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Do you want to make money online – and at home? You’ve come to the right post! We’ve compiled a list of 51 ways to make money online, and you’ll almost certainly find one that will work for you.
Whether you’re looking for a full-time online opportunity, part-time, or just something to pick up some extra cash every now and again, you’ll find it here.
The most important step is to try something. Most of the ventures will take a while to get going and to build up to the point where you’ll be making serious money. But you need to start somewhere!
And you never know when today’s casual side gig will turn into a whole new career.
How to Make Money Online
So let’s get started. These 51 ways to make money online are in no special order, so if you come across a few that you don’t think will work for you, just keep reading.
Run Facebook Ads
Facebook Ads have become increasingly popular over the past few years. There is a great reason why: they are very effective.
Each year, companies spend trillions of dollars trying to capture the attention of large audiences.
Due to the massive user-base Facebook garners, it has naturally become a hot-bed for companies – large and small – to spend some of their marketing budgets.
Running Facebook Ads is great for small businesses because there is no minimum amount of monthly ad spend. So, if a business only has a spare $100 to run ads, that will do just fine.
But, most small business owners simply don’t have the time or the know-how to run these ads.
That is where you come in.
By learning how to manage Facebook Ads for small companies, you can make a killing. And, (once you know what you’re doing) it really doesn’t take much work at all.
It is simple:
Learn how to run Facebook Ads (Psst…Click here to easily learn how.) Reach out to local small businesses asking if they would like to expand their customer base through Facebook Ads. Propose a simple business relationship in which the company sets a monthly Facebook Ad budget and pays you to run the ads.
Take Online Surveys
This might be the most commonly advertised way to make money online. The concept is simple, but do your research and tread lightly. This is also a business that had more than a few scam operations! I even hesitate to include this category, but the subject of how to make money online wouldn’t be complete without including it.
Some will pay you cash to take surveys, but awarding points seems to be the more common method of compensation. You accumulate points by doing surveys, and the points can be redeemed for merchandise. That merchandise is often provided by the survey company itself, and that’s where this can get a bit sketchy.
Some survey sites to consider – but please understand this is not a recommendation – include:
Survey Junkie
Mypoints
InboxDollarsCheck them out, do some research, and see what you think. I suspect that at best you can make a few dollars extra each month. But if that’s all you’re looking for, and you have some time to kill, have at it!
Launch Your Own Blog
Blogging can be done either as a hobby or as a full-time business. In fact, it often starts as a hobby, becomes a profitable side business, and then becomes a brand-new, all-encompassing career.
One of the most beautiful and exciting qualities about blogging is that you can create a blog that deals with any subject area that you are either knowledgeable or passionate about (and preferably both!). You can write about personal finance, careers, real estate, getting into business, technology, cooking, travel, personal health, or just about any topic you choose.
You can set up a website, gradually build up the content (articles, videos, podcasts, etc.), then eventually monetize the site through advertising, affiliate marketing, or even the direct sale of specific products or services. Even better, you can generally find whatever services and technical assistance you need online and free of charge. Later on, when your site develops a reliable cash flow, you can begin working with paid providers who can take your blog to the next level.
I know a good bit about starting a blog, with the success I enjoy here on Good Financial Cents. I can even help you to make it happen, if you read my post on blogging, How I’ve Made over $1,097,757 from Blogging.
Gazelle – Sell Your Old Cell Phones for Cash
Every cell phone has to be replaced every few years. And you can actually pick up some extra cash by selling your old phone. Gazelle is a web platform that will pay you for your old cell phone, typically in the form of cash or gift cards.
You might be able to turn this into a small part-time business if you are able to obtain used phones on a fairly regular basis. But be advised that Gazelle only pays for late-model, higher-end smartphones. That means that there isn’t any money in selling them old flip phones.
Sign up for Gazelle>>
Invest in Peer-to-Peer Lending
This is actually an investment, but it is one that exists only online. It is possible to get double-digit interest rate returns on your investment through peer-to-peer lending platforms, such as Lending Club and Prosper. When you consider that bank investments typically pay less than 1%, it’s like getting 9% (or more) on your money for free!
