20 Real Ways To Make Money Online – Legitimate Ways

From students and housewives to retirees, it isn’t very difficult to find people who want to make money online or extra cash from home.

Nowadays, the internet couldn’t be a more fantastic place than ever. Your computer with an internet connection can make a lot of opportunities to earn money online now. It’s flexible and has no time obligation to work on what you want. That must be the biggest perk of making money online or working from home.

That being said, making money online isn’t a wonderful idea when you encounter online job scams. In fact, the internet is full of scams and pitfalls watching for an opportunity to exploit the hard work of innocent people or even their money in the form of investment.

So, it’s necessary to know what works and what doesn’t before deciding on your online job to start. In this article, we are going to cover your back with the complete guidelines that fall under 2 major categories — the real ways to make money online and how to avoid falling victim to online job scams.

How can I make money online?

Making money online isn’t difficult but it’s difficult to figure out how to do it. That’s what many people are lost about when they’re trying to make money online from home. It puzzles people about where to begin and what to do next.

The best way to make money online is by taking advantage of your skills or knowledge in an area – whether it’s writing, coding, art, or design.

Or else, the passionate area you love can also be a great thing to capitalize on to earn money online, for example, beauty, football, movies, or pop culture.

There are numerous ways of making money online. But the basic principles of money-making online fall under these 5 categories:

• Earn Money Online by Creating Content – Youtube, blog, Instagram, etc.
• Earn Money Online by Online Gigs – Freelance marketplaces like Fiverr, and Upwork.
• Get Paid by Online Tasks – Amazon Mechanical Turk, Upshift, paid surveys, etc.
• Make Money by Selling Online – Starting an online shop or using online marketplaces. (eBay, Amazon, Etsy, etc)
• Make Money by Finding a Remote Job – working for a company that allows remote work.

Are there any real-life ways to make money online from home?

Practically, many people do make money online, and there are a plethora of real ways to do so.

People earn money online by creating content on their social pages or freelancing what they are good at. Also, some people earn small extra cash by performing online tasks on crowdsourcing platforms like Amazon Mechanical Turk.

According to Pew Research’s statistics, 16% of Americans respond that they have earned money on gig platforms at some point. FindStack’s research says 16% of the companies in the world are fully remote. Given the facts, earning money from home using the internet is no longer an odd concept to think about. In other words, we’re living in a world of technological advancement that connects people everywhere on the planet and enables anyone who wants to make money online.

However, the online space isn’t just a wonderful or legitimate place. People online can be an easy target for scammers to lure up and carry out deceitful schemes. Certainly, you’ll want to steer clear of these scams on the internet.

How do you spot and avoid Make Money Online Scams?

The internet is riddled with scams that try to take your money or hard work. The worst part is that they are not always obvious and can be very deceptive. Anyone can be the victim of a bogus scam. It can be anyone, including me and you.

So how do you spot and avoid Make Money Online scams? Although some sophisticatedly sly scams might be hard to detect, however, it could be easier to spot scams by knowing these common characteristics of Make-Money-Online Scams.

The most common traits of online job scams are:

1. Spelling or grammar mistakes

Many scammers, either intentionally or unintentionally, make spelling and grammar errors in their scam job postings/emails.

2. Too good to be true

Claiming to offer unrealistically fantastic rewards is a common online job scam that many scammers employ to bait victims. It’s because it’s a great tool to grab the attention of the possible victims in the first place.

3. Rich-Quick schemes

Scammers lure people by promising a huge sum of money that participants are able to make overnight, or even in a few hours. They often showcase a lot of fake rags-to-riches stories on the front.

4. No contact details

Many scammers want to hide or even don’t have proper contact points such as phone numbers (business landlines), physical addresses, and official business websites.

5. Initial fees

Best avoid if they ask for money to earn money. Scammers’ usual excuse is that they need you to pay for the initial job settings or start-up equipment.

6. No business or brand presence

They don’t have their website, social media pages, or anything that can verify their legitimate business presence online.

7. Generic email

Many scammers don’t have work email addresses associated with their business domains. Instead, they just use personal emails like “TheirName@gmail.com” or “TheirName@hotmail.com” which are far from professionalism or seriousness.

8. Not enough job details

Scammers frequently leave vague job offers that lack essential job information such as the company name and specific job roles. Instead, they put a lot of emphasis on how well it pays so they can bait people first. (e.g. skeptical offers like “Click if you want to learn more about the job” types)

9. Others

Several more typical scam patterns like MLM (Multi Level Marketing) or jobs that require excessive personal information (bank account, SSN, etc.) even before starting the job.

These are the most common job scam patterns many people are duped into. Again, scammers are anywhere online looking to steal people’s money, labor, or personal information. You need to best avoid those skeptical job scam patterns described above.

How to check if a job offer is legitimate:

In addition to the scam checklist above, what next to do is your own research done thoroughly. This way, you can further filter out 99.99% of job scams. Checking these elements below can be your best bet to make sure the job you’re taking is a legitimate job.

