on hiring search engine evaluators. Lionbridge started as a translation research and has moved into other things while retaining the original focus on language.

The way this spills over into search engine evaluating is you may need to test search engines using other languages…though not necessarily.

Another site that frequently has search engine testing is iSoftStone. Like Lionbridge, a lot of iSoftStone’s postings are general crowdsource-related gigs. And of those gigs, some are about evaluating search engines.


Item 88: Give answers on JustAnswer

JustAnswer is a super nifty website from the perspective of a person with odd questions. Of course the internet is full of answers that are totally free.

But a lot of questions aren’t easily Googled or searched on Reddit. Sometimes you might have a simple question, but one that can only be properly answered by an expert. Quick answers from experts is where JustAnswer comes in, and that’s also what sets it apart from Clarity.fm, which is more on the side of quick consulting and advice.

Applying is super easy, and can take as little as 30 minutes (though I suggest you spend longer).

JustAnswer to make money online

There are over 175 categories you can choose from, and you can work entirely on your own hours.

Customers often pay $5 a question, and you get a 20% cut when you start out. This can be worked up to 50%, and some can exceed $5—a lot of questions can end up going to $15-$30, so the cut you take is not so bad, especially if you work quickly and answer the right questions.

However, there’s one major flaw: you ONLY get paid if the asker rates your answer as positive. If your answer is marked as negative, you won’t get paid for it—which is pretty frustrating, needless to say.

So should it be your main source of income? Of course not. But this can net you a decent amount of money for a side hustle, and it can be extremely fun if you’re just informing people about subjects you love.


Item 89: Try transcribing audio

Transcribing audio is the type of online gig that’s good for extra cash but not quite for a full-time job. You could make it work full time, but I wouldn’t recommend it unless you find a client on your own who’s willing to pay extra.

For the most part, transcribing audio is great for easy cash on the side, though.

Some transcription jobs are on larger freelance marketplaces like Upwork or Amazon Mechanical Turk. But usually, you’ll get paid to transcribe audio on specific platforms just for transcription.

One of the most popular is TranscribeMe:

transcribe me to make money online

TranscribeMe has some of the best rates of any platform offering transcription gigs. Earnings typically start at $15-$22 an hour (big difference, I know).

GoTranscript will pay you up to $0.60 a minute, which is $36 an hour—but that’s the high side. You’ll usually start lower than that—average earnings are $150 a month, so it’s truly a side hustle.

There are other platforms, with varying degrees of pay and for different levels of experience. Some require very little experience. Others want people with qualifications, and many platforms will want you to take a writing speed test.

Although you’ll want to check the specifics on each platform, the general benefit of transcribing is that it is almost entirely up to you to work when you want.

A virtual tutoring or writing gig, for example, still will require you to work a consistent schedule and meet deadlines even if they’re more flexible than traditional jobs. But transcribing audio for a platform is one of the most flexible gigs around, and you can work basically whenever and however often you want.


Item 90: Use the Disney vault hack

The “Disney Vault” is a term used by Disney for its policy of putting some of its animated feature films on moratorium. In short: a Disney movie will be available for purchase for a while, and then retired to the “Disney Vault” for some number of years.

Disney vault And then? After some time passes—usually a little longer or shorter than a decade—the film is available for re-release.

You might wonder why I’m talking about something so long term. I understand perfectly well that one of the great things about the internet is that it speeds things up, and if you want to make money online quickly this isn’t the best tactic.

That said, this could be a good thing for you to know about. I call it the Disney Vault hack because not enough people take advantage of this tactic, despite the fact that it’s fairly easy to do.

Here’s how it works: a Disney film, usually an older animated one, will get put on the re-release. Once that happens, buy it. It’ll go into the Disney Vault…and when it gets re-released years later, it’ll be way more expensive than when you bought it. You can then go ahead and then sell it on eBay.

Run this process over a bunch of times, and you’re looking at a very nice profit. And yes, you have to wait a bit.


Item 91: Sell your notes

Let’s switch things up a bit. Here’s an option for our student readers: if you already go to school, and if you already take notes in class, then you can sell your notes online.

What’s great about this is that you don’t need to be a full time student, you just need to be taking classes somewhere. The great thing about selling notes online is that you already did most of the work if you took the notes in the first place!

One popular site for this is Stuvia:

Stuvia to make money online

There’s also Nexus Notes, which is a little more reputable.

Docmerit is an online platfom which enables you to sell your study notes, e-books, textbook summaries, study guides, exam solution essays, thesis, etc. with an 85% student payout ratio. The way it works is that once your balance reaches $20, Docmerit will allow you to transfer the money into your paypal account within 48 hours. Included being a global service, if you need help at any point, they also have 24/7 technical and sales customer support.

Docmerit to make money online

The other good thing about selling notes online is that if you’re already in class, there are high chances you already have some immediate social network of people. Most of them don’t need to buy your notes.

But chances are there are a few who are willing to or even really want to. So I encourage you to not just check out the sites I mentioned, but to offer your services independently.


Item 92: Sell your lesson plans to make money online

Let me be a downer first: this is something to be cautious about. Depending on where you live, there may be some legal gray area in buying and selling lesson plans. You’ll have to check out the specific regulations and rules on your own.

Additionally, this is something that won’t necessarily be a get-rich-quick scheme. Because you might not just be selling lesson plans, but lesson ideas, flashcards, activities and games, etc—as with many things, put in the work you feel is appropriate.

But there is certainly a market for this. As is the pattern with this list, you can sell on a variety of places, including freelance sites and to your own social networks.

One well-established marketplace specifically for educational resources is TeachersPayTeachers:

TeachersPayTeachers to make money online

As the name implies, it’s really a marketplace of teachers buying and selling to each other, so it’s a great place for you to interact with peers and provide something useful!


Item 93: Sell your hair

Is this weird enough for you? If not, great!

Yes, you can sell your hair online. And no, you don’t need to rely on Craigslist (though you’re welcome to, if you’re brave enough).

There are a couple of sites that are explicitly just for buying and selling hair. This isn’t exactly a way to make money online “passively,” as you still have to do the work of selling, but at least you don’t need to manage any inventory—just let your hair grow and when you want to cut it, you can sell, too!

Now the most famous and reputable marketplace for selling hair is HairSellon (get it?!).

Sell your hair to make money online

HairSellon doesn’t take any commission fees, and has lots of tips for helping you figure out how to precisely measure and describe your hair.

They even have a hair price calculator (or checkout this one) to help you estimate. Just make an account, post a listing, and sell to the highest bidder…easy peasy!

The other competitor to HairSellon would be BuyandSellHair.com. BuyandSellHair has been featured on a lot of press publications and is the only other hair marketplace of comparable size, traffic intake, and reputation to HairSellon.

You’ll need to pay a one-time listing fee of $14.50, which will last for three months. But that’s it—BuyandSellHair also doesn’t take commissions.

As you probably noticed, most hair listings go for several hundred dollars easily. The lower end is usually just over $100, and the high end can get close to $1,000.

So if your hair has been getting too long lately, why not earn a few hundred for the haircut you were going to get anyway?


Item 94: Be a virtual ESL tutor

Believe it or not, this one is actually different from the previous item. A remote ESL tutor is still a remote tutor, but the virtual ESL tutor market is surprisingly robust—enough to warrant its own placement on the list.

Now, I’ve actually done virtual ESL tutoring for a year, and it’s a surprisingly sweet gig. There are quite a few companies hiring for this work, many of them Chinese servicing Chinese students but not necessarily.

Not all companies need you to have an ESL teaching certificate, although it’s obviously preferred. If you have experience tutoring or any kind of English language credentials, that goes a long way.