When you invest on peer-to-peer lending sites, you are effectively functioning as a lender, lending directly to the borrowers who come to the site. The borrowers are vetted and rated based on credit profile, income, and the purpose of the loan.
You can earn above-average rates of return because peer-to-peer lending eliminates the bank function. That means that you participate in nearly the entire interest rate being paid by the borrower, rather than the less than 1% that you will typically earn on certificates of deposit. And you can reduce your risk by investing in slices of hundreds of different loans.
Get started with LendingClub
If you do a good bit of online shopping, Ebates is a good way to earn some extra money from doing it. It doesn’t actually provide an additional income in the true sense, but it does provide you with rebates on your shopping that have the same net effect.
The platform is free to use, and you can even get a $10 gift card for signing up and earning your first rebate. Otherwise, you make your purchases through the site, and Ebates splits its commission with you in the form of rebates.
This is also a generally passive income source, and one that you can earn just from doing what you would be doing anyway – shopping!
Get started with Ebates>>
Create an Ebook to Sell Online
Is there a topic that you’re really strong in? You could write an ebook and start earning some extra money. This is also a passive venture. Once the ebook is written, you can begin getting sales through a thoroughly automated process.
People come to your ad page, make a payment, and are then directed to a download page where they can get their copy of your ebook. You won’t have to lift a finger. Get a few ebooks written and marketed, and well, you get the idea. “How to” ebooks are some of the best ones to provide, especially if you’re an expert in a given field.
There are different ways to market an ebook. One of the most common is through Amazon’s Kindle program. They can help you with all the steps to both publish and market your ebook through their incredibly popular platform. There are some specialized sets of writing software that will help with not only writing your ebook but also formatting it correctly for the Amazon market as well Barnes & Noble and iTunes
You can also market your ebook on your own website or blog, particularly if the site gets good traffic. Still, another method is affiliate marketing. You can offer to pay sites related to your ebook a percentage of the sale price – say, anywhere between 20% and 50% – for them to post an ad or linked article for your book on their site. This could enable you to market your ebook on multiple platforms for greater market exposure.
Create Videos
Do you have a flair for creating videos? If you can then you can create them, download them on YouTube and then monetize them with Google Adsense (see #20 below).
This is another way to make money online in a completely passive way.
Once the video is created and generating traffic, you can add Adsense to the video, and earn some money anytime someone clicks through one of the ads. If you can make $50 – $100 per month from a single video, think how much you can earn if you create several videos?
The principle is similar to creating an ebook, except that you’re using a visual medium. How-to topics also work well with videos, but you can also do commentary, social-media friendly videos (for example, people seem to love cat videos), or even entertainment or music videos.
If one of them goes viral on the social media, you may have found a gold mine – for at least as long the video remains popular. After that, it’ll be time to create a new one or a stream of several.
Become a “Garage Sale Billionaire”
Have you ever watched Pawn Stars or Storage Wars on TV? That’s the general idea behind this money making venture.
It’s one of the oldest and most proven ways to make money – buy low, sell high. The buy low part comes from searching garage sales, estate sales, and even thrift stores to find items that are in good condition (“gently used”) but selling well below what they would if they were brand-new. In this way, you might be able to acquire an item for $5, and later sell it for $50.
You can sell the items on eBay and Craigslist. eBay is the better platform to sell small, high-priced, and unusual items. Craigslist is better for larger and more practical items.
A good book on how to make it work is Garage Sale Billionaire by Oody Geffen . The book will tell you everything that you need to know, from buying (including determining values) to marketing and selling.
Tutoring – Online, At Home, or On Site
This works with just about any subject that you are strong in – math, science, foreign language, and even test preparation. By tutoring online, you will have control over your time as well as the amount of work that you take on.
You can always offer your services directly by marketing to schools in your area or even placing ads in neighborhood newsletters and on bulletin boards. But you can also use online platforms that are dedicated to matching tutors with students.
Two sites worth checking out for this purpose are Chegg Tutors and Tutor.com. You can use either to enable you to tutor online and from home.
