Platforms Where You Can Make Money Online

IF YOU HAVE A PC, YOU COULD BE MAKING MONEY RIGHT NOW!

This is a general narrative that you hear in the online business world. The question on your mind would be if it’s that easy, how come everyone else isn’t doing it! Well, that’s the difference between doers and naysayers and there are many more of the latter in the world. So, if you are a doer, then sit tight, grab a cup of coffee and keep reading!

In this article, I have compiled a very comprehensive list of all the practical money-making ways that are available online. Some are intended to just put a little extra cash in your wallet and others have the potential to help you build an online business empire. Go through each in detail and see if any of these options suit your personality and liking. So here it goes. Depending on how you look at it, online money making can be divided into the following categories:

1. Side hustle / Side Income
2. E-Commerce
3. Freelancing
4. Content
5. Digital Products
6. Software Development
7. Miscellaneous

A side hustle is a way to make some extra cash that allows you the flexibility to pursue what you’re most interested in. Most people, when starting out with online money making start it on the side, while keeping their day jobs. Once they start generating some income online, they quit their jobs and focus completely on this new way of economic sustainability. Here are some methods and platforms that can help you in doing this:

There was a time when buying and selling stock investments required a phone call to a stockbroker who would charge you a lot to execute your stock trade. Things are a bit different now. You can now enter your own stock trades through a stock trading app. These apps give a lot of freedom to investors whereby allowing them to trade by themselves and also choose the most suitable choices for them. The top trading apps include TD Ameritrade Mobile, Robinhood, Acorns, and IQ Option. Most of these apps have a website as well, so if you don’t like installing new apps on your phone then you can stick to the website.

We all understand the importance of market research but did you ever think that answering questions to market research questions could make you money? Well, the answer is yes, but it is not that straightforward. Firstly, there are a lot of survey scammers out there and secondly, the surveys are mostly targeted towards the US and UK markets. Plus it takes a lot of time to get to the actual survey. All that being said, people do makeup to $50 per survey completed. For beginners, Swagbucks is a good option as they are one of the largest online tasks companies in the world surveys are one of the tasks. Other legit sites include Survey Junkie, MyPoints, Opinion Outpost, and Vindale Research. Special offer for 18–24-year-olds: PineCone offers unique high-paying surveys for this age group.

So this option is one where you need to spend money to make money. Basically, these are shopping websites where you get offers, discounts, or cash-backs. So in essence, money saved is money in your pocket. There are many online platforms that offer this service like Rakuten and Top Cash Back. If you are looking for a very diverse listing then sign up to Rakuten and start availing of these offers. However, if you are more interested in getting better cash back deals then you need to start with Top Cash Back. Here is how it works. You buy a pair of Nike shoes through the Rakuten app. Rakuten gets a $10 commission because the sale went through them, but they give $7 of it back to you. It’s basically a way to get sale prices on things that aren’t otherwise on sale. Other sites include Befrugal and Shopkick. You can also look at the app Dosh. The concept is a little different from the other two but the basic premise is still the same.

Sign Up to Rakuten
Sign Up to Top Cash Back
Sign Up to Befrugal
Download Shopkick
Download Dosh
Search for more

There are lots of companies that need to get very small and repetitive tasks done on a large scale. You have a number of options to choose from here. There are people who register with more than one of these task sites and make a full-time income. I’ve already mentioned Swagbucks which is probably the most popular micro tasks site on the web. These tasks range from taking surveys to watching videos to admin tasks and you don’t need any technical skills to get them done. Word of caution though There are lots of scammers out there so be on the lookout for the signs of work-at-home scams (For instance, if the company asks you to pay to sign up?). Other platforms include:

lists human intelligence tasks (HITs) that remote workers choose and complete for a fee that’s set by the requester.
Clickworker
Has tasks like data categorization, copy editing, proofreading, web research, etc.