Rates vary a lot, but on the lower end they tend to start at $12 an hour. A lot of Chinese companies start hiring around $16 an hour, and some can go up to $22 or more.

vipkid to make money online

Here’s the catch: as an ESL tutor, you’d probably be working odd hours of the day. It could be really early in the morning, or really late at night. It definitely depends on where your customers are.

Now aside from using companies as intermediaries, you can also just find people who want ESL tutoring for themselves or their children and work directly with them. The benefit of this is that you’d be working within your own time zone!

Some of the big Chinese companies include: VipkidTeachers (pictured above), Landi English, DaDa, WhalesEnglish.

Some American ones include: iTutorGroup, Cambly, Vivaling, Take Lessons. But I’ll give you a hint—American companies tend to pay less than Chinese ones here.

It’s a growing field, can be fun (you’re dealing with cute kids, after all) and rewarding, and pays decently for remote work!


Item 95: Loan your stuff on Loanables or RentNotBuy

You can do more than lend money online. You can do more than sell stuff you own online. You can loan stuff you own online too!

Craigslist is actually a very popular site for this sort of local interaction, but it’s not dedicated to loaning alone.

One dedicated resource is Loanables.

Loanables to make money online

It’s founded by nature enthusiasts who want to promote loaning goods, at least in part because it’s better for the environment. The policies on Loanables are very laid back:

Create an account, and post a listing. People searching for that thing you’re listing will be able to find it through the site. If the potential renter agrees to your rate, they rent it at that rate.

Easy-peasy!

Another prominent site for personal and household goods is RentNotBuy. RentNotBuy’s owners are similar to Loanables in that they treasure the efficiency of renting as opposed to buying.

RentNotBuy doesn’t have ads or listing fees—you just need to list your item at the price you want, and wait for someone to agree with it or negotiate accordingly.

The downsides of RentNotBuy and Loanables is that both sites are fairly hands off when it comes to disputes between renters and loaner. Luckily there is still a review system in place to add some credibility to each person using the site.


Item 96: Rent out your musical instruments on Sparkplug

This is a solid item because I can almost guarantee that most of you have never heard of Sparkplug. And I’m willing to bet a lot of you who haven’t heard of it can also make money online on it without much hassle.

It’s fairly simple: use Sparkplug to rent out your musical instruments, equipment, and even space if you have it.

Musical instruments and equipment (and especially space) can be too expensive to own or even rent from larger companies. But someone in the area may be able to rent out their stuff, right? That’s where you come in.

Sparkplug is centered around people coordinating with each other in roughly the same region. In fact, Sparkplug tries to get you to meet the person you lend to—which is good, as you don’t want your equipment damaged—but you can opt to deliver instead.

You can get paid directly to your bank account within a day of the rental period starting. The renter will return your product after the agreed time, and you inspect it to make sure it’s in proper condition, and leave a review of the renter after.

It’s pretty simple and while it may be logistically easier for people in urban areas, that’s still a heck of a lot more people who can make money online doing this than they would’ve otherwise. Oh, and it’s not just the U.S.!


Item 97: Use your car as a mobile billboard

Okay, so you don’t want to let someone else drive your car around…no problem. And you don’t exactly want to get out of your way driving people around either.

One way you can earn some income passively on your car is to let advertisers use it as a mini, mobile billboard.

There are a few different ways you can do this, aside from individually reaching out to advertisers.

Grabb-it is a startup that makes it very easy for you to turn one of your car windows into a screen:

drivers

And as they say, installation is free and you can still roll the window down! You can then drive as you would normally, or take extra care to drive around big events and shows in your area.

Another similar service is Carvertise, but it may not be “online”—at least with Grabb-it, you’re using the internet to make money online and advertise while you go about your normal business.

With Carvertise, things are a little more in person, so I won’t get too into it: basically, you answer questions when you sign up and will be matched with a brand based on your answers. Your car will get a wrap instead of a digital screen, and you can choose between getting a full or partial wrap.

Then you just drive around with a big ad on your car and get paid every month by direct deposit. It does no harm to your car and will be professionally taken off at the end of the campaign.

Another service is MyFreeCar. It works effectively the same way, in that you get your car wrapped by the platform and paid monthly.

But hey, I understand that the latter two options may be a gray area of “making money online,” so I’ll leave it alone.


Item 98: Get free cash (or gift cards) for being healthy with Achievement

Achievement was a little more famous a few years ago, back when it was known as AchieveMint, but it’s still around today! And in fact, it’s a top app on both the Apple and Google Play app stores.

Here’s how it works: sign up on the website, or download the app and sign up there. Once you have an account, you can start connecting other health/fitness/lifestyle apps. There are 20 other apps you can choose from.

These apps usually are about meditating, walking, biking, keeping track of meals, etc.

You’ll use the apps you connect to earn points for certain things on Achievement. For example, if you walk a certain amount, you’ll get points for it on Achievement. These are usually milestones: for example, meditating for 15 minutes or an hour on an app will get you a specified set of points on Achievement.

Once you have 10,000 points, you can cash out:

redeem to make money online

Yes, it’s a very small amount.

The big question is probably how quickly you can earn those 10,000 points…and frankly, even if you’re dedicated to the app, it can take a while to get to 10,000.

So my word of advice: don’t install and use this app as a source of quick cash. This should be an added incentive in maintaining your health, a two-birds-with-one-stone scenario.

As you monitor and improve your health over time, you’ll naturally accumulate points and be able to cash in from time to time. Hey, if you’re already doing these sorts of things, why not earn some extra money for them?


Item 99: Get even more cash for being healthy with HealthyWage

HealthyWage is very similar to Achievement, but I figured it was worth separating them because they’re each unique and well established.

Check out how many times HealthyWage has been noticed:

HealthyWage

So it’s not a rip-off by any means.

The key difference between HealthyWage and Achievement is this:

Achievement is about racking up points for different activities that are generally healthy, which can then be exchanged for money. But HealthyWage is much more direct. It’s about making bets on weight loss.

There are different bets and challenges to participate in, but the most famous one is the HealthyWager. You enter in the amount of pounds you want to lose, the amount of time you want to reach your goal, and the amount you want to bet per month.

You’ll then get offered a prize amount automatically based on those values, and if you win—you get it!

So it’s very different from Achievement in the directness of the “challenge” aspect, and the amounts of money. Your prizes will be usually be at least hundreds of dollars if you win (the shortest time you can challenge yourself is 6 months though), because your bet can’t go under $100.

Of course, you’re also buying into the bet (that’s just how it works folks!).

If you want to commit yourself to weight loss, this is a great way of doing it. Not only are you going to be more incentivized to pursue your weight loss goal, you’ll also earn money for something you wanted to do anyway!


Item 100: Sell older cell phones on Gazelle, BuyBackBoss, or OC BuyBack

Okay, I’ll admit that this is three things crammed into one item, but whatever: the gist here is that you can trade in your devices for money. Onto the show!

Gazelle is one of the biggest and most reputable sites for selling your old phone. It’s very straightforward and simple.

gazelle

One of the major appeals of Gazelle is that you can sell a broken phone (within reason, of course).

Although Gazelle really specializes in phones, you can also sell back other used Apple products like iPads, iPods (yes!) or MacBooks.

To my knowledge, you can’t sell back non-phone tech from other makers, so no selling back that PC notebook you hate. However, as the picture shows, feel free to sell back your Android phones.

With Gazelle, you just have to make sure your item is actually on their site. If you don’t find that phone/electronic model on their site, you can’t sell it to them. Once you find your product, you answer some questions about it and they’ll generate an offer for you. If you like it, great.

Oh, and shipping is free!

BuyBackBoss is similar, and like Gazelle is mostly for phones. You tell BuyBackBoss about your phone (through answering an automated survey) and you get an offer immediately.

