28 Best Ways to Make Money Online in 2024

Updated Aug 6, 2023.

There are many ways to make money online. You will find the best business ideas for beginners, companies you can start with less than 100 USD, and some super profitable ways to make money online fast.

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What are the best ways to earn money online? And why should you care?

Imagine being able to work anywhere with no one to report to and no deadlines to meet.

You have unlimited earning potential and absolute creative freedom, and your work follows you wherever you wish. Stuck waiting for a delayed flight? Just crack open your laptop and get right to work in the airport lounge.

And best of all, you can start today.

Does this sound too good to be true? It isn't.

That's the beauty of making money online; it can afford you all these benefits and much more.

This article will cover 28 of the best ways to start making money online fast in 2022 and explain how much time and money you need to invest in each, how long till you start making money from them, and how to get started.

At the end of the article, we'll also explain how to choose the best method for you so you can get started quickly and finally start living on your terms.

Let's go!

How to Make Money Online: 28 Real Ways

1. Start a Blog

Start-up Time: A few hours.

Effort to Start: Medium start-up effort, but high maintenance effort.

Time to Revenue: Varies depending on monetization strategy.

Initial Investment: Free – $200.

Blogging is one of the oldest and most popular ways to make money online—and for good reason. It is an excellent way for writers to earn extra money online and has grown beyond big businesses and side hustles.

These days, anyone with a solid internet connection and a love for words can put out great content, build an audience, and make good money from their blog.

The best blogs take a relatable, personal approach that resonates more with their target audience than faceless, corporate blogs can.

There are several reasons to start a blog. Many people start blogging to share insights, thoughts, and life experiences; establish their personal brands; educate their readers; express their views on a particular subject; or sell products and services.

What are your main motivations for blogging
Source: Growthbadger

While it’s a low-investment business idea that you can start in your spare time, blogging requires a fair amount of time and effort to pay off. Ranking on page one of Google’s search results doesn’t happen overnight.

But if you choose the right niche and are dedicated and determined, you’ll find it to be one of the most rewarding online money-making ideas.

How to Get Started

  1. Pick a profitable niche for your blog: Building an engaged and loyal audience is difficult if your blog talks about everything under the sun. To choose a profitable niche, find one that you’re passionate about and has a high audience monetization potential. The most profitable blogging niches include health and fitness, productivity, personal finance, and recipes & food.
  2. Choose a blogging platform: A blogging platform will make it easier to launch and manage your blog. We recommend WordPress because it’s free and easy to use, even for complete beginners. You can also try Wix or Squarespace.
  3. Design your blog: The design of your blog is extremely important for making a good first impression on your visitors. If you went with WordPress, designing your blog is as simple as picking a theme or template from the thousands of options available.
  4. Promote and market your blog: No matter how beautifully designed and engaging your blog is, if you don’t tell people about it, no one will read it, and you won’t make money from it. Promotion is even more important than publishing regularly and frequently.
  5. Monetize your blog: There are several ways to make money from your blog. You can place ads strategically on your posts or publish sponsored posts from specific brands, a popular strategy among review websites. You can also add affiliate links in your posts or sell your own physical or digital products to supplement your advertising revenue. And finally, when you’ve built an established personal brand, you’ll be able to book speaking gigs, big contracts from clients, television deals, consulting gigs, and more.

2. Start Dropshipping

Start-up Time: 2 – 3 weeks, working a few hours daily.

Effort to Start: Low effort with minimal ecommerce knowledge.

Time to Revenue: 2 – 4 weeks on average.

Initial Investment: Varies depending on traffic generation strategy. $1000 is a good starting point for the first three to six months.

There are many ways to start an ecommerce business to make money online. But dropshipping stands out as one of the lowest-cost methods since there’s minimal need to carry lots of inventory.

You don’t need to stock any products you sell in dropshipping. When someone makes an order on your website, the order is routed to your supplier, who then fulfills and ships the item directly to the buyer. In other words, you never see or handle the product; you simply serve as an intermediary between the buyer and the supplier.

The Dropshipping Model
Source: Oberlo

Because of this zero-inventory model, the costs to start a dropshipping store are relatively low compared to other ecommerce business models, and the barrier to entry is quite low. So, it’s a popular way for both beginners and pros to make money online.

Starting a dropshipping store is quite similar to starting a regular online store, and running it is even easier—although that’s relative. The main difference between both models is that in dropshipping, the quality of your supplier can be the difference between success and failure.

How to Get Started

  1. Pick a niche: As with any other business model, picking a niche is essential to success in dropshipping and is an integral part of standing out in the sea of dropshipping companies these days. The most profitable dropshipping niches include fashion, health & personal care, kitchen, and home.
  2. Perform market analysis: Next, you need to perform market research to assess the industry you plan on entering thoroughly. This will help you estimate potential revenues, profits, and pricing.
  3. Find a supplier: The quality of your dropshipping supplier can make or break your business because you rely heavily on the quality of their products and service. Therefore, you must be highly selective when choosing a supplier. You can find excellent dropshipping suppliers on platforms like SaleHoo, Modalyst, and Spocket.
  4. Select an ecommerce platform and create your dropshipping store: There are two options here. You can start selling online from an ecommerce marketplace—like Amazon, Etsy, Facebook Marketplace, and eBay—or from your own online store. Ecommerce website builders allow you to build an ecommerce store without coding.
  5. Market and grow your store: With your store up and running, it’s time to get customers. There are many ways to do this but they all have one thing in common: you must invest time, effort, and in most cases, money to see results.

3. Try Print-on-Demand

Start-up Time: 1 – 2 weeks, working a few hours daily.

Effort to Start: Low effort with minimal ecommerce knowledge.

Time to Revenue: Depends on when you get your first sale and the payout policy of your ecommerce platform.

Initial Investment: Free – $500.

Print-on-demand is another excellent model that allows beginners to earn money online for their creativity.

In print-on-demand, sellers customize white-label products with custom designs and offer them for sale online or offline. When a customer makes an order, a print-on-demand company prints the design on the product, fulfills the order, and ships the item directly to the customer.

How Print on Demand Works
Source: Oberlo

This means that the seller never sees or handles any inventory. In this way, print-on-demand is quite similar to dropshipping.

But it has a key advantage over dropshipping: you have much greater control over the aesthetic of your products. This is particularly true wherever design is the key differentiator—like apparel.

The bottom line, print-on-demand is a low-risk, low-investment way to earn extra cash online.

How to Get Started

  1. Pick a niche: Defining a niche for your print-on-demand business has several benefits, including lower competition, higher profits, and lower ad spend. Some of the top earning niches in the print-on-demand space are pets, social causes, families, and health & fitness.
  2. Create your designs: Although success in print-on-demand depends heavily on how good your designs are, you don’t have to be a graphic designer to make it work. You can hire professional designers on platforms like Upwork, 99designs, and Fiverr to create designs for you.
  3. Choose an ecommerce platform and set up your store: As with dropshipping, you can choose to sell on your own website or on an e-commerce marketplace. If you choose the website route, set your website up with a home, contact, shipping details, payment details, and about pages.
  4. Choose a supplier: Your supplier is even more crucial to your success in print-on-demand than dropshipping. Go with a reputable supplier like Printify or Printful.
  5. Market your products: Run Facebook and Instagram Ads to promote your products. Publish content regularly to your blog or podcast. Post regularly on social media. Engage influencers to market your brand. And whatever you do, don’t stop talking about your business.

