Top Side Hustles to Make Money Online
SIDE HUSTLE PROFITS
List of Contents
Turning Private Label Articles Into Ebooks/ Reports 6
Paid Surveys (Yes This Method Still Works) 9
Top Free Blogging Platforms 15
Where To Find Affiliate Products 19
Write For Other People (As a service) 24
Selling Online Courses (E-Learning) 38
Where Can I Sell My Online Course 40
How to Make Money With Your Podcast 54
Introduction
In today’s digital age, making money online has become more accessible than ever before. With the rise of the internet, there are now countless opportunities to generate income through various online platforms and business models. Whether you are looking for a side hustle or seeking to replace your full-time job, there are plenty of ways to earn a substantial income from the comfort of your own home.
The term “how to make money online” in google returns billions of search results! Yes BILLIONS!
You probably guessed the demand of people trying to learn how to do this is enormous to say the least.
The truth is there are many different ways you can make extra money online.
However a lot of online business ventures require some money upfront to get things going.
This seems to put a lot of people off the idea of trying to make this work for them. As people trying to earn a few extra dollars online probably don’t have much money to invest in the first place.
Good news is there are still many ways to make extra money online and start a side hustle online which require no or very minimal investment.
In this guide there will be many different side hustle methods to make extra money online that just about anybody with an internet connection and a laptop could do. Most of the methods require no money or investment to start either.
All that is required from you is to put the work in, time and energy will be required to make these methods work. Nothing will come to you for free, however if you put in the simple work you can reap the rewards.
As the saying goes “you get out of it, what you put into it”
You’re here because you understand the Internet can help you grow your business. You might not even have a business right now. Even so, you can envision building an online presence that can eventually replace your current income. You’re also here because you would like to do so with spending as little money as possible, or if any, if you can help it.
A lot of marketers do this. They want to “test drive” a system or process to see if it’s profitable before they invest a lot of money. This makes sense. Your first business might not take off. You may have to try a few different online business models before you find one that is perfect for you. Then after that business begins to make money, you can begin investing some of your profits to expand.
Before that happens, you have to get started.
That’s what this report will help you do. Even if you have some money to invest in a business, you don’t have to do that right away. You can grow your current business or start a new one without spending any money. All you need is an Internet connection and some spare time.
One of the quickest ways to get a product you can sell online is to use free PLR. What’s PLR and how can you use it to create a passive income stream? Let’s take a look.
Turning Private Label Articles Into Ebooks/ Reports
PLR stands for private label rights. When a writer attaches private label rights to his content, he’s giving you the right to use that content as your own. You get intellectual property rights to the content. You can claim it as your own, modify it, use it as is, and do whatever you like with it. Free PLR can be used to create e-books you can sell on your website or blog.
You could always hire someone to write books for you. That can cost a lot of money, even for a short book. Free PLR means you don’t have to pay a freelancer to write for you. You can publish as many books as you want, without writing a single word!
Of course, you could write your own books, but how long will that take? When you find a reliable, quality PLR provider, you can download a free e-book in seconds! You can sell it immediately and keep 100% of the profits.
You save time and money. If you aren’t a very good writer, you can get your hands on some really impressive, well-written content you’ll be proud to claim as your own.
You can create a large library of e-books with minimal effort that provide a passive income stream for years.
And think about this. When you have your name on a book, you earn instant respect. Your prospects see you as a leader in your field.
Imagine this scenario.
You’re trying to decide which of two marketers to do business with. The products they offer are virtually identical. You could use one or the other, it really makes no difference. Their products are something you need, so you are going to go with one business or the other.
Price-wise they’re the same. The quality is similar. Their function, price, availability, features and warranty are so much the same as to make them twins.
Now imagine this. One of these marketers has a free e-book that talks about how to use his product. It tells you everything there is to know about it. All features and functions are explained so you can get the most out of your purchase. This businessperson has other books on subjects that are important to you.
The other marketer has no books. Who do you do business with?
You’d probably go with the marketer that has e-books that solve problems, answer questions and explain processes that interest you. He’s providing more value than his competitor.
Some of the wealthiest and most successful internet marketers used free PLR this way when they started out. Some continue to do so. You can too. The only investment is a little time and energy on your part.
Paid Surveys (Yes This Method Still Works)
Surveys help businesses grow. They can help a company raise its profit margins and lower its return percentage. Most of all, surveys tell companies what their customers and prospects are thinking.
Surveys are a great way of letting customers tell businesses what they like and don’t like about their products and services. Then the business just needs to implement a game plan for making smart changes.
Online surveys expose companies to thousands or even millions of opinions. It’s less expensive for a company to conduct an online survey than at a brick-and-mortar location, and they can reach more people.
You join an online surveying company and they will put you in touch with companies that pay you for your opinion. Signing up is free. You can create a steady cash flow that can put a few hundred dollars in your pocket every month. Take more poles and you make more money. Here are a few legitimate paid survey businesses where you can start making money in just a few minutes.
Swagbucks
How big is Swagbucks in the paid survey industry? They are the Google of their market. They’re the Amazon. If you join just one legit online survey website, make it Swagbucks. They have handed out more than $600 million in payments to their members. Aside from surveys, you can get paid to play games, search the web and watch videos.
Swagbucks will even pay you to make online purchases and take trial offers. There are prize drawings and you can get paid in money or vouchers. Swagbucks usually offers an exclusive sign up bonus as well. Swagbucks is legitimate, reliable, and the site is well organized and easy to use.
How much money can you expect to make?
If you want to make the most money possible, take surveys and polls every day. There are 11 different ways to earn Swagbucks (SB points), but polls and surveys pay the best.
