So, you want to make some extra money from home? But you don't know where to start?
Perhaps you want to set up a passive income stream?
Or maybe you want something more interactive?
Whether you want to make an extra $100 a month, or even $1,000+ per month, you have many options available.
In short, it all boils down to how much time you are willing to invest in your side gig.
With a bit of creativity, the possibilities are nearly limitless. Furthermore, for most opportunities, the only prerequisite is that you have access to a computer and Internet service.
It is important to realize that the digital economy is one of the fastest-growing sectors with strong, consistent growth, year-over-year.
So, what is stopping you from getting your slice of the pie?
If you aren't sure where to start, then you came to the right place. Please read on for some ideas to get you going.
Sell your old treasures online
Do you have old treasures lying around your home or boxed away in the garage?
Surely, they would love to find a new home.
Then there are several options available online to find them a new admirer. Selling old treasures online is an easy way to make some extra money.
All while enjoying the comforts of your own home.
Here are some examples to get you started:
- 5miles: Sell pretty much anything in your local area
- Amazon: Sell pretty much anything.
- BookFinder: Sell books and textbooks
- Craigslist: Sell pretty much anything in your local area
- Decluttr: Sell technology devices (phones, CDs/DVDs, Games, even Legos)
- eBay: Sell pretty much anything
- Gazelle: Sell your old cell phone
- Listia: Sell your old stuff
- OfferUp: Sell pretty much anything in your local area
- RubyLane: Sell antiques and collectibles
- ThreadUp: Clean out your closet and sell your old clothes
Sell Your Photos and Graphics Online
The Internet is constantly growing with new websites, bloggers, publishers, and all forms of content creators.
Many of these Internet properties need quality photos and graphics for their content.
Busy entrepreneurs know buying stock photos is often more efficient than hiring a professional photographer.
So, let them help fund your vision while you work on your entrepreneurship.
Make Money from Home as a Mystery Shopper
Do you love to shop?
If you do, then mystery shopping is a fun way to earn extra money and get free products. It often involves purchasing a particular item or service or gathering information. Often, you get paid to eat out, stay in hotels, and play.
All on your own schedule!
Once you complete your shopping assignment, you provide a detailed report of your experience.
Now, not all mystery shopping opportunities are home-based; there are still opportunities available with the use of your phone or online.
Here are some mystery shopping opportunities:
- A Closer Look (Onsite mystery shopper)
- BestMark
- Call Center QA (Telephone mystery shopper)
- Intellishop (Onsite mystery shopper)
- Market Force
- Secret Shopper (Onsite and Digital mystery shopper)
Get Paid for Your Opinion with Focus Groups
Companies spend a lot of money on the development of their products and services.
As a result, they don’t want to waste money putting a bad product or service on the market.
They often use focus groups to obtain feedback on their products and services before making them available to the public.
There are a lot of options in this space.
Some pay in cash/check and others pay by gift cards.
These are not regular income opportunities, but they are a way to easily make money from home without any prior experience needed.
Here are some opportunities for focus group participants:
- 2020 Research
- Accurate Data Marketing
- C2 Research
- Consumer Opinion Services
- ExperienceDynamics
- Fieldwork
- Find Focus Groups
- FocusGroup.com
- Google Usability
- Inspired Opinions
- Mindswarms
- PingPong
- Probe Market Research
- Respondent
- Savitz Research Solutions
- User Interviews
Make Money by Taking Surveys
If you like taking surveys, there are many opportunities available.
You won't get rich taking surveys, but you can earn cash and gift cards easily.
Taking surveys is an easy way to make money at home from the comforts of your couch.
However, remember that any service you choose should be free to join. If they are requesting a fee, steer clear!
Here are a few options to check out:
- American Consumer Opinion
- FocusLine.com
- Google Opinion Rewards
- Harris Poll Online
- IdeaShifters
- iPoll
- i-Say
- Nielsen Computer & Mobile Panel
- Qmee
- Quick Thoughts
- SurveyFeeds
- Survey Mini
- Surveys On The Go
- The Panel Station
- Toluna
Make Money from Home with Online Tutoring
What types of things can you tutor online?
You could easily tutor a subject like history, math, or science. If you are bilingual, teaching a language is certainly a possibility.
With the explosion of video conferencing tools, you could also tutor musical instruments such as the guitar or Ukulele.
The possibilities are only limited by the skills you have to offer to others.
Here are a few online tutoring platforms to get you started:
Microwork in the Gig Economy
Do you like to do freelance work?
Then you should know that the modern freelance work terminology is crowd-sourcing in the gig economy.
Many companies now outsource to project-based freelancers to perform various tasks.
For example, those tasks include website content creation, transcription, graphics creation, video editing, research, and data entry.
Therefore, a motivated individual with relevant skills can do quite well as a microworker.