BuyBackBoss

Shipping is free, as BuyBackBoss will send you a prepaid shipping label via email you just need to print. You can get paid by check or PayPal.

You can sell some other Apple devices—iMacs, iPads, iPods, Apple Watches—and the Google Pixel, but that’s it for non-phone products.

OC BuyBack is another efficient buyback site, but it’s a more open about what you can sell: you can sell 45 types of phone, 9 types of iPod, 17 types of tablets, 4 types of smartwatches, along with GoPros and AppleTVs.

OCBuyBack

You can choose to drop off your device locally, or you can ship for free. It’s basically the same as the other sites, but a smaller/less popular service.

Nextworth is the last one I’ll talk about, but it’s pretty similar to the others (free quotes, shipping, etc) so I don’t have much more to say. Except that it’s pretty reputable:

next worth

And one of the biggest buyback services, with over 12 years of business and 3 MILLION trade-ins.


Item 101: Best of all…be an online dating consultant!

Unlike online dietitian jobs, there are a LOT of dating consultant jobs available.

Okay, it’s not as common as writing or site design gigs, I’ll admit. But nonetheless, check this out:

remote dating consultant jobs

Yep. They’re out there. Now as you can see, there aren’t a lot of sites just for dating consultants, but there are a lot of job postings on regular jobs boards.

One of the great advantages of getting into this line of online work is that you don’t need to have a formal education or certification. But there are some things that could help you along in getting clients and appearing qualified:

First off, if you have any training as a therapist, that’s a pretty good qualification. If you have a degree in psychology or social work, that could also be good.

And probably best of all would be if you have a proven track record of giving solid dating advice!


Item 102: Sell on eBay and make money online

You might be thinking: eBay?! That’s still around?!

Yes, it is still around, and more to the point: it’s still enormously popular. Amazon may be the king of digital marketplaces, but eBay is no joke:

eBay buyers

Here’s another reason it’s worth consideration:

free on eBay

Yep: eBay lets you list up to 50 products a month for free. Go more than 50? It’ll usually cost you $0.35 to list.

Compare this to Amazon, whose free account lets you list 40 items a month, and will ask you to pay $39.99 a month if you want to sell more than 40 products.

Also, eBay’s selling fees might sound high at 10%, but they’re not high compared to Amazon. It’s true that Amazon can sometimes be significantly lower (6%, for example) but Amazon can also be significantly higher (at 20%).

What’s interesting about eBay is that if you’re selling as an individual, you can do it with the same account you use to buy stuff on eBay. In that sense, selling there is less formal and a little more relaxed.

That said, just be mindful to do your utmost to assure your customers they won’t get ripped off. Once you’ve had some successful sales to develop a reputation it will get easier, but in the meantime, think the way your customers might!

Generally, I’d say eBay is better for selling odd things you have lying around but don’t want/need. Especially things that might appeal to niche buyers, or products that are no longer being produced.

Here’s eBay’s guide on getting started!


Item 103: Sell on Craigslist

Selling on Craigslist is a little different from most of the other platforms here. While Amazon offers the HUGE advantage of helping you with shipping, and eBay is a massive online marketplace, Craigslist is more nuanced.

People aren’t just selling on Craigslist—they’re also trying to get rid of things, they’re hiring, trying to get volunteers, and so on.

The other main difference about Craigslist is that it’s region-oriented. So while you may do a lot of the work online, the distance between you and the person you’re interacting with will usually be relatively close.

Take a look at the bar on the right:

Craigslist

From the perspective of someone trying to make money online, I’d say the two main ways of using Craigslist are as follows:

First, you can post your resume, skills, etc, onto it and see if anyone is interested in hiring your services.

Second, and this is what I’m really getting at, is you can sell physical goods on Craigslist. Craigslist is good for selling items you’ve refurbished, repaired, restored, or generally don’t use (as I mentioned earlier), especially as your shipping costs would be lower (in some cases, you may be able to deliver them in person).

A major point in favor of Craigslist is that you can sell all sorts of items, and if you’re selling odd assortments, you stand a pretty good chance of finding someone willing to spend.

Plus, in my experience, people are generally more responsive about their interest over Craigslist than other sites.


Item 104: Retail on Bonanza

Bonanza is a digital marketplace that’s well-received, but not huge. How well received?

ecommerceBytes

It’s appreciated for good reason. Now, as far as what Bonanza is, it’s best to be simple: it’s a marketplace for just about all sorts of physical goods. However, it really stands out as a place to buy personal items, such as clothes, equipment, etc.

Some important qualifications: Bonanza doesn’t ship for you—it’s all between you and the buyer. So why use it over any other platform/marketplace?

Well, some would argue that Bonanza has better support, though I think it’s hard to get an objective comparison between it and bigger competitors. And while Bonanza may not ship for you, it does streamline the process from your end and help you with efficient shipping labels.

Plus, Bonanza integrates with your other marketplaces, and that’s one of the best features about it. No need to set everything up again from scratch, just sync between your other stores…a major benefit.


Item 105: Sell your fashion products on Tradesy

Tradesy is pretty similar to Depop, and technically there are barely any differences in what you can sell, but it bends a little more towards fashion and high-end products than Depop.

tradesy

However, Tradesy still has a similar “sell from your closet” vibe.

Tradesy’s brand is very clear:

how tradesy works

Buy or sell efficiently. That’s basically it.

The price a buyer sees includes your shipping costs. Your shipping labels are free and you can even get a free Tradesy shipping kit to make sure you can send the goods safely.

Tradesy is steeper than Depop as far as the fees go, unfortunately. Currently, Tradesy keeps a 19.8% commission, so while you can set your own prices higher to compensate, you’ll always be taking home 80% of the full price.

But hey! People on Tradesy are used to buying pricier items, and you can always lower your price if people don’t seem interested. Ultimately, customers are still saving compared to buying the products first hand.


Item 106: Sell on The RealReal

The RealReal has a more specific focus than Depop and Tradesy. It’s aimed at reselling luxury goods. Obviously this means that the bar is higher for what you can sell and what you can make in sales.

The RealReal

So The RealReal has higher standards on what it accepts than most other places—stuff has to be at least in good condition, from certain brands, and within certain boundaries of wearable goods.

You can be paid by direct deposit, mailed check, or site credit (which earns an extra 5%). You can keep up to 85% of the selling price of your items, but you’re not guaranteed that price, so be careful.

One of the interesting things about The RealReal is that it tries to get your item sold at the highest price it’s worth within 30 days. They have a team of real people who evaluate what you post, to authenticate it and price it appropriately.

The RealReal advantages

The way The RealReal describes itself is not inaccurate. The fact that the bar for the products is higher really only means that the platform wants to take a larger role in investigating its sellers, so you have less to do than on a more conventional marketplace.

And consider this: if you sold luxury goods elsewhere, potential buyers would be more skeptical, and you’d have to do more work to make sure your item is appropriately priced and suitable for use.

The RealReal is a pretty good deal if you’re going to sell used luxury items.


Item 107: Sell niche art, collectibles, and artisan works on Ruby Lane

Ruby Lane is one of those companies that’s famous enough a lot of people have heard of it, but not famous enough for most of those people to know much more than its name.

Ruby Lane is a marketplace for antiques, vintage collectibles, fine art, jewelry, and so on, and it’s the largest marketplace for such goods. There are over 2,500 shop owners, over a million visitors a month, and over 15 million products.

Now, if the numbers are to be believed, it would seem Ruby Lane’s sellers consistently make good money in sales. And Ruby Lane is highly rated by sellers…so you might be wondering how its fees stand out.

