Last Updated on July 7, 2022
Does this frustrate you also?
You search for the best way to make money online. Google spills out tons of pages from its suffocated bowels. And what do you land on?
A treasure trove?
Nah…
Just a roller coaster of regurgitated content. Dangling money in your face, as if you could just pluck it off from some online tree.
And then, those creepy YouTube videos.
Always WARNING you to watch to the very end. Because if you don’t, you’ll miss a magic wand that should enable you to earn $5,000 by the end of the month.
And like a fool, you heed the call. Sitting through an entire 23 minutes long YouTube video. Just for that special bonus that perhaps will bring you that coveted goal. Money!
But what do you get?
Blah….Blah…..Blah.
Advice that does not put money in your pocket.
Gee….. Do….do you feel it? Like, if you had a way, you could obliterate such pesky content from the YouTube platform.
But then…
Something still scratches the back of your mind. That little unmistakable voice that always comes when in doubt.
Whispering “maybe ….maybe it’s possible.”
You know it’s possible. If you can just find the right way.
True, there are folks making money on the internet. And you know you could do it as well if only you could rise above the stupor of inaction.
But then…
In the midst of such information overload on legitimate ways to make money online, why would I have the temerity to write about the subject still? And expect not to add to your frustration.
Well…
I have rummaged through heaps of internet rubble on ways of making extra money from home. And I have come to discern real stuff from fluff, to discern what will work from what cannot work, and to discern that sustained effort than laziness will mostly bring triumph in any area of life.
To triumph, you must assess your situation, plan your attack, and finally pick the appropriate path and amour for your situation.
Question.
How long are you prepared to wait for ‘make money at home ideas’ to germinate, flower and bear fruit?
Is it a week or two? Is it a month or two months? Or is it more than six months?
Whatever your answer is the reason why this article is apportioned in three ways of making extra money online categories.
Short, medium and long term ways.
Whatever option you pick, remember that old cliche.
“Nothing comes on a silver platter.”
Let’s hop in….
SHORT TERM WAYS
1. How to make money online quickly testing websites
Why would you be testing a website?
The same reason Ford would put its sleek charcoal gray brand new SUV to a test drive before rolling out the model to millions of expectant buyers.
Website creators, similarly, are keen to find out the user experience on their brand websites. And they are ready to pay people to review these websites and provide valuable opinions. These creators continuously improve their websites on the strength of your opinions.
What a boon to share your opinions and positively critique websites. It is a grand opportunity to make some side income.
There are several platforms you can do this.
But I recommend a website called UserTesting.com. You’ll make $10 for each test you complete. So as you surf the internet(which you normally do anyway) and give your opinions on particular websites you can pick up some cool cash along the way.
The major issue these websites owners are concerned about is user experience.
What is the experience of a person using their website? Do they have difficulties in finding some items on the website? Are some links not accessible?
Give them candid answers to that in tests that would barely last you 20 minutes. And you can make extra money from home legitimately. Talk of $30 to $40 in an hour. Just be sure to have your PayPal account ready to receive a payment the following week.
To sign up…
Provide your email on UserTesting. They will send you a sample test to complete before they approve your application.
And what you need…
A computer, microphone(because you have to record your opinion), and an internet connection. For mobile tests, you need an iOS or Android phone or tablet and the ability to download UserTesting software.
I hope you’re at least 18 years and speak English(ha ha ha). If that does not appeal to you, here is another easy quick way to make money.
2. How to make money fast and easy delivering food
Delivering a burger, or that triple cheese, shaved steak, epic meat feast pizza to folks around your locality can be a fast and great way to make money.
This, of course, can be done in your spare time. Essentially, you choose when to work.
There are several companies you can work with to achieve your goal. Typical among them are Postmates, DoorDash, and UberEats.
Pick on DoorDash, for example.
To earn money with DoorDash, the time is yours. The goals are yours. The decision of when to work is also yours, and you set the goal of how much money you want to make.
When you work with DoorDash, you are called a dasher. Being a dasher is a quick way to get money by driving or biking with DoorDash.
To begin you must be at least 18, have some mode of transportation (car or bike would do), and a smartphone.
Provide your email at DoorDash to begin the sign-up process.
You’ll be required to complete your Dasher profile and consent to a background and motor vehicle check(if using a motorized vehicle).
Once you complete the registration formalities, you’re on your fast way of making money online.
Before we move on to medium-term ways, here is the last short term way to earn money easy way.
3. How to make quick cash with name contests for companies
Thousands of new companies and products are created every day.
Their problem?
Creators are looking for names to call these companies, products, and brands. They are looking for hard-hitting slogans for their unique selling points. They are even looking for logos to use.
If you have the talent to craft out names and slogans, you can make money helping out these companies.
Quickly!
Squadhelp is one of the platforms to use if you want to make money that way. You can enter contests to name companies and make yourself some wonderful extra income.