1. Official Website

Check out if they have an official website that represents their business. Nowadays, 99% of serious businesses have their website if they are online-based.

2. About Us

If they have a business website, carefully look into their About Us page. Legitimate businesses are fully transparent with who runs the business and typically they have the head photos of the business owner and staff. You can also check how reliably their About Us stories are written.

3. Contact Us

You will probably expect to be properly informed of where the company is located and how you can contact them if they are a fully legitimate company. Make sure their physical address and phone number (preferably, the landline number)

4. Social Presence

If it’s a job offer from a legitimate company, it’s very natural to see they have a solid online presence across online. They will have a business page on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or Youtube associated with their business. And you can check a lot about the company’s legitimacy from their social status.

5. Staff Presence on LinkedIn

It’s extremely common that legitimate companies have their staff on LinkedIn. What you need to pay attention to are the staff profiles that mark the company name that you’re trying to work for. You can even talk to some of them to double-check if the company is a proper business.

6. Company review sites

Checking into what other people talk about the company is truly helpful. Most of them who leave a company review are former employees or current workers for the company.

7. Business Registration Number

There are web resources that help check the business registration number of the company you are trying to look up. The easiest way to do so is by typing “(Company Name) business registration number” on Google.

20 Legitimate Ways to Make Money Online

1. Make Money Online by Blogging

If writing is your cup of tea, blogging can be a thing you should go for. You will get a perfect place to share your thoughts, stories, or what you know with the world and the wonderful thing is you can even earn money online with what you write by monetizing your content.

Blogging is home to many famous blog authors and 6-figure income blog stars since early 2000. Many small blogs back then now became publication giants like Pete Cashmore (Mashable) and Joanna Goddard (Cup of Jo).

Whether you want to monetize your blog, or just make some money from it, there are many different ways of doing so.

These are the most popular methods to make money from a blog:

1. Third-Party Ads

You can earn money with your blog by placing 3rd party ads on your site. The most well-known 3rd party ad platforms are Google Adsense, Microsoft Ads, and Media.net. To participate as a 3rd party ad publisher, you will need to meet their publisher qualifications.

2. Direct Ads

Direct ads are a more beneficial option for you to maximize your ad revenue. With direct ads, you can earn 100% from your ad placements without any fees. However, having to find and deal with advertisers on your own is the tough part.

3. Sponsored Posts

You can publish posts sponsoring advertisers. In return, you will get paid for it. Pricing per post is absolutely at your freedom. But $1 – $3 is the average charge per 1,000 views. Say, you have 100,000 monthly views on your blog, then your sponsored post price might span around $100 – $300.

4. Affiliate Marketing

It’s as easy as inserting affiliate links in the text of your blog posts. Your blog can turn into a money generator whenever your visitors buy products or services by clicking the links. Amazon Affiliate Program is one of the most famous affiliate programs. You can also collaborate with a lot of advertisers via affiliate networks like ShareASale.

5. Selling Products Via Blog

In contrast to affiliate marketing, your blog can turn into a cyber salesperson when selling your own products. If you are a WordPress user, turning your blog into an online shop is more than a breeze. All you need is just the Woocommerce plugin or any cart plugin to build an online shop within your blog.

6. Selling Services Via Blog

As well as selling physical products, you can also sell your gigs or services through your blog. For example, your writing services, or marketing services. In that regard, your blog can be an outlet for showing off your skills or knowledge in your expertise area which helps earn the trust of your potential clients.

7. Selling Your Blog / Blog Flipping

Selling your blog and taking it over to somebody else can be a lucrative way to make money online. Many blog experts do that and make a 5 to 6 figure transaction. But you need to get the hang of how to grow a blog to hundreds of thousand of monthly views to sell your blog at a significant price.

2. Monetize Your Youtube Channel

Youtube is a very popular platform for content creators to make money with. It’s not just about uploading videos and waiting for the ad revenue to come in. There are many ways to monetize your Youtube channel and make some serious money while you’re at it.

It’s no secret that famous Youtube stars make a lot of money online on Youtube. According to Forbes, the world’s top 10 Youtube giants make $106 million to $54 million annually by creating sponsored videos and displaying Google Adsense 3rd party ads on their content.

Certainly, that dreamy figures wouldn’t be the case for all people. However, making your Youtube channel a nice source of extra income isn’t just a dream. It just needs you to think cleverly and create unique value for the audience. Your Youtube channel should be irreplaceable by other run-of-the-mills and have a distinctive theme/style that set your channel apart from the crowd. The key is to give them a reason why they have to watch your videos. That’s simple but a powerful starting point to further shape up your channel.

Millions of Youtube creators make money online. There are various ways to do so.