InboxDollar
If you’re interested in earning a little bit of money doing fun stuff like reading emails, answering surveys, and watching videos, then InboxDollars is definitely worth a try. If you are in the UK, you should try InboxPounds.

Figure Eight
Includes tasks like the categorization of social media posts, content moderation, and audio transcription.

CPA stands for Cost Per Acquisition, but in this case, it is known as Cost Per Action or Pays Per Action (PPA). This is an online pricing model, where advertisers pay for a specified action. These could be, selling, clicking or form submission, etc. Direct response advertisers often consider CPA to be the best way to buy advertising online. Because the advertiser only pays for the advertisement. This means that advertisers only pay affiliates for leads to result in the desired action for sale. Some major players in this arena are Click booth, Offer vault, Max Bounty, Peer fly, and Above All Offers. Each of them has its own benefit but an Offer vault would be the best one as their database is huge.

This falls under the category of the task but it\’s more like a crazy fun time as you are just watching videos and you don’t need to get physically engaged with the task. Different platforms have different payouts. So, Swagbucks is, here again, being one of the most popular paid video watching services but there are many other platforms that you can use as well. InboxDollar is another one that you can try. People often call it a Swagbucks alternative. Oh, and Netflix falls in this category as well. Yes! The real one. How this works is, Netflix periodically hires ‘taggers’ to watch and tag their programming to provide accurate recommendations to fellow subscribers. All open positions are posted on the Netflix job board. Tagger positions are not the most financially lucrative and can require long hours. But, if you love to binge-watch content or watch anything Netflix has to offer, this can be a great opportunity. Other platforms include Viggle, which is an app that you need to activate before watching Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu. QuikRewards is another one that pays out relatively well but it is only open to people in the US, UK, and Canada. I recommend signing up with Swagbucks and InboxDollar for good deals to start and then diversify.

Sign Up to Swagbucks
Sign Up to Inbox Pounds or Inbox Dollars
Sign Up QuikRewards
Download Viggle

This is not much different from the previous option (Watching Videos), in fact, the two main platforms that allow you to earn money while surfing the web are Swagbucks and InboxDollar. If you are looking for one platform with different money-making options and all legit then just go with one of these. Here are quick links to these sites:

NIELSEN APP
Most people know about the TV tracking company Nielsen. They track trends of TV watchers in great depth. Well, they are not only in the TV game anymore. They track many different behaviors of people including internet usage. All you need to do is download the Nielsen App and they will pay you $50 a year to keep their app on your favorite internet-browsing device. That’s not much, but who hates an extra 50 bucks. On top of that, Nielsen tries to sweeten the deal by giving away $10,000 each month as various rewards and sweepstakes.

Downloads the Nielsen app

You didn’t see this coming right! There are platforms and apps out there that pay you for getting fit. Well, almost. There are platforms like Sweat coin and Achievement that collect your physical activity data e.g. how many steps you take in a day and they pay you for that data. You can potentially make $5 to $20 per day based on which app you choose and what you are sharing. In order to make the most of it, install both of them on your phone and then install them both on your partner’s phone and then your parents and so on. These small amounts will easily accumulate to something more meaningful. There are apps out there as well, but they come with a risk e.g. With Healthy- Wage, users select a goal weight loss, place a bet, and choose a timeframe for achieving their goal weight. Their proprietary algorithm determines your payout, which can reach as high as $10,000 but then again, you might lose money if you don’t achieve your goal.

Download Sweatcoin
Download Achievement

There are many platforms that allow you to become a website tester where you give your opinion about the design, experience, quality, etc. of specific websites. Instead of just looking at the website from a technical eye, these platforms get feedback from real potential end-users. Click on one of the links below to sign up.

The payouts are usually around $10 per test, but this is not a regular gig as these sites are not always taking in new testers, and based on your demographics, you might not always have enough sites to test.

