How to make money online / at home ?
With the Internet taking over and influencing a large part of our lives, especially now with the work from home and social distancing situations in place to tackle coronavirus, more people are looking to ways to earn money online to increase their money flows.
Earning money has typically been associated with and restricted to traditional ‘offline’ route. With the Internet taking over a large part of our lives, more people are looking to ways to earn money online to increase their financial inflows, with secondary income streams.
You should be mindful of the platform that you choose. While there are numerous ways to earn money online, some of these might be fake. Also, do not expect to earn a huge amount quickly when using online avenues to earn money.
With a situation involving more time at home and/or more free time in general, maybe fewer working hours for some, some of you might have some free time on hands. Here are online platforms, websites and tools that can help you earn money online.
You may know Forex is short for foreign exchange – the transaction of changing one currency into another currency. This process can be performed for a variety of reasons including commercial, tourism and to enable international trade.
The foreign exchange (also known as forex or FX) market refers to the global marketplace where banks, institutions and investors trade and speculate on national currencies.
Forex trading is the process of speculating on currency prices to potentially make a profit. Currencies are traded in pairs, so by exchanging one currency for another, a trader is speculating on whether one currency will rise or fall in value against the other.
The value of a currency pair is influenced by trade flows, economic, political and geopolitical events which affect the supply and demand of forex. This creates daily volatility that may offer a forex trader new opportunities.
An online forex broker acts as an intermediary, enabling retail traders to access online trading platforms to speculate on currencies and their price movements.
Most online brokers will offer leverage to individual traders, which allows them to control a large forex position with a small deposit. It is important to remember that profits and losses are magnified when trading with leverage.
1. Freelancing
Freelancing has always been a popular way to earn money online and the Internet has several options. There are several websites offering freelance tasks for people with varying skills. All you need to do is to create an account, browse through the listings, and apply for the task that suits you. Some websites may even require you to create a personal listing with the details of your skillset, so that interested clients can contact you directly. Outfiverr, upwork, freelancer, and worknhire are some websites that provide freelance jobs. You can earn anywhere between $5 and $100 through these websites.
But remember, you will only get paid once you successfully complete the given task and it has been approved by your client. This may even mean revising the work several times unless the requirements of your clients are met. Some sites may ask you to set up a PayPal account, as most clients prefer to make payments digitally via it.
2. Starting your own website
There is enough material available online to help you put together a website. This includes choosing the domain, templates, layout and the overall design for your website. Once ready to service the visitors with the relevant content, sign up for Google Adsense, which when appear on your website and clicked on by visitors, help you make money. The more traffic you get on your website, the more will be the potential for higher earnings.
3. Affiliate marketing
Once your website is up and running, you could opt for affiliate marketing by allowing companies to insert web links on to your site. This is like a symbiotic partnership. When visitors to your site buy products or services by clicking on such links, you earn out from it.
4. Surveys, searches and reviews
There are various websites offering money to undergo online surveys, carry out online searches, and write reviews on products. To get the credit, one needs to disclose certain information to them including one’s banking details. This is why you should use this route with utmost care. Some of them may even ask you to register with them before working on projects. The most important watch out in such projects is to stay away from websites offering money that appears too good to be true. Be careful while evaluating the reputation of the website as many of them could be a scam. Most sites promote businesses showing copies of cheque payments which may have been given to the middlemen only.
5. Virtual assistantship
Doing all the corporate stuff from one’s home is what a virtual assistant (VA) does. VAs basically work remotely with their clients and manage the aspects of their business that they are too busy to handle themselves. When you work as a virtual assistant, you can choose to work as an employee or you can set up your own business.
VAs are skilled, home-based professionals that offer companies, businesses, and entrepreneurs administrative support. Some of the major areas of work includes making phone calls, email correspondence, Internet research, data entry, scheduling appointments, editing, writing, book keeping, marketing, blog management, proofreading, project management, graphic design, tech support, customer service, event planning, and social media management.
Becoming a VA may require some degree of training or briefing, depending on your qualifications. However, if you possess good communication skills and are capable of using applications like MS Office, you can just sign up on sites such as Elance, 24/7 Virtual Assistant, Assistant Match, eaHelp, Freelancer, FlexJobs, People Per Hour, Uassist.Me, Upwork, VaVa Virtual Assistants, Virtual Staff Finder, Worldwide 101, Ziptask, Zirtual and so on.
6. Language translating
Knowing a language other than English may even help you earn some extra money. There are several websites that offer translation projects that require translating a document from one language into another. This may include Spanish, French, Arab, German, or any other language to or from English.
For many, this can make the task rather time-consuming and therefore they hire translators available online from anywhere across the globe. Several websites such as Freelancer.in, Fiverr, worknhire or Upwork offers you a platform to be a professional translator.
Those who do not have the knowledge or the time to complete their projects on their own, put up their work on these platforms where you can register and start bidding on translation jobs and get paid in the range of Rs 1-Rs 5 per word. This can go up to Rs 10 for some languages.
