Are you ready to make money online, even as a total beginner?
Get ready to explore some options that can help you make money fast and in the long term. From being an online tutor to gigging with Uber to writing masterpieces with freelance writing, you can make it happen. People shop online, and many platforms pay good money to appear in search engine results to ensure people use their services and contractors.
That's where you come in: it's not exactly free money, but by putting in the hours and taking advantage of your existing expertise, you can make money online starting today.
While this isn't professional financial advice, it is written based on years of experience of making money online starting with just an internet connection and a laptop. You'll have to test websites to see which one works best for you to make money.
Most of these gigs pay via PayPal or direct deposit, but some gigs like Uber provide you with your own debit card and instant cash when you complete a job -- that's great if you need to make money online or with apps fast.
Table of Contents
Become a Freelance Writer
Do Online Surveys
Start a Dropshipping Business
Become an Affiliate Marketer
Stream Your Games and Monetize
Design Websites
Sell Online Courses
Open an Online Store
Take On Virtual Assistant (VA) Work
Become a Mechanical Turk
Earn Advertising Revenue
Get Gigging With Instacart, Shipt, Uber, Lyft
Transform Your Day Job
Additional Ways to Start Making Money Online for Beginners
Become a Freelance Writer
Freelance writing is one of the most popular ways to make money online. To get started, post a few blogs on a free WordPress blog, Medium.com (which you can also monetize if accepted into their program), or LinkedIn. Make sure your blog posts are on the niches you'd like to cover.
To ensure you can earn money online as a freelance writer, do some market research regarding rates in different niches that match your capabilities. If you're a travel writer and also have a medical background, for example, you'll find that medical writers generally earn more money.
After you've published a few pieces, you will need a portfolio. As you publish, add your bylined work to your portfolio. This will help you get more work. If you can write a good blog post about an area of your expertise, you can unlock many opportunities.
For beginners interested in making money online with their writing skills, we recommend FreelanceWritingGigs.com and ProBlogger. Once you get some experience there and continue to publish bylined work, it's time to explore other platforms like UpWork and WriterAccess. You can also pitch marketing agencies directly -- they're always on the look out for reliable writers.
Do Online Surveys
Online surveys are a fast way to make money online. Most beginner level surveys don't pay much when you do them, but focus groups often seek professionals in specific business areas. If you're already fully self-employed or have a day job, your opinions and experience could be especially valuable to an online survey company -- it's just a matter of finding one in your niche.
Taking online surveys usually earns a few dollars to start and involve clicking through the survey. However, this can lead to more complex focus group opportunities that include video chats, which tend to pay much more for your time. Find these businesses by connecting with market research companies on LinkedIn to make more money than you'll get on standard survey sites.
Start a Dropshipping Business
Dropshipping is a tried and true online business idea. You create a website, list products from a third party such as Alibaba, and customers buy the items via your site. The dropshipper then ships the product, and you get a percentage of the sale.
A dropshipping business allows you to sell products without actually holding any stock. We suggest sticking to a niche you're familiar with, such as costumes or sports supplies. You can leverage your expertise through blogging and social media posts to encourage sales.
Another variation of dropshipping is called drop servicing, which utilizes service-based businesses instead of physical products.
Become an Affiliate Marketer
Affiliate marketing isn't the best way to make money online fast, but over time, it can produce incredible active and passive income. As with freelance blogging and dropshipping, it can help you immensely to learn search engine optimization (SEO) to increase your success.
Affiliate marketing is similar to dropshipping in that you are supporting the purchase of someone else's product or service. If you're willing to niche down, there's a lot of opportunity here. When you're looking at making money online to begin with, start with a known affiliate program such as Amazon.
Amazon and most affiliate programs will provide a special affiliate link that you can use when writing about or posting on social about an Amazon product. When someone clicks through and buys that product (or another item), you get a little monetary reward.
If you list affiliate links regularly for your readership, it's a recommended way to earn extra cash over time.
Stream Your Games and Monetize
Are you someone who likes to play video games? Make money playing games! Maybe you want your own online talk show. If so, consider monetizing your content by streaming video games online. While Meta is trying to get into the game streaming business, Twitch is the main online platform for streaming games.
Users can subscribe to your channel (Amazon provides free opportunities for this from Prime members) and they can also provide "bits," which are pieces of Twitch currency that you can convert back to real money. You can earn cash by streaming regularly and building your fan base.