If you type well and have lots of free time, you can definitely make some cash on the side. You know that image or text that comes up at the end of a form asking you to prove that you are human! Well, the websites providing these captcha questions need real humans to enter the correct answer to verify their process. The payouts are rather low (ranging from $0.17 to $2.00 for every 1000 correct entries) but if your typing speed is good, then you can potentially make significant money. The major captcha players are:

Kolotibablo
2Captcha
CaptchaTypers
MegaTypers (You will need an invitation code. Use this: F8MQ)

Most people do not have enough capital to avail benefits of a real estate sector (which is probably the most successful sector for investors). So some really smart people came up with Fundraise where you can invest your money, according to your goals, in a portfolio filled with dozens of real estate projects each one carefully handpicked and proactively developed with the goal of growing your net worth. You do need some investment to start but it doesn’t have to be anywhere close to the actual price of the property. You just become one of the many owners who have invested in said property. The major benefits include 8% to 12% expected annual returns and it’s a very easy way to diversify your investments and get exposure to a market that may have been previously inaccessible. You can check out the following.

Fundrise
Realty Mogul
RealtyShares
Patch of Land

Are you creative with words? Do you like to help people out? Do you want to make money by suggesting a few words? Well then, picky domains is IT. The way this works is that a person would go to a picky domain and give some information about the type of website they will be running. You as a suggester will suggest one or more domains based on the specs provided and if your domain name is selected, you will get a percentage of the price. The drawback is that you might suggest many names to many people but none get selected, so it can be considered as time wast-ed. However, I do suggest giving it a go and you can sign up to picky domains.

No, this doesn’t mean turning something upside down or flipping off a website. Just like any other asset, you can buy and sell websites and apps. Flippa is the market leader in website flipping and Website Broker is a close second. You can find websites based on categories like membership sites, blogs, new sites etc. Some websites have a regular income through ads or E-commerce etc.

whereas some might not even have any traffic. You can assess all these sites and if any are to your liking, buy them straight from the seller or put in a bid. The benefit is that even though you might have to invest a little in the beginning, you will get a continuous source of revenue which may surpass your investment in a little while. Plus you can even work on increasing the monthly income amount.

Flippa
Website Broker

A simple rule of thumb is that if you can collect a certain number of people who have similar interests in one place and be a figure of authority in this community, you can make money through selling and recommendations (which are meaningful). A Facebook group is EXACTLY that. Please note, a Facebook Page is not the same as a group and groups tend to have a lot more engagement than a Page.

So let’s say you are into fitness and you start a group called ‘Lose 10 inches and 20lbs in 30 days challenge’. Once people start joining and you begin posting methods and articles about how to do this, people will start listening to your advice and asking questions. After a while, if you make a complete program to achieve this goal, it will be very easy to sell it to the people as there is a level of trust between you and your community members. In other words, if you position yourself as the authority in your niche, then your audience will pay attention and buy from you

Did you know you can get paid to take phone calls from people who need your advice? Think about it this way you are a consultant and someone needs your services but they can’t afford you as you charge $100 an hour and the consultancy could go on for days. So basically, you will lose this potential client and make no money off them. However, what if they just need a few minutes of your time to get the ball rolling. Well, that’s where clarity.FM comes in. You can create a profile with all your expertise and set up how much you would charge per minute for a call and that’s it. Anyone who needs your advice can call you up and you will start building up another stream of income.

If you are into TV and music, then you can make some money through Slice the pie. It’s a review site that pays you (yes, in cash) for sharing your honest opinions on new unsigned artists and upcoming TV shows. They are a little selective about who they let in and the max payout would be around $1-$2 per hour.

The entrepreneurial narrative nowadays is that you do not need to go to College to be an entrepreneur. But if you’ve already made this mistake, you can get rid of the notes by selling them off. Some major websites that buy college notes are:

Course Hero
Nexus Notes
Notesale

There are many people who have won prizes in online competitions and the amounts have been in thousands. Read through this article and see how Rick won over £20k through this method. There are two main platforms that you can explore are: Loquax and the Prizefinder. I would recommend this option if you think that you have always been lucky.