Etsy – Sell Your Crafts Online
If you are good at creating crafts, just about any type, you should try your hand selling them on Etsy. This is a site that is dedicated to the sale of of crafts. They charge a fee of 3.5% of your sale, which is a lot lower than what other online marketplaces charge. All the rest is yours.
The advantage with crafts is that they are creative in nature, and can work well if you are a creative type. In addition, since you are making the crafts, you’ll be able to better control your inventory, as well as the costs that go into it.
2020 Panel – Get Paid to Rate Products and Services
Companies need to have their products and services evaluated – it’s a fundamental part of the marketing process. To do so, they often turn to individuals to review those products and services. This creates yet another opportunity for you to make money online and in your spare time.
A website for this purpose is 2020 Panel. You evaluate products and services, and render your opinions with focus group companies. You’re typically pidy between $50 and $150 per evaluation.
Sparkplug – Rent Out Your Unused Musical Instruments
There’s an excellent chance that you have one or several musical instruments sitting in storage that haven’t been used in years. Perhaps it’s a leftover from when you were in school, or even from your days playing in a band. Whatever the reason that you have it, it’s probably worth money if you can sell it. Brand-new instruments are ridiculously expensive, so people often look to buy used equipment instead, particularly if they are novices.
You can make money online by selling your used instruments on a site called Sparkplug. Naturally, they’ll take a fee from the sales proceeds, but that will still enable you to make some money from an item that is just sitting around collecting dust.
Also, if you know a good bit about musical instruments, and know how and where to buy them on the cheap, you can use Sparkplug to sell them on an ongoing basis. That can turn into a nice side business, that eventually might grow into something more.
Sell Your Photos Online
Some people have a talent for taking pictures. If that describes you, you might be able to make money online from what has been a hobby up to this point.
Websites like iStock and Shutterstock will allow you to post your photos on their sites. Since they are common photo sources, you’ll get people looking for very specific types of photos. If they download one of yours, you can earn anywhere from a few cents to a few dollars per downloaded photo.
If you can create an online portfolio of several hundred photos that people are interested in downloading, you may have created one of the very best passive income sources. Take a look at the types of photos that you see appearing across the Internet, and tailor your work to meet that need.
Outsourcing is the new and dominant wave of the business world. As businesses shed employees, they increasingly turn to independent contractors to supply what in-house staff used to do. One of the ways they do this is through virtual assistants. These are people who provide certain tasks online. Businesses can use virtual assistants as much or as little as they need to. If you can make yourself available to multiple businesses, you might have plenty of work without ever leaving your house.
You can work as a virtual assistant through dedicated websites, such as Upwork or Zirtual. All kinds of skills are needed, and compensation can vary anywhere between $10 per hour to $100 or more. Obviously, the higher pay will be to people who have more technical skills, such as web building skills and marketing. But you can find work doing administrative tasks at the lower end of the pay scale.
Get Paid to Rent Out Your Car
Not everyone will be enthusiastic about this idea, due to the fact that it does have certain risks (like damage or loss of your vehicle). But if you don’t use your car a whole lot, and would like to use it to earn some extra income – without doing any extra work – web platforms are available to make this happen.
Sites like RelayRides and GetAround enable you to rent out your car hourly, daily, for a weekend, or even for a specific trip. GetAround advertises that you can make up to $10,000 per year renting out your car while you’re not using it.
For Nurses Who Want to Work at Home
If you are a registered nurse, there are opportunities to make money online and without ever leaving your home. There are businesses who need the expertise of a nurse to answer questions from customers, or to provide information and recommendations.
All kinds of companies need RNs for this purpose, including health insurance companies, hospital chains, and even medical recruiting companies. You can find them by checking out their job sites, and entering the key phrases “work at home” or “work from home” or “telecommuting”.
But you can also register with a company called Fonemed. They are in need of nurses to provide triage and medical information to their clients by phone. The clients are primarily doctors based in Canada and the United States.
Start a Product Based Website
Is there a product or service that you are particularly enthusiastic about? If you are, you may be able to develop a website that is built around selling it. You don’t have to be the actual provider of the product or service either. There are many businesses that offer these products and will allow you to sell them on an affiliate basis. For example, you may be able to sell a product on your website for a commission of 20% or 30% of the sale price.