Well, Ruby Lane is a little more complicated—there are no commission fees, plus a one-time fee of $0.19 per item listing, a $100 one-time setup fee, and then after that maintenance fees (i.e., platform fees) which vary by the number of items you sell.

If you list 80 items or less, it’s $69 a month. If you list 81-150 items, it’s $0.30 an item. This decreases as you sell more items, so once you’re selling more than 1,001 items, you’re paying $0.01 an item. You can view the details here.

Here’s how Ruby Lane compares its entry level/smallest shop option with other platforms:

Ruby Lane

Suppose you make $5,000 in sales (instead of $2,000 as used in the chart) but you’re still within the 80-item listing limit:

Your fee would be the same as if you sold $2,000 items. On every other platform, you would be charged a fixed percentage of what you make, not much on what you list.

So if you think you can make a lot of money within an 80 item listing limit, Ruby Lane would be a great option.


Item 108: Sell jewelry on OpenSky

OpenSky is an online jewelry marketplace that’s been around since 2009. Alibaba acquired OpenSky and some of the other marketplaces and websites founded by similar people, and joined it all into the MoreCommerce platform I just talked about.

So why talk about OpenSky?

Well, OpenSky is still its own marketplace. From the perspective of a customer, MoreCommerce doesn’t really come into the picture. The reason I put MoreCommerce before OpenSky though, is that if you want to sell on OpenSky, you need to register with MoreCommerce.

If you want to know basically anything about your setup fees, listing limits, and so on, you have to refer to MoreCommerce:

morecommerce opensky

Prices vary—one type of subscription starts at $32 a month, another starts at $29.95. Along with it, you get different variations of access to multiple marketplaces, and so on.

The bright side is that for the most part, you get unlimited listings, channels, orders, and expert support even from the entry level subscription.

So I suspect that a lot of people won’t find it’s worth it to sell on OpenSky—but for some people it might be a great marketplace. Just be aware that you’ll be going through MoreCommerce to sell on OpenSky.


Item 109: Sell electronics on Swappa

This is separated from the previous item because in this case, you would be selling on a marketplace, not selling your tech to the site.

Now, Swappa is more open about what you can offer than Gazelle:

swappa

The main difference is that unlike with Gazelle, you’re not selling back to Swappa. You’re using Swappa as a marketplace to sell your tech.

As such, you’re on your own for shipping, but there are no selling fees. Which is a MAJOR bonus.

That being said, Swappa has a cool feature called Swappa Local. This means you can sell in a certain metro area, to save yourself time and money. There are a lot of cities available, with a range of listings—Charlotte, NC, is the lowest at 32 listings and Seattle-Tacoma is the largest with 863 listings.

I’m actually impressed with how many cities use Swappa, so don’t assume your metro area isn’t on the list or that you’d be unlikely to sell using Swappa Local.


Item 110: Sell on digiCircle as an alternative to Swappa

Like Swappa, digiCircle is MOSTLY a marketplace for selling your tech. But, you CAN also sell back directly to digiCircle.

Yeah, it looks a little old school:

digi circle

But it’s got modern features.

Like I said, digiCircle has dropshipping services for resellers, which sets it apart from Swappa. But usually, to qualify for dropshipping, you must already have made $3,000 in sales on the site.

As far as selling to digiCircle goes, there are few requirements other than that your tech is in good condition and has all necessary accessories. If the value of the device exceeds $50, you’ll get free shipping!


Item 111: Sell your crafts on Etsy

You’ve almost certainly heard of Etsy. Etsy is so popular that there’s a fair chance you’ve even used it. But even so, let me go over the basics:

Etsy is a marketplace for handcrafted or vintage items. This obviously ends up including a massive range of items, but generally people sell clothes, fashion accessories, art, and furniture.

If you might be selling stuff that could be sold on Etsy, but you haven’t really taken the idea of selling on Etsy seriously before, maybe some of these numbers will change your mind:

Etsy has over 33 MILLION buyers and in 2017, they spent over $3 BILLION. That might sound small compared to giants like Amazon, but that’s still massive compared to a lot of Etsy’s competitors.

The best number to me is that Etsy has over 1.8 million sellers. This is a massive amount of sellers for a site that isn’t in the same tier as Amazon or eBay.

In my view, Etsy hits a sweet spot: it’s big enough that everyone’s heard of it and you can get sales. It’s also a little more focused than an everything-store like Amazon, so your stuff still has a good chance of getting sold.

Now for the stuff you want to know…here’s how the fees work out:

A 5% transaction fee is not ideal, but not the worst by any stretch of the imagination. A $0.20 listing fee also isn’t bad.

There is a “Plus” account option, which is an extra $10 a month and comes with extra tools (like getting a custom domain, and better customization tools, among other things).

If you’re a small seller who can offer handmade goods, artisan works, or vintage products, Etsy is no joke. There’s a reason it’s so popular. You can learn more here.

Useful Resources:


Item 112: Resell tickets to make money online

Before you freak out, no, ticket reselling (also known as scalping) is not illegal nationwide in the U.S. While the federal government doesn’t impose any restrictions on the issue, various states or even counties may have their own penalties or regulations. So you’ll have to check out what applies to you.

That being said, there’s a big business in reselling tickets online. And even if you’re not in the business of ticket scalping, you might have some tickets for an event you don’t care about or which you are unable to attend. Why not unload it and get some cash?

Ticketmaster is one of the most famous sites for buying and selling tickets between fans. It’s super easy to resell tickets, especially if you already bought them on Ticketmaster.

ticketmaster

Ticketmaster’s main competitor is Stubhub, which is much more firmly oriented towards people who want to sell tickets. Stubhub is actually sometimes considered the largest online ticket marketplace, and they get you free delivery.

stubhub

One last option is Vividseats, and Craigslist is also really good if you want to resell a small number of tickets.


Item 113: Do micro jobs with Amazon Mechanical Turk

Amazon Mechanical Turk is in many ways a pioneer of online micro jobs. It’s also a pioneer of crowdsourcing work.

amazon mechanical turk

So let’s get to it: the architecture of Mechanical Turk is fairly similar to the apps and sites I mentioned in the last item. However, Mechanical Turk is considerably bigger and is really only for online work.

There are thousands upon thousands of different types of tasks available on the MTurk marketplace. But they can be generally categorized as tasks and gigs that relate to the failings of software and algorithms.

After all, think of the name: mechanical. The tasks posted are more formerly known as “Human Intelligence Tasks,” and they’re not always easy but are generally not demanding of expertise.

Some examples of popular types of tasks include image and video processing (having a human identify and choose things in images), verifying data, processing data (meaning categorizing it, translating it, transcribing it, etc), and gathering information.

MTurk pay varies by task but are generally low per-hour. So if you want to do it, you have to be smart about it: it should be a simple task you can complete quickly, for example, or a very interesting task if it takes you longer.

It’s important to factor into account the time it’ll take you to apply for a gig posting for this reason.


Item 114: Use Kickstarter

Kickstarter is what most of us think of when we hear the term “crowdfunding.” But it still has some important differences compared to the other options here.

Here are the basics:

Kickstarter is for single projects, so you’re not going to be asking for subscriptions. Kickstarter is also relatively strict on vetting crowdfunders, understandably so, but this means some people won’t get in.

Importantly, Kickstarter is all-or-nothing. Meaning, you meet your goal, or you get nothing. The fee is 5% of the funds you collect (so you won’t have fees if you don’t meet your funding goal).

Here’s the important part:

kickstarter

What makes Kickstarter a good option for a lot of you, is that it’s not meant for charity. So if you’re trying to put out a single, strong project, Kickstarter is a great way of doing it.

