How to Make Money Online: 25 Ideas to Earn an Online Income

August 25, 2022

Thanks to the internet (not to mention post-pandemic work culture), there is an endless number of ways to make money online without ever leaving your home — from blogging to dropshipping to podcasting.

Whether you’re just looking to pick up some extra cash to pad your vacation fund, or seeking to earn your whole paycheck via online work, here are 25 ways to make money online from home (or from anywhere, really).

1.Take Surveys Online:

While taking online surveys won’t make you rich by any means, a few minutes of your time can earn you a few extra dollars.

For example, Swagbucks allows you to earn points and then redeem them for gift cards or cash back. And the cash back option is available for over 1,500 retailers including Amazon, Starbucks, and Target.

You simply earn points by shopping through their portal, filling out surveys, watching videos, etc.

Developers always need people to test their games, websites, and apps. Basically, you use the game, site, or app just as though you were a regular user/customer, then provide feedback on how it functions — its appearance, usability, and any bugs you find.

Some good websites for finding work as a website tester are:

_UserTesting.
_Userlytics.
_uTest.
Read more: Best Game Apps to Make Money Fast

You can tap into the gig economy by looking for temporary or short-term tasks that can be done from your phone or laptop. While most people probably think of things like Uber and food delivery as gig work, there’s also plenty of online gig work — from random data entry tasks to more specific work based on your skillset and availability.

You can search for a variety of tasks on any of these platforms:

_Amazon Mechanical Turk.
_Clickworker.
_UpWork.

Read more: How You Can Make Money from the Gig Economy — Without Wasting Your Time

4. Become a Virtual Assistant:

Long gone are the days when assistants had to sit outside their manager’s office door. Now, virtual assistants do everything from website management to admin support to customer service all from home. And depending the client, you can often set your own hours.

Some places to find virtual assistant jobs are:

_Flexjobs.
_Fancy Hands.
_Zirtual.

One of the more common ways to make money online over the past few years has been virtual teaching tutoring.

There are many platforms that allow you to make money as a tutor from home, such as:

_VIPKid.
_TutorMe.
_Tutor.com.

One of the best ways to make some quick money online is to sell stuff you no longer need.

You can sell your things on popular platforms like Kijiji or Facebook Marketplace. Just take some pictures of the items you want to sell, then list them.

If you’re a student or recent grad, you could also sell your textbooks. Textbooks are expensive, and if you have old ones you’re never going to look at again — or never looked at in the first place — selling them can make you back some of the money you had to spend.

And if you buy your books from Barnes and Noble, they make it easy to sell them back at the end of the year.

If you’re thinking about making money from home, it’s important to note that you can literally make money from your home.

You can list your space (just a room or the entire place) on Airbnb. If you have a spare bedroom that you never or rarely use, you can instead use it to bring in some extra money on the weekends.

Read more: Is Being an Airbnb Host Worth It?

One of the best ways to make money online is to write. After all, there is always a demand for more written content online. And the type of writing out there varies wildly, so depending on your tastes and talents, you may find one particular niche that appeals to you most. You could:

Write articles for blogs and websites.
Copywrite for businesses and entrepreneurs.
Ghostwrite for public figures.
Write social media posts for businesses.

To find freelance writing gigs, check out any of these sources:

_Problogger.
_All Freelance Writing Job Board.
_Contena.
_Freelance Writing Gigs.
_LinkedIn.

You can also consider pitching publications or reaching out to bloggers on social media to see if they’re looking for guest contributors.

Or, if you’re an expert in a particular field and have a topci you want to write about, you could consider writing and selling an e-book.

You can go through Amazon Kindle Publishing — they’ll charge you a commission each time you get a sale, and since their reach is huge, you’ll have a better shot at selling more copies than if you went at it on your own.

If you can create a niche audience for your blog, you can make an entire paycheck — just ask Money Under 30’s founder.