Below are how they earn money from their Youtube channels:

• Google Adsense – Once you are approved to be a Google Adsense publisher, you will immediately be able to monetize your Youtube channel. $3 – $5 is the average rate for 1,000 video views.
• Sponsored Ads – Youtube is home to video marketing and many brands offer advertisement deals to Youtubers in their target markets. The average charges for sponsored ads are between $10 to $50 per 1,000 views.
• Selling Services/Products – Youtube can be an awesome sales funnel for your products, or services. Plus, selling products via video can lead to higher conversion in your sales since research says 65% of the general population are visual learners 
• Affiliate Marketing – Many YouTubers monetize their channel with affiliate marketing. Video marketing on affiliate products can drive your affiliate sales to the next level. The average conversion rates range from 2% to %5.

3. Start Freelancing

If you have some talent or skills in an area, you might want to be a freelancer to make money online.

Anyone can start freelancing to monetize what they can do for others. It’s been a popular choice for people who want more flexibility in life or want to make extra income. According to PewResearch, 16% of US adults have ever earned money using freelance platforms, which indicates freelancing has become a popular work model nowadays.

In freelancing, you can do anything as long as others demand it from writing, translating, and designing to even running a personal errand. In fact, freelancing doesn’t mean you have to be someone special with sophisticated skills, but anything you come up with to help others can be freelanced.

With the help of the internet, it isn’t difficult to start freelancing these days. There are many ways to become a freelancer and start making money online.

Below are how you can become a freelancer:

• Freelance Marketplaces – There are numerous freelance marketplaces on the internet, including Fiverr, Upwork, Freelance.com, and plenty more.
• Social Media – Social Media like Facebook community groups or LinkedIn are places where you can spot great freelancing opportunities. (Beware of Facebook job scams though)
• Personal Connection – Easiest way to become a freelancer is with the help of people you personally know. It can be anywhere near you that needs your help.
• Job Boards – Jobs boards, especially freelancing or remote job boards have numerous freelance opportunities you can grab.

4. Work Remotely

Remote work is becoming the norm. This past decade has seen a big shift in the way people work. More and more positions go remote and remote work has transitioned into a huge demand now.

A study says now 16% of businesses worldwide are fully remote and 65% of workers work remotely once in a while. Given the statistics, we are living in a world that gives us a lot of opportunities to work remotely and make money online just from home.

You might want to get a remote job now. because it’s a much more stable option than other money-making methods online. It pays you a salary and you are employed by the company. There is nothing different than working for a company as an in-house employee aside from the fact that you work from home. Working remotely has a lot of perks given that.

It isn’t very difficult to find a remote job nowadays. You will see hundreds and thousands of companies filling remote positions from software development and customer service to marketing and sales.

Below are where you can find remote jobs:

• General Job Boards – Remote jobs are anywhere nowadays, even on the general job boards. There are a ton of remote jobs available on Indeed, Google For Jobs, and ZipRecruiter.
• Remote Job Boards – Remote job boards are for those who specifically want more remote-focused job opportunities. SmartWorkersHome, WeWorkRemotely, and Remote.co are great remote job boards.
• Social Media – Social media is a great resource to find a remote job or freelance opportunities combined. LinkedIn, Facebook groups, and Reddit are where you can look up remote openings.
• Direct Application – If you have your favorite companies in mind, you can visit their career page and directly apply for a remote position you’re trying. E.g. https://www.zynga.com/job-listing/senior-social-media-specialist-p211599/

5. Launch An Online Shop

It has never been easier to open an online shop of your own. With the help of online shop builders like Shopify or WordPress with WooCommerce, you can build your online shop and start selling things instantly.

Of course, selling online isn’t a breeze. Nothing is promised to success. According to EtailInsights.com, there are globally 9.1 million online retailers on the internet. Given that, it’s a convincing indicator that the online retail market is highly saturated.

Opening a shop will probably be easy. But not when it comes to how well it sells. Success will most likely depend on many factors like your niche selection, marketing strategy, and online traffic. It’s a lot of work upfront and you will drive yourself to a happy result only when you are ready.

These are crucial parts of a successful online shop:

• Your Niche – The important things in selecting the niche is the demand of your products and competition in the niche market. You can use many different tools like Google Keyword Planner or Google Trends to see the demand (search volume) and competition (keyword competition).
• Product Sourcing – Without trustworthy vendors supplying products for you, it’s impossible to keep up your online shop. Finding vendors who provide high quality and lower prices is essential.
• Marketing – When your shop has no visitors, it’s pointless to keep your shop open. You need traffic from paid ads or organic sources. Search engines, social media, Youtube, and forums are great traffic sources you can target to gain customers online.
• Operation – From processing orders to shipping packages, the whole process should be smooth. A happy customer experience is a key to success.
• Branding – In a competitive marketplace, branding is what sets you apart from the crowd. it’s important to make sure your customers actively remember your brand if you want it to go for long-term success.

6. Sell on eBay

Selling on eBay can be a quick way to earn cash online. You can sell anything from new products to second hand items there.

Many people work from home with eBay whether full-time or part-time. The average earnings of eBay sellers are around $35,000 per year when the highest and lowest earners are combined.