Here is how it works……..
Thousands of startup businesses turn to Squadhelp for name ideas for their businesses. A contest is put up for business name, tagline or logo design.
If you have the finesse to coin business names and taglines, here is an opportunity to get paid for your creativity.
Remember this is a contest and the selected entry takes it all. The good news, however, is that the contests are available each time you logon to the website. There is significant potential to earn money.
For each contest you win, you generally make between $100 and $300 even though some contests pay higher than this.
The grand tip is…
Continue submitting your entries many contests without waiting for the outcome of your earlier participation.
If you go to Squadhelp’s leaderboard, you will notice that there are folks who have made as much as $251,000 on this platform. This takes us to slightly longer ways of making money online.
MEDIUM TERM WAYS
1. How to make money online for beginners as Virtual Assistants
They are called VA’s.
Virtual assistants.
Another great way to make money online if you have proven organizational ability.
Virtual assistants basically provide administrative or technical assistance to others.
There are a million-plus entrepreneurs and busy folks looking for people to do some tasks for them.
Some of these tasks could be making travel arrangements to view lions in the Serengeti national park, managing email boxes, typing, database entries or doing some research.
You do not require exceptional skills to do these commonplace tasks. What you require is time. To get hired, to work your butt off, and finally to make money online fast.
Several platforms exist where you can find these tasks listed.
These include Zirtual, Upwork and Fiverr.
Joining these platforms is super easy and will not cost you anything at all. These are real ways to make money from home for free.
In most cases, you only make small payments to these platforms when you get hired. So go ahead and register yourself and start making money from the comfort of your house.
For example.
If you register with Upwork as a virtual assistant, be sure to create an outstanding profile to showcase your business. Upwork’s algorithm will highlight projects that you make a great fit for.
There are thousands of jobs posted on Upwork. With a well-written proposal to any of these jobs, you are sure of getting hired quickly.
Upwork, gives you a secure platform to get paid for your work. They do charge a sliding service fee based on your lifetime billings per client.
You pay 20% for the first $500 you bill. Then 10% for total billings between $500.01 and $10,000. And 5% for total billings with your client above $10,000.
2. How to make your own money working remotely
Opportunities for remote working keep on multiplying day by day. A lot of long-established companies and those starting up are embracing the pros of remote employees.
Remote employees enjoy noteworthy well-documented advantages.
These jobs can either be full time or part-time, so you choose what suits you best. You can work from anywhere, in your nightgown, and barefooted if you so wish. And since you do not need to commute to work, you save on transport costs.
What’s more?
Opportunities are available for everyone. Those with specialized technical skills and those without any specialized skills can equally find remote work. A lot of opportunities exist where you just interface with customers of a particular company providing remote work.
Here is how it works
Go to a portal offering remote work. There are many. I will give you a list of 10 in a moment.
Look for a job that suits you and go for it. The major requirements are your skills set, a computer and a reliable internet connection.
Example…
You go to the Flexjobs platform. This is one of the renowned platforms to find remote jobs. It offers you hand-screened, home-based jobs that are 100% legit.
And the type of jobs offered…
You’ll find part-time, flexible schedule, freelance basis, and full-time jobs. Examples of typical jobs are customer service, data entry, English tutor, medical billing, transcription, virtual assistant, and writing and editing.
These are ways to make extra money at home. Flexjobs, together with the other nine platforms listed below is a grand source for remote jobs.
- Flexjobs
- We work remotely
- Skip the drive
- Virtual locations
- Remote.co
- Jobspresso
- SolidGigs
- Europeremotely
- Indeed
- Jobscribe
The above-listed platforms are not the only ones offering remote jobs.
You’ll certainly find other remarkable ones available. Since remote working is appealing to a lot of people, you can take advantage of these making money at home jobs.
Now the third medium-term way…
3. Make money quickly online as a tutor
People across the world are hustling and bustling to learn.
They want to learn languages. They want to learn skills like singing or playing a piano. They want to learn how to write compelling copy and even technical subjects.
The point?
There is a wide yawning market for tutors. If you have a skill that others can learn from you or a subject you can confidently teach, then you can make money on the side.
The internet provides several platforms where you can ply your tutorial skills.
From teaching children to old folks. And mostly, these platforms guide you on how to prepare tutorials for their websites’ clientele.
Tutoring is actually one of the best ways to make money online. Here are a few platforms you can work as a tutor.
- VipKid
- Chegg
- StudyPool
- Smarthinking
- Preply
There are other sites where you can teach a skill without necessarily being interactive. Take for example at Udemy.com. You upload your course once and students pay at any time to pick the lessons.
You can also offer any course from a website you run. Take for example SmartBloggers.com. They offer a course in copywriting which is very popular.
LONG TERM WAYS
1. The best way to earn money from YouTube videos
A quick search on the internet reveals YouTube channels making millions of dollars in a year.