Shopify offers you the ability to create a fully operational website for this purpose.
This is a more technical way to make money online then most of the other strategies given. But you can get an excellent course on how to make it happen with Steve Chou’s Create a Profitable Online Store program. Steve and his wife have built a highly successful online store – selling wedding napkins – and he’s anxious to provide insider secrets to people who sign up for his course..
Become an Online Freelance Writer
Do you see all of those articles, tutorials and guides all over the Internet? Somebody wrote every one of them! If you have decent writing ability (no, you don’t need a journalism degree!), and knowledge in a few specific topic areas, you can be one of those writers. It’s an opportunity to make money online and without ever leaving your home. It’s also the kind of venture that can start out as a small side business, but grow into a full-time career.
You can get started by offering your services as a content writer on a website like Upwork. That can be a good place to get started, though you’ll want to go full-on independent as your experience and reputation begin to grow.
And if you’d like to go the independent route, check out Kevin Mercadante’s post The Perfect Side Hustle: Freelance Blog Writer. He’s already living the life of an online freelance writer, and even offers an inexpensive program to help you get started.
Sell Your Online Skills to Websites and Blogs
Being an online freelance writer is one type of skill that you can use to make money online. But there are a wide variety of other skills that can be used in a similar manner. Every website and blog on the Internet needs technical skills. This can include graphic design, web design, search engine optimization, social media marketing and promotion, content editing, and so much more.
If you have any of these skills you can market them for websites such as 99Designs (which is mostly graphic design) and Upwork for other skills.
If you are more confident in your skills, you can also market directly to websites and blogs. You can contact the sites by email to market your services. That will also enable you to select the specific types of sites that you are more comfortable working with. Since there are literally thousands of websites and blogs on the web, the potential market is limitless.
Build up a large enough book of business, and you’ll never need to look for a job again!
Leapforce – Evaluate Search Engines
Nearly everything on the web is subject to evaluation, and that includes search engines themselves. You can make money online evaluating search engines using a site called Leapforce. Using the platform, you can conduct predetermined searches, and provide feedback for the search engines to use to improve the service that they provide.
eJury – Become an Online Juror and Get Paid
Do you like watching court trials on TV? You might be able to turn that interest into a hobby that makes you some money.
There’s a site called eJury that will pay you a small amount of money to participate in pretrial jury cases. These enable attorneys to determine in advance how a jury is likely to view the circumstances surrounding a certain case, and to make adjustments for the real trial.
The site advertises that they will pay you $5 to $10, depending on the length of the trial review (usually about 35 minutes). That’s not a big payday, but if you can get on several cases each week, it could be enough to make your car payment – who knows?
AchieveMint – Get Paid for Living a Healthy Lifestyle
Doctors and health experts are always telling us we need to take better care of ourselves. Well, thanks to the internet, you may be able to earn some extra money for doing just that.
A website called AchieveMint gives you points for engaging in healthy activities, like exercise, tracking your eating habits, or even taking health related surveys. Points can be redeemed either for cash (10,000 points are worth $10) or for Amazon Gift Cards. The app actually connects with other health apps, like Fitbit and MyFitnessPal, to track your progress.
Add Affiliate Marketing to Your Blog or Website
If you already have an active blog or website, you can earn extra income – completely passive income at that – by adding affiliate marketing to your site.
With programs such as Amazon Affiliate, Google Adsense and Media.net, you can have ads related to your content automatically placed on your site. This will provide you with an income every time someone clicks on one of the ads. This is the perfect way to add an extra income stream to your existing web platform.
If you have high enough web traffic, you can also participate in affiliate programs from various companies. They will typically pay you a certain amount of money every time someone signs up for a product or service that is advertised on your website. Thousands of websites are making a lot of money using affiliate marketing.
Watch and Rate Online Movies and Videos
Swag bucks will actually pay you to watch videos, movies, and even news programs, and rate them. That will earn you points for each video that you watch, and those can be redeemed for cash (through PayPal) or through gift cards.
You won’t make a fortune with Swagbucks, but it can provide a small extra monthly income, which you will earn in your spare time.
