Are you tired of wasting hours of the day sitting in traffic on the way to the office? Do you arrive at work to a job you hate, with colleagues you can’t stand?
Unfortunately, this is a reality for millions of Americans in the workforce.
You can count yourself among the lucky few if you have a job that you enjoy. Many people battle through the working day, wasting their talent and their lives so they can support their family and pay the bills.
What if you could work from the comfort of home, and spend more quality time with your kids? Think about all the savings you would make on gas and other peripheral gas station purchases in the course of a year. How much time would you save in your commute?
We decided to help you break free from the chains of corporate slavery, and give you a few ideas on how to make money at home using the internet. Start small and build yourself toward your goal of earning a full-time income online, from the comfort of your couch.
Also Read: Our Guide to the Best Online Jobs
Choose Your Model
Before you start going through our list of online money-making opportunities, it’s essential to define the strategy you want to use. If you have a full-time job, and you’re happy with your working environment, then you might only need a side hustle to make some extra cash.
If you need to earn a second income and want a part-time job, then there are plenty of options available. However, if you’re looking for full-time employment, then you’ll also find that you have numerous occupations and employers looking to hire you for your skillset.
You need to decide how far you want to take your money-making ideas, and how much time you can afford to spend on building your online career each week.
Take Surveys
Surveys are one of the most popular methods of making money online. While you won’t be able to make a full-time living using this strategy, it will help put a few extra dollars in your bank account at the end of the month.
There are dozens of survey firms online looking for candidates to take part in their studies. In most cases, more than 80-percent of surveys focus on the American market, so you’ll need U.S. citizenship to apply.
Read: Take Surveys for Money: Best Online Survey Sites
Surveys are fun to complete and involve answering a few questions on your phone. You’ll finish in less than 10-minutes, and you can earn anywhere from $3 to $10 per survey that you take.
The survey companies award you points, and you have the option of trading these points for a PayPal cash payout, or gift cards from leading retailers like Amazon. Filling out surveys is an excellent, low-risk means of starting your online career.
Survey Junkie
Survey Junkie is the most well-known platform which will pay you for taking surveys. They have been around for over 14 years and are the leader in this area.
You can take surveys and complete other assignments to earn points which can then be redeemed for real money via PayPal. While some survey sites have a strict admission policy or even ask you for money SurveyJunkie isn’t one of them.
In fact, SurveyJunkie is the research subsidiary of DISQO!, which is a totally respectable silicon-valley company. The site is also super easy to join, although unless you live in the UK, USA, or Australia, you are unlikely to make much on the platform.
SurveyJunkie will actually give you 100 points (100 SurveyJunkie points = $1 USD) for signing up to the site and doing a few tutorials, and you should have no trouble building your survey earnings from there.
Visit Survey Junkie or Read our Full Review here.
Swagbucks
Swagbucks offer online surveys alongside a whole host of other ways to earn money and gift cards such as watching videos, using their search engine, completing daily activities and polls. You can opt to be paid in real cash, or get gift cards to merchants like Amazon if you just want some extra online spending money.
Earning money with Swagbucks is pretty straightforward. All you have to do is signup, and start doing surveys. If you spend a lot of time on the site and live in an area that is in-demand, you should be able to clear $5-7 USD per hour most of the time.
Swagbucks also has some cool programs to boost your earnings. The platform has lots of affiliate links on popular shopping sites like Amazon, which you can click on when you are shopping to make more profit. Some of your internet searches can be monetized with Swagbucks, which is another way to score some extra cash.
Visit Swagbucks or read the review.
InboxDollars
InboxDollars is another great survey site that will pay you a little bit to sign up, and has lots of easy online money-making options. Unlike many survey sites, InboxDollars pays out in cash. You will probably have to work for a few weeks to make the minimum payment, but the site offers lots of surveys you can take to earn money.
Much like other survey sites, InboxDollars has expanded into other online money-making areas. You will be able to play video games, browse the web, and shop as online gigs with InboxDollars. While the site doesn’t offer anything unique to speak of, it is totally legit and can be a good tool to have in your online money-making strategy.
Doing surveys and the like is a good way to get started making money online. If you are just looking for something to do that will earn you money, doing surveys and other easy tasks can be a great way to be more productive in your free time.
There are a lot of other options out there as well, and some can be very profitable. If you want to make more of your online career, there are loads of options for you. Let’s look at other ways to work online, that have the potential to be really lucrative.
Visit InboxDollars or Read our Full Review here.
Launch Your Blog or Vlog
If writing is your passion, then try starting a blog about your life. Blogging is a fun way to build an online platform that you can monetize in the future. Many successful bloggers earn upwards of $10,000 a month.