Ever heard of Ryan’s World channel?
He has recorded a whopping $26 million in a year.
There are several hundreds of channels making a killing on YouTube. Obviously, it takes supper effort and time to reach such levels.
But you are not even looking for that level of earning. You are just like millions of average folks wanting to take care of normal financial impediments. $3,500 per month would be sufficient.
Or maybe $7,800 a month! And it’s doable. Achievable!
But where do you start?
YouTube is a huge search engine providing content in a countless range of niches.
Guitar lessons, basketball, dancing, PowerPoint lessons, yoga. You name it!
If you have a knack to make videos you can take a chunk of the billions of dollars floating on YouTube. All you have to do…
Create videos and upload them to your channel.
I know there is a little challenge for many newbies.
The phobia to show their faces on video. That’s okay! That fear dies down with five, six videos down the line.
Besides, even videos where you don’t show your face equally do well on YouTube. For example, if you are doing PowerPoint lessons or soccer compilations, there is no need to show your face.
Minimum Requirements to Set sail
A free screen recording software would do if you’re just starting out and on budget.
There are several of course.
Pick on Ezvid, for example.
You can use it as a video editor, slideshow maker, and a screen capture solution. Ezvid can also upload your videos straight to YouTube. How cool is that?
Check it out here.
In case you would want guidance on creating a YouTube channel, check this post – How to Make Money on YouTube|5 Easy Ways For Newbies
As your channel grows, you can invest in equipment that will enhance the quality of your videos. Think of getting a decent camera, microphone, tripod, and a lightbox.
How do you exactly make money on YouTube?
That is the major question, isn’t it?
One sure method used by many YouTubers is to join the YouTube Partner Program. You earn money from the ads that are placed on your videos.
I’m sure you have seen those annoying ads that appear when you are engrossed in your video. With a counter from 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and then gives you the option to “skip ad.”
YouTube generates revenue from those ads and shares it with YouTubers who have been accepted into the partner program.
To be accepted you must have at least 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours in the preceding 12 months.
You need consistent video production to achieve this.
When accepted you have to connect your Adsense account to your YouTube channel.
If you have no Adsense account you have to create one for you to generate money from the ads on your channel. You need a Gmail account to register on Adsense.
Are other ways to make money on YouTube available?
Yes, of course!
Another easy way to make money from home on YouTube is by joining the YouTube Premium program.
This program caters to folks who prefer watching YouTube videos ads free. They pay for such grandiose treatment and they are allowed to download videos among other benefits.
As a content creator with a YouTube channel, you can join this program so that your videos are available to such folks.
YouTube pays you part of the revenue it generates from this program. The payout is dependent on how much of your content is watched.
The good thing…
Your videos are still available for ads revenue. That is, your videos that appear on ad-supported YouTube will also be available without ads on YouTube Premium. So you gain from two streams of revenue.
Another way to monetize your YouTube channel is by affiliate marketing which we talk about below.
2. How to make extra money online with Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is the promotion of products and services online for a commission.
The products and services may belong to an individual or a business entity. The commission is determined by the owner of the product or service.
Three parties are involved in affiliate marketing.
The advertiser, publisher, and consumer. The advertiser is the owner of the product or service. The publisher is the one who promotes the product or service. And the consumer is the buyer who is linked to the advertiser by the publisher.
Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular and best ways of making money from the internet. A lot of guys have gone ahead to quit their 9 to 5 jobs after finding affiliate marketing as a way to make extra money fast. The internet has indeed provided a way of how to make a living at home.
There are many ways to do affiliate marketing.
The whole essence, however, is to reach a particular audience or to drive traffic to a product or service you’re promoting. This could be by paid traffic, social media, email marketing or search traffic from Google or other search engines.
One way to take advantage of search traffic is by creating a niche website.
Here is an example.
If your passion is carpentry, you can make a niche blog on carpentry. And then start promoting affiliate products related to carpentry.
To build a niche blog, you have to buy a domain name. This should cost you around $9 to $15 per year. You also should pay for website hosting. At Bluehost, a startup hosting plan costs $2.95 a month.
Once set up, you now have to create and publish content that will help you attract search traffic from the search engines.
Content creation can be outsourced. But if you are on a budget this is not a way to go. Because it could cost you from $50 to $200 for a 2,000-word long article.
The alternative is to create your own content. This takes time and you need to work hard to see any meaningful results.
But once the traffic starts rolling in, making bank from month to month becomes a breeze.
3. Start a Podcast to earn extra money home
The world is hungry for inspiring content in all forms.
Written content is in high demand. Video content is equally in high demand. Similarly, audio content is in high demand and the graph keeps on rising.
What is then required is for you to share your stories.
Content that will attract traffic to be wanting to listen to you. It could be stories, interviews or skills that you want to impart to your listeners.