But it’s not enough to publish a few blog posts and wait for the money to roll in. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work like that. To start earning money by blogging, you’ll need to make use of affiliate marketing.

With affiliate marketing, rather than getting paid per 1,000 page views or per click, an advertiser will pay an affiliate publisher (i.e., your blog) when you refer a paying customer.

If you’re a skilled artist with a portfolio, you can pitch your work to clients by using sites like Fiverr, or by searching job boards for remote graphic design roles.

You’ll need to have access to a computer and the Adobe suite of software or something similar (sorry, but Canva probably won’t get you very far).

And if you’re into the crypto scene, you could even try selling your artwork as NFTs.

Read more: How to Create and Sell NFTs

If your hobby is photography, or you’re looking to become a professional photographer, there are a couple ways you can get started and make some money online.

First, you can sell your photos to stock photo companies such as:

_123rf.
_500px.
_Alamy.
_Crestock

Or, if the only camera you have access to is your smartphone, you can specifically sell pictures you take with your phone. Apps and companies you can sell to include:

-EyeEm.
-Foap.
-Scoopshot.

With your own Etsy shop, you can sell anything from handmade crafts to digital printables.

In addition to creating whatever it is you sell, you’ll also need to do a bit of marketing — write compelling descriptions, list the items, and promote them beyond Etsy.

Before you get going, it’s a good idea to browse some other Etsy shops that are sellling similar products, so you know what the market and competition is like.

The popularity of dropshipping has risen in recent years and it’s now one of the more common ways to make money online.

The basic premise is that you’re the middleperson between a supplier and the customer. You sell the product to the customer through an online e-commerce platform, but the supplier handles the storing, packaging, and shipping aspects of it.

You can sell products on a marketplace like Amazon or eBay to get started.

If you have a specific area you’re especially knowledgeable in, creating an online course can make you some decent money. This could be a course in just about anything: cooking skills, massage therapy, how to play the guitar, etc. Most of them are done through video, with worksheets included.

You’ll want to start by creating a course outline — show it to a few people, and have them tell you if they think they’ll actually learn whatever it is you’re trying to teach.

Podcasts are a booming side hustle these days. Just like with a blog, you need to find a niche topic, which makes it easier to narrow down your audience (and affiliate market).

Once you have a dedicated audience (which admittedly could take a while), you can start reaching out to advertisers whose products would make sense to mention.

16. Become YouTube Famous:

If you’re good at talking in front of a camera and have an idea/product you want to discuss, YouTube could be the perfect platform for you. You can earn money on YouTube in a variety of ways:

Become a YouTube Partner. The big money on YouTube is if you meet the requirements to become a YouTube partner. You’ll need a channel that has reached 4,000 watch hours in the previous 12 months and 1,000 subscribers.
Connect to Google AdSense. Once you become a Youtube partner, you can connect to Google AdSense, their advertising system. You’ll be paid based on the number of impressions your videos get (when someone clicks on or watches an ad).
Product placement. If you can get companies to sponsor your videos, or place their products in your videos, you can generate even more income. Just remember you’ll need to inform YouTube of these product placements, or they may pull your partnership.

Social media influencers make money through brand partnerships, affiliate programs, or even by selling their own products.

There are influencers specializing in everything and anything you can think of: from financial commentary to health and beauty to social justice activism.

Pick your platform (likely Instagram or TikTok, or maybe both), choose your niche, then get to posting. Be warned that the competition is fierce and it’ll take you awhile to grow your audience, especially with social media’s ever-changing algorithms.

But if it’s something you’re passionate about anyway, then it can just be a hobby at first, with the potential to grow into something more financially beneficial.

You can also make money from social media on the management side of it. You can organize content for clients, conduct research into current trends, respond to comments on a client’s behalf, or develop social media strategies for brands and businesses.

UpWork and Indeed frequently post jobs for social media managers.

If you’re into gaming, DJing, or even playing chess, you can get paid to stream yourself doing these things on Twitch.