You can expect to take around 10 minutes to complete a survey. When you learn the process you can realistically earn between $6 and $7 per hour. You could make a little more or a little less.
Inbox Dollars
You earn money by shopping online, watching videos and answering surveys. You can take polls and click on links in emails. There are plenty of ways to make money with Inbox Dollars. Just choose what you want to do and ignore the rest.
You are clearly told how much you make per task. Most other paid survey companies pay you in points. Then you have to earn so many points to get paid in cash. For instance, Inbox Dollars clearly tells you that you will get a penny for each email you click or each video stream you watch. Surveys can earn you $0.25 to $1.50; sometimes a little less and sometimes more. Inbox Dollars is currently offering a $5 sign-up bonus.
Prize Rebel
Prize Rebel has been paying people to take surveys since 2010. The company offers daily challenges to keep you coming back every day. You can earn reward points on top of getting paid for taking reviews and polls, and performing other tasks. You are paid in points, with 100 points equaling $1. You can accept pay in gift cards, through PayPal or in Bitcoins. Prize Rebel boasts that it only takes 10 seconds to sign up and start making money.
Survey Junkie
Survey Junkie carries an A+ rating by the Better Business Bureau. What I like about them is that they only do surveys. They don’t pay you a few pennies for watching a 10 minute video or ask you to click on links in emails.
This is just surveys and polls.
Surveys may require testing out a product or receiving a phone call. Most of them are just straightforward online surveys. Survey junkie usually pays worth three dollars or less for their surveys. However, there are often surveys which pay up to $50 or more. Obviously, these are in-depth surveys which will take several hours of your time. Payment is made through PayPal or you can opt for an electronic gift card.
Life Points
With over 5 million users, Life Points is one of the most popular paid review sites. You can earn money taking surveys after you list all your demographic details. You can also participate in product reviews. You are paid in Life Points which can be converted to cash and paid out through PayPal or gift cards. What’s really neat is that if you get disqualified after taking a survey, you still get paid. Another nice bonus is the low payout threshold of just $5.
Start To Blog
The average annual salary for a CEO is around $250,000. There are bloggers make that much money every month. That’s not a misprint. I’m not exaggerating. There are plenty of bloggers making more than $100,000 every 30 days, month in and month out.
You probably have never heard of Tim Sykes. He used to trade penny stocks and now he’s an Instagram influencer and blogger. He has cashed in on his previous knowledge of financial markets. On his blog he sells DVD courses that teach people how to trade penny stocks, just like he used to. If you need any proof that blogging can make you money online, consider this.
Tim Sykes makes more than $1 million each month from his blog.
So, how do you get started? Many bloggers use the WordPress platform to build an online presence. They buy a domain name for $15 or $20. That domain name needs to be repurchased every year for them to retain it. Then the website has to be hosted on a physical server. That can cost anywhere from $5 to $20 per month. WordPress offers free themes for you to build your blog. They also have themes you can buy.
That’s a very typical setup for many beginning bloggers.
As you can see the costs to start a blog are very low, and ideally you would want to host your own blog with your own wordpress install as you get much more control in what you can do. So always opt for this option first if you can afford to do so.
However if you cant afford the costs to start a blog with your own domain and hosting there are some free blogging platforms out there. So you could always start here and get your own blog later down the line.
Top Free Blogging Platforms
Some companies let you build a blog for free. You use their servers to host your blog. You don’t have to buy a domain name or pay for hosting. Many of them are user-friendly and have a number of themes to choose from.
It’s easy to build a blog quickly. You choose a theme, a name for your blog, and that’s it. Then you start putting up blog posts. You can add videos and images, and monetize your blog in a number of ways.
Not all the top free blogging platforms allow you to monetize anyway you want. They may only let you earn income on your blog a few different ways. However, this is an absolutely free way to get started blogging.
The following are the most popular and reliable free blogging sites. I’ve included links so you can get started right away. Just click on the name of the blog provider to begin building your own moneymaking blog.
- Wix.com
- Joomla.org
- WordPress.com
- Blogger.com
- HubPages.com
So, how do you make money from a blog? There are dozens of different ways to monetize your blog. You can sell advertising space. You can charge businesses a monthly fee for display ads or for hyperlinks back to your website. Why not sell the e-books you created with free PLR? You can sell online courses or physical products, turn your blog into a paid membership site or use the next free online moneymaker we’re about to discuss … affiliate marketing.
Affiliate Marketing
Have you heard of this little website called Amazon? The company Jeff Bezos created to sell physical books is now the largest retail company in the world. As of July 2019, Amazon was valued at a staggering $797 billion. Why are we talking about Amazon in relation to how you can earn money online without spending any money?
It’s because Amazon’s biggest marketing and advertising tool is affiliate marketing.
Amazon will pay you if you send someone to their site and that person makes a purchase of any kind. This is their number one advertising tool. Millions of people just like you spend their time and money sending traffic to Amazon. Mister Bezos created the world’s largest and most valuable retail company by letting you and other affiliate marketers advertise for him.
Here’s how affiliate marketing works.
You sign-up as an independent marketer with a company that has an affiliate marketing program. Log into your affiliate account. Then find a product or service you want to market. As an affiliate, you’ll be given a unique, one-of-a-kind url for each product the company offers.
No one in the world has that URL but you. You share the URL with your friends on social media, through email, in your signature file on forums and in chat rooms, and everywhere else online. Whenever anyone clicks on that link, they are taken to the sales page of that product. If they purchase that product or anything else from the company you are affiliated with, you get paid a sales commission.