Loquax
Prizefinder

The bodybuilding.com 12 week transformation challenge pays out $125,000 to a man and woman every year. There are many other fitness challenges that give you cold hard cash if you win the challenge. I suggest signing up with multiple companies running these competitions to increase your chances of winning.

Typically if we have a question, we simply go to Google and search but sometimes, we may have specific questions that require a very personalized answer. You can be that person who answers this specific question. If you are an expert at something like photography, shopping, fitness, skin care etc. or any other more complex questions you could get paid to answer peoples’ questions. Some main players in this game are:

LivePerson
JustAnswer
Studypool
Weegy
Experts123
Help Owl

E-commerce means using the internet to sell things. There are many different ways people do this e.g. building your own website and selling your own products, selling on other platforms (like Amazon and ebay) and using landing pages. All are very legitimate ways of doing e-commerce business. There are many ways consultancies and experts break down e-commerce, for example, B2B, B2C, C2B, and C2C or they highlight e-commerce business models as direct to consumer, white-label, wholesale etc. However, let’s not get into the business jargon which is mostly theoretical. Following are simple to understand e-com categories that will help identify the options you have available

This is the most obvious one out of the bunch. If you have a product that you manufacture yourself or in your own facility, you can get an e- commerce website built on Woocommerce (WordPress), Shopify, or any other platform that falls within your budget and start selling online. Most brands tend to do this e.g. Nike, Gymshark etc. as they have the resources required to get it done. You can start with a less capital-intensive option and then eventually move to this.

WordPress
Shopify

If you don’t have a lot of budgets but are somewhat technical, you can start with this option. The technical word is drop shipping. This is where you create an online store and find a product that another vendor is selling using Ali Express, Ali baba, Oberlo, Spoker etc., and create a product listing of the selected product on your website. You can then run ads on different platforms to get customers to your site and as soon as you receive a payment for the product, you place the order directly to the vendor selling this product and get it sent to your customer’s postal address. This is an extremely successful e-commerce model and many people have made millions of dollars using this simple method.

There are many struggling drop-shippers who say that DS is saturated, which is completely wrong. In fact, drop shipping can never be saturated, but drop-shipped products can be. There is a critical difference between the two. The only thing that has changed about drop shipping is the strategic angles and customer awareness about this model. It’s just about being a little creative and that’s it.

Oberlo
Shopify

So you don’t have a website and don’t have the resources to get one. Well, there are numerous platforms out that will give you a place to sell your product(s) online and just take a small cut from your sale price. Amazon, ETSY, eBay etc.

Amazon FBA is the new IT thing in the e-commerce world. FBA stands for ‘Fulfilment By Amazon’, which basically means that you just need to give your products to Amazon and they will fulfill all orders i.e. postage, packaging, returns, customer support etc. Obviously, they take a good percentage to offer this service, but FBA can still be very lucrative if you are able to scale up. The way most businesses are using this service is that they use tools that help identify products that perform well on Amazon. They then find a supplier on Alibaba (or other sources) who is able to manufacture that product. The business may or may not stamp its brand name on the product before sending it to an Amazon Fulfilment Center. Once the products are with Amazon, the business can create a product listing on the Amazon website and drive traffic through ads or Amazon SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Youtube is filled with short courses on how to setup an Amazon FBA business.

This is a rather interesting method and it should in theory fall under a passive income or side hustle category, but you will be surprised to know how much money some people make using this method. We call it Print on demand. So the way this works is that you come up with a concept, design, tagline, or something interesting (and trending) that you can get printed on a shirt, hoodie, mug etc., and submit it to a print on demand platform. That’s it! They do the rest. You can promote the product yourself along with getting some traffic from the platform’s own marketplace. Here are some major players in this market:

Printful
Printify
Zazzle
Redbubble
Fine Art America
TeeSpring
Sunfrog

If you are good at marketing, are able to generate traffic to websites or are a ninja in Facebook Ads, you should explore this option. The concept is that you don’t have your own site and you don’t have a product but you partner up with someone who has both. Help them generate sales or leads and based on that you can get a percentage of the sale price. Technically, this is not e- commerce, rather it is more along the lines of affiliate marketing and promotion, but the growth potential is the same as the other options highlighted in this section.