Now let’s compare it to another option:


Item 115: Use GoFundMe

GoFundMe is one of the other famous crowdfunding sites, but it’s very different from Kickstarter as far as it applies to YOU, the potential earner. Here’s the main difference:

GoFundMe to make money online

Yep. GoFundMe is FREE—no platform fees, or cuts of what you make. There are still card transactions, but that’s unavoidable. And, it’s not all-or-nothing.

But before you get all excited about how you can collect money for free, pay attention to the other part in that message: “for the people and causes you care about.” See, where Kickstarter isn’t meant for charity fundraising, GoFundMe is strongly oriented towards it.

Now, it’s important to note that GoFundMe isn’t as strict about what you can make campaigns for. But generally, the campaigns are for nonprofit goals, so be mindful about how you want to use it.


Item 116: Use Indiegogo

Indiegogo is the last of the “big three” crowdfunding sites. It was one of the first sites to offer the crowdfunding model, so it’s been in the game for a while. It’s also the best known for being oriented towards entrepreneurial goals.

While you’d use Kickstarter for a creative project (which can include business), and GoFundMe for generally nonprofit endeavors (though not necessarily), Indiegogo is all about raising money for business.

Here’s another thing that sets it apart:

Indiegogo to make money online

While Indiegogo is mostly known for its campaign-style funding, and while that’s what it mostly started out with, it also lets you continue to grow your campaign even after you’ve met your campaign goal.

Although there’s some variation, Indiegogo generally charges a 5% fee.

Now, you might be a little unclear what the differences are between Kickstarter and Indiegogo, aside from the general “vibe” or culture of the sites.

The main differences are as follows: Indiegogo is not all or nothing unless you want it to be; you can keep funding after you meet your goal (as described); you can get funding from just about everywhere in the world; and the approval process is easier.

As a matter of fact, there’s no approval or application process. You can view a full list of differences here.

But now, it’s time we get into the lesser known areas of crowdfunding, which blur into subscriptions…


Item 117: Do Peer to peer lending

Peer to peer lending, also known as P2P lending, is a uniquely online phenomenon. Technically you don’t need internet to make it work, but its growth and current scale is certainly due to the internet.

P2P lending is what it sounds like: the practice of matching peers so that they may lend and borrow from each other. Typically the way it works is you’ll go on a P2P lending site to borrow or lend money from an individual or business.

And why would you do this?

Well, P2P lending sites are less regulated than banking in the “real world” is. If you borrow, you can borrow at lower interest rates. If you’re a lender, you can earn higher returns compared to savings or investment products that your bank offers to you.

The big risk is that the borrower will default…a lot of loans on P2P sites are unsecured. However, P2P platforms make it easier to secure loans by having borrowers offer some of their assets as collateral.

Usually, as a lender on a P2P site, you’ll be competing with other lenders to get a borrower with good credit or some level of reliability—which means you’ll compete to drive down your interest rates.

P2P lending is regulated to varying degrees in different countries and provinces/states, so be sure to check your own law first!

Now, I’ll go over some top options.

One is Upstart: Upstart’s loans start at $1,000 minimum and max out at $50,000. So, if you’re going to lend with them, don’t expect to microloan to anyone. APR starts at 8.85%.

One characteristic of Upstart is that it’s more forgiving on credit trustworthiness: a borrower’s loan eligibility is also based on education and job experience. This means you have some added risk, but also a larger share of people who aren’t borrowing from banks.

upstart to make money online

Plus, Upstart is using a lot of solid tech and has a lot of money going through it. And the best thing about Upstart is that it has significantly less defaults than most banks and competing P2P platforms.

Funding Circle is another option: the target borrower is British small businesses, but other countries’ small businesses can use it if they’re in the US, Germany, or Netherlands.

Funding Circle’s stats are mind-boggling: since 2010, £290 MILLION in interest has been earned on the platform. As with Upstart, the minimum loan amount is £1,000 (which is more than $1,000).

One last option is Prosper, the first P2P lending marketplace in the United States. Since its 20005 founding, its facilitated over $12 BILLION in loans. Loans start at $2,000 and usually can’t exceed $40,000.

There are other lending marketplaces you can look to, but these are some of the biggest and most reputable. As you’d expect, there’s some amount of risk involved—mostly depending on the choices you make more than the platforms themselves.

And yes, there are platform fees, which vary from site to site. Even after platform fees, you’re still going to make more lending on those sites than you would otherwise.


Item 118: Get cash back with Rakuten

I’ll be straight with you: this is less of a way to make money online and more a way to save money online. But, it’s a great way of saving online, and as Ben Franklin said—a penny saved is a penny earned!

Rakuten is very simple and effective. Major stores pay Rakuten to drive traffic and customers to them. Rakuten then shares some of that money with you by giving you a certain percentage of your cash back.

Rakuten to make money online

The key thing is that you don’t need to do anything that you don’t already do, aside from using the Rakuten software.

And while it’s true the percents are low for major stores like Amazon (up to 5% cashback), eBay (2%), or Walmart (5%), if you just use it while you do your normal purchasing through the year, you can save hundreds.

Not to mention that some stores will get you up to 40% cashback, and even major retailers like Kohl’s and Macy’s will get you 10%.

So yeah, you might not be technically making money…but you’re going to end up with more money in your pocket without changing anything you were doing before. I think it’s worthy of a mention.


Item 119: Get money back on your purchases through Paribus

Here’s an alternative to Rakuten. Actually, scratch that: you should use these two together. They’re similar because they’ll save you money, but they do so in different ways.

Rakuten wants you to shop as usual and will refund you a small percent of the purchases you make for different stores. You give Paribus an email you use for receipts, and Paribus will automatically note if there are price changes in certain products since you bought them.

Use Paribus to make money online

And if the price lowers since you bought it, they’ll get you the price difference back. So are you earning money online exactly? It’s a gray area, but you’re certainly saving money you wouldn’t be otherwise, so I think it’s worth a mention.

Another feature of Paribus is that it will get you compensated for late deliveries, which is sweet.

There’s another feature, but it won’t get you any money: Paribus has a returns tracker that will notify you when something you bought can be returned. This is insanely useful, and is just good for saving money in general, even if you don’t directly get cash from Paribus.


Item 120: Be an online juror to make money online

Let me clear a few things up:

First, I don’t mean to be a literal juror. More often than not, you’ll be a mock juror in a mock trial. This is because as some lawyers prepare for trial, they want to make sure their cases are strong.

It’s expensive and difficult for a lawyer or team of lawyers to try and put up a mock trial on their own. But some companies offer mock juror services online, which allow lawyers to give their case a solid test without overspending.

As a mock-juror should be any ordinary person who could be a juror, there aren’t many requirements beyond that which a normal juror would need. So as long as you’re literate, a citizen, not convicted of a crime, etc, you’re going to be eligible for most services.

So, here are a few well-known companies that will hire you to be an online juror.

First up, eJury:

ejury.com to make money online

With eJury, each case is tried to a minimum of 50 people, to get the attorney a lot of feedback. The attorney will submit the case—facts that would be used in court, jury questions that would be used in court, and personal questions for additional feedback.

Then, eJury posts the case a secure part of the site, and only “eJurors” in the right area of the country can access the case—they’ll also be notified by email.

The eJurors then review the case, answer the questions, and then submit their verdict when ready.

It’s very straightforward, but here’s the main downside: pay is very low. It’ll be $5 to $10 a case, with a typical case taking roughly 35 minutes.

If cases don’t take you too long, the low pay might not be so bad. The only problem is that because cases are only unlocked in certain areas, you can’t pick and choose the cases that are most interesting. If you live in a populated area, you may have options, but if not…oh well.

Another site is Online Verdict. It’s overall pretty similar to eJury, and cases are also posted by county/federal district. So you can only qualify for cases in your area.