Here’s the great part. Some companies offer cookies which last 30 days, 90 days or even an entire year.
What are cookies, besides a delicious snack? On the Internet, the word cookie applies to a small piece of data. In the affiliate marketing world, a cookie helps a company differentiate you from other marketers.
Imagine for a moment that you form an affiliate marketing partnership with Amazon. You advertise your unique Amazon URL for a product. Someone clicks on that link and heads over to Amazon. The Amazon software uses a cookie to mark the date and time of that visit, the identity of the person that clicked on your link, and your identity as well. If that person makes a purchase before the Amazon cookie expires, the company knows they owe you a sales commission. That’s how cookies work online.
If someone you send to the company makes a purchase within a cookie’s timeframe, you get your commission. It doesn’t matter if they purchase the item you are representing or anything else. As long as they used your unique affiliate link and made a purchase before your cookie expired, you get paid.
Amazon makes it easy to get started as an affiliate marketer.
They pay up to 10% commission on their millions of products. All you have to do is get people to click on your link and they’re taken to Amazon. Amazon is regarded as one of the most trusted and reputable online retailers. They’re very good at getting people to purchase things.
Your only job is to send people to Amazon, and the marketing geniuses there give you a great opportunity at earning a commission. If you’re interested in becoming an affiliate marketer, Amazon is a great place to start.
By the way, affiliate marketing is one of the quickest and easiest ways to make money online. It doesn’t cost a thing for you to sign up and become an affiliate. Some companies pay commissions as high as 25% or 50%, some even higher. You don’t have to deal with customers. You don’t handle returns or product delivery. You don’t do anything but drive traffic.
Remember the wealthy bloggers we talked about above? Many of them make 5 or 6 figures each month from affiliate marketing.
Where To Find Affiliate Products
I recommend becoming an affiliate marketer in partnership with Amazon. They do such a good job at closing the sale. All you have to do is drive traffic there. On the downside, there commission starts off at just 4%. That may not sound like a lot, but once you start sending steady traffic to Amazon, your commission goes up according to how many products you get sold.
Amazon is far from the only company you can make money from as an affiliate marketer. Here are a couple of websites where marketers sell digital products.
- JV Zoo
- ClickBank
Commissions at JV Zoo and ClickBank run from 25% to 75%. Some smart marketers even offer a 100% commission! They do this because they know a lot of people will help them sell their digital products if they get to keep 100% of the sale price. Marketers use this method to build an email list quickly so they can market to that list later.
You can also find companies to partner with by searching through Google. Think about the type of company you would like to work with. Do you like horses? Are you always thinking and talking about fashion? Maybe you love gardening.
Whatever it is that you love, something you think about all the time, type that into Google. Then add the words “affiliate marketing program”. Here’s an example.
Bass fishing affiliate marketing program
A recent search for that phrase in Google returned more than 5.3 million results. Cabela has been selling hunting, fishing and outdoor gear since 1961. They have an affiliate program. TackleDirect, Bass Pro Shop, Old School Bass Fishing and other companies will gladly pay you a commission if you help them sell their products.
A search for “beekeeping affiliate program” reveals the following companies.
- PerfectBee.com
- BeeBuilt.com
- BeeKeepersNaturals.com
- BackYardHive.com
- NaturalApiary.com
There are hundreds of companies that you can become affiliated with in the beekeeping marketplace. No matter how obscure your interests are, there are companies somewhere that want to pay you money to help them sell their products. If you don’t believe me, check this out.
- WormFarmingRevealed.com will pay you a 50% sales commission. Just send people that want to know about worm farming to their site and you can make up to $25 per sale.
- Do you collect Russian nesting dolls? RussianLegacy.com pays up to 10% commission for every Matryoshka sale you generate.
- EarthCareGreenhouses.com has an affiliate program. They pay you a commission if you can get someone to buy the greenhouses they sell. Their greenhouses cost as much as $2,000, meaning you can make up to $140 on a single sale.
Head over to Google and start looking for affiliate programs that are right up your alley. This is a great way to make money online without spending a penny. You can market products you care about that are associated with topics and hobbies you’re interested in. What could be better than that?
Write And Make Money
Selling Books On Amazon
Earlier we talked about how you can turn free PLR into e-books you can sell online. You can definitely make some money doing this. The only problem is that you can’t sell these e-books in the Amazon Kindle store unless you totally change them.
There are a lot of successful marketers that sell e-books on their websites and blogs. They take free PLR or PLR they pay for, change the cover, slap their name on it, and start making money. Because PLR articles, reports and e-books are sold to more than one person, this means they’re not unique.
Amazon only allows unique e-books to be sold on their Kindle platform.
This isn’t a big deal if you have time on your hands and some writing talent. You reword the content in your PLR articles and e-books to make it unique. Then you run your e-book through a service like CopyScape or Plagiarism Detector. Those companies compare your content with all the content on the World Wide Web and let you know if yours is 100% unique or not. As long as you have content that is not worded exactly the same anywhere else on the World Wide Web, you can publish your e-book on Amazon.
Instead of using PLR to give you ideas about what to write about, you can do your own research. Google is a boon for writers. It’s an endless source of information, facts and figures, opinions and knowledge. Come up with a topic and title for a book and the combination of Google and your writing ability can result in a bestseller. The top places to publish and sell your e-book online are …
- Amazon
- iTunes
- Kobo Reading Life
- NookPress
- SmashWords
Amazon owns 83% of the e-book marketplace in the US. They control the majority of the global e-book marketplace as well. People that read e-books shop for them on Amazon.
Simply put, e-book authors need to be on Amazon.