4. Make Money with Affiliate Marketing

Start-up Time: A few hours.

Effort to Start: Medium effort.

Time to Revenue: Varies depending on how effective your marketing is.

Initial Investment: $0 – $350.

Affiliate marketing is one of the best online money-making ideas for beginners because it allows you to start a business without creating your own product. You apply to join the product’s affiliate program, and if accepted, you’ll receive an affiliate link that you can promote and share with your potential customers.

This link is designed so that you receive the corresponding commission when someone purchases the product using your link. The commission depends on the affiliate program and the product sold.

In other words, small, low-priced items with slim margins on Amazon won’t pay as much as custom, high-ticket products—which could pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars in commission for every item sold.

Affiliate marketing works best when you help the prospect understand why they need the product. This is why you’ll see it most frequently used on content-focused channels like blogs, online magazines, and YouTube channels.

How to Get Started

  1. Choose an affiliate vertical: Choosing a vertical is a strategic business decision that helps you decide who to target and who not to. The top affiliate marketing niches are lifestyle and wellness, personal finance, technology, and pet care.
  2. Choose your platform: The next step would be to create your content-focused channel. This could be your Instagram page, blog, website, magazine, YouTube channel, or even Twitter account. The point is to have somewhere you can send traffic and command attention. And if all you have is an internet connection and a social media page, you’re set.
  3. Find relevant affiliate marketing programs: Don’t just focus on high-paying offers; try to find offers and products your audience will find most appealing. Choose a program with a great market reputation, good commission rate, and high earnings per click (EPC). You can also ask your favorite brands if they have an affiliate or ambassador program. Or you can use affiliate marketplaces like ClickBank, Commission Junction (CJ) Affiliate, Partnerstack, Amazon Associates affiliate program, Impact, and FlexOffers.
  4. Create valuable content: The key to success in affiliate marketing is to make your content valuable. Your hard work will ultimately pay off if you focus on creating and publishing high-quality content and building an engaged audience.
  5. Build an audience: Create a mailing list to reach your audience directly. You can send them updates on new content, newsletters, and exciting offers directly. On social media, you can tag and follow influencers who might be interested in your niche. The point is to do whatever you can to drive traffic to your chosen platform and convert those visitors to your audience. Finally, remember to include a disclaimer disclosing your financial relationship with the brands and products you promote; the FTC requires it.

5. Start a YouTube Channel

Start-up Time: A few hours.

Effort to Start: High effort.

Time to Revenue: However long it takes to reach 1000 subscribers.

Initial Investment: Free – $2000.

Lights, camera, action!

If you’ve ever felt like you have it in you to be a star or just love filmmaking, you can earn money online (a lot of money, actually; Ryan Kaji, an 11-year-old micro-celebrity, earns over $29 million per year selling toys on YouTube) by becoming a YouTube star.

There are many routes to go here; you could review products, teach a particular topic, post humorous skits, or anything your audience might be interested in (you’ve chosen a niche, right?).

To be successful on YouTube, your content must be educative, entertaining, or both. The immediate goal is to grow your channel to 1000 subscribers so that you can monetize it with YouTube ads and start earning extra money.

In time, you’ll grow a large enough following to be able to attract product placements and sponsorships from large brands who will pay you a fee to be featured on your channel. Plus, you can sell your own products or become an affiliate.

How to Get Started

  1. Determine your niche and target audience: Here, you decide what your channel will be about and who your target audience will be. What type of content would they like to see? What other channels do they follow? Answering these questions will help you determine how to approach your channel.
  2. Invest in the necessary tools: These days, all you need to make high-quality YouTube videos is a smartphone with a decent camera and an internet connection. But for the best results, we recommend investing in at least a tripod, ring light, and a good microphone.
  3. Activate your YouTube channel: Almost everyone has a Google account, and if you do, you already have a YouTube channel! Simply log into YouTube and choose Your Channel from the menu in the top-right corner of the screen. From here, you can create either a personal or business account. If you don’t have a Google account, create one first.
  4. Create a trailer for the channel: It’s good practice to create a trailer specifically for the featured video section of your channel. This will be many viewers’ introduction to your channel. Hence, putting your best foot forward with a custom-made trailer explaining the channel and introducing yourself or your business is a good idea.
  5. Promote and grow your channel: As with everything else, no one will watch your videos if you don’t tell people about your channel. Promote your channel on your social media pages. Forge partnerships with other YouTubers to be featured on their channel; this will expose you to their audience. On YouTube, organic growth is difficult and requires much more effort. Use tools like Keyword.io and Tubebuddy to find relevant keywords for your videos and boost your YouTube SEO. You can also try running social media ad campaigns to get more subscribers. And at the end of every video, remind watchers to like, subscribe, and leave a comment.

6. Start Your Online Store

Start-up Time: 4+ weeks

Effort to Start: Medium to high effort

Time to Revenue: A few months

Initial Investment: Varies depending on the price of your products, how much inventory you carry, and your marketing budget.

E-commerce is on the rise, and there's no stopping the train. In 2021, global e-commerce sales reached $4.9 trillion—an over 16% increase from the previous year's $4.248 trillion—and are projected to reach an astounding $7.391 trillion by 2025.

Global Ecommerce Sales
Source: Shopify

These stats clearly show just how rapid the growth of the e-commerce industry is. If you want to earn money online, this industry presents a unique opportunity and is poised for explosive growth.

To make things even better, the barriers to entry here are much lower than starting many other businesses such as, say, a brick-and-mortar store—thanks to platforms like Squarespace Commerce, building your own online store has never been easier.

Yes, competition may be higher as a result; but it also means you have zero reasons not to start an online business today.

How to Get Started

  1. Choose an e-commerce platform: an e-commerce platform will act as the nerve center for your entire online business. Choose one that is easy to use, offers accessible customer support whenever you need it, includes friction-free checkout, and includes hosting for your online store.
  2. Decide on a target audience: Choosing a target audience makes it easier to find new customers and attract buyers to your store. You also get higher conversion rates and more sales, resulting in lower customer acquisition costs for your online business. Consider the demographics (characteristics like their age, gender, occupation, education, and income), location, and psychographics (characteristics like interests, attitudes, opinions, and lifestyle) when choosing a target audience.
  3. Choose your products: To find profitable products to sell on your online store, you can appeal to hobbyists, capitalize on trends as early as possible, go with areas of personal passion, or look at what's trending on online marketplaces (this is the most popular way to find products to sell).
  4. Design your site: Bear in mind that the design of your store can affect the perceived credibility in the eyes of your visitors. Add your products to the store and write clear and descriptive product titles and descriptions. Set up your pricing, inventory, and shipping, as well as your contact, about, FAQ, and policy pages. When you're done, connect a payment gateway and add a custom domain name.
  5. Launch and market your store: Your store may not be perfect, but that's okay. Launch it now and perfect it little by little over time. And when you launch it, you must market it aggressively. Install the Facebook Pixel and Google Analytics on your store so you can correctly track the results of your marketing campaigns.