The bright side is that Online Verdict pays more: to my knowledge, there’s a wide range of $20 to $60 a case.

Lastly, there’s Sign Up Direct, which has some of the most competitive pay for mock jurors. Pay will be at least $100 for a day, but your selection for a case is less likely.

So, in conclusion: while there are a few options for being an online juror, one of the unifying characteristics of them is that they don’t bring a ton of money in, and are not very consistent.

This is a way to make money online that you can do fairly easily, but you should do it if you think it’s interesting…not if you need money.


Item 121: Be an online notary (or eNotary)

Whew, last one! Let’s wrap this up with something very unique.

In case you don’t know, a notary is someone with the authority to perform certain legal formalities. Mostly, this means someone who can draw up or certify contracts.

Don’t get scared! I’m not saying you need to go to law school and start drafting contracts online. Yes, you can do that too, but I’m thinking of something a little easier.

As a notary, you may just want to certify documents. In real life, the notary’s job is basically that of a witness: you verify that the parties signing the document are who they say they are, and watch them sign the contract together.

If you’re already a notary, you can advertise your services online. I would recommend advertising in your local community first and foremost.

If not, you can actually become a notary public fairly easily—and you can even do it online! You can learn more about it here.

Anyway, once you’re a notary, you can get paid to notarize on a small number of sites. The most prominent is DocuSign, which is probably the most popular software for signing contracts online.

docusign to make money online

You can also look into the aptly named Notarize.com, which is exclusively for getting documents notarized online. Notarize’s pay starts at $25 per notarization and will even help you get certified if you aren’t already!

DocVerify is a third option that not only lets you do your work online, but lets prospective customers in your area find you for in-person business (if you want that).

Get paid to witness the signing of a document from your computer? Dang, the internet is great…and I think this is a perfect way to end the list!


Item 122: Create/help create greeting cards

This is one of the more novel ways to make money online, but it makes sense when you take a second to think about it. How many premade cards do you see when you go to the grocery store? How are there different ones every few months?

Who comes up with all this stuff?

Well, potentially you. This could be relevant if you’re an artist for the obvious possibility of selling your designs. But you could also help create greeting cards if you’re a poet or general writer.

And if you can do both design and words, then why not? Sell both of your services to greeting card companies.

Now, different companies go about this in different ways. If you use Blue Mountain Arts, you’ll pitch poetry (or otherwise well-crafted, artistic prose) via email, and if Blue Mountain Arts likes it, you’ll hear back with further comments. They pay $300 per poem for worldwide rights and $50 for one-time use.

Calypso Cards will take messages/card text as well, though it doesn’t have to be poetry, and they are particularly friendly towards accepting art.

NobleWorks Cards will take both art and writing submissions, as will Oatmeal Studios. If you research on your own you’ll find plenty of other options, but these are some of the most famous.

NobleWorks Cards to make money online
Image Courtesy: Noble Works Cards

Pay will vary: sometimes it’s a fixed rate per type of accepted submission, as with Blue Mountain Arts. Other times you’ll be paid proportionately to the sales, but that’s rarer.

Helping to create greeting cards by pitching to companies is great for people with artistic or writing qualifications, but who aren’t looking to invest in their own infrastructure or to try starting their own business selling cards.

Of course, you can sell your own greeting cards, the way you can sell your own t-shirts or design prints. But for many of you, this will be an easier way of getting paid for your art/writing.


Item 123: Win an interior design contest

Here’s a pretty quirky way to make money online: if you’re an interior designer, you can use your skills for some extra money online through interior design contests.

For the most part, you can find these only on a couple sites. One of those websites is called GoPillar.

GoPillar is fundamentally the same as Squadhelp’s naming contest, but it’s for interior design.

GoPillar to make money online

Someone launches a contest, which will then be available for any of the designers on GoPillar. If your designs are picked, you’ll win the contest prize and be able to work with the person requesting the design, thus also giving you a new client.

Another option is Roomstyler:

Roomstyler is similar in format and interface to GoPillar, but before you get too excited, these contests are not for money. They’re for fun.

room styler to make money online

So why bring it up?

Because you’ll have a profile that shows your contest wins. If you have a lot, it can be a unique thing to show a prospective client…or even a way of getting a client to discover you!

The other utility is in being a source of inspiration for your real-world design work.


Item 124: Sell your graphic designs skills

As I said, this has some overlap with the previous item, but it’s still different. Here I’m not talking much about you making prints of art you already created that’s already more traditional.

I’m talking more about visual art you’ve made that’s quite clearly supposed to be a graphic design. So rather than a painting or drawing you made that you also realized could be printed on other things, I’m talking about something made for the intent purpose of being used as a graphic design.

Now, you can do that on the sites I already mentioned, so I won’t go over them again. However, I will submit a new entry for you:

99Designs is specifically geared towards graphic design. This can overlap plenty with the previous sites I mentioned, but it focuses more on having you sell logos and designs for specific businesses.

99designs to make money online

This means that you won’t be making one design and selling it all over the place, but tailoring work for your clients. You can think of it as a marketplace for freelance designers.

You can match with a client and get them to pay you on your own, but you can also enter designing contests. Basically, some businesses will start a contest and let freelancers give it a go—the winner takes all!

99Designs charges a $100 intro fee for your first client, but it’s spread over the first $500 you make with that client. There’s an additional platform fee per project you land, but it varies depending on your “designer level” (which means your level of experience/CV on the platform).

A top level designer only pays 5%, whereas a newbie would pay 15%. The mid-level designers get…yep, 10%.


Item 125: Sell clothes with your graphic designs on them

Yes, yes, this overlaps with the previous items, but hear me out.

While you can use Redbubble, Society6, Zazzle, and others to sell shirts with your art printed on them, you can also focus exclusively on shirts.

Why?

Because shirts are famously good candidates for bulk buying and selling. Even if you don’t buy in bulk, you can buy a shirt for a low cost and resell it for a higher cost if you’ve got something good on it.

I’ll get into the t-shirt only part in the next item, but for now, let’s stick with graphic designs on shirts.

There are sites specifically geared towards this niche of online selling.

Teespring is probably the most popular of these sites. It’s got a well-established setup for artists intending to sell a smaller number of items, and for people who want to get more heavy into selling.

Spreadshop is yet another option, as is Teepublic. And before you ask, yes, basically any site that lets you sell shirts you design will also let you sell other articles of clothing and accessories.

This can also crossover into general t-shirt selling, meaning even if you’re not an artist, this can still be relevant to you.

See, one of the things about Teespring and the other services I mentioned is that they’re not really only for artists. They’re for people who want to sell shirts that aren’t just plain.

Which means that as long as you can put together something that people would buy, these are solid options, regardless of whether you’re a professional artist or not. In fact, a lot of people sell shirts online without much experience in graphic design.

These are some of Teespring’s numbers:

Teespring’s numbers to make money online

You don’t need to be a designer to pull those numbers. Just get into the business of selling shirts (and similar clothing), as it can be fairly profitable if you do it right.

What’s more, it can be a great source of passive income once you set it up properly.


Item 126: Sell your web designs to make money online

No, I actually haven’t talked about this already, smart-aleck. When I talked about selling designs before, that was about actual graphic designs for physical products.

But you can transfer that principle to websites very easily, and it’s in high demand. At the end of the day, there are a ton of websites out there, and many people need their sites to look good and unique.

Now, there are different ways you can sell your designs. One way you can do it is by directly contacting people you know, and offer your web themes and such.

Another way is listing your themes and templates on a popular marketplace.

Without a doubt, one of the most popular and reputable places for this is Themeforest. Themeforest is particularly known for its WordPress themes, but that’s hardly the limit.