How do you start a podcast?
In a way, it is as good as creating a website. Needs planning.
Start by choosing a topic. A niche you will podcast about. It could be hiking or maybe surfing.
Choose a name for your podcast and purchase a domain name. Or if you are already on web hosting that gives you a free domain like Bluehost, you can take advantage of that.
Two of the platforms you can use to upload your podcasts are iTunes and SoundCloud. You can equally put your podcasts on your website.
Once you build up a good following, you are sure to make money out of it.
Here is how you can make money with podcasts.
One of the ways on how to earn money online for podcasters is through sponsorship.
Established brands are willing to sponsor podcasts in order for them to put their brands before the audience of the podcast. Obviously, you need to have a well-established audience to attract sponsorship.
Another way to earn money is to set up a crowdfunding campaign. To earn this way you have to lead your audience to your crowdfunding campaign.
Podcasters can equally earn money through affiliate marketing. One form of doing this is by offering promotional codes to their listeners. Once the code is used on the advertiser’s website, the sell is associated to the podcaster who then earns a commission.
Some podcasters charge money for you to listen to their podcasts. And that is how they earn money. Or another way is to sell merchandise to their listeners. This may include branded Tees or cups among other things.
If you are into writing, the next way will be of interest to you.
4. How to make money from home on the side with Amazon Self Publishing
Every person is unique.
Even our experiences are unique. So you can share your experience that may benefit another person. And one of the best ways of doing it?
Writing a book!
To some, this may seem like a daunting task. But really if you put in a little effort this is easily achievable. There are millions of books that have been published to date. And some of the writers have become millionaires.
But we are not talking about writing books for the print media. We are talking about electronic books. Some of the best selling ebooks are actually well under 50 pages.
And these are books that you can self publish on platforms such as Amazon Self Publishing.
You will realize that Amazon is the biggest bookselling platform with a huge audience across the world. With Amazon self-publishing, you set the price of your book before you list it. For each sale you make Amazon takes only 30% while the remaining 70% is all yours.
How it works…
You can search Amazon and see the most popular topics you can write about if you have not yet written your ebook. Like already mentioned, short books equally sell well on Amazon. You can just price it low. Say under $5. The frequency of sales will make a huge difference.
The Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing program allows you to upload your ebook in a few minutes. It also makes it possible for buyers to download ebooks to their devices.
Listing your book on Amazon is free. But that does mean you will not spend any money to have your book up and ready for sale.
Unless you can do this on your own, you will need someone to proofread your work and design your ebook cover. You can get such services on either Upwork or Fiverr among other platforms providing such services.
Further…
To enhance your revenue, you can also offer the book as a paperback print on demand for those who still prefer printed books.
This is still done within Amazon. But the greatest way to improve your revenue is to write several ebooks and have them listed on Amazon.
5. How to make money on the side online Selling Crafts
If you are one of those busy moms with a knack for crafts, there is no need of going out to physically sell them at a market or something like that. You can do that online.
There are platforms like Etsy where you can sell your crafts. Listing your crafts on Etsy is not complicated. And the transaction fee for selling on Etsy is 5%. This is quite cheap, unlike other competing platforms.
Alternatively, you can create your own niche website and start promoting your crafts. You do not need to be a techy to create a website nowadays. With drag and drop website creation tools, you can whip up a professional-looking website under a day’s work.
After creating your website, you can then use Pinterest to promote your stuff and attract hordes of customers to purchase your crafts.
But let’s get back to Etsy…
Etsy has etched itself a lucrative corner on the internet after being in existence since 2005. It provides a platform where you can showcase your talent. Allowing you to sell unique and handmade goods, art, jewelry, crafts, and other vintage items that you cannot find in a traditional online shop.
If you are looking for quick and easy ways to make money, steer clear of Etsy. It is a long shot.
But once your Etsy shop is well established, and the sales start rolling in, it is one legitimate way of making money online.
Here is one thing to cheer you if you want to set up a shop on Etsy…
The startup cost is ridiculously low.
You pay $0.20 to list an item. And as of 2020 the transaction fee when you sell an item has risen from 3.5% to 5%. You will also enjoy the Etsy well-built system of search features, inventory management, logistics, and free traffic and marketing.
What can I do to make money?
Imagine you could stop wasting time watching those ‘how to make money really fast’ YouTube videos hours on end, stop consuming those make money blog posts that tend to make you celebrate the money that you haven’t even yet made.
Imagine you could take time to assess your current financial situation, to assess your true requirements and determine what will best suit you. Whether to make money in the short term, medium-term or long term.
Imagine you could pick on one way to make money, throw aside all distractions, and put in all the effort required to finally start earning at least $2,000 online.
What a joy it will be!
And I know you can do it.
So pick up one method.
And work your butt off.
Until the channel starts to flow your way.
That channel of…
Money.