7. Become an Influencer

Start-up Time: Three to four months on average.

Effort to Start: High effort.

Time to Revenue: Depends on monetization strategy.

Initial Investment: Free.

Influencer marketing has seen a huge boom in recent years, with 68% of US marketers at companies with over 100 employees working with them as of 2021.

It might seem unlikely, but anyone—including you—can become an influencer. All you need is an engaged follower base.

You don't need millions of followers; with anywhere from 10,000 to 50,000 followers, you can become a nano- or micro-influencer, and these types of influencers are becoming even more popular with marketers these days.

TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram present the two biggest platforms for this. Once you have a decent following, there are many ways to monetize your newfound fame.

You can charge marketers for sponsored posts, speak at events, become an affiliate, sell ads, write a book, become a brand ambassador, or sell products in your online store. And these are just a few ways to make money on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube.

How to Get Started

  1. Select your niche: Ideally, you should have some level of expertise in the niche you choose, and it should be one with a large audience.
  2. Select and optimize your social media profiles: It's best to focus on only one or two platforms to avoid spreading yourself thin across multiple channels. You'll also want to switch to a business account to access more options than are available on personal accounts. Create an engaging bio and add a clear profile picture and cover photo.
  3. Understand your audience: The most successful influencers hold sway over their audiences because they have a deep understanding and a strong connection with them. Analyze your current follower base to get insights into their demographics, location, and interests. You can only deliver what your audience likes if you know it in the first place.
  4. Post regularly and consistently: You'll want to create a posting frequency and schedule and be consistent because most platforms—especially Instagram—prefer accounts that post regularly and frequently. You can post at any frequency—daily, weekly, or several times daily. But before deciding on this, take the platform into account. Some are more dynamic—like Twitter—and require a higher posting frequency, while you can get away with posting once or twice a week on others—like YouTube and Facebook. Also, consider this study by Sprout that outlines the best days and times of the week to post for maximum engagement.
  5. Engage with your audience: Reply to comments, answer questions, or at least like comments to show appreciation. You can also ask questions and start a conversation with your followers to build personal connections with them and consolidate your position as an influencer.
  6. Let brands know you're open to working with them: State that you're an influencer on your bio and are interested in collaborations. Provide your contact details to make reaching you easy for potential clients. You can also reach out to brands in your niche and offer your services. And you can use influencer marketing platforms to connect with brands that need your services.

8. Create an Online Course

Start-up Time: Varies widely; depends on the scope of the course.

Effort to Start: Very high effort.

Time to Revenue: Varies; depends on your payment structure.

Initial Investment: $200 – $10,000.

Creating an online course is one of the most popular money-making ideas because it's an excellent vehicle for passive income. Like any other digital product, once you launch the course, it costs practically nothing to deliver to more customers, except the cost of hosting.

There's a boom in the appetite for digital courses and continuing education, what with the current need to learn new skills fast and adapt quickly in the rapidly changing marketplace of today.

That’s why Skillshare and Udemy are so popular these days. Your biggest competition in selling online courses is the sheer number of free resources available to learn anything on the web.

Udemy Course Enrollment Growth
Source: Udemy

How to Get Started

  1. Choose your topic and test your idea: The topic you pick should be one you're knowledgeable about or are willing to learn thoroughly. It should also be something many other people want to learn about, or it won't be commercially viable. Since creating a course requires a ton of hard work, it’s a good idea to test your idea and validate it before proceeding.
  2. Write a course outline: Write down all the lessons and sub-lessons you plan to cover in the course. For best results, you should define an objective for each lesson. Also, create assignments for every lesson to help learners practice and assimilate the course contents better.
  3. Create the course content: You don't have to be a video pro to produce a high-quality course. You can create a video course at home with your smartphone, a ring light, a cheap microphone, and a tripod for your phone. There are many video editing software you can use to edit your content.
  4. Choose the right course platform: Your best option for hosting your course is to use an online course platform. You can use a standalone platform (like Thinkific, Teachable, or LearnWorlds); an all-in-one platform that provides marketing tools, a website builder, and a content delivery platform in one package (like Kajabi, Podia, or Kartra); or a marketplace (like Skillshare or Udemy).
  5. Launch and market your course: You can use free and paid channels for marketing your course. Build an email list and use email marketing to promote the course. Use paid ads, social media, blog posts, YouTube and promo videos, website pop-ups, influencers, and other tactics to promote your course and get people to buy.

9. Publish an eBook

Start-up Time: Varies; some eBooks may take a few days to write while others might take as much as two years.

Effort to Start: High effort.

Time to Revenue: Varies. Amazon takes 60 days to payout after end-of-the-month sales.

Initial Investment: Free – $3000 (if you hire freelancers for everything).

If you have a knack for storytelling or enjoy writing, publishing an eBook might be the best way to make money online. Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing makes it easy to publish your book; you just have to write it, format it, design a cover, publish, and then promote it.

But even if you're not the best writer, you can still make money from this method by hiring a ghostwriter to work on the book with you. That's not the only part of the process you can outsource; you can outsource practically everything from design to editing and formatting.

That said, the barrier to entry is quite low, so prepare for a ton of competition.

Choose the right topic, give it a title that hooks the reader, keep your content unique with insights that are unavailable elsewhere, and create an attractive cover, and you're well on your way to making a success of this.

How to Get Started

  1. Write and edit your eBook: The first step is writing a good book. Your book must be as polished as a hard copy book, so put in maximum effort and ensure it's properly edited to root out grammatical errors and inconsistencies in the storyline.
  2. Write a good eBook description: A book description is not a summary of the book; it's a pitch to the reader, telling them why they should read it and why they should listen to you.
  3. Design a strong book cover: With a physical book, the reader can at least flip through the pages and be drawn in by illustrations or snippets that jump off the page and grab their attention. But with eBooks, the cover does all the work of grabbing the reader’s attention. For the best results, you’re better off leaving the design of your cover to a professional graphic designer.
  4. Choose your eBook publishing platforms: While you have other options for publishing your eBook, you cannot afford to ignore Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), as they control 67% of the digital publishing market. Some other options for publishing and distribution include Kobo (most popular in Japan and Canada), Apple Books, Google Play, and Barnes & Noble’s Nook Books.
  5. Publish and market your book: Don’t think your work is done after publishing your book. You must now promote it aggressively. It pays to have a marketing plan ready before hitting Publish.

10. Make Money Online with Freelancing

Start-up Time: Depends on the service.