Make Money at Home by Creating Sales Funnels
Sales funnels are a way to automate the sales process.
Every business has some form of a sales funnel. But, successful businesses have very effective and fully automated sales funnels.
A typical funnel will start with some sort of offer, often free.
The free offer is often referred to as a lead magnet. That is to say, the goal is to deliver value in your lead magnet to build a relationship and trust with your audience and ultimately convert them into customers.
The next step of the funnel is to entice your customer with an irresistible offer that is priced very attractively for what you are offering.
Then once that purchase is made, upsell the customer with more one-time offers to increase the value of the transaction.
There is a whole lot more that goes into sales funnels and will be the topic of another blog post.
Make Money from Home with an eCommerce Site
The eCommerce industry is constantly growing.
In 2023, the number of eCommerce customers is expected to increase by 400 million!
Now, that is a lot of new customers!
And global eCommerce revenues are expected to reach over $2.7 trillion.
That is an average of 11% year-over-year (source) growth rate.
Don't let reckless government spending influence your perspective. That is a lot of money being made online.
Do you have a product that you want to sell online?
Then you should consider that single-product eCommerce sites that implement effective sales funnels are making not-so-small fortunes!
As a result, this is disrupting the traditional thought of how eCommerce should work.
Effectively, you no longer need a giant product line and a huge storefront to become successful in eCommerce.
Start a Blog
Do you enjoy writing?
Well then, a blog may be a good fit for you.
Equally important, blogs have proven to be one of the best ways to earn a passive income online.
Although, you must be in it for the long game. Because blogs are not a get-rich-quick scheme.
In order to make money, they take time to grow and fully realize their value.
Starting a blog is relatively simple. However, you will need to put in the work and the effort in order to become successful.
Creating a blog site is a lot like planting seeds for your crop. A lot of work goes into it, before reaching the point of harvest.
The cool part is that generating an income and scaling your business is very easy once your blog gets going.
To scale, you just produce more content and line up more offers (see sales funnels above).
And if your blog becomes really popular, you will be able to attract top talent that is willing to write blog posts for you, in exchange for a very powerful back-link to one of their own websites.
Make Money by Creating Webinars
Do you enjoy writing and have an interest or talent for copywriting?
Then you should consider webinars.
So, what is a webinar?
Webinars are web-based seminars. They are a popular sales tool that delivers massive value to businesses and consumers alike. Therefore, building webinars is an extremely useful skill set to have in the digital economy.
You can make webinars for other people's products. And then reap the financial rewards.
Successful webinars typically follow a specific template. And once you master that template, you can become quite successful just by building webinars.
I plan to explore webinars with a more detailed blog post on webinars and how to build a template for success.
Create online educational courses
Admittedly, I am addicted to learning.
One of my favorite ways to keep learning is through online educational platforms like Udemy and Pluralsight.
But neither of those sites produces its own educational content.
They rely on folks like you to create the content.
So, an excellent way to make extra money from home is to create online courses for these platforms.
Now, this does take an upfront investment of time. But, as with any other passive income-generating activity, you do the work once and get paid repeatedly for it.
In order to get started with course building, you need to choose a topic.
Then build a course around that topic.
And then use such a site to deliver that course.
And finally, market that course through something like a blog or a webinar with a sales funnel.
Now, are you starting to see the relationships between some of these money-making ideas?
Here are a few online educational platforms to consider:
Make Money from Home with Affiliate Marketing
Finally, we get to the last item on this list, affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is a relatively easy entry point into selling products online.
To clarify, affiliate marketing is a way for a company to sell its products through “affiliates” (ie. you), who do the marketing for them.
Affiliates make a commission when someone buys a product that they are marketing.
Furthermore, with affiliate marketing, you need an audience to sell these products or services. For example, a blog, website, or social media following.
Where do you find affiliate programs?
You can find affiliate marketing opportunities on sites such as Amazon Associates, ClickBank, Commision Junction, eBay Partner Network, LinkShare, and ShareASale.
Those are just the tip of the iceberg.
So, if you have a favorite eCommerce business, then check them out. They may have an affiliate program that you can join. If they do, then it will be much easier for you to market that product.
A key point that must be remembered with affiliate marketing is that you must present your offer to the right audience.
In other words, don't be a spammer! Nobody likes spam (except maybe with rice and eggs).
Furthermore, if you run a blog about beauty products, you probably don't want to offer your audience web hosting services.
In other words, you must market your offers ethically to the correct audience.
Closing Thoughts
In conclusion, today's digital economy presents virtually unlimited opportunities to make money from home and online.
In short, your imagination is the only limit to your ability to make money online. Whether you want to make a little side cash or establish a passive income stream, there is something out there for you.
So, follow your passion and start making money now!
