1000 Ways to Make Money Online

When I started out on this blog I thought it would be real easy to just crank out descriptions and strategies for ways to make money online. Then I got distracted. Should have figured.

The plan is to periodically review the ways to make money online and examine the difficulty in getting started, money making potential, and skills or tools required. Below you’ll find the first 10 ways summarized. I tried to start out with ways that cost little or nothing to get started. Let’s get down to it.

1. Selling your stuff on eBay

I won’t waste your time describing the online auction giant; all you need to do is have something to sell. The best things about eBay is that they’re hurting for new customers so they’re enticing people with 5 free listings per month. As far as earning potential goes, consider this: powersellers make $1000/month. Silver powersellers – $3000/month, Gold – $10000/month. The very fact that they have these ratings means that people are doing it (btw, Titanium powersellers make $150K per month. Haven’t seen one of these yet). Getting there is going to take some work. No one is making $1000/month on stuff they have laying around so you’re going to have to find something to sell, preferably wholesale.

2. High-Interest Savings Account

High-interest savings accounts are kind of joke these days offering little more than a 1% return (FDIC insured return). However, they’re a safe place to put your cash in waiting. There’s a ton out there and you can get some ideas at Fat Wallet Forums or Bankrate.com. Technically, it’s a way to make money online.

3. Peer-to-Peer lending with Prosper.com

I screwed up with this one, there’s nothing free about lending money to people. What Prosper attempts to do is become the middle-man between lenders and borrowers. So, as a lender you can lend money to other people at rates that are a lot better than savings or CDs and the borrowers get lower rates than credit cards and possibly bank loans. Despite the optimistic name, Prosper earnings are little more dicey. On the successful end, Lending Stats.com reports people making upwards of 23% Return on investment. Looking at one of the portfolios, the loan amounts are for roughly $6000 dollars so a 23% ROI means about $115 rolling in each month. On the not so successful end, I’ve lost about 50 bucks so far. It goes without saying that a lot of research and a sound strategy are required to be successful. The person with the 23% ROI has a high majority of loans in the B grade category. I wrote a little about my strategy but you probably don’t want to lose money.

4. How to make money online writing for eHow

eHow is probably the biggest article site around and they provide a platform for you to publish “how to” style articles on almost anything. I’ve found the most promise with this so far and have seen my revenue steadily increase over time. The name of the game is writing good eHow articles and plenty of them. It takes a little bit of time to figure out what makes a “good” eHow article and I’ve tried to give some tips on what I’ve found works. Writergig’s ebook does a great job of laying out how she makes over $1000/month and can certainly help you jump the learning curve; but it’s not required in order to be successful. While not everyone is breaking the $1K/month barrier, Write for eHow blog interviewed top eHow earners and each one is making more than that.

5. Taking Stock in Photography with istockphoto.com

istockphoto.com is the photographer’s version of a content site, allowing you to upload your stock photos for sale to various interested parties. Being one of the “premier” stock photo agencies, they have some quality standards that may make it tricky to get started. The earnings schedule is a little bizarre but there are numerous people making $500+/month. The big caveat on this one is that it takes a decent amount of equipment to get started. Realistically, if you have a DSLR or a really good point-and-shoot camera you can probably get started right away; however, if you get into it and want to excel (and let your ego get the best of you) you’ll want higher quality which means more equipment.

6. Put your Graphic Arts Degree to use with Zazzle.com

Zazzle.com is a Print-on-Demand site that takes your pictures, artwork, or designs and puts them on a whole slew of different media (t-shirts, stationary, mugs, skateboards, etc.). It’s a great place to sell some items if you have good ideas for t-shirts or want to start a stationary style business (mostly wedding or graduation related) or you have some really good marketable designs (say, for a tie or t-shirt). The site is extremely user friendly and only takes a few minutes to set things up. The one thing you’ll need to have besides ideas is some sort of graphics editing software. Set up is easy, design is what you make of it but the real hard part to being successful is marketing. Zazzle has a prosellers account that gives you all sorts of promotional support once you make $100/month for 3 consecutive months. There are plenty of regular prosellers out there; however, I had trouble locating any of the higher performing prosellers such as the silver ($1000) or gold ($5000).

7. Freelance Writing Without the Commitment: Write Articles for Bukisa.com

I feel that Bukisa is an excellent compliment to eHow. Bukisa is a writing site that has a much more open format – you can write about anything and the earnings are driven by views so you don’t have to sell people on anything. The two great things about Bukisa are 1.) it’s completely free and 2.) the referral system is generously multi-tiered. They just published a spotlight on their top earner who made $2527.10. Honestly, this isn’t a lot for online article sites; however, Bukisa is still young and may gain traffic as they age.

8. Straight-up Cash Grab. $500. ING DIRECT

There is no two ways about it. This is a straight-up one-time cash grab of $500. ING DIRECT is looking to get more customers and are trying to sweeten the pot by dishing out money to both you, the referrer, and your buddy, the new guy. I’ve used ING DIRECT for several years now and have been very satisfied with their service. I’ve convinced a few friends and family to sign up using this offer, but it’s definitely not as easy as it sounds. Of course, the earning potential on this is $500. That’s it.

9. Earn Online Income with Amazon Associates Program

The Amazon Associate program is their version of an affiliate program. Basically you drive traffic to Amazon.com and get a commission on whatever they buy. Using Amazon as an intro to affiliate marketing is great because it’s very easy to get started and they have a shit-ton of tools to help make affiliate marketing easier. Their commission schedule is tiered so you make more percentage-wise as you get more sales. The earning potential on this is pretty much limitless, it all depends on how much traffic you can drive to Amazon and that means having content!

10. Annoy Your Friends and Make Money at the Same Time with Adf.ly

Adf.ly is a link-shortening system that inserts an advertisement between your link and its destination. They give you half of what they earn and if you followed my calculations you’d make $100 a year. Granted, my calculations were a bit conservative but there doesn’t seem to be an incredible amount of potential. It’s just one more tool in you online money making arsenal. I should mention that I did see a proof payment (Paypal Screenshot) for a $228 transfer. Not that it couldn’t be faked but why 228? You can always give it a shot; it’s free.

I’m hoping to pick up the pace on my ways to make money online. It’s very easy to get distracted and part of making money online is going out there and doing it (instead of writing about it). I hope that you have found this helpful so far and if you have any money making ideas I’d love to hear them!

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