Effort to Start: Medium effort.

Time to Revenue: Varies.

Initial Investment: Free.

Freelancing is becoming an increasingly popular way for beginners to make money online, especially with the advent of the new gig economy.

Almost all roles an online business requires—from writing and graphic design to digital marketing and data entry—can be freelance services. Freelancing can become your full-time job, not just something you do in your spare time.

One thing to note about freelance jobs is that you're directly trading money for time. So, if you stop working, your cash flow dries up—in other words, no passive income here.

If you already have digital skills, freelancing is an excellent way to make money quickly. You can sign up on one of the many freelancing platforms and start making money immediately, even within a week.

And even then, you don’t need advanced skills to take advantage of this great money-making idea. You can start making quick cash with data entry or sign up as a virtual assistant while you learn a high-income skill.

How to Get Started

  1. Find a high-demand skill: Your skill could be as simple as data entry or as complex as developing full-scale mobile applications. The point is to find a high-demand skill at which you excel.
  2. Polish your skill: With the abundance of freelance talent available, you can't get away with offering mediocre work as a freelancer. So, you need to be good at what you do to get the most out of this.
  3. Create a portfolio: Collect all your live work into one place to form a portfolio. Ideally, this would be a purpose-built portfolio website as it's easy to share a single link with prospects that ask to see your work. Your portfolio should include only your best work, not any and everything you've ever done. Three to five exceptional pieces are often enough to net your first client.
  4. Choose a freelancing platform: The most popular platforms, like Fiverr and Upwork, are popular because they simply work. But their popularity also means that there's a lot of competition. So, you might want to try lesser-known alternatives. But the caveat here is that you won't have access to as many opportunities as you would on the more popular sites.
  5. Start sending proposals: A good proposal should include an intro about your skills and expertise, how you plan to approach the project, concepts you're considering for the project, and a quote and timeframe for completion.
  6. Deliver and exceed expectations: Go beyond expectations and stand out from the crowd. That's how you build a 5-star reputation and a lasting career as a freelancer.

11. Become a Writer

Start-up Time: Instant.

Effort to Start: Medium effort.

Time to Revenue: Varies according to agreed-upon payment terms.

Initial Investment: Free.

If you have an excellent command of the English language and a cordial relationship with the written word, you might be glad to learn that becoming a writer is one of the best ways to make money fast online.

There are several blogs and websites that pay writers at any level of experience handsomely for their work as long as you follow their guidelines and deliver quality content.

Writing online comes with many benefits. You don’t need to make any up-front investment or pay any start-up fees, writing gigs abound at all levels of experience, and you can expect to get paid quickly, which makes it one of the best ways to make money fast.

How to Get Started

  1. Set up a blog or website: It's essential to have an online presence as a freelance writer. You can create a website that will serve as a blog, online resume, and portfolio where prospective clients can see some of your best work. Or you could post regularly on a platform like Medium.
  2. Put together a few excellent sample pieces: These sample pieces will go on the portfolio section of your website and help you attract clients. You can publish them on your blog or as guest posts on other blogs and online magazines. You'll also include them when you start to send out pitches for paid work to potential clients.
  3. Pitch yourself everywhere: Develop an elevator pitch to tell people what you do. Reach out to companies you love and offer to write for them or create sponsored posts about their products for your blog. Join networking groups with other freelance writers; these groups regularly share opportunities and available jobs. Pitch the editors of online and print publications directly with ideas for articles. Keep your LinkedIn profile up to date with links to your published works.
  4. Find gigs on writing job boards and freelance marketplaces: Some specialist job boards provide an excellent source of leads for freelance writers looking to get hired. These sites include Problogger, iWriter, Textbroker, Writer Access, BloggingPro, WordAgents, Verblio, Writers Domain, and The Writer Finder. You can also find writing gigs on freelancing platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, Freelancer, and PeoplePerHour.

12. Carry out Micro-jobs

Start-up Time: Instant.

Effort to Start: Low effort.

Time to Revenue: It can take a few weeks to make a decent amount of money.

Initial Investment: Free.

Micro-jobs are straightforward tasks that require no technical skill to perform. They are often boring jobs you can complete for small sums of money. Also known as HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks), they are often tasks that computers and algorithms don’t do well or humans do much more efficiently and effectively.

Pay for these tasks is often between $0.1 and $1 per task, and tasks include things like transcription, research, identification of objects in videos and images, and data deduplication.

Because the tasks are simple and require zero technical skills, there is often a lot of competition for them, hence the low pay.

How to Get Started

Amazon Mechanical Turk
Source: Mturk

To get started, sign up on any of the many micro-job sites like Amazon Mechanical Turk, Fiverr, Appen, TaskRabbit, and ClickWorker, and apply to tasks. All you need is internet access and a smartphone with a decent camera since some tasks will require you to take photos while performing them.

These jobs often require you to have a PayPal account to get paid. Jobs are available on a first-come, first-served basis, so you need to accept and complete tasks on deadline—all tasks come with deadlines—to earn a good reputation.

13. Sell Digital Products

Start-up Time: Depends on how long it takes to find or create your product.

Effort to Start: High effort.

Time to Revenue: Depends on your chosen ecommerce platform.

Initial Investment: Varies depending on traffic generation strategy. $1000 is a good starting point for the first three to six months.

Requiring no inventory, logistics or shipping costs, or manufacturers, and boasting high margins and no limit to how many products you can sell, digital products might just be the dream product for every online retailer.

They are the most scalable and attractive e-commerce products anyone can sell because, while upfront development costs may be high, ongoing variable costs are comparatively low, making it inexpensive to deliver the product to customers.

Often available as a downloadable PDF document, plugin, software, interactive document, or other media, a digital product is an intangible asset you create once and repeatedly sell without needing to restock.

They are an excellent source of passive income and one of the most powerful ways to make money online.

How to Get Started

  1. Determine what you want to sell: Brainstorm and research ideas for your digital product. What knowledge, experience, or skills do you possess that you can pass on to others? Can you create a digital product to augment your physical product or service if you already sell physical products or services? You can ask yourself these questions to develop ideas for digital products to sell.
  2. Validate your idea: Before investing so much time and effort into creating a digital product, it makes sense first to verify if there’s even a market for such a product in the first place. And even when you’ve verified the need for the product, create a minimum viable product (MVP) to test the idea in the real world before launching a full-scale solution.
  3. Create your product: If you haven’t already chosen a format for your product, choose one. But start with the simplest format possible so you can launch as quickly and cheaply as possible and improve the product over time as you get feedback from actual customers. You don’t want to waste time building something with all the bells and whistles only to discover that customers don’t want all those features.
  4. Create an ecommerce store: Now, create an ecommerce store to sell your products. Remember to disable the shipping option in your ecommerce platform settings since you won’t be needing that.
  5. Drive traffic: WIth your ecommerce store up and running and your product ready to go, it’s time to start getting customers. Promote your product with paid ads, social media marketing, and influencer marketing.