Write For Other People (As a service)
You can also make money online without any startup costs as a freelance writer. You use your writing skills to create content for other people. There are plenty of online marketers that have very little time on their hands. They have several websites that need fresh content, but they don’t have the time to write it.
A lot of these marketers understand they don’t write very well. They are more than happy to pay you for your writing ability.
One of the easiest ways to get started as a freelance writer is to talk to the people you know. Do you know anyone that has a website or blog? Tell them you’ll write a few pieces of content for them in exchange for a testimonial. This gives you samples you can show to potential clients. It gives you a testimonial that acts as social proof to help convince people to hire you. You also get a link you can give prospective customers where they can check out your work online.
Then it’s simply a matter of selling yourself. Spend some time searching for companies you’d like to work for. Contact those companies and offer your services as a remote content writer. A tip here is to stay away from huge companies and micro-businesses. Small and medium-size companies are the best.
You can find someone in the “About Us” section of those sites you can identify with. Make note of some personal detail. Mention it when you shoot out an email. It shows that you took the time to get to know that person. It can help you make a connection that could pay off for years.
Use Google to Find Writing Work
The folks at StatCounter love to crunch numbers. They do research all day along and spit out the facts, figures and statistics on a number of markets.
StatCounter tells us that Google owns 92.96% of the search engine market.
Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, DuckDuckGo and all other search engines scrap over less than 8% of search traffic. Google owns basically the entire search engine market. So guess where people go when they’re looking to hire a writer? That’s right, they go to Google.
You can use Big G’s dominance to your advantage when looking for work. There are certain ways you can list search terms to find out what other people are looking for. One way is to enclose a specific phrase in quotation marks.
For instance, if you were to search for “looking for a writer” and include the quotation marks, Google would show every web page that has the exact phrase “looking for a writer”. This is a sneaky way to find out where people are looking for writers like you. A company that needs a good writer may have that phrase on one of the pages of their site. Someone may have typed that phrase on an Internet marketing forum like the Warrior Forum.
Some entrepreneurs look for writers on Craigslist. Others use classified ad sites and freelancing sites like Freelancer and UpWork to look for writing help. In the blink of an eye, Google scours its index of web pages and delivers every page that has the exact phrase “looking for a writer” on it. This is absolute gold for the writer looking for work.
Take some time and look through the results. This is a numbers game. You may have to spend a few hours going through dozens of search results, but you will eventually find work. You can also look for the following phrases
- “We need a writer”
- “We need a freelance writer”
- “Writer needed”
- “Freelance writer needed”
- “Write for us”
Remember to enclose your search term in quotation marks. This gives you a list of all web pages Google has indexed that has that exact phrase; those exact words in that order. This is a time-consuming process, but it puts you in direct touch with people who are looking for writers.
Join a Freelance Site
As a freelance writer you can also join the following websites. This is where people go to look for writers just like you.
- UpWork
- Toptal
- Fiverr
- Freelancer
- PeoplePerHour
It’s free to sign-up. Add a picture with your smiling face and make sure to completely fill out your profile. You can upload samples of your work and testimonials you have received from previous customers.
If you are just starting out as a writer, accept jobs at any pay scale. You might only make $5 or $10 for a short article, but you’ll get a testimonial and a work sample. These freelance websites ask their customers to rate the freelancers they hire. Do really great work and your rate will go up, meaning you can demand higher prices in the future.
Remember, the squeaky wheel gets the most oil. The more people you approach, the more writing jobs you are going to get. The most talented writers often struggle to make money because they don’t know how to market themselves. Market your services everywhere online and you can stay busy as a freelance writer.
Start A YouTube Channel
Over 500 million hours of videos are viewed on YouTube each day. That’s more than 20 million days’ worth of viewing taking place every 24 hours. YouTube has over 1 billion regular viewers. Web Marketing Pros tells us that video is responsible for nearly 80% of consumer web traffic. Insivia.com reports that 64% of video viewers are likely to buy a product online after watching a video.
According to Online Publishers Association, 8 out of 10 consumers remember a video ad they viewed in the past month. Most video viewing happens on mobile phones. That’s great, because 92% of people that watch a video on a mobile device share that video with others.
On top of all that, studies continue to show year after year that video converts much better than text alone. Do you want more proof that you need to be posting videos on YouTube for free to make money online? If so, consider this.
YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. It is owned by the largest search engine, Google. This is why YouTube videos rank well on Google.
You should be starting a YouTube channel for a lot of reasons. One of the best reasons is that uploading videos on YouTube is free. It doesn’t cost a thing. Sure, you have to make the videos, but you can do that with your smartphone. Some desktop and almost all laptops have built-in cameras and microphones. This means you can make videos without owning a traditional camera or camcorder.
Here are a few applications and software downloads that allow you to record screenshots and anything you’re doing on your computer.
- Screenshot Captor
- SnapDraw Free
- Jing
- Screencast-o-Matic
- FreeScreenRecording.com
They make it possible to record videos without having a camera. Many of them have instant YouTube upload capability.
Making Money on YouTube
Become a YouTube Partner
The easiest way to make money with YouTube is simply to get people to watch your videos. Start posting lots of videos. If any of your videos begin to get a lot of viewers, YouTube notices. They will start adding advertisements in and around your video. In return for the right to monetize your videos, YouTube pays you for every 1,000 views.
This means you don’t have to try to make money directly in your videos. Just create content that people want to watch and share with others. There are plenty of marketers who make a good living on YouTube this way.
This moneymaking method requires that you become a YouTube Partner. You can find more info on about this program on their website.