Get Paid to Review Software
This is another of the more technical online moneymaking strategies. SoftwareJudge will pay you to review the software that they produce. You have to try out the software, render a thorough review, and provide your opinion about your experience.
Obviously it’s a venture for people who are very familiar with various types of software, and who know how to thoroughly investigate and evaluate each program. But it’s also one of those opportunities where you will start small, and your compensation will grow with experience, and as they develop a greater degree of trust in your opinions.
Become a Driver for Uber or Lyft
Driving for Uber and Lyft technically isn’t an online activity. However, the source of the business is online, or more specifically, through your smart phone.
Customers sign up for a ride on their own smart phones, and you are alerted if you are in the area. Since payment is made online, you do not have to concern yourself with collecting from the customer, the way you would if you were driving a traditional taxicab.
This opportunity works better in large metropolitan areas, where people are both more likely to not own cars, but more likely to attend major events, like sporting events and concerts. Airport connections are also a very important source of business.
The downside is that you have to use your own vehicle, but this can be either a very generous part-time venture, or even full-time. It all depends upon how much activity there is in your area, and how much time and effort you are willing to put in.
Online Data Entry
If you have a lot of clerical experience, this might be your dream job – an opportunity to make money online and at home, doing exactly what you might be doing on the job.
You can go through a website, such as Upwork, to get online data entry assignments. Otherwise, you can also check with job offerings for online data entry on Craigslist.
The jobs may only be temporary, or even related to a specific project. But if you’re only looking for some extra money, this can be the way to do it. And you never know – if you get on an assignment, and it becomes ongoing, you just might have that work-at-home-in-your-pajamas job that you always wanted!
Evaluate Websites for a Fee
A site called User Testing will actually pay you a fee to evaluate websites. It typically pays you $10 for each video that you review – which typically takes about 20 minutes. If the work is there, and you are particularly good at it, you could earn up to $30 per hour. That’s a pretty solid pay rate for a work-at-home job. You wouldn’t have to work a whole lot of hours to generate a decent part-time monthly income.
Turn Your House into a Bed and Breakfast
The peer-to-peer concept is coming to virtually every corner of human existence. That includes the hospitality industry. Through AirBnB you can actually rent out your house for various lengths of time for a predetermined fee. That gives you an extra income on your house and gives the visitor the benefit of having an entire house, rather than being crammed into a single hotel room.
Exactly how much you can earn from this activity depends on a variety of factors. Obviously, the size and amenities of your home are important – larger homes will fetch higher fees. Location is also critical. A location close to a large city, or major recreational venues, are perhaps the best candidates.
The practice isn’t for everybody, but as AirBnB has become common across the globe, there are safeguards in place. If you tend to be out of town a lot, this can be an excellent way to earn additional income.
Care.com – Become a Paid Pet Sitter
Pet sitting has become one of the more common ways that people are making extra money. But you can use an online resource, like Care.com to find paid opportunities.
Care.com hooks up service providers with customers for all types of care-related situations. This includes childcare and elder care, as well as pet care. It can be an excellent source of ongoing business, particularly if you are new to the business.
One factor that you must be aware of though is that Care.com is a peer-to-peer arrangement. That means that you will be in direct competition with other pet sitters in your area. You must price your services competitively in order to get business. Once you begin to develop a list of regular clients, you will be in a better position to raise your rates. This will be particularly true as you get referrals from those customers.
Paribus – Find Hidden Refunds on Previous Purchases
While this is hardly the most generous way to make money online, it gets my vote as probably the most interesting. An app called Paribus enables you to get money back on online purchases. And it’s free to sign up!
They scan your email archives for the receipt of any online purchases made. They have a list of several major retailers that they regularly work with (such as Amazon and Target), and they will issue you a refund anytime there is a price drop on the product or service that you purchased. That’s found money!
Amazon Mechanical Turk
Remember earlier how I said that the new order of business is outsourcing? Well, that includes every task that you can think of. And that includes what have come to be known as “micro projects (or tasks)”. If you’re interested in getting involved in these, you can do so through Amazon Mechanical Turk.