14. Become an Online Tutor

Start-up Time: A few hours.

Effort to Start: Low effort.

Time to Revenue: Depends on what platform you get clients from.

Initial Investment: Free.

At its current compound annual growth rate of 22.7%, the global online tutoring industry is expected to hit $197.64 billion by 2030. That’s a huge market, and it's good news for you if you enjoy helping people finally grasp difficult concepts.

An online tutoring business is one of the best ways to make money online and is excellent because you can start making money fast since it only takes a few hours to set up.

What’s more, you set your rates—instead of depending on those set by someone else—and decide which subjects you feel most comfortable teaching.

And with sites like Fiverr and TutorMe taking the hassle out of finding clients, it’s easier than ever to freelance as an online tutor these days.

How to Get Started

  1. Set up your “classroom”: Find the perfect place to conduct your online classes. You want a noise-free place with plenty of light and a neutral background for video calls. You’ll also need a computer, a webcam, a functional microphone, and a strong internet connection. Plus, you’ll benefit tremendously from having a tablet or digital drawing pad with a stylus that you can use to illustrate concepts during classes.
  2. Get the right software: Since your classes will be held virtually, you’ll need video calling software like Zoom or Google Meet. Ideally, it should be software that lets you share your screen. You’ll also need virtual whiteboard software like Ziteboard, Scribblar, or IDroo so you can draw, write, and diagram digitally. And finally, you’ll need document-sharing software like Google Docs or, even better, Google Classroom.
  3. Set your rates: Generally, rates fall between $20 – $80 per hour. In setting your rates, consider what others charge for similar work, making sure to factor in your other business expenses such as software, taxes, and time spent prepping for classes.
  4. Establish a web presence: As an online tutor, you need a solid online presence to be successful. So, set up a website and social media accounts for your business, and sign up on tutoring platforms like TutorMe, Fiverr, Preply, TutorOcean, and Cambly.
  5. Market your business: Once you have set up all the above, it's time to get the word out about your business. Ensure that you consider your current network when developing your marketing strategy.

15. Earn Money with Online Coaching

Start-up Time: 2 – 4 weeks.

Effort to Start: High effort.

Time to Revenue: Up to 6 months.

Initial Investment: Free – $500.

Online coaching is an excellent business model to make money online if you genuinely enjoy helping people become a better version of themselves. It's an opportunity that doesn't require a huge upfront investment, and it could eventually run itself if you set it up correctly.

Creating an online coaching business requires carefully evaluating your niche, expanding your knowledge, identifying your ideal customer, understanding their needs, and so much more. That means it takes quite a bit of time to get started.

But for all that effort, there are benefits, including making good money fast as soon as your setup is complete.

And these days, multiple platforms allow coaches to launch with a scalable business model without compromising on quality and effectiveness.

How to Get Started

  1. Define your mission: The first step to starting a coaching business is to formalize your coaching philosophy and determine what kind of coaching you’ll provide.
  2. Establish your target audience: You can’t work with everyone because not everyone would be suited to receiving the kind of help you offer. Start with the basics like demographics and then move on to more advanced psychographics.
  3. Create an online presence: To succeed as an online coach, you need a solid online presence. So, set up a website and social media accounts for your business, and take full advantage of coaching platforms like Satori, Nudge Coach, Coach Catalyst, TrueCoach, and CoachAccountable.
  4. Work out service delivery basics: You’ll need a coaching channel. Video conferencing is the most popular channel for online coaching. You might also want to provide supplemental resources via gated content on your website, releasing new information as the client progresses through the online program. You’ll want to establish protocols for communication between coaching sessions, too. Finally, determine your rates and a required minimum commitment.
  5. Market your coaching business: Once you have set up all the above, it's time to get the word out about your business. Ensure that you consider your current network when developing your marketing strategy.

16. Become a Virtual Assistant

Start-up Time: 2+ weeks.

Effort to Start: Medium effort.

Time to Revenue: Depends on how quickly you get your first client and the agreed payment terms.

Initial Investment: Free – $1000

If performing administrative tasks—organizing and planning—is right up your alley, you might enjoy making a handsome living by becoming a virtual assistant (VA). VAs provide all kinds of support services to individuals and businesses.

Besides being an excellent way to make money online remotely, startup costs for this business model are minimal compared to many other ways to make money online. Plus, the average annual pay for VAs is a decent $58,000.

In addition to possessing excellent time management, writing, organizational, and communication skills, VAs often also need to know how to operate bookkeeping and project management software, as well as popular online platforms like Google Drive and QuickBooks.

The easiest and fastest way to get clients as a VA is through platforms like Fiverr and Freelancer. Or you could join a virtual assistant company and earn more money with verified clients.

How to Get Started

  1. Identify your skills: The most commonly required skills for VAs are computer proficiency, communication skills (verbal and written), editorial skills, and organization and time management. A resume that indicates your strength in these areas will convince potential employees of your ability to get the job done, even if you don’t have much experience.
  2. Determine the services you’ll offer and set your rates: Deciding on what services you can and are willing to offer beforehand will make it easier to target potential clients and earn jobs. Also, you should determine your prices at this point. You can charge hourly, daily, weekly, or per task.
  3. Search for jobs: Next, it’s time to start looking for clients. Since you don’t have much experience, you may need to start with small, low-paying jobs to garner experience, build your portfolio, and bolster your reputation with positive reviews. Search job listings online and join freelancing marketplaces to find clients. Also, refer to your professional network to find clients. When you complete tasks for your clients, don’t forget to ask for feedback and reviews.
  4. Market yourself: Get your name out there as a VA by creating a website and social and professional profiles for your business. The key to successfully marketing your VA services is to focus on networking and building relationships.
  5. Pick a specialty: The best way to increase your rates and retain more clients as a VA is to specialize and market yourself as the go-to expert in that area. For example, you can specialize in providing administrative services for email marketing, customer support, web design, or social media management.

17. Become a Twitch Streamer

Start-up Time: A few hours.

Effort to Start: High effort.

Time to Revenue: Twitch pays out 15 days after the end of each month.

Initial Investment: $500 – $1500.

The increased popularity of live streaming has led many platforms to introduce native live streaming capabilities. However, Twitch still tops the market and has evolved beyond streamers playing games to all types of content, from arts & crafts to adventures.

To make money online as a Twitch streamer, you can monetize your channel by selling products, collecting donations from fans, offering subscriptions, collaborating with brands for sponsorship, and Twitch ads.

As with any other content-based endeavor, the key to building a strong following on Twitch is consistency; as much as possible, broadcast regularly at the same time or day.

Your style and topic also need to remain consistent. Is your content funny or educational? Do you talk about your travels or stream your World of Warcraft gameplay?

Consistency sets expectations for your viewers, so they always know what they’ll see whenever they tune into your live stream. Of course, it pays to engage your viewers as much as possible via live chat.