The YouTube Partner Program requires that you have at least 10,000 total channel views before you sign-up. If you have 10 videos on your channel, they only need to get 1,000 views each for you to hit that minimum requirement.
Once you get 10,000 total channel views you can become a YouTube Partner. Influencer Marketing Hub says that you can earn up to $70 daily if your videos produce 10,000 views per day. The more engagement that occurs with your videos, the more money you make. Also depends on what niche your videos are in as some earn more than others.
Make Money with Google AdSense
Once you’re approved as a partner by YouTube, you can make money from the site’s parent company, Google. Big G has an advertising system called AdSense. You can connect AdSense to your YouTube channel.
Then advertisers using AdSense pay you based on the number of impressions your videos get. An impression occurs when someone either watches and ad that plays during your video, or clicks on an ad. Again, the key is in producing videos that get lots of views. The more views the more impressions, and the more money you make.
Upload Videos to YouTube Premium
YouTube Premium is YouTube without advertising. Once you have 1,000 active subscribers you can load videos here. Then you can either offer your videos for free, or put them behind a pay wall. Users pay to watch your videos and to have their comments and messages highlighted during any live stream videos you post.
YouTube Plus Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is no doubt one of the easiest and most hands-off online moneymaking methods. During your videos you can share your affiliate links. You can also place these links in the video description and transcript. This is a great way to take advantage of all the free traffic the second largest search engine in the world has to offer.
Sell Your Own Physical or Digital Products
With affiliate marketing, you are getting people to buy products and services you have not created. Why not use YouTube videos to sell your own stuff? You can advertise your products in your videos and in the description and transcript. You can drive traffic back to your website where you are selling e-books, other digital products or physical products.
Freelance Your Skills
What is it you do well? What are you good at doing, better than most people? Whatever that answer is, if it’s possible to deliver that service over the Internet, you can become a freelancer.
The word freelance comes from medieval times. Mercenaries (professional soldiers) would fight for anyone as long as they were paid well. The lance was a long pole with a metal tip used by soldiers on horseback. Fight-for-money soldiers were not obligated to one king or even one country. In their minds they were free to sell their lancing abilities to anyone. They freelanced.
Today’s freelancers don’t have a single employer. They work remotely and deliver their services through the Internet. Just about any product or service which can be delivered digitally through the Internet can be offered on the top freelancing sites we mentioned earlier. Here they are to refresh your memory.
- UpWork
- Toptal
- Fiverr
- Freelancer
- PeoplePerHour
Many freelancers make a full-time income on these top freelancing websites.
Are you a talented web designer? There are a lot of people looking for your services online right now. The same is true if you have great customer service skills or know how to use social media to drive web traffic. A lot of busy entrepreneurs hire virtual assistant (VA) freelancers to handle a number of tasks.
Can you spot a misspelled word or grammatical error in text without trying to? You could become a freelance proofreader. Graphic designers, transcriptionists and app developers can offer their talents as a freelancer. It costs absolutely nothing to sign up and nothing to build your profile.
Upload a few samples of your work and browse top freelancing sites for customers. Like just about every moneymaking method in this report, it just takes your time, determination and abilities to earn money.
(Many of the moneymaking methods in this report can be offered on freelance websites.)
Take on a Micro Task
Sometimes your day is filled with small tasks. You don’t have any big, daunting responsibilities. You look over your to do list and see that everything you need to have done by the end of the day will take 5 or 10 minutes. That sounds great at first. You think that you will be able to take care of all your responsibilities and have plenty of time left. It’s not always that simple. If you have a lot of small jobs before you know it, your entire day is gone.
You could call these jobs micro tasks.
Micro tasks are mini jobs. They’re small tasks that can usually be completed in a very short period of time. They’re quick and simple. A lot of businessmen and women have many of these types of tasks they have to complete every day, and every week. They know their time would be better spent on other aspects of their business, so they pay you to take on these responsibilities.
Before you read on, understand that nobody is going to pay you a lot of money for a task that might take you 5 minutes. Would you pay someone a lot of money to do something that you could do in a few minutes? Of course you wouldn’t. This is not the way to make the most money online. What it is going to give you is money for something that isn’t very hard to do and doesn’t take very long.
Micro tasks appeal to people that may have several breaks during the day. You might not have an extended stretch of several hours to work online. Maybe there are 4 or 5 times throughout your day where you can work for 30 minutes or an hour.
If so, micro tasks might be perfect for you.
It’s free to sign-up and take on these micro jobs. You are definitely not going to get rich doing this, but it is one of the easiest ways to make money online without any upfront costs. Here are a few of the best micro job websites to get you started.
- Microworkers
- RapidWorkers
- Amazon’s Mechanical Turk
- ClickWorker
Sign up and start browsing. You can get paid to read a blog post and leave a comment. Some marketers will hire you to watch their YouTube videos and comment on them. You can get paid for interaction on social media sites and for creating email accounts. Some marketers will pay you to test their products or rate apps they’ve developed.
At first you may have to take on tasks that pay very little money. That’s okay. The more tasks you perform successfully, the higher your rating goes.
As you complete more and more jobs your improved rating becomes attractive to a lot of job posters. You can eventually make more money completing these miniature tasks, but there is one thing you definitely have to do to make this work for you.
Record everything you do.
Keep track of how much you make and how much time it took you to earn that money. Don’t forget the time spent browsing for jobs and applying for tasks. At the end of 30 or 60 days figure how much you’re making per hour of effort. Then you can decide whether this proven method of making money without spending any money is right for you.