Amazon will have you work on micro-projects that require some sort of human interaction. Tasks can include translating a paragraph into English (or another language), rating the search results for certain keywords, or reworking an article. The tasks are simple, and you will be paid a small amount to complete each. But if you do enough tasks quickly, you can make a respectable amount of money.
There’s certainly nothing glamorous about micro-projects, but check out the site, and find out if it is a good fit for you. It will enable you to earn at least a small amount of money online, at home, and in your spare time.
Get Paid to Lose Weight!
What could be a better payoff to losing weight then getting healthy? How about some extra cash for doing it?
It sounds too good to be true, but that’s exactly what HealthyWage will do. You sign up with the site, set your goal weight, and the amount of time that you expect to achieve it. You then place a bet of between $20 and $500 per month that you will make it.
The site advertises that you can win up to $10,000 for reaching your goal. They even have an on-site calculator that will calculate how much you can win, based on the amount of weight you need to lose.
Obviously, this will represent a one-time compensation. But if losing weight means that you will get healthy and make a bunch of extra money for it, you’ll have a double benefit coming.
Participate in Online Focus Groups
This is a variation of taking online surveys. You can participates through ProOpinion , and be compensated with points each time you complete a survey. Points are redeemable for cash (through PayPal), or with Amazon Gift Cards, iTunes Gift Cards, or you can elect to make a donation to the American Red Cross.
Once again, this is one of those ventures that won’t earn you a boat load of money. But it will enable you to earn some extra cash (or gift cards) just for participating in online focus groups.
Fiverr Gigs
Fiverr is another variation of micro-tasks. You can earn $5 for each task that you complete. And of course, the secret is to complete as many tasks as possible.
Those tasks can include either products or services. They can involve research, data entry, or any one of a number of small tasks that someone needs to outsource for a specific project. You may even be asked to perform unusual tasks! AFTER You can decide which tasks you want to take on, and which you want to ignore.
ALSO, You can sell certain products on Fiverr. Of course, this will include small items that will cost no more than $5, including shipping. You may even be able to use the $5 limit as an intro price on certain skills, such as graphic design or accounting, but charge higher fees for more complicated Projects.
As you go long, you’ll also want to garner positive reviews. The more positive reviews you have, the more tasks that will become available, and the more income you will earn.
Work From Home Jobs
Working Solutions is a web platform that matches agents – service providers – with clients who need those services. This is a way for you to land a work-at-home job.
The website has been around since 1996, and it even provides education to the agents to help them learn about the client’s business. They do this through a program called Working Solutions University, and is completely free to use.
Teachers Pay Teachers – For Teachers Only
If you are a teacher, you can have an opportunity to sell your lesson plans on a site called Teachers Pay Teachers. This will provide you with an opportunity to make money online using a “product” that you already have – your lesson plans.
You can actually sell those plans on the website, which is particularly beneficial to new teachers, who probably have not yet created their own lesson plans. They may use your lesson plan entirely, or they may use it as a template to develop their own customized version. Either way, if they buy your lesson plan, you’ll get paid.
This is essentially a peer-to-peer platform for teachers. It is where they may come and share various teaching resources, as well as lesson plans.
Create and Sell Educational Courses Online
Another variation on the education side of the universe is Udemy. That’s a website where you can sell educational courses. This isn’t just for teachers either. Anyone can create a course, and sell it on the platform.
It’s an excellent opportunity to offer technical training courses that teach people how to learn a much-needed skill, or accomplish an important task. It could also prove to be an important testing ground for your educational courses. If you are able to market your course on the site, against direct competition, you may be able to direct marketing to the general public, using a website, videos, or even an affiliate marketing program.
Much like creating an ebook or a video, educational courses on Udemy can also be an excellent source of passive income. And that can be an important part of your ability to make money online on a consistent basis.
Sell Your Computer Skills on the Internet
A lot of ordinary folks search the web looking for computer and Internet information. Many of them go to a site called Experts Exchange to get that information. You can become one of the 500,000 experts who participate on the site.
Experts Exchange provides information on web design, SEO and marketing, graphic design, web development and a whole lot of other subjects – over 300 tech subjects in all. The information is provided through specific gigs, online courses, written articles, videos and live answers.