If you have no experience in selling on eBay yet, starting with the used items that you have at home but don’t need anymore is a good way to begin so you can test how it works at first. Many people also sell items bought from flea markets or pawnshops so they can make a great profit by buying cheap and selling high.

Things to know before selling on eBay

1. Niche

Although you aren’t limited to selling anything on eBay, successful eBay sellers have their specific niche and target a specific customer group.

2. Pricing

Chances are you aren’t the only one selling the product. Many other sellers might sell the same one. Then, what makes you stand out? Price. It’s a good practice to review the prices of other sellers and price your items attractively.

3. Happy Customer Experience

The crucial key to success on eBay is your customers’ happiness after their buys. Their shopping experience and reviews on your listings make or break your eBay search rankings that directly affect your earnings.

4. A/B Test

You will need to A/B test your listings to maximize your sales on eBay. This includes testing performances between “Buy Now” and “Auction” or price variations on the same items.

5. External Traffic Sources

Whether you run a Youtube channel, blog, or are a long-time member of a community forum, you will have a chance to promote your products on eBay. It doesn’t mean to spam around with your eBay links, but make user-engaging content that naturally funnels traffic to your eBay listings.

6. TOS

Every marketplace has its own Terms Of Service. eBay isn’t an exception. You must read through their TOS and not break their rules which can lead to the termination of your eBay account.

7. Drop Shipping

Dropshipping business is a beginner-friendly version of eCommerce that lets you start selling things online without a large investment.

For those who aren’t familiar with dropshipping, dropshipping is a type of eCommerce business model that eliminates the need to stock inventory and process shipping to customers.

In dropshipping, you will have an online shop and take orders from your customers but order processing and shipping will be handled by 3rd-party suppliers without you having to involve.

Drop Shipping has many perks like:

• You don’t have to buy inventory and can avoid the risk of unsold stocks.
• It’s easy to start with little or no investment
• You can only focus on selling and marketing since every packing/shipping process is done by a 3rd-party.

While dropshipping has cons like:

• Dropshippers are at the mercy of suppliers’ stock levels and shipping times
• It’s hard to maintain quality assurance of the products you sell because you don’t have inventory on your hand.

Starting a dropshipping business isn’t hard. Because it doesn’t need skills or a degree to get started, which can be great if you’re just getting your feet wet. Given how easy it is to start, dropshipping is often referred to as stay-at-home moms’ business on the internet.

How to start a dropshipping business

1. Decide on your niche – First thing first, you need to come up with what niche you will go for. You will have a significant advantage when you choose something you know the best about.
2. Create a domain – A domain is necessary to host the shop you will create later. A rule of thumb is you need to create a domain named by your brand name.
3. Choose a Host – After a domain is created, what next is to purchase a hosting plan and host your domain/website. For beginners, Shared Hosting is a popular choice to go because it’s cheap and can handle a reasonable amount of traffic in the beginning.
4. Create an online shop – Making a website selling dropshipping products is easy with the help of online shop builders like Shopify, Woocommerce (with WordPress), Wix, or many more.
5. Find dropshipping suppliers – This sounds tricky, but not really. There are several great dropshipping platforms online that help you find dropshipping suppliers and import product details into your online shop. e.g. Importify, Oberlo, Spoket, etc.
6. Add product listings – And then, add product listings on your online shop. With the help of dropshipping platforms, you can import product details to your shop in a few clicks.
7. Market and sell – Now time to promote your shop and sell online. You will likely have to put some time and effort to establish your brand online at first. Google search results, Instagram, Youtube, Pinterest, and anywhere you target to promote.

8. Test websites/Mobile Apps

If you are a tech savvy, you can make money online by testing websites and mobile apps.

There are a bunch of usability testing platforms on the internet. Basically, they are crowdsourcing platforms looking for web testers who can test their clients’ sites. The parts of their testing involve website design, user interface, and user experience tests.

The average rate is around $10 (USD) for a 10-minute to 20-minute session which isn’t a bad deal. However, the rates you will get paid can vary depending on how skilled you are in web usability or UX/UI.

As the biggest perk of this job, web testers can enjoy the flexibility of work. It’s because the work is on a pay-per-work basis and web testers can work when they want to. It’s similar to being a freelancer.

How to make money by testing websites

There are a dozen of sites that let you earn money by testing websites or mobile apps. You will need to sign up first and pass an entrance test before receiving test offers.

1. Respondent – $100 for a 60-min testing session
2. UserTesting – $10 to $15 for a 20 min testing session
3. UserFeel – $10 for a 10 to 20 min testing session
4. WhatUsersDo – $5 to $10 for a 5 min to 30 min testing session
5. TryMyUI – $10 for a 20 min testing session
6. Testing Time – 50 Euro for 30 min to 90 min testing session
7. UserLytics – $5 to $90 for 5 min to 90 min testing session
8. Validately – $25 for a 30 min testing session ($5 for quick jobs)
9. StartUpLift – Flat $5 for any length of tests
10. BetaTesting – $10 – $20 for 20 min to 30 min testing session
11. IntelliZoom – $10 for 10 min to 15 min testing session

9. Write and Sell e-Books

Is writing fun to you? Then, this job might be for you — writing and selling eBooks. And the exciting part is you can become a book author, precisely, an e-book author.