Design Websites
Are you handy with a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress? If so, consider designing websites for clients. You should have your own website as a portfolio example. From there, engage friends, family, and local small businesses as clients -- then scale.
Website design is one of the more popular online business opportunities, as there are plenty of online course selections from which to learn about it. As with freelance writing, you can also secure work via agencies.
Sell Online Courses
Are you a subject matter expert (SME)? Many SMEs make money online by creating, advertising, and selling online courses. The structure generally works like this:
Provide a free 101 course
Advertise the course on an online platform or social media site like Facebook
Collect email addresses as people sign up for the free course
At the end of the course, provide a call to action: get the paid course to learn more -- or hire you as an expert for consulting
You can also create a paid membership community on Facebook, which allows your community members paid access to your expertise.
Open an Online Store
You can create your own online store. Platforms like Etsy are especially useful if you're a crafter, but you can sell digital products on Etsy as well. Earn extra money by letting your store work for you, even when you're asleep.
Etsy also provides you with done-for-you shipping options, so you can print your labels and mail your products instantly. The back-end tracking is especially useful for sellers, and it'll take just a few minutes to complete fulfillment. Plus, you have your own business, you name your own price, and you can make a few hundred dollars or more in your first month!
Take On Virtual Assistant (VA) Work
Are you great at being organized and managing projects? Do you like tying up the details of projects for other people? If so, you could be someone's lifesaver as a virtual assistant.
Virtual assistants manage social media accounts and make online income for completing virtual tasks for people who are too busy. Most who would hire virtual assistants don't need someone full-time, but may need you to work for them for several hours per work. You can find clients on LinkedIn or on online platforms specifically dedicated to help virtual assistants make money online working.
Become a Mechanical Turk With Amazon
Many companies have lots of tasks to manage, but need help organizing those tasks. That's where Amazon comes in with their Mechanical Turk service. Instead of hiring what Amazon calls a "large temporary workforce," Mechanical Turk lets companies pay for manageable tasks via this platform. Best part about it? This is an ideal way to make money online for beginners.
Earn Advertising Revenue
Did you know that you can make money online with advertising revenue? Sites like YouTube allow you to opt-in to start making money online with ads. They place relevant ads in your content, and you earn revenue.
There are several types of online ads available to content creators looking to make money online. Some pay you per impression (when it displays), but most give you a click through payment, and/or more payment when a customer buys. In this fashion, you can make money online via your YouTube channel with your YouTube videos.
Get Gigging With Instacart, Shipt, Uber, Lyft
Surely you have heard of services like Instacart, Shipt, Uber, and Lyft. You can make money with food delivery, driving people around, and delivering packages with these online platforms connected to apps.
Once you're approved with these apps, it's a really fast way to make money. Some even offer a sign up bonus. Gigging with these types of apps are online jobs that help you earn a full time income fast, and many small business owners start their other online businesses while they are gigging with these platforms to get started.
Transform Your Day Job
What are you already good at? If you're in a day job already, you can make money online or create an online business using the skills you already have. You can save money (by not having to take tons of courses to become an expert).
Additional Ways to Start Making Money Online For Beginners
In addition to the above opportunities to help you make money online using online platforms and your own talent, there are many small businesses looking for your help when it comes to attracting users to online shopping and more.
Always check social media platforms for more opportunities
Consider additional online sites and online jobs such as digital marketing, a data entry job, becoming an expert on search engines, selling stock photos online, selling items on Craigslist or Facebook marketplace, online tutoring, and making your own successful mobile app.
Some opportunities, like the ability to sell stock photos, won't make you money overnight. Other opportunities such as driving for Uber will net you easy money as soon as you're approved. There are slow and fast ways to make money online, and most affiliate programs pay out quarterly or monthly for those using an affiliate link. You may need to combine more than one way to make money to produce a full time income, or to support yourself while you are building your own small business.
Earn rewards online and keep track of all your expenses when it comes to your independent contractor work. You can make money shopping and earn cash directly with apps like Honey.
One of the best ways to make money online is to come up with something no one has done yet. What's a product or service people need to solve a problem? What are their online shopping habits like? When do they shop, and when are they most likely to see online advertising? The ability to answer these questions can help you make money online.
Don't let your unused internet connection go to waste -- get online and start making money online today!
Sources: MTurk | Nerdwallet