This is more of a high-tech option. If you are a software developer or are good with WordPress/Woocommerce and their plugins, you can set up a complete marketplace for any niche and take a percentage per sale made or offer a subscription.

If you have been researching making money online for a while, you would have surely come across freelancing. It is basically where a person does not work for an organization, rather works for him- self/herself and can choose the kind of jobs they want to do. Each job is task-based and once the task is done, the job will either discontinue or in some cases, the task owner may retain the freelancer to carry out additional tasks for a cost. Many people have generated a full-time income through freelancing and a few have even set up their businesses out of it. The main platforms for getting freelancing projects include:

Freelancer
Upwork
Fiverr
Solidgigs
Freeeup
FlexJobs
Topal
PayPerHour
Outsourcely
Credo
Hubstaff Talent

Now there are different kinds of categories on these sites and you can choose the kind of jobs that suit you. However, here is a list of the most popular job types that make you some good money.

Proof reading
Writing
Graphics Designing
Virtual Assistant
Book Keeping
Transcriptionist
Digital Marketing
Facebook Promotion | SEO and SEM
Software Development
Translation

You might have heard of the term ‘Content is King’. Well, in the case of the internet, this is surely true. Developing and publishing good content is the best way to make a sustainable income. This could be making videos, writing articles, taking pictures, or a combination of all and you could be doing that on multiple platforms. You can either build your own website with complete control our you can use a platform that allows you to publish and monetize your content. Here are some methods that you can try:

Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr, medium, and the list goes on and on. These are platforms that you can use to start blogging. You can start right now. You can blog about any and everything. There are websites like Listverse that just compile lists about any topic they find interesting or is trending. There is another blog called Wonderful Engineering that talks about the latest news in tech, tech hacks, entrepreneurship, and other similar topics. You can also just talk about yourself and some of your experiences e.g. Rookie Moms is a blog about being a mom and the author just talks about her day-to-day life and challenges. So, the idea is that you blog about any topic that feels passionate about and wants to give your point of view on it.

Running your blog can help you generate revenue through multiple streams e.g. putting up Google Adsense, Videos, Fidelity Media, etc. (which will either pay you per ad click or per ad view), use affiliate marketing, become an influencer, sell your own product, offer consultancy, etc. In the internet age, there is one golden rule Traffic Money. Now it’s up to you to make it efficient & worthwhile for yourself.

This is just slightly different from the previous point as you do not run your own blog. So the headache of promotions, SEO, network building, and so on are not your concern. All you do is develop content for someone else’s blog and get paid for it. Most of the big blogs out there use guest bloggers to generate high-quality content. You, as a guest blogger, can make anywhere from $5 to $100 per guest blog post based on the blog’s authority, the country of the target audience, and your track record.

Let’s say, you are in the health and fitness niche and a company comes to you and asks you to write a post about their new fitness program and they will pay you $$$ for it. However, this does take a while as companies look through many blogs and websites before asking them to write sponsored content. If you are a beginner then chances of getting a sponsored gig are slim. Give it some time. Develop some high-quality content regularly and you will get there.

A vlog is just a video log or blog, so if you are not a big writer and are fine with being on camera, then this would be a better option for you. In addition to that, people tend to watch videos more than reading long articles (like this one). Your revenue generation models would differ from platform to platform e.g. Youtube has a Partner Program that you can join and start making money that way. On top of that, you can use every method that you use for blogging including affiliate marketing, being an influencer etc. This is a highly recommended option if you like being in front of the camera.

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