Answer Technical Questions
This is something like Experts Exchange, except that it’s more general in nature. As a professional in just about any field, you can offer your expertise on JustAnswer. They are looking for professionals in various fields who will provide answers to reader’s questions. You can make money online by answering these questions and pointing people in the right direction to get the solutions that they need.
The website doesn’t indicate how much money you can earn, but it is an opportunity to earn extra money doing what you know best, at home and in your spare time.
Buy, Restore and Sell on Craigslist
In #3 we talked about buying used items at garage sales and other places, and selling them on sites like eBay and Craigslist. But you can do a variation of the strategy, by buying used items, and either repairing or restoring them, and then selling them on Craigslist at a substantial markup.
The advantage here is that items that are broken or deficient can often be had for next to nothing, or even completely free. If you have the skill, you may be able to restore them to a very usable condition with a few dollars and some elbow grease.
Craigslist even has a free section, where you can get items that people are just looking to get rid of – not to make any money. Why would they do this? Because it might actually cost them money to have the item hauled away by the trash company.
If you can find and restore items like furniture and appliances, you can make a substantial amount of money. You can acquire the items on Craigslist, or even at garage sales or estate sales, restore them, and then list them for sale on the site. You may also be able to market certain items on eBay, particularly if they are small, unusual, but high in price.
Get Rebates on Food Shopping
Everybody buys food, right? So here is yet another way to make some money. You can actually do your grocery shopping using rebate apps.
Apps like Ibotta and SavingStar can offer cash rebates on your food purchases by taking a picture of your receipt with your smart phone. You do your regular grocery shopping at the usual stores, and you can get rebates when you purchase basic items like meat, bread and eggs.
Once again, technically this is not an income source, but it does offer you cash back on normal purchases, which is basically just as good.
Buy and Sell Used Books
This is another make money online favorite! Everybody has used books somewhere in their home, and a website like BookScouter can help you turn some of them into cash.
BookScouter is actually a book buyer aggregator site. They work with dozens of companies that buy back books. You can enter the ISBN number on the site, and it will connect you with the buyer that will pay the most for the book. You then send the book to the site in a prepaid envelope, and you will be paid within a few days.
If you are good at finding valuable books in good condition, you may be able to turn this into a profitable side business. It’s another example of putting the buy low, sell high strategy to work for you.
Turn Your Twitter Feed into a Revenue Source
If you are active on Twitter and have a few thousand followers, you may be able to earn some money tweeting through PaidPerTweet. You can sign up for the app for free, and then earn money each time you tweet a message from one of their advertisers out to your followers.
The amount of pay that you will receive per tweet depends upon the number of followers that you have. Naturally, a person with 100,000 followers will receive higher compensation than someone with 5,000 followers.
It’s one of those strategies that can enable you to earn a decent amount of money from a slow drip of activity. For example, if you’re paid $5 per tweet, and you tweet two messages a day for a month, you can earn $300.
That’s a pretty good return on about five minutes worth of work per day.
Make Money Flipping Websites and Domains
Have you ever seen those shows on TV of people who buy dilapidated houses, and then rehab them and sell them for enormous profits? You can also do that with websites and web domains through a site called Flippa.com. It’s a virtual marketplace for websites and web domains.
It’s something akin to picking stocks. You want to buy undervalued domains, and sell them later on at a higher price. For example, you can pick a domain that is out of favor, but could be related to some future event. So if you decide that the stock market is likely to crash in the future, you can buy a domain that includes the words stock market crash during a rising market, and then sell it in a falling market.
You can also buy struggling websites, and work to improve their appearance, revenue stream and value. Once you do, you can sell the sites for more money than you paid for them. It’s kind of like doing property rehabs, but without getting your hands dirty.
Become an Online Translator
We’ve been hearing a lot about globalization in the past few decades, and that’s meant that more people who speak different languages are interacting on a day-to-day basis. That has created a major need for people to work as translators. If you are bilingual, this could be a real opportunity for you to make money online.
Proz.com is a site where you can get paid to translate all kinds of documents, including files and even conversations. The site provides you with an opportunity to list your services as a translator. They offer opportunities in Spanish, German, Italian, Chinese, Arabic, Japanese and other languages, and specialize in legal, medical, technical and other fields.