How to Get Started

  1. Build your streaming setup: To start streaming, you’ll need a powerful computer, streaming software (like OBS Studio, which is free and popular), a camera (your smartphone camera placed on a cheap mount will do for a start), and a proper microphone.
  2. Craft your streaming persona: You must decide what topics you will cover—will you stream about games, music, art, or food?—and what kind of entertainer you want to be. Loud and brash or soft-spoken and reserved, ensure that your persona is authentic to you.
  3. Stream: Whenever you feel ready, jump in and start streaming! The best way to master this art form is to do it. You can start with a 30-minute stream and build from there. In all, be patient and understand that it takes a fair bit of luck to become a big deal. And it never happens overnight.

18. Sell Your Photography

Start-up Time: A few weeks.

Effort to Start: High effort.

Time to Revenue: Depends on where you sell your photos.

Initial Investment: Free – $1000.

As a photographer, you can find many excellent opportunities to make money online, whether you’re an avid professional shooting with top-of-the-range gear or a dabbling amateur happily snapping away on your iPhone.

There are potentially dozens of ways to make money from this gig. The most obvious one is to sell stock photos to stock photo sites like 500px or Alamy. But that’s just one way to make money with photography.

You can also sell prints of your best photos on your ecommerce store. You can use a service like Printify to have your photos printed on products such as phone cases, mugs, and throw pillows.

The bottom line: if photography is your skill or passion, that’s an amazing opportunity to make money online.

How to Get Started

There are dozens of ways to make money online with photography. Here’s a list of just five of the best ways to do this:

  1. Sell stock photos on stock photo sites: This method helps you create a stream of passive income. Once your photo is out there, you receive a royalty whenever someone buys it. But it’s also very competitive, so you might not make as much money from it as you like.
  2. Sell prints & products: You can launch a print-on-demand ecommerce store to sell prints of your photos and products with your photos printed on them (such as coffee table books, mugs, T-shirts, and throw pillows). You can outsource production and fulfillment to a third-party print-on-demand service like Printify or Printful.
  3. Offer photo retouching services: You can find clients on freelancing platforms like Upwork and Fiverr. However, going this route can prevent you from developing as a professional since it could take up much of your time and leave you with little time to do actual photography.
  4. Create photography courses and tutorials: This requires a lot of time and effort but is well worth it in the end since it helps develop and solidify your reputation as an excellent photographer, helping you get more clients and charge more for your work.
  5. Start a photography blog: If you’re also good with words, you can start a photography blog or online magazine that combines these two skills. You can make money from ads and affiliate links, and when you have a large enough audience, you could even create an ebook to sell to them.

19. Sell Clothes Online

Start-up Time: A few hours.

Effort to Start: Low to medium effort.

Time to Revenue: Depends on your chosen sales channel.

Initial Investment: Varies. Depending on your chosen sales channel, it could be entirely free or require a marketing budget.

We all have clothes hanging in our closets that we don’t wear anymore. Some of us even have clothes we’ve probably never worn before. Rather than letting them gather dust in your closet, you can turn them into cash pretty quickly.

It’s as good a time as any to start your own clothing line; the second-hand clothing industry is projected to reach $77 billion in market value by 2026.

No matter what clothing items you sell—clothes, shoes, handbags, or accessories—there are several sites dedicated to helping you make money online by trading your used fashion items for cash.

How to Get Started

First, clean out your closet and determine what items you want to sell. Clean the items and take high-quality pictures of them; ensure the images are well-lit. List the products on your preferred marketplace, ensuring the price is fair and competitive.

Consider the following second-hand clothing and accessories marketplaces:

  • Depop (for vintage and designer products)
  • Tradesy (for women’s fashion)
  • Rebelle (for luxury fashion items)

You can also sell on eBay, Facebook Marketplace (an excellent choice if you want to target local buyers), or Etsy (great for one-of-a-kind, handmade, or vintage items).

Whichever platform you use, understand that most of them will only pay you when your items sell or when they receive and inspect your items. So, allow at least a month to receive your payout.

If you plan to do this long-term, you should consider creating your own ecommerce website to sell your products.

20. Buy and Sell Domains

Start-up Time: Less than an hour.

Effort to Start: Low effort.

Time to Revenue: Varies.

Initial Investment: As low as $10.

Flipping domain names is another excellent way to make money online. Like a collector’s item, you can buy and sell domain names for a profit.

However, anyone can hop on a domain registrar and buy any random domain name. The trick is finding valuable ones.

How lucrative is selling domain names? Well, Cars.com did sell for a whopping $872 million.

But before you start dreaming about hitting the jackpot and becoming a kazillionaire overnight, you should know that such massive payouts are extremely rare and so dependent on luck that they are practically unrealistic.

The key to long-term success and profits is to buy a portfolio of promising domain names and try to sell them for a modest profit, not go unicorn hunting.

Some domains will remain unsold for months, even years. But with patience and minimal effort, domain flipping is a surefire way to make a bit more money on the side and work comfortably from home.

How to Get Started

  1. Find a domain: To maximize your upside, find a domain that’s inexpensive to purchase initially but could be worth a lot more. Besides using domain name search tools to find domains about a specific topic, product, or service, you could also check out domain auctions—especially expiring domain auctions—for possible options.
  2. Evaluate the domain: Next, evaluate the domain to try to predict whether you would be able to sell it for a profit. Look at historical sales prices for similar ones and evaluate the domain’s length, brand-ability, search friendliness, and relevance.
  3. Register the domain name: If the domain name passes muster, buy it and register it in your name.
  4. Find a buyer: You can buy and hold, waiting for interest in the domain to grow. Make your registry public so that prospective buyers can find your contact information. You could also create a landing page for the domain name to get people to buy it. Or you could list it at an auction.
  5. Sell the domain name: When you find a buyer, and they pay for the domain name, transfer ownership to their new registry.

21. Create a Membership Site

Start-up Time: A few days.

Effort to Start: Medium start-up effort, but high maintenance effort.

Time to Revenue: Varies depending on monetization strategy.

Initial Investment: Free – $200.

Another excellent way to make money online on your own website is to start a membership site. Membership sites sell access to premium, exclusive content through subscription plans.

Some have tiered membership plans so that members on different tiers have different privileges and levels of access to content.

One great thing about membership sites is that the subscription model makes for recurring income and a steady revenue stream, making it easy to grow the business or sustain its current level without spending too much effort to find new customers.

Building a membership site in your niche can be a great way to secure a captive audience to which you can market your products if you own another business or brand.

How to Get Started

  1. Brainstorm ideas for your membership site: You can build your site around courses, premium content (articles and reports), digital products, industry insights, curated information, or as a community/mastermind.
  2. Research your favorite idea: Research your options to ensure that there is a demand for them and that the prospects in those verticals can not only afford it but would be willing to pay for it.
  3. Plan the membership program: What are you going to offer? How will you offer it? What would be the membership term length (will it be renewed monthly or annually)? You might offer several content delivery methods (audio, written, video, infographics) to cover all possible learning styles.
  4. Choose your tools: WordPress offers several scripts and plugins (such as Memberpress, Restrict Content Pro, and S2Member) to help create, run, and manage membership sites.
  5. Build your membership site and create your content: Now, build your website and set up your tools, then start creating your content. Since people will be paying for this content, it should be more in-depth and unique than anything else your members can find for free online.
  6. Promote the site: Run ads to promote your site. Post regularly on social media. Consider creating a sales funnel with a lead magnet to get people to join your mailing list. The lead magnet could be something that's a part of the paid membership to give your prospects a taste of what they stand to gain from joining. Alternatively, you can offer a free trial to get more members.