It’s never been this easier to write and publish your own e-book online with the help of self-publishing platforms. There are many and tons of those platforms online that help you with all parts of the process, from writing to publishing to sales. For example, KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), CreateSpace, iBook, etc.

Aside from the excitement of becoming a book author, another perk of selling eBooks is it can be a nice passive income stream. It’s another great part of selling eBooks that you can earn money online consistently once your eBooks are listed on the digital marketplaces.

How to make money selling eBooks

These are the ways you can sell your eBooks:

• Selling eBooks on your own website – Either an online shop selling digital products or even a blog with eCommerce functionality. WordPress.org is a great option to create your online book shop for free.
• Selling eBooks on Self-Publishing platforms – it’s easier to get your eBook published and exposed to a high volume of traffic on their internal marketplace in return for a fee deducted from each sale. Amazon Kindle (KDP) and CreateSpace are popular places to publish Books.
• General digital marketplaces – It doesn’t harm you to expand your horizon of sales channels. You can also sell eBooks on eBay, Payhip, and other general digital marketplaces.

10. Sell stock photos or mobile photos

Making money from photography isn’t just for professionals anymore. That said, it’s a job for anyone who enjoys taking photographs.

Whether it’s full-time or part-time, there are a lot of stock photographers making money from their photos. Although in general, it’s quite challenging to turn your photography into a full-time income, many amateur photographers earn extra income out of their hobby.

According to Photutorial.com, amateur stock photographers earn $0.02 per image a month whereas professionals make $0.05 to $0.25 per image a month. Selling photos isn’t surely a rich-quick scheme, but a lot of groundwork has to be done in the beginning. But once you have a large volume of photography in your library, it can potentially earn you a substantial income that is passively produced.

How to make money selling photos

There are a few ways to sell your photography online. Not only professional photographers but also amateur or hobby-based photographers make use of these channels to sell their photos:

• Selling photos via your own website – You can use your website or blog to directly sell photos to customers. There’s no fee deducted in this way, but you need to find customers on your own.
• Selling photos via stock photo marketplaces – Stock photo sites are also where you can upload high-resolution photos (4MP) and get paid per download. e.g. Shutterstock, Getty Images, etc.
• Photo-selling via mobile apps – You can also sell your smartphone photos on mobile apps like Foap, Clashot, or SnapWire.

11. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a type of Internet marketing in which companies compensate affiliates for marketing efforts on their behalf.

Affiliates who promote companies’ products or services are paid when they succeed in either making sales, sign-ups, or downloads.

The most typical way affiliate marketers make sales is by placing affiliate links on their blog or Youtube videos (video description) which are trackable by the companies.

Affiliate marketing has been a popular way of making money online since early 2000. If you already have a large following on your social media accounts or blog, you will have a significant edge in making affiliate sales.

Glassdoor research says the average annual income of affiliate marketers is around $65,800, spanning from $42,000 at the low end to $83,000 at the high end. But in reality, most beginners who aren’t ready with a substantial following base yet would arguably struggle to make a single sale which means in other words, $0 earning.

How to make money with affiliate marketing

To live up to your expectations with affiliate earnings, it’s necessary to be ready with your website/blog traffic or a large volume of social followers.

Below are the channels where you can promote your affiliate links:

• Blog – Blog is the most typical way to make money with affiliate marketing. You’ll have great earning potential with affiliate marketing if your blog has high traffic and the niche fits the affiliate products you sell.
• Youtube – Many affiliate marketers make a great income with Youtube. First, you need to produce a good number of video views and second, the affiliate products you promote should be relevant to the primary interests of your audience.
• Email Lists – If you have newsletter subscribers, you can place affiliate links on your email. But not to spam with random links. It needs natural context and a legitimate reason why you need to put the link for your audience (email subscribers)
• Facebook – Promoting affiliate links on Facebook groups could work. But not easy. You need to find groups that allow placing affiliate links first.
• Forums – You will get banned by most forums if you just spam affiliate links around. You must first have to add value to the community by naturally engaging in conversations and helping people there. And your ace in the hole is your forum signature where you are allowed to place affiliate links.

Where to find affiliate deals:

• Affiliate Networks – There are dozen of good affiliate marketing platforms where you can find affiliate offers all in one place, given by individual companies. e.g. ShareASales, Awin, or CJ – Commission Junction.
• Company’s Affiliate Page – Many companies from eCommerce to (SaaS) platform businesses offer affiliate deals, for example, Amazon Associates, eBay Partner Network, HubSpot, AWeber, ConvertKit, and a lot more.