And the thing is, unlike t-shirts, people buying themes online are generally willing to shell out money. It’s an investment in their business after all, and while everyone would love to save money, it’s realistic that you can get a high price for a good theme.

I mean, just check out these numbers from Themeforest:

envato market make money online

*Note: Envato Market runs Themeforest.

Some alternatives to Themeforest include Templamatic and CreativeMarket. And believe it or not, you can even sell themes on eBay!


Item 127: Win a logo design contest

Did you read the item I just did about Squadhelp’s naming contests? Okay, let’s take that same concept but switch out naming for logo designing.

There are quite a few sites that have this sort of feature. The most famous one is 99designs. I’ve already talked about it a bit earlier as a general site for freelancers to do design work, but it’s also got logo design contests that might be a good option for some people.

Another option would be logocontest.com, which is super easy to sign up with as a designer (though you still need to submit samples to be approved as a designer).

Designhill is very much focused on the contest part as well, and it extends its contests to more than just logos, but other aspects of site design as well.

As is true for the naming contest, I wouldn’t recommend this as a source of income to rely on. It’s good for getting your feet wet, for fun, and for some extra cash. Although there is another benefit:

Designers who get it just “right” can be difficult to come by. So if you win a design contest, there’s a fair chance the business that picked you would hire you personally for more work.


Item 128: Do Business Coaching to make money online

Business coaching is something you should only get into if you feel you’re properly qualified. You might even have a formal degree in coaching, but more likely than not, you’ll be counting on your real world accomplishments.

The bad news: there aren’t many notable established websites for hooking up business coaches with clients. There’s one called Noomii, which you check.

The good news: wherever there’s a popular online job or gig board, there are calls for business coaches.

If you have an interest in online business coaching, it’s certainly something you can accomplish. You just have to be willing to set up shop as an independent coach. This means making a website for yourself, or at the very least a strong social media presence.

Even within the field of business coaching there is diversity. You can work in any niche business you want, as long as they’ll work with you. The good news is that the more you do, the easier it gets.

For example, you can take any existing consulting or coaching you’ve done and get a testimonial or quote from those previous clients, then put it on your website. As you start getting clients online, you can do the same with them.

And if you get big enough or sufficiently build your reputation, you can switch your focus from finding requests for coaches to taking them.

What’s great about all of this is that even though you have to do more legwork for lack of platforms, you also get to keep more of what you make. For example, if you’re a business coach on Upwork, you’ll suffer a 20% for the platform fee.

That might be good for getting some experience and additional qualifications, but outside of Upwork you can charge clients what you want for a Skype session or PDF on building a Shopify store. And you’ll only have to pay what it costs to use the tools you want to use with your clients!


Item 129: Be an online fitness trainer

I know what you’re thinking: how is this a way to make money online? Don’t people hire fitness trainers in real life, for in-person training?

Well, you’re certainly correct that most fitness trainers do their work in person. But there are more opportunities for online fitness trainers than you think.

First off, think of who would want this: usually, someone who wants the convenience of a trainer they don’t have to coordinate with for in person workouts. Someone who they can simply talk with to improve their fitness.

In addition, there’s a fair chance your potential client is hoping to pay less for online work. The bright side? You may not need as many formal qualifications as you would in real life.

Now I would also say the flip side of this is that you need to do more work to prove your ability and skill. Whereas you can just send a writing sample and resume for an online writing gig, you need to have clear interpersonal skills on top of experience to get hired as a trainer.

You’ll probably want to cultivate a brand online: maybe make your own website, but if not, at least post on Instagram or YouTube with some of your workouts, strategies, motivation, etc.

There aren’t really solid sites for connecting online fitness trainers with prospective customers, but I do have a couple resources that could be useful for you.

iBodyFit is a prominent site for people to get personal fitness trainers, but they’re currently not advertising hiring—I’d say contact them about it if you’re interested.

Fitness Mentors isn’t a place to apply to, but a place to use as a resource:

Fitness Mentors

It might be an affordable way of getting your license if you have an interest in this stuff.

For the most part, you’re going to find your clients the same way most online freelancers find clients. So be prepared to market yourself and act independently! While it may be risky, you stand a fair chance of netting a client willing to shell out money for a solid fitness program.


Item 130: Be an online dietician

Okay, let’s be honest: the bar for entry here is kind of high. This is something you should really only be looking at if: A) you’re a dietician in the physical world, or B) you’re about to be.

The reason is simple: a dietician is an expert in diet and nutrition. About half of registered dieticians in the US have graduate degrees. In the US, the term “dietitian” or “registered dietitian” is protected by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

My point is, you need to be an expert and qualified in this, not just someone who reads a lot about nutrition and is passionate about health.

So, how would you make money online as a dietician? Well, while it’s true you can find calls for anything in general freelance marketplaces, postings for online dieticians are understandably going to be rarer.

So I would suggest getting a website or social media presence…kind of like with being an online fitness trainer, but even more so. You should already have some certification or in progress to complete it.

So why not use those credentials on your site or social media? And from there you can find and negotiate with prospective clients much more easily.

Here’s another idea: have a nutrition blog. Oh sure, there are a lot of those, but if you can find a suitable niche, you can start making affiliate commissions and ad revenue.


Item 131: Provide nursing knowledge remotely

Rather like the previous item, the bar for entry is high: you should be considering this only if you’re a registered nurse or if you’d be working in tandem with one.

I’m willing to bet that most nurses are working in person jobs, where they can make the most of their skills and also be paid the most.

But if you’re not working full time as a nurse but you have the credentials, or if you just want an extra source of income, there are plenty of people who would like to have access to a nurse remotely.

Usually the best option will be to look into a hospital or insurance company, and see if they’re hiring nurses to provide remote advice. Some of this may be through the phone, so not “online,” but you may also be using live chat and such.

Now, there is one prominent platform for finding remote medical professional jobs:

fonemed to make money online

That’s Fonemed. Fonemed is all about working to make healthcare and health advice easier to access remotely.

It’s not entirely dedicated to giving nurses and other health professionals remote jobs, but in the process of its general focus on remote healthcare, it certainly aids that endeavor too.


Item 132: Become an online financial consultant

This is a big one, guys. Let me say first off, the jobs are out there, although in many cases you’ll need to create the jobs for yourself.

The bigger issue is that you need to be careful. I do not recommend you enter this flippantly, looking for a source of quick cash. People who are willing to hire financial consultants are giving those consultants a big responsibility.

If that doesn’t scare you off, here’s something positive: you don’t have to manage all or even most of someone’s finances to be a financial consultant.

There’s plenty of opportunity to be a consultant for a portion of a person’s finances. And yes, notice I said person, not company.

You can be a finance consultant for a company or small business, but that is going to have a heavier responsibility. So for that, you should really only do it if you’re qualified—if you have experience in small business or finance consultancy already.

But as far as job postings and common gigs go, a lot of calls for consultants are for individuals seeking help with their personal and familial finances. This is also where you can shine: talk about your own smart financial moves, how you’ve saved money doing X or invested securely in Y, etc.

Here’s another thing about financial consulting: you can take long term or short term gigs. For example, you may get a client who just wants some knowledgeable, neutral advice on whether they should do X or Y action.

You also may get someone who wants some help managing stock investments for a couple years, or even indefinitely.

My point is, the online world is wide open—and as with other things, I encourage you to create a space for yourself online to market yourself as a consultant!


Item 133: Be a Virtual CxO

You might be confused about what a CxO is. Well, believe it or not, you know exactly what it is:

CxO here just means any executive position–I’m using the “X” as a variable (i.e., C_O). So in this instance, I mean being a virtual CEO (Chief Executive Officer), CFO (Chief Financial Officer), COO (Chief Operations Officer), or CMO (Chief Marketing Officer).