22. Create a Podcast

Start-up Time: 9 – 14 hours per episode.

Effort to Start: High effort.

Time to Revenue: Depends on your monetization strategy.

Initial Investment: $200 to a few thousand dollars.

Podcasts are mainstream now. The number of podcast listeners in the US is expected to reach 138.6 Million by 2024, and the average podcast consumer spends 7 hours weekly listening to podcasts. Altogether, it’s been predicted that by 2028, podcasting will be a $94.88 billion industry.

US Podcast Listeners
Source: Founderjar

This presents a unique opportunity to make money online. If you already own a business, you probably know the value of content marketing for your brand. Podcasting allows you to reach new audiences that prefer consuming audio to long-form content.

Thankfully, it doesn’t require a lot of capital to start, and you don’t have to be technically inclined. You also don’t have to be a popular blogger or an influencer to be successful with podcasting.

How to Get Started

  1. Identify a theme for your podcast: Stress test your ideas for a podcast theme by writing out at least 20 episode topics. If you can't come up with at least that many topics, you will run out of ideas, and your podcast will lose steam.
  2. Create your brand: Choose a name for your podcast that’s succinct, intriguing, and easy to spell and pronounce. Listeners should be able to tell what the podcast is about from the name. Also, create your cover art; you can do this yourself for free in Canva or hire a professional designer on Fiverr or 99designs to do it for you.
  3. Choose your podcasting equipment: Get a high-quality microphone. While you can record a podcast with your smartphone, it's not recommended because the audio will not be as clear and professional-sounding as you'd like.
  4. Get recording software: Now, you need software to record and edit your podcasts. Adobe Audition is a powerful option with all the bells and whistles. Audacity is a free option for both Mac and PC, while GarageBand is a Mac-only free option. You might need software to record your calls if your podcast includes interviews. Some excellent options are Zencastr, Ecamm Call Recorder, Callnote, and Dialpad Meetings.
  5. Record an intro and outro: Intros and outros are often 20 – 30-second voice-overs—with background music—that go over the podcast, the episode number, the host, and the podcast's hook.
  6. Choose a platform to host your podcast: Contrary to what some might think, you don't upload podcasts directly to Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or Spotify. Instead, you host them on a dedicated podcast hosting platform like Buzzsprout, Transistor, or PodBean.
  7. Promote your podcast: You can make your podcast launch an event to generate buzz around it. This will help you get some listens and reviews immediately and put you in a position to be featured on Apple Podcasts’ New & Noteworthy section, which will do wonders for the organic growth of your podcast. Create a website for your podcast, telling people about it; you can draw some inspiration from other excellent podcast websites.
  8. Monetize your podcast: Asides from ads, there are numerous ways to monetize your podcast, including sponsorships, direct support (asking for donations to support the show), affiliate sales, premium content offerings, hosting live events, and selling your own products. But your primary focus should be on growing your audience and trust before monetizing.

23. Review Apps and Websites

Start-up Time: A few hours.

Effort to Start: High effort.

Time to Revenue: Depends on which user testing platform you join.

Initial Investment: Free

There are numerous platforms out there that will pay you a token to test websites and apps and give the owners feedback on them. User testing is a quick way to make money online by answering questions as you browse through an app or website.

Usually, the questions are asked through a video, and each video is about 20 minutes long. Complete three in an hour, and you’ve made $30.

But as with anything with such low barriers to entry, the problem is competition. You’ll receive an email when a new project goes live, but so will everyone else on the platform. So, you must act fast before someone else takes it.

How to Get Started

To get started, apply to any user testing site—like UserTesting, TryMyUI, PlaytestCloud, Userlytics, TestingTime, Userfeel, SoftwareJudge, and Validately.

Usually, you’ll be required to answer a few screening questions that will help the system match you to the right test opportunities. Start taking tests and earning. It’s that simple.

24. List Your Spare Bedroom on Airbnb

Start-up Time: It will take 72 hours from publishing your listing for it to appear in the search results.

Effort to Start: Medium to high.

Time to Revenue: Airbnb sends payments 24 hours after guests check in.

Initial Investment: Free.

If you have one—or several—spare bedrooms at home, you can put them to good use by renting them out on Airbnb.

Becoming an Airbnb host is a great way to earn extra income from your home. It’s much less stressful than renting out an entire property, and you can still live in your home while enjoying the extra cash it brings.

And thankfully, it requires no financial investment on your end; simply publish a listing, and you’re good to go.

How to Get Started

Before you list your room on Airbnb, ensure that you have the legal right to rent it out and the necessary certificates and permits that your area requires for short-term rentals.

Once you have settled these, create an Airbnb account, go to the host page and follow the prompts to publish a listing.

Ensure that your listing includes well-lit, accurate, and eye-catching photos of the space you plan to rent. Keep your prices competitive, and set a clear cancellation policy.

Your listing will go live 72 hours after publishing it.

25. Teach English Online

Start-up Time: Instant if you have the right certifications.

Effort to Start: Medium effort.

Time to Revenue: Depends on your chosen platform or company.

Initial Investment: Free.

Even if you have no experience as a tutor, you can teach English as a virtual tutor, as long as you’re fluent in the language.

Recently, there’s been a boom in demand for English tutors, with an astonishing 1 billion people currently learning the language globally.

There are numerous platforms and schools you can join to become an English tutor, and more spring up every day. Some of them require a bachelor’s degree while others don’t. But most require at least TEFL or ESL certification and fluency in English.

How to Get Started

  1. Get Certified: The most popular certifications are TESL, TESOL, and TEFL, and you can earn them online.
  2. Get the right tools: At the very least, you’ll need a good laptop with a webcam and a headset with a microphone. You’ll also need video chat software like Skype, Zoom, or Google Meet.
  3. Create a resume and an online profile: Create a resume highlighting your coaching, teaching, or tutoring experience. It also helps to have an online presence such as a LinkedIn page, personal website, or Facebook page to market yourself.
  4. Search for students and apply for jobs: There are several companies, job boards, and online job marketplaces dedicated to matching tutors with students—like Preply, VIPKid, and SayABC. Look for the most reliable and promising ones that will guarantee payment just as well as they help you find students.
  5. Start teaching: When you schedule your first class, crack open your laptop, switch on your webcam, and teach away! You’d be surprised just how engaging online lessons can be, even though you’re worlds away from your students.

26. Become a Social Media Consultant

Start-up Time: Could take months or years; depends on your current following and experience level.