Selling Online Courses (E-Learning)
When you sell e-books on Amazon they are going to be priced between $.99 and $9.99. The sweet spot for pricing, where most sales take place, is the $.99 to $2.99 range.
Amazon takes a bit of each sale. If you price your e-book between $2.99 and $9.99 you receive a hefty 70% of the sale price. Any other price and you only get 35% of the sale. I don’t mention this to make you think you can’t make a great living selling e-books on Amazon. You just have to sell a lot of books. This means you have to produce a lot of books and market a lot of books.
The beauty of selling e-books on Amazon or anywhere else is that you only have to write the book one time. Then you get it up on the web where the Internet gives you exposure 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year.
I mention e-books here as a comparison to online courses. Once you get comfortable in front of the camera on your smartphone or laptop, you can whip together a video course in just a couple of hours. You can use the screen capture applications I mentioned earlier in the YouTube video section to make videos.
You don’t need videos as the basis for your online course. You can just use text. However, video courses have a much higher perceived value, so you can charge more for them than text-based courses.
Online you’ll find most text-based courses selling from $7 to $27. The same information delivered in a video course can go for as much as $47 or $97. A high quality video course could fetch $97 or $197 or much more. People prefer videos to text and will happily pay more for videos.
How many modules should your video course contain? You want at least 5 different video modules and no more than 9 or 10. People today like quick wins. They want to get what they’re looking for quickly. This means each video module should not be more than 10 minutes long. If you only have 5 or 6 modules, you might be able to get away with your videos being 15 or 20 minutes in length.
Many times you will be able to create a video course much more quickly than a text-based course with the same content. This means you make more money with a smaller time investment.
Whether you create text-based or video-based online courses, provide value. Solve big problems. Answer big questions. Change lives. Make your content valuable to your prospects and sales will take care of themselves. Now that you have created an online course, how do you make money off of it? Let’s take a look.
Where Can I Sell My Online Course
You can sell video and text-based courses online a number of places. Sell individual text-based modules as e-books on Amazon. Then combine them into one large box set where you can charge a higher price. You can also sell text-based and video courses at the following places.
- Udemy
- Teachable
- SkillShare
- JV Zoo
- ClickBank
If you don’t know what to make a course about, think about what you do very well. Is there a subject you know everything about? It doesn’t matter what it is. There are people out there looking for information on popular and obscure subjects.
If you have a lot of knowledge about something, you can make an online course. The beauty of online courses is that you make them once and sell them forever. The Internet allows you to post your online course in a number of places online. Everywhere your course is offered, you have a silent salesman that works day and night to sell that course.
Advertising on social media sites. Offer it to your email list. If you don’t have a list of email subscribers, offer it to your friends, family members and colleagues through email. Go to a site like JV Zoo or ClickBank and offer a hefty commission for people to sell your course for you. Hand out a 50% or 75% percent commission on those sites and you can get big-name affiliate marketers to sell your online course.
The first thing you have to do is make your course.
Don’t think perfection. Marketers use a term called Minimally Viable Product (MVP). This means your course just has to be good enough but not perfect. It’s okay if the video isn’t perfect. If the audio isn’t world-class that’s okay. Your second production of an online course will be better than your first. Your third will be better than your second. Just get started. As with everything on this list, you have to take action. Create an online course and start selling it.
Make Money With Side Gigs
Have you heard of the “Gig Economy”? The word “gig” was popular in the 1960s in the US. It was used to refer to a short period of employment. Musicians would refer to one-time performances as gigs. People with part-time jobs that only used them a few hours each week and eventually ended call those jobs side gigs.
The word is used the same way when referring to the current Gig Economy.
In the past, someone would work for a single company for 40 or 50 years and then retire. There are obvious benefits for both parties in this kind of situation. The company benefits because they have someone that they only have to train once to do a job. They are not constantly hiring and training people. The employee benefits by having stable, reliable employment. He doesn’t have to constantly pound the pavement and hit the road looking for work.
There are plenty of companies today that use this same employment model. There are also many companies large and small that prefer hiring short-term employees.
This way they don’t have to pay a pension at the end of a 30 or 40 year employment. They don’t have to provide benefits like health insurance, personal time and paid vacation days. The employee or contractor benefits by being able to pick and choose jobs whenever and wherever he can work. Thanks to the Internet and the World Wide Web, a worker doesn’t even need to leave his or her home to perform short-term gigs. A person can make a full-time living with these gigs, or keep their current job and perform online gigs in his spare time.
Some companies that hire you for a gig will use you over and over again. Other times you have to constantly pop from one gig to another to make money. Fortunately, there are websites that make finding gigs easy.
Companies pay these websites to find gig workers for them. It’s free for you to open an account with these gig finding sites. Some have you perform a series of tests so that you qualify for certain gigs. With others you can get started right away. With most of them, the more gigs you complete, the more money you’re paid per gig.
At all of the following sites, you are acting as a part-time employee taking on short, simple jobs.
- Fiverr
I talk about Fiverr a lot in this report. The upside is that you can make money so many different ways on this website. It is free to set up an account and offer samples of your work. You can do anything and everything. You can offer a wide variety of services or just one service or digital product.
The site is called Fiverr because jobs and services start at $5. The majority of jobs are $5 or $10. Most jobs can be completed very quickly. Customers rate you and the higher rated Fiverr freelancers command higher prices.
- Guru.com
If you have an expertise in just about any area then you might be able to find some gigs on guru. The site offers thousands of freelance jobs at any time. You can search for hourly jobs or fixed-price payments. Jobs can be searched by category, location and other filters. If you have any previous work you would like to share as an example of your high-quality abilities, you can add it to your profile.