There are plenty of free resources that can help you set up a blog. WordPress is free, and they have plenty of custom templates available at no charge. Hosting is a few bucks a month, which you can pay for using the proceeds from your surveys.
If you are thinking about a blog as a place where you will have to show off world-class writing to make a living, think again. Blogs can make money from many different sources, and selling products is one of the best ways to turn a profit.
Becoming a reviewer, or having an opinion is enough to make money, and if you become popular, you can make some pretty respectable profits. If writing isn’t your thing, but you’re a whiz behind the video camera, consider starting a YouTube channel and uploading videos to your account.
YouTube pays you a commission on advertising based on the total amount of subscribers, and the number of views on each of your videos. If you don’t mind putting your life on the internet for everyone to see, then you could be the next Logan Paul.
Much like blogging, there is a huge market for video reviews. This might come as something of a surprise, but most people aren’t rich. You can be forgiven for thinking otherwise, given the ‘flexing’ culture in the media, but in reality, there is a reason why Casio sells ever so many watches (they are affordable).
Making it With Reviews
You might be sitting there thinking….wait!…I am not an expert on anything!
Well…where do you think experts come from?
The simple fact is that people both have to, and want to, buy things on a daily basis. Most consumer products are affordable (otherwise no one would buy them), which means getting samples to review should be easy.
It is a very good idea to choose a range of products that most people use or like, and you can enjoy. For example, if you are the one who does laundry in the home, you can start reviewing laundry products. It is a good idea to start small, with products like laundry soap, or fabric softener.
Read: What are the Best Affiliate Programs for Bloggers? Complete Guide
Like any business, you may be approached by companies who want you to try out their products and give your opinion of them. To continue the example, as your review channel or blog grows, you may expand into reviewing washers and dryers, and may even be able to score a free one from a company that makes them.
It can all start with switching your laundry soap every time you run out and doing a nice review of the new one that you start using. Unlike doing surveys online, this kind of business will take time to build-up.
The plus side is that there is a lot less competition, and you can use other ways to make money with online reviews as well. Many of these angles are detailed below, such as affiliate marketing, and running your own e-commerce store. Once you have a regular audience, many doors will probably open!
Sell Information Products
You don’t have to rely on physical products to make money online; you can sell information-based products as well. Web courses, eBooks, and blogs cost next to nothing to produce and maintain, and they can earn you an excellent monthly income if you know how to market online.
The most significant challenge with producing information-based products is selling them. You need to understand the basics of internet marketing and how to sell your products online.
If you have no marketing experience, it’s best to take an online course to learn how to promote websites using social media and SEO methods before you start executing on any of these strategies.
However, after learning a few marketing tricks, you can start executing your strategy, and you should begin to see results reasonably quickly. The best thing about all of these models is that they’re easy to scale. There’s nothing but time stopping you from building 1,000 of each of these models.
Sell a Web Course
If you have specialized knowledge on a subject, then there are millions of people out there willing to pay money to tap your expertise. If you know how to build and restore classic cars, or market websites online, you could create a course giving other people a step-by-step guide to replicating your results themselves.
Let’s say you understand how print-on-demand works. You could build a course showing people hope to source designs, sign up for a teespring account, and then create a sales funnel using Facebook Ads to capture prospects to your landing page.
Using this strategy, people will earn money, and they’re happy to pay you for the service.
Lifestyle Blogging
Do you have a hobby that’s your passion? No matter if you love cooking, or collecting Cabbage Patch Dolls, there are thousands of people online that share your love for your hobby. Starting a lifestyle blog is an excellent way to work with what you love online.
Since you have a never-ending flow of inspiration, you’ll never lose motivation for producing top-quality content. By publishing quality content and marketing your blog on social platforms and other blogs, you should start to develop a decent amount of traffic to your website.
After your blogs receiving decent volumes of new monthly visitors, you can start to monetize the site. Sign up for a Google AdSense account and display ads on your site that are relevant to your niche. The advertiser pays you every time someone clicks on the advertisement on your website.
Blogs can also benefit from sponsorship deals with companies and brands to promote them in their posts. Blogging is also another easy-to-scale business once you understand how it works. You could start a blog about making smoothies, cooking, traveling, or anything you like.
Create an EBook
Are you an expert in your field? Then try writing an eBook to sell online. Creating virtual products is an excellent way to set up a passive income stream that provides you with sales every month for years to come – with no effort in managing the process on your part.
If you…
How to Make Money Online at Home 2021: Ultimate (10,000 Word!) Guide