Effort to Start: High effort.

Time to Revenue: Depends on your payment structure.

Initial Investment: Varies; you might need to buy courses to learn.

Social media consultants help brands develop creative ideas, produce videos, develop a content strategy, and build the brand’s awareness and audience on social media. Some successful social media personalities offer their social media chops as a service.

Social media consulting is a smart way to make money online, and while it takes some time to get off the ground, it’s worth it because it can become a full-time career or business that you can run from anywhere in the world, even with just a smartphone.

Besides creating viral videos, you’ll also need to learn how to grow and manage an engaged community and brand reputation.

How to Get Started

  1. Educate yourself: Educate yourself before you start your consulting business. There are tons of free, cheap, and premium courses available online to learn and master social media marketing. Learn as much as you can and, if possible, do some work for free to practice what you learn and build a portfolio.
  2. Establish credibility: Practice what you preach by growing your own social media account. You should also have a website and blog showcasing your expertise, and you can also write ebooks and host webinars. Become a content creator and publish original and insightful content regularly. The point is to prove to prospects that you know your stuff, even if you don’t have as much experience as the competition.
  3. Garner experience and build a portfolio: The fastest way to garner experience as a social media consultant is to do pro bono work for people in your network who already know, like, and trust you. By this, you build a portfolio and track record and further strengthen your credibility. Display case studies of your work on your website and social media as proof of your abilities.
  4. Connect with people both online and offline: You must genuinely connect with people beyond the surface level for them to choose to work with you over anyone else. Engage with people on your social platforms, and don’t forget to take those connections offline whenever possible.

27. Make Money with Online Surveys

Start-up Time: Instant.

Effort to Start: Low to medium effort.

Time to Revenue: Depends on the survey service used.

Initial Investment: Free.

Do a quick Google search for ways to earn online, and you’re bound to find online surveys as part of almost every result. There’s a simple reason for that: it simply works. While filling out surveys won’t make you rich, it will earn you some pocket cash.

Some online survey sites will give you points for each task you complete, and you can redeem these points for cash later. You can also watch videos, surf the web, or play games to earn points.

This option is great because it’s low-effort, does not require you to have an education or learn new skills, and you can do it in your spare time.

Some survey sites pay more than most would expect, but it still won’t be enough to replace your primary source of income, and your earnings probably won’t ever exceed the double figures.

Anyhow, you can do much worse than getting paid for watching videos and filling out questionnaires.

How to Get Started

To get started, apply to any online survey site—like Swagbucks, OpinionOutpost, Survey Junkie, Inbox Dollars, i-Say, and LifePoints.—and provide certain information such as your background and interests. This information will help the system match you to the most relevant surveys.

28. Sell Your Art & Designs

Start-up Time: A few days.

Effort to Start: High effort.

Time to Revenue: Up to 12 months to earn a decent living.

Initial Investment: Free.

If you’re artistic or have a good eye for design, you should look into selling your artwork and designs online. There are tons of platforms that facilitate this type of business. They allow you to create an online shop, upload your art or designs, market them, sell, and ship orders to buyers.

Whether it’s drawings, paintings, handcrafts, or woodwork, there is a wide range of platforms to sell your artwork; which one you choose depends on what you plan to sell. These platforms include Etsy, CafePress, Artfinder, ArtFire, and UGallery.

How to Get Started

There are a few ways to start selling your art online, but the fastest way is to pick one of the abovementioned platforms, sign up, and start selling immediately.

You can also launch your own online shop with Squarespace Commerce, WooCommerce, or Shopify and promote your products with Facebook and Instagram Ads. You can work with print-on-demand companies to print your works and fulfill orders.

Finally, don’t forget to copyright your works to protect yourself from piracy.

How to Choose the Best Way to Make Money Online

Having learned some of the best ways to earn online, the next step is to narrow down your options and choose the best one for you. But how should you do this?

As a starting point, consider the following factors when evaluating your choices. After these considerations, most people will find that only three or four of the options discussed would be relevant to them.

  • Interest: Choosing a venture solely for its money-making potential is a surefire way to fail because most methods require a lot of hard work and effort that is only sustainable when you’re genuinely interested in the venture. So, ensure that you’re passionate about the venture before going into it.
  • Effort: Ask yourself if you have the skills required to be successful at each option. Where you don’t have the skills, consider how long it would take to acquire those skills and how long it would take to set up the venture.
  • Capital: Consider the budget required to start each venture. Can you afford it, or would you have to save money towards it? If you have to, for how long would you have to save money to raise the required capital?
  • Potential: Ideally, you’ll want to choose a venture that would remain profitable in the long term. Consider this when choosing one.

Make Money Online FAQ

How can I make money online very fast?

Some of the fastest ways to earn online include answering online surveys, testing apps, and websites, and carrying out micro-jobs.

How can I make $100 a day on the web?

It’s possible to earn $100 a day online. But it takes a lot of effort and patience to get there finally. Some ways to achieve this include teaching online, driving people around, and participating in research. You could also start an ecommerce bsuiness and sell a $20 product to five customers per day. Or you could sell a $2 ebook or other digital product to 50 customers daily. Or you could sell a piece of art for $100. The point is that there are 1001 ways to earn $100 per day online; it just takes grit and patience.

Making Money Online Was Never That Easy

Whatever your reasons and motivations for wanting to make money online are—whether you just need to earn some extra dough on the side or want to replace your 9 to 5—there are endless opportunities for you.

If required, you could use your savings to get things off the ground. But even if you don’t have the capital to start the venture you truly want, you could choose an option that requires no financial investment to get started and use the earnings from that to transition to what you want.

In all, no matter your level—rank amateur or world-class expert—there are tons of opportunities for you to make money online.

Learn more about ways to make money online with the following articles:

Launch a Blog

SiteGround

An excellent web hosting provider that offers one-click WordPress installation, free ready-to-use templates, friendly 24/7 support, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Start an Online Store

Squarespace Commerce

A fantastic ecommerce platform for artists, illustrators, and everyone that values creativity and prioritizes excellent design and extensive customizability.
Make Money With Online Coaching

Thinkific

A superb online platform for scaling your coaching business from the one-to-one model to the more profitable one-to-many model via live or on-demand courses.
Make Money With Online Courses

LearnWorlds

An all-in-one online platform for users to create, market, and sell online courses to monetize their expertise while maintaining total control of their brand and business.
Earn Money as a Freelancer

Fiverr

A splendid online marketplace that connects freelancers looking to monetize their skills with clients needing various digital services, from graphic design to web development.

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Martin Luenendonk

Editor at FounderJar

Martin loves entrepreneurship and has helped dozens of entrepreneurs by validating the business idea, finding scalable customer acquisition channels, and building a data-driven organization. During his time working in investment banking, tech startups, and industry-leading companies he gained extensive knowledge in using different software tools to optimize business processes.

This insights and his love for researching SaaS products enables him to provide in-depth, fact-based software reviews to enable software buyers make better decisions.