If you are bilingual, and feel that you can translate any of these documents, this can be an opportunity for you to make money online and at home in your spare time.
Turn Your Car Into a Mobile Billboard
Like online surveys, this is another opportunity that exists in the “gray zone” (a lot of companies in this space have come and gone). But the theory of it makes it interesting! Basically, you use your car as a moving billboard, displaying advertisements for the general public.
You may be able to make several hundred dollars per month through My Free Car, using your car as a moving billboard.
Do some deep research on the company, and if it seems to be on the up and up, give it a try. You’re going to be driving anyway, and you know that it always costs money to keep and drive a car. You may as well earn some money doing what you’re going to do anyway, and this is an opportunity to make that happen.
Gigwalk
This is another variation of micro-projects, except that it is oriented toward doing tasks on the go. Gigwalk enables you to sign up for the app, and begin to receive job orders. Those orders come in on your iPhone, and you must be prepared to perform the task, and to do it quickly and efficiently.
As is typically the case with micro-projects, they are usually simple tasks, the pay a few dollars per task. The key is to complete as many tasks as possible, in the shortest amount of time. There are people who claim to be earning full-time equivalent salaries by fully committing to this venture.
There are a variety of tasks that you may be asked to perform. This can include delivering documents, delivering food or restaurant meals, taking pictures of a building for a real estate developer, taking pictures of a menu in an upscale restaurant, or even delivering auto-parts. If you have a good working car (or even a good bicycle), time on your hands, and a lot of energy, this can be a real opportunity to make money online.
Offer to Provide Your Service on Zaarly
This is similar in concept to micro-tasks, except that it is oriented toward specific services, such as cleaning services, pest inspection, handyman services, house cleaning, lawn & garden services or any of the skilled trades. It might actually be more accurate to say that it is a platform where skilled service providers can offer their services to site visitors, similar to Angie’s List.
Zaarly is currently available in just three cities – Denver, Minneapolis, and Kansas City – but we should suspect that it will add more as time goes on. The tasks are actual customer jobs, and generally more substantial than micro-tasks. They may even hold the opportunity to develop ongoing customer relationships.
Get Paid to Be Politically Active
Next Wave Advocacy is a platform that will pay you to get involved in specific political activities. You’ll perform these tasks from your home, and exactly what you will do will vary each day.
They often expect you to commit to working a certain number of hours per week, which is generally part-time. They will pay you an hourly salary for that work, so it is really more of an at home job situation than it is in an entrepreneurial way to make money online. Still, if you want to get involved in political activity, and you have the time and motivation, this could be a way to monetize that passion.
BONUS: Sell With Fulfilled By Amazon (FBA)
We’re always being inundated with news about how online sales – particularly Amazon – are eating up retail stores. Rather than getting rolled over by the trend, you can get on the bandwagon, and let the trend help you make money online. You can do that through Fulfilled-by-Amazon (FBA).
There are a large number of independent businesses and individuals who sell through Amazon. FBA enables you to set up an online business. In the process, Amazon will actually pack and ship the orders that come from your ads on the Amazon website.
The process looks something like this:
Send your products to Amazon’s fulfillment centers.
Upload your listings to Seller Central.
Let Amazon fulfill all or part of your inventory.
Print PDF labels provided by Amazon or use FBA’s Label Service.
Use Amazon’s discounted shipping or select your own carrier.
Amazon stores your products
Customer’s order your products
Amazon fulfills orders placed directly on Amazon.com or fulfillment requests you submit for sales not on Amazon.
Amazon picks and packs your products
Amazon ships your productsThink of it as creating your own online product business, but one with the power of Amazon behind you; how could you go wrong???
So there you have it, 51 ways to make money online and at home. You should try several of them. Try one at a time, until you find one that works. Since most of these opportunities require mostly time on your part, and very little money (if any at all), you’re free to try as many as you like.
Get one of them up and running – earning even just a few dollars per month – and you’ll be on your way. From there, it’s just a matter of scaling your business or adding any other businesses to your income mix. Then trust me, you’ll be an entrepreneur in no time!