And while you’d be right to guess that most of the time, companies prefer to have the most important members working physically in an office, there are still many companies now open to hiring high ranking members for virtual work.

The key thing is that you’re qualified. Before you get discouraged, you don’t need to be the COO or CFO of a major corporation–though you’re welcome to.

There are many small and mid-sized businesses, including a lot of startups, who are seeking qualified individuals interested in their line of work first and foremost. Working virtually is a compromise a lot of smaller businesses are willing to make, as long as they get a qualified officer.

As far as places to find this work go, it’s mostly down to your own ability to network and use LinkedIn or other main job boards. There will be postings for Chief _ Officers on Indeed.com, but a lot will be for in-person work.


Item 134: Online marketing consultant

This is the sort of thing I suggest you get into only if you have some solid experience in marketing. But before you get scared off and skip the next item, think about what marketing entails:

When you hear “marketing,” you probably think of advertisements and email. Yes, a lot of marketing is done through email, and advertisements, and social media. But it’s a lot more than that.

Marketing can include website design. It includes search engine optimization (SEO). It can also include written content. It can include a ton of miscellaneous things as long as they point towards a company’s goals.

My point here is that you may be more equipped to be a marketing consultant than you realize. Maybe you don’t know how to create a marketing funnel (see above)…but you might be an expert at SEO. Or you might be really good at coming up with written content.

You can use your existing skills to help businesses in your field market themselves online. Target companies that you know you can help with your expertise.

Now if you have marketing skills beyond a single field of expertise, so much the better. People like you are in high demand. In fact, marketing companies are hiring all the time these days.

But that’s for another article. Right now, I’m saying you should be creative with your own abilities, and offer small businesses (or larger if you can handle it) a leg up in something you know you can help them with.

I would kind of suggest that even if you plan on doing this remotely, local businesses are a good place to start. That’s because you know the area and can speak to the managers with a shared background and knowledge of where the business operates.

If you want to do everything online though, go for a small business you like, in a field you like, and let your passion and desire to help the company grow speak for itself (along with your experience).


Item 135: Earn with the Medium Partner Program

While social media is great, maybe it’s not your preferred medium of expression. Maybe you like to write thoughtful material. In that case, your preferred medium might be…Medium!

You might have heard of Medium, but you might not have used it. Medium gets its name from the idea that it’s a “medium” sized blog format. Whereas some blogs may be really long, and Twitter is super short, Medium is for sharing those in-between pieces.

Now if you love to write, but would also like to earn some money for it, using the Medium Partner Program could be a great option.

It’s pretty clear-cut. You just need to blog as you normally would. Activate your distribution and earnings settings and you’ll be eligible for the program automatically.

Medium’s team of editors and curators are looking at tons of on-site content daily, and if one of your stories meets the editorial standards, it’ll get recommended to people reading similar topics.

And from there? Then this happens:

Medium Partner Program to make money online

Your pay will be basically dependent on how deeply Medium readers engage with your content. And the pay? It varies:

A Medium reader’s subscription fee will be distributed to the authors and stories interacted with the most. So the more a given reader reads your stuff, the more of their subscription fee will go to you.

A subscription fee is $5 a month, so it’s not exactly a ton of money. As with a lot of things on this list, you’re kind of counting on getting large amounts of people to make those numbers work for you.

But the best thing about Medium’s Partner Program is its focus on quality. A lot of content creators are understandably turned off by how much they need to rely on advertising for money.

And if you’re a writer, there’s a fair chance you’re not in love with clickbait. The Medium Partner Program is a good way of earning money for writers who want to keep up their artistic integrity.


Item 136: Use SoundCloud Premier Monetization

This is less a way of selling music than it is a way to get paid for music you produce. Yes, there is a difference.

If you’re a musician, you’ve definitely heard of SoundCloud. It’s not just that the site is popular. It’s also that several artists have become famous and achieved real world success in music because of their SoundCloud popularity.

The most famous of these is Chance the Rapper. A couple others include XXXtentacion and Lil Pump, but there are plenty more who have achieved smaller, yet notable levels of success.

It should go without saying that for these people, their main source of money is from their success after receiving fame from SoundCloud. In this case, fame was the engine…so while that may be ideal for you, you shouldn’t expect that income just from SoundCloud Monetization.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s focus on how it works:

To qualify, you have to be an independent creator. This means that you have to be 100% in ownership of the music you’re putting out and the rights to it. Podcasts or mixes don’t qualify, currently.

You also have to be a SoundCloud Pro or SoundCloud Pro Unlimited subscriber, and need to have at least 1,000 eligible streams from the most recent month. Only streams from certain countries can be eligible—you can check the list here.

Rather like Medium’s Partner Program, your money is coming from a revenue share, and it’s based on the number of streams you’re getting. The more your songs get streamed, the larger of a share you get.

Just note that you’ll only get paid for streams that happened after you signed up for Premier…so it’s not retroactive (which makes sense).

Clearly then, pay varies and I can’t give you a solid figure. But if you’re already planning on putting music out there, why not invest in SoundCloud Pro to get your tracks monetized? The other similarity this has with Medium is you’re not counting on advertisements, you’re counting on your listeners.


Item 137: Help people with tax prep

A while ago on this list, I talked about different kinds of consulting and coaching. Tax prep isn’t always the same thing as consulting, but it does share some essential qualities.

For one thing, you are helping people and businesses figure out their finances. You can charge your own rates, work through platforms or independently, and you can do it all online.

But here’s where helping with tax prep is even better:

Everyone has to do taxes, and almost everyone hates it. Which means you won’t have much trouble finding clients around tax time.

Naturally this sort of work tends to be seasonal. If you’re good at networking, you might be able to nab a business or individual who wants assistance throughout the year…but even then, the bulk of your work will be in the weeks before late April (in the US, at least).

The other good thing about tax prep is that it can be very lucrative in the season that you are working the most, particularly as people begin to rush to meet the deadline.

Another pro of tax prep is it’s a very open field. Most people will want you to handle most of their tax burden, but you also may end up with families who only want help with part of their tax forms. Same thing for businesses.

Not to mention, you might be asked to just handle a form quickly, or to give very thorough advice on how to save money with taxes.

Certification is a mixed bag: on the one hand, you don’t want to be completely lacking in certifications. Even desperate tax procrastinators may choose themselves over an inexpensive tax preparer who doesn’t seem qualified.

On the other hand, you don’t need as many formal qualifications as an outsider would think. You don’t even need a degree (though if you get one, great).

The bare minimum in the United States is a PTIN, or Preparer Tax Identification Number. A PTIN is required of all who get paid to prepare taxes. Luckily, you can get one online in about 15 minutes and there’s no fee required.

You should have at least one tax prep course. If you only go for one thing, go for a formal IRS “Record of Completion” for the Annual Filing Season Program. This program is entirely for non-credentialed preparers who want to add to their qualifications.

While it’ll be more complicated if you want to help businesses prepare taxes, handling stuff for individuals and families is actually fairly easy if you put in the work and pay attention to details!


Make Money Online: Final Thoughts

If you’ve scrolled this far, then you’ve seen just how many ways there are about to make money online.

And you know the funny thing?

I only got some of them! A true list is probably impossible, because new ways to make money online are discovered all the time. Heck, new ways of making money online are invented every day.

But I’d say that if you’re looking for options, this is at least a good place to start.

Making money online can entail a million different things: it can mean working long hours for little pay and no benefits. It can also mean earning six figures for less effort than a traditional job. And it can mean everything in between.

The bottom line, though, is that as long as you keep your wits about you, work hard, and learn, you can certainly find income online in a way that’s right for you.