12. Sell Your Art on Etsy

If you enjoy making art or crafting, this is the ideal venue for you.

You can sell art on Etsy by showcasing your artwork. Etsy is full of customers looking for unique artwork.

Etsy is an online marketplace that specializes in handmade or vintage items and supplies. It was founded in 2005 and has since expanded to include a variety of products, such as clothing, home goods, jewelry, art supplies, and even digital downloads.

Crafters on Etsy have a lot of selling potential given the wide range of Etsy categories. Especially, Etsy is a place where college students, stay-at-home moms, and dads sell their art or something they make from home.

According to Josh Silverman, the CEO of Etsy, the average seller on Etsy makes around $2,900 year and established sellers earn around  The average successful seller on Etsy earns between $43,000 and $46,000 per year.

How to start selling art on Etsy

This is a step-by-step process to becoming an Etsy seller:

1. Create an account on Etsy
2. Create an Etsy shop by visiting Etsy.com/sell 
3. Set up your shop configuration such as the shop name, language, country, currency, etc
4. Decorate your Etsy shop such as shop logo, banner, background, and profile
5. Add your listings to your shop, that you want to sell
6. Promote your shop by optimizing your shop profile with keywords and external traffic from social media
7. Start selling and earn

13. Become an Online Travel Agent

Becoming a work-from-home travel agent can be a thrilling job for those who naturally love travel, and know a lot of destinations in the world. It lets you make money online from home, planning travel itineraries or booking a flight/hotel ticket for other people,.

According to ZipRecruiter, an average independent travel agent earn $37,677 per year and $18 per hour. Although it seems a bit less than what it used to be paid before the Covid, it’s still a good way to make extra income at home using your laptop and the internet.

How to make money being a home based travel agent

There are various ways to make money online and work from home as a travel agent. And depending on what type of travel agent you want to be, your salary type, working hours, and type of (travel) products you will sell will vary.

Let’s break it all down.

Types of Work From Home Travel Agent:

• Independent Travel Agent – you will be like a freelancer and get paid for what you sell without a field salary.
• Employed Travel Agent – you will be employed by a travel agency and receive a salary every month. But you will still work from home as a remote travel agent.

What travel services you can sell:

• Flight or Hotel Booking – You will sell flight tickets or hotel reservations and get a certain percentage of commission off the sale.
• Travel Counseling – Your job will be to advise or plan your clients’ trips. Also, you are responsible for booking travel arrangements or event tickets.
• Cruise Ticket Selling – Cruise companies like Cruise.com pay you a commission upon your cruise ticket sale
• Other Various Roles – Travel agencies are looking for work-from-home agents in various fields. For example, travel consulting, customer service, or social media manager in the travel sector.

14. Rent your place on Airbnb

Airbnb is a “home-sharing” service that allows people to rent out their homes to strangers.

The idea behind Airbnb is simple: you can rent out your home for a little bit of extra cash, and someone else can have an affordable place to stay when they are traveling somewhere. it can be a fun job if you love the vibrant vibe brought by cheerful new visitors and friendly tourists to your home.

If you are skilled at something, you will have more opportunities for extra earnings on top of renting. For example, if you are skilled at painting, you can arrange an art class for your visitors for an extra service fee.

For those who don’t own space to rent out, you can still make money from Airbnb — their “Co-Host” program is so, in which someone representing as a co-host (by the listing owner) takes care of hospitality for visitors and entirely manages the property. In return, the profit is shared with the co-host based on the agreed profit share with the original host.

How to make money with Airbnb

There are a few ways to monetize your home for extra money with Airbnb:

• Rent out your entire home – If you can spare another home where you don’t live, the entire home can be rented out for visitors. In this case, your price can be raised to a higher level.
• Rent out a room – You can share the home with your visitors if you have spare rooms. Some homeowners rent out their entire home to different visitor groups. Each room for each company.
• Airbnb Experiences – If you have some skills or something fun that your visitors would enjoy, you can arrange some activities for them. For example, food tours, wine tastings, or yoga classes with your visitors.
• Co-Hosting – You don’t necessarily have to have a place to rent out to make money with Airbnb. You can still get paid by the listing owner by taking care of the home and visitors.

15. Design and Sell Custom T-shirts

Have you ever custom-designed your t-shirts on your own? With the help of Print-On-Demand platforms, you can create your own T-shirts with the easy built-in tools. You can design your own graphic or use free stock images to print on apparel, bringing your unique T-shirt idea to life.

You can, of course, buy it and wear it for yourself. But you can also sell it on its marketplace. Most of Custom T-shirts platforms support social commerce allowing you to sell your creations and buy those of others.

Not only T-shirts but also phone cases, mugs, posters, socks, pillows, and even curtains. They have a wide range of printables that you can print on. All you need is just your awesome graphic or clever typography to put on them.