Once you’ve picked your niche, you’ll need to work on growing your audience with a bit of marketing. Once you’ve got a decent following, you can earn money by:

Adding a donate button to your channel.
Scoring brand partnerships.
Selling merchandise.
Becoming a Twitch affiliate.
Becoming a Twitch partner.

20. Become a Virtual Life Coach:

If you enjoy helping other people tackle personal or professional problems, you may want to consider getting accredited as a life coach.

While life coaches aren’t necessarily licenced therapists (although many are), they do still go through training to receive accreditation.

Once you’ve received your life coach designation, you can provide one-on-one Zoom sessions with people seeking guidance on anything from career development to relationships. Clients will pay you for these sessions, although you could also then upgrade to writing an eBook, starting a podcast, or growing your own YouTube channel.

If you’re a speedy typer with a good ear, you can get paid for transcribing audio recordings. While most transcription services are at least partially done by AI these days, there is still the need for human freelancers to work alongside the AI.

Here are some websites to check out if you’d like to make money online as a transcriber:

-Rev.
-TranscribeMe.
-SyncScript.

22. Narrate Audiobooks or Record Voice-Overs:

If you have a professional microphone and a unique sounding voice, you could make money online by reading audiobooks or doing voice-over work.

There are websites like ACX and Voices where you can find voice-over gigs for podcasts, commercials, audiobooks, and any other project that requires a voice.

In the post-Covid era, many jobs have gone fully remote and have technically become online jobs. You can even find remote jobs that provide competitive pay and full-time hours, with complete flexibility.

Some good websites for finding remote work are:

-We Work Remotely.
-Working Nomads.
-Jobspresso.
Read more: Should You Work from Home or in the Office? 10 Factors to Consider

OK, so you’re not going to make fast cash here, but this is a way to boost your long-term investments — all from online.

Robo-advisors put your investments on auto-pilot. You just sign up for an account, load some cash into it, set your risk level and goals, and the robo-advisor takes care of the rest. You can monitor your investments as much (or as little) as you like with the robo-advisor’s app or website.

Read more: The Best Robo-Advisors

Investing in cryptocurrency is one of the newer options for those looking to make money online. You’ve probably heard some of the more absurd success stories that have popped up in this space, but as crypto is extremely volatile, don’t come into it expecting to cash out big overnight on a meme coin.

That said, if you’re into learning more about the crypto scene, it could be a way to make some money online (just be prepared for a lot of risk alongside it).

You can make money from buying/selling crypto, of course, but other options are mining and staking, or even becoming a crypto influencer.

Now that we’ve looked at the best ways to make money online, we also wanted to give you a few ideas on how to save money online.

Download Cash Back Apps

If you already shop online, there are plenty of apps out there that will score you discounts in the form of cash back.

MyPoints is one of my favorites. You can earn up to 40% back on all your purchases at 2,000 retailers, like Walmart, Home Depot, Best Buy, and Amazon. They also offer promo codes at tons of online stores. You can redeem your points whenever you want, in the form of gift cards or cash straight into your PayPal account.

Unsubscribe from Online Services You Don’t Use

Making money online is easy, but spending money online is even easier. It’s incredibly easy to sign up for a service, put it on autopay, and forget about it.

Luckily, there’s a service that will go through all your old subscriptions and ask you which ones you want to cancel: Trim.

Trim can even negotiate some of your bills for you, making it perfect for millennials who have an aversion to phone calls.

Use Deal Sites for Online Shopping

Deal sites like Groupon, Slickdeals, and Hip2Save can all save you money on things you’d already spend on.

As the world continues to move more online, it’s becoming easier to make money online. And post-Covid, with so many jobs turning remote, there’s more options than ever for remote work.

As long as you have some technological know-how, you can make a little extra cash on the side. We have just 25 ideas above, but there are an endless amount of things you can do to make money if you get creative.