One neat thing about this site that’s different than most of the others on this list is the virtual “Work Room”. Here you can schedule your tasks so you can keep organized. This is where you communicate with the folks that hire you. It’s nice to have a record of your communication with the people that you work for.
- Behance.net
This is the place you can should go if you’re a creative type of person. You can land photography and designer gigs. Illustrators and other creatives can also find work here. Just like with Fiverr and the other companies on this list, Behance.net allows you to show off your portfolio. You can filter the available part-time jobs by field, company, location and keyword.
- Gigster.com
Do you know a lot about information technology (IT)? If you are knowledgeable in this field, Gigster.com is the place for you. The focus here is on software development but there are other IT gigs available. As you can imagine because of the focus of this website, you will need to go through a screening process and application.
Gigster.com gets a percentage of your fee for any project you complete. On the positive side, your expertise in IT is well rewarded here. Compared to other sites that help you find gigs, the money you can make here is at the very high-end of the spectrum. Many jobs are extremely lucrative.
- Task Rabbit
Task Rabbit is another gig landing site. Companies and individuals looking for local help advertise here. Some of the things you can do are online, but the vast majority of part-time gigs are going to be local and offline.
You can browse chores in your local area. You might be asked to clean someone’s home or deliver groceries. Some are one-time jobs but you can also find once a week or once a month jobs. There aren’t too many jobs offered for IT professionals and creatives but if you have some spare time, you can get to work right now in your local area and make some money.
- Gigwalk
This is another local gig website. It’s easy and free to sign up. Just download the Gigwalk app and open an account. You just have to answer a few basic questions and register your best email address. You have to have a PayPal account to get paid. Once you’re set up (which only takes a few minutes) you can browse for and complete gigs in your local area.
Gigs can take as little as 5 minutes to complete, or as long as several hours. A quick check of the website reveals that you can make anywhere from $3 to $100 for each gig. Everything is done through the app. As soon as your job is finished and approved, the money is sent directly to your PayPal account.
Become A Tester
Smart companies want to know what people think about their products and services. In a brick-and-mortar business, a company can do this by performing exit interviews. They ask customers leaving their stores a series of questions that help them make the experience better for future customers.
This happens in the online world as well. You may have received an invitation to take a short survey after you purchased something online. This gives the company valuable information. They can use this data to create better products and more value for the customer.
Sometimes companies will pay someone to test out its products. This happens to the big influencers on social media all the time. Companies send their physical products to have people review them on social media.
Another way to get this information is to get a third party involved.
Sites like UserTesting supply digital product testers for companies. Companies can have their mobile apps and websites, digital and physical products tested. The companies pay UserTesting a fee and UserTesting pays people like you to complete a series of tasks or to use a website or application. You record yourself in real time in audio talking about your experience.
This way a company gets a real person using its products, whether they be digital or physical in nature. You give your true feelings about your experience. You get paid for your feedback. This is a win/win/win situation for everyone.
You win because you make money without having to spend any money. You can earn up to $60 per test or per set of tasks. The company wins because they can use this information to make superior products for their customers. This makes the customers happy and the company can make more money. UserTesting wins too. They charge companies a fee for providing the service. Everybody wins.
UserTesting is not the only company that offers this service. There are a few more legitimate companies that operate basically the same way. While UserTesting is definitely the biggest of the companies that pay you to test websites and applications, here are a few more you may want to work with.
- Enroll
This company is basically the same as UserTesting. What’s cool is you can take the tests on a desktop computer, laptop, phone or your tablet. You need to have an account with PayPal to get paid. If you don’t have a lot of time on your hands, there are short jobs and tests. The longer the test the more you get paid.
- UserFeel
You get paid $10 for each test you perform. Just like most of the user testing websites out there, all you have to do is sign up, take a test, pass it, and get paid. You will have to complete a sample test before you’re approved. Payments are made once a week through PayPal.
- TestingTime
This is another user testing website. It works a little differently, requiring you to perform each study via Skype. You have to have between 30 and 90 minutes of free time for each test. Payments are offered through PayPal and take 5 to 10 days after your test has been completed to hit your account.
- UserLytics
Most user testing companies just have you test websites and applications. UserLytics pays you $10 per assignment and you can choose to test websites and apps if you like. However, this site is unique in its field because you can also check out prototypes, concepts and physical products.
- TryMyUI
TryMyUI says you can make $10 in just 15 minutes. To do so you need to pass a qualification test first. This proves you understand the process you will be going through and you meet certain requirements. You are sent testing opportunities to your inbox and you can pick and choose the ones you like. Payments are made twice a week through PayPal.
Start A Podcast
Podcasting is the new blogging. Blogging is definitely a great way to get started making money online, and you can do so for free. You can start a blog, run it and make money from it without spending a penny. All you need is time and a little elbow grease.
The same thing is true with podcasting.
On the plus side, there are far fewer podcasts than there are blogs. This is why I said podcasting is the new blogging. Your podcasting competition is nowhere near as tough as your blogging competition. That’s the way blogging used to be.
How many blogs are there on the World Wide Web? GrowthBadger tells us there were 600 million blogs as of June 2019. That company also reveals that a whopping 5.76 million blog posts are published each day. That’s a new 4,000 blog posts that hit the Internet every minute!
There are currently only about 700,000 podcasts. That’s 599,300,000 fewer competitors!
This doesn’t mean blogging is a bad idea. It just means you’re going to have to work to make it profitable enough to supply a full-time income. The benefit of blogging is that it’s easy. If you have a computer and an Internet connection, you can start blogging in the next few minutes.