How to make money selling custom t-shirts (print on demand)

There are a bunch of good platforms that allow you to sell your custom t-shirts and print-on-demand creatives. After creating your creatives, you can sell them in the internal marketplace of your platform(s) by putting your creatives on sale. You can also share the link to your shop on social media so people interested visit your shop and buy what they may love in your inventory.

Aside from organic promotion, some serious sellers leverage their promotion through paid advertisement. They often use Facebook/Instagram Ads, and Pinterest Ads to scale up their custom t-shirt sales by investing their budget in ads.

As a result of paid ads, you might be able to make a good number of sales and receive instant cash in your pocket. However, the heads-up is it leaves you a high risk in case the campaign doesn’t go live up to your expectations — you can even lose money especially if you’re a beginner in paid ads.

These are some great Print On Demand platforms where you can sell custom creatives:

• TeeSpring
• Printful
• TeeLaunch
• Zazzle
• Printify
• Merch by Amazon
• Cafepress
• Society6
• Spreadshirt

16. Teach English Online

If you’re a native English speaker who enjoys teaching others, this is something you should consider.

The online English education industry has rapidly grown since the internet came out and teaching English online has never been easier. There are a bunch of English teaching platforms, the vast majority of which are based in Asia, allowing native English speakers to teach Asians English as freelance tutors.

There are various types of classes you could choose to teach, and you would get paid differently, depending on which age group you’d like to teach or whether it’s 1-on-1 or group classes.

While teaching English as a freelancer, you will get paid either weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly depending on which platform you work on. Most companies pay you via bank deposit or Paypal which also varies.

How to make money teaching English online

First, you’re going to need to choose a platform to teach based on, and fill in an application form on the Apply page. You will be emailed in a few days and might have an entrance test for them to see if you qualify for teaching English.

If you don’t have a degree or an English teaching certificate, your options for platforms might be limited. However, there ARE English-teaching platforms that don’t require you a degree but only be a native English speaker.

Where you can teach with a degree

1. VIPkid – $7 to $9 per 25 minute class
2. Skooli – $25 per hour
3. DaDaABC – $15 to $25 per hour
4. Qkids – $16 to $20 per hour
5. iTutorGroup – $12 to $30
6. Gogokid – $7 to $10 per 25-minute class
7. Whales English – $18 to $26 per 50-minute class
8. English Hunt – $14.50 per hour

Where you can teach with no degree

1. Palfish – $12.70 to $17 per hour
2. Preply – Able to set your own rate: $15 to $20 per hour on average
3. LatinHire – $7 to $13 (American tutors only)
4. Cambly – Cambly: $0.17/min ($10.20/hour), Cambly Kids: $0.20/min ($12.00/hour)
5. Acadsoc – $2 to $12 per hour (non-natives accepted)
6. Amazing Talker – $24 per hour
7. Skima Talk – $12.80 + bonus (teaching certificate retired. e.g. ESL)
8. Open English – $7 to $13 per hour

17. Paid Surveys

Answering paid surveys is also a way of earning some extra cash online. Although it usually pays a very small amount, some people are still fond of the fact that paid survey is a way of monetizing their spare time.

Again, the rewards for answering a survey aren’t attractive enough. It might let some people down, thinking their time is exploited for single or a couple of bucks.

Just for those who are okay with it, you would get paid around $1 for a 10-min to 15 min survey session on average. But in fact, it much depends on the set rate of each survey or what research firm offers the survey.

How much one can earn from paid surveys is also variable. It highly depends on what demographic you belong to, for example, your gender, occupation, age, and importantly the location you live in. Along the way, the survey invitations are thoroughly personalized to send to you.

How to earn extra cash with paid surveys

Clearly, it doesn’t make you big bucks, but just a small amount of pocket money. You would be able to make $1 – $2 in 10 to 20 minutes if you’re qualified with a survey.

Once you sign up on a paid survey site, you will either instantly or gradually be offered paid surveys that fit you. But a heads up is that you need to look out for scam sites that might lure you in with deceptive offers and pay you nothing.

Here are the legit paid survey sites with decent user reviews: (at least not scams)

• Branded Surveys – $0.50 to $5 per survey
• Swagbucks – $30 – $1.5 per survey
• Brand Institute – $2 – $5 per survey
• InboxDollars – £1
• Toluna – $0.40 to $1 per survey
• Ysense – $0.20 to $2.5 per survey
• i-Say (IPSOS) – $0.45 to $1.50 per survey
• Pinecone Research – $3 per survey
• YouGov – £3 per survey
• PrizeRebel – $0.50 per survey

18. Get Paid to Listen to Music

Not many people know this — you can make money online listening to music. There are platforms like Slicethepie that pay you to write a review after listening to the latest songs.

Straight to the point, it actually does not pay you much. You will likely get paid 10 cents per review that couldn’t live up to your expectations.

But the thing is that you can still enjoy the music if you are a music person and get a small side hustle that pays you for dinner once in a while.