That’s not true with podcasting. Podcasting requires much more technical abilities. You’re going to have to learn how to set up a microphone and attach it to your computer. The best podcasts use a mixing board to get their audio just perfect. A lot of podcasts record their episodes in video so they can hit YouTube with their content.
Now for the good news. You can start a blog using just your smartphone, your laptop or desktop computer.
Most computers these days have a camera and microphone. You can purchase an inexpensive headset with microphone attached for $20 or $30. Sticking with the theme of this report, it’s not necessary to buy a headset. You can record short podcast episodes on your smartphone. The quality of audio recorded with phones and computers is higher than it has been in the past. This means your podcast audio will be just fine.
The Benefits of Podcasting
You can start a podcast for free. Once you start making money from your podcast you only need to invest $100 or $200 for a quality setup. This is definitely a no to low cost online moneymaker. Another benefit of podcasting is that you receive an instant and significant boost to your credibility and authority in your field. Most people don’t have the ability or the confidence to record their voice and opinion and broadcast it to the world. They look at you as a very accomplished individual because of this.
By the way, podcast listeners keep going back for more content.
Have you ever listened to a podcast episode? Chances are you listened to more than one. You probably checked out a few podcasts that were recommended by your friends. Maybe you did a web search for a particular type of podcast. Eventually you found one you really liked.
Did you listen to just one episode and never return? Of course you didn’t. You kept going back and back and back because the podcast covered a topic you’re interested in.
Once a person finds a podcast they enjoy, they listen to multiple episodes. Some people listen to the same podcast for years. This is great news. Get your listeners hooked and you can count on steady traffic.
This is not a one-and-done experience with your listeners.
Another benefit is that podcasts have a truly global reach. The Internet once again lets you market yourself to the world. Another great benefit of podcasting is that there are numerous ways to monetize your podcast.
How to Make Money With Your Podcast
So, how will you make money from your podcast? The quickest way to turn your podcast into a moneymaker is to send your listeners to somewhere you are selling something.
If you have a blog where you are selling e-books, send your podcasting traffic there. Maybe you’re selling e-books on Amazon. Perhaps you have entered the world of affiliate marketing. If so, you can launch a free blog in an afternoon and drive traffic from your podcast there, where you have your affiliate marketing offers listed.
Another way to improve your relationship with your listeners while making money is to build an email list.
Podcasts are great for a lot of reasons. The power to build an engaged and quality email list is right up at the top. When people sign up to your newsletter they do so because they want to hear from you. You offer them a free report, e-book or some other digital product in return for their email address.
Even a small email list of devoted podcast listeners can make you some substantial money every month and every year. You can use this list to make money through affiliate marketing or by selling your own products and services. You can ask your list what they want and then create a product that you can sell to them. There are many ways to use your email list to make money by providing value to the people on that list.
Build a loyal following and you can make money through advertising. Advertisers will pay you money per episode if you mention their company. The more listeners you have each episode, the more money you can charge.
Smart podcasters sell advertising space before the begin at the beginning of their podcast, in the middle of a podcast episode and at the end. Just make sure that any advertising you do in the middle of your podcast is very short. You don’t want to lose listeners by launching into a long advertisement in the middle of your show.
Why not sell your entire podcast? This might not be as crazy as it sounds. If you just have 1,000 or so listeners, your podcast is valuable. There are people in your market or niche that would pay good money for your podcasting name and the listeners you have attracted.
Sell podcasting lessons.
Once you learn how to podcast, you have a skill that very few people on the planet has. Use the screen capture resources mentioned in the YouTube Videos section of this report to make a basic podcasting class. It will take nothing but your time and knowledge to film a short video course. Advertise this course on your podcast for $47 or $99 or $197 and keep 100% of the profits. You have a skill, so why not get paid for sharing that skill with other people?
Finally, you can review physical products on a video podcast.
Companies will send you their products for you to review. They pay you a fee as well. Video is believable. Companies know this. They have you open a brand-new, sealed box containing one of their products. Then you put it to use and talk about the experience on video. This allows you to post that episode on one of the podcast directories listed below, as well as YouTube. You can add affiliate links in your video description to add another monetization method.
Here are the top podcasting directories where you can publish your podcast. ITunes is the biggest of the bunch.
- iTunes
- Spotify
- Stitcher
- TuneIn
A simple google search on “how to start a free podcast” will give you plenty of step by step instructions on how you can do this.
Conclusion
Notice that a lot of these no-cost moneymakers can be combined. For instance, you can make money as an affiliate marketer on your blog. You can use a blog or website to sell e-books and other digital products. Sometimes you only need one moneymaking method to develop a pretty respectable revenue stream, but two is better than one.
Every online moneymaking method we discussed can be started with hardly any out of pocket costs to you.
The opportunities for making money online are endless, and the digital landscape is constantly evolving. This guide has provided you with a wealth of information and practical tips to help you navigate the online world and build a successful online business. However, it’s essential to remember that the key to success lies in taking action and putting what you’ve learned into practice.
The most successful online entrepreneurs are those who are continually learning, adapting, and experimenting with new ideas and strategies. With persistence, dedication, and a willingness to take risks, you can create a profitable online business that allows you to achieve your financial goals and live the life you’ve always dreamed of.
So, what are you waiting for? Get started. You can have all the knowledge in the world, but if you don’t take action on that knowledge, you go nowhere. Choose one or two of the side hustle profit methods above and take action. The most successful marketers were one day right where you are … at the beginning of their careers. They did their homework, got started and kept at it until they succeeded. You can too.
Thank You and Good Luck on Your Money Making Online Journey!
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