How to earn money listening to music

You can sign up for these platforms listed below and start listening to songs on their lists. You will get paid when you leave a review that qualifies after listening to around a 30-second song.

Most platforms (websites/apps) pay you around $0.10, but some sites pay you up to $15 per review if you are qualified with their requirements, for example, having at least 1,000 followers on your Spotify playlist.

We shortlisted a few “Get Paid To Listen To Music” sites/apps below, that pay at least 10 cents per review. (whereas most sites pay you a couple of cents which aren’t worth your time at all)

Where can I make money online listening to music?:

• Slicethepie – Listen to and review new songs for $0.10 per review.
• Music Xray – Listen to and review a song for $0.10 per review.
• Playlist Push – Listen to and review a song for $1.25 to $15 per review. For that, you have to be accepted as a curator that curates your playlist with at least 1,000 followers on Spotify or Apple Music.

19. Selling Domain Names

You might’ve heard that some high-value domain names have sold at exorbitantly crazy prices like “CarInsurance.com” which was sold at $49.7 million in 2010 and “Voice.com” sold at $30 million in 2019.

Those who aren’t familiar with domain names might ask back “you mean $49 million for just a domain name?”. Yes, you read it right. It was sold so, and thousands of domain names have ever been sold for more than a million dollars in history.

Well-named domain names are worth investing and many corporations and startups are on the hunt for good domain names for their brands. They don’t hesitate to invest a ridiculously large sum of money if the domain name is never replaceable and perfectly reflects their brand.

How to earn money online selling domain names

There are many domain sellers or flippers making money online by buying domain names and reselling them for profit. They might make a lot of money upon just a single name named domain, but In reality, the chances of obtaining a high-value domain name are extremely slim. And even if you have one with million-dollar potential, it often takes you years and a decade to end up with one sold.

So, the most realistic approach to domain selling/flipping to make money online is to target $50 – $500 worth domains which are relatively easy. That said, selling domains takes you some time most of the time. (at least months)

So, how do you make money online selling domain names? The process is as simple as buying a new or pre-owned domain at a cheaper price and reselling it with a margin so you can make a profit through the buy-sell process.

1. So, first, how do I buy a domain?

There are a few ways you can buy a domain. Important to note that you always have to keep a margin in mind — in other words, you need to buy cheaper than the price you would sell.

• Register a new domain – If you are lucky enough to spot a premium domain name unoccupied yet, that’s the best scenario — You can register the domain just for $10 per year at a domain registrar. E.g. GoDaddy, Name Cheap, Name Silo, etc.
• Buy an owned domain – Most premium domain names are already taken. Then what to focus on now is finding a good deal on a domain name that is underpriced. (So you can leave a profit when reselling it)
• Buy an expired domain – Expired domains are transacted at expired domain auctions like GoDaddy Auctions, DomCop, and several more. At the expired domain auctions, you can grab a powerful domain name with a lot of backlinks at reasonable prices.

2. Second, how do I resell the domain I bought?

After buying a domain, you can park the domain until it gets sold. Now you would need to know where you can resell the domain you bought.

There are a few ways you can sell domains for profit as follows:

• Domain Marketplaces – You can sell the domains you bought at domain marketplaces by listing them on sale. Famous marketplaces for domains are Afternic, GoDaddy, Flippa, Sedo, and a dozen more.
• Facebook Marketplace – Facebook Marketplace can be a good supplemental sales source on top of domain marketplaces.
• Forums – Alternatively, forums like NamePros DNforum, or Warrior Forum have many buyers that might be interested in your domains. But most of them on forums are domain flippers and they might want you to sell for extremely undervalued prices.

20. Completing Tasks on MTurk

Amazon Mechanical Turk AKA “MTurk” is a crowdsourcing platform run by Amazon, that makes it possible for you to get paid for doing small tasks.

On MTurk, you can make money by completing surveys, transcribing audio files, and translating documents. You can also write short product descriptions or perform other tasks like data collection and tagging photos. The tasks are simple and straightforward and the pay is not bad given how short you can complete each task.

Whereas this can hardly replace your regular job, there are many micro-tasks workers claiming that they make a good side hustle from MTurk — $50 a day. According to seasoned workers on MTurk, the speed of completing a task is the most important trait to accumulating your earnings because the platform works basically on a pay-per-completion basis.

How to earn money online with MTurk

First of all, you will be required to sign up on Amazon Mechanical Turk and fill in your account details. It’s fairly simple to join and you can instantly receive work that you can complete.

Follow the step-by-step process below:

1. Visit MTurk page
2. Click on Request a Worker Account on the right-hand side
3. Log in with your Amazon account, or create a new account
4. After logging in, create your MTurk profile
5. Wait for your MTurk account to be verified. (up to 48 hours)
6. Once verified, fill in your payment info to be able to receive payouts

Take note: A new Turk worker is going to undergo a probation period for the first 10 days after signing up. During the 10-day probation, your tasks are limited to up to 100 HITS only, each day.

SWH Editorial Team

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