7. Online tutoring
If you are an expert in a particular subject, you can earn by tutoring people online. Online tutoring provides a means to connect online with students of all ages, across the country to provide homework help and tutoring in the subjects for which you have demonstrated expertise.
One may sign up on websites like Vedantu, MyPrivateTutor, BharatTutors, tutorindia as an online tutor by creating a profile, and listing the subjects or classes you want to teach, how much experience you have, what your qualifications are, etc. Some of the platforms may offer flexible and convenient time to work as an online tutor.
Most platforms follow this process- they ask you to apply by filling a simple form, after which a teaching demo will have to given their experts. Once selected, documentation and profile creation will be done, followed by training and induction webinar. Once you attend the webinar, you will be listed as a teacher and will get your online sessions to conduct. Beginners can make around Rs 200 per hour, which can go up to Rs 500 as you gain experience and expertise.
8. Social media management, strategy
In addition to interacting with friends and strangers, social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat can be used to make money. Companies and brands pay social media strategists to further boost the popularity of their products. With lots of competition around and the constantly shortening of attention time of online viewers, creativity is essential to create posts, videos etc that can go viral quickly and enhance the brand value. Remember, social media needs dedicated time and energy to stay relevant. Hence, you need to share posts regularly and interact with your followers on a regular basis.
9. Web designing
Not all business owners are tech savvy but the need of the hour is to have a website of their own. Those who have a knack for all- things- tech, especially related to websites, can help small businesses set up their own websites and earn from it. Coding and web designing are the essential ingredients in setting up websites. Further, websites need maintenance and may require frequent updates, which may add to one’s revenue.
10. Content writing
Online platforms can be a good starting point. Depending on the quality of the articles, one gets paid. One may be asked to work upon articles with specific guidelines as well. Develop a niche in your area of expertise and build strength in that domain to increase the revenue stream.
11. Blogging
It starts with a hobby, interest, and passion and soon blogging becomes a career option for many bloggers. There are a number of full-time bloggers. There are two ways to start a blog: you can either create a blog through WordPress or Tumblr, which requires no investment, or go for a self-hosted blog.
In case of the latter, you will have to invest in and spend money on domain name and server hosting space that can cost you between Rs 3,000-Rs 5,000 a year. Self-hosted blogs have an added advantage that it allows you to customise elements and functionality of your website. In case of the former, you need to make peace with the tools and plug-ins made available by the service provider.
You may monetise the blogs through ads, product reviews, and so on. But remember, earning through blogging may also take a lot of time and effort. For some, it may take as long as year to actually earn through blogging.
12. YouTube
If you are not comfortable in penning down your thoughts through blogs and content writing, make use of your camera to create a video presentation. Create your YouTube channel, upload videos and start monetising them. Choose a category or subject that you want to make videos on and get started, but make sure it’s a topic that will interest a lot of people. Everything from cooking shows to political debates can find many takers on YouTube. You have to create a YouTube channel, which works on a similar model as a blog. As you make your channel popular and the number of subscribers grows, so will your earning potential. The payment one gets is based on every thousand views.
13. Kindle eBook
If writing books interests you, one option you can exercise is self-publish eBooks and paperbacks with Kindle Direct Publishing, and reach millions of readers on Amazon. Publishing takes less than 5 minutes and your book appears on Kindle stores worldwide within 24-48 hours. One can earn up to 70 percent royalty on sales to customers in the US, Canada, UK, Germany, India, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, and so on. One can keep control of one’s rights and set their own list prices and also make changes to one’s books at any time. BooksFundr and Pblishing are two other places to get your book published and earn money.
14. Selling your products online
If you want to sell products online, you may can it by creating your own website. As there’s lot of competition and several existing websites in place already catering to this market, an attempt to create a niche in terms of products may be considered. Or, you can use the platform such as Amazon, Flipkart to sell. One can increase reach and visibility through affiliate marketing.
15. PTC sites
Several websites offer money (after a minimum level of earning) by clicking on advertisements. Hence, they are called paid-to-click (PTC) sites. One has to get registered before the project begins. Not all of these sites could be genuine, so be careful. One may also refer friends and earn money in the process. Some such sites are ClixSense , BuxP and NeoBux are some of such PTC sites.
16. Peer to peer
Similar to e-commerce websites such as Amazon and OLX, a peer-to-peer (P2P) platform is a marketplace for money lending activities. You can lend money to others in a more organised and structured manner using the P2P lending platform. The P2P platforms have the recovery process in place and one should understand it before using the services of the platform. Since this is an unsecured loan where there is no face-to-face interaction, a P2P lender needs to be aware of the risks involved.
17. Data entry
Although this line of work is seriously threatened by automation, there are still plenty of data entry jobs available in India. It is one the simplest jobs you can do online, and requires no special skills. You just have to have a computer, Internet connection, fast typing skills, and the ability to pay attention to details. Most freelancing websites list these jobs, and you can sign up on any of them to start earning in the range of Rs 300 to Rs 1,500 per hour.
Do you have photo skills or live in an area where images are in demand? “Stock photography websites are huge repositories of photographs, covering almost every possible subject you could imagine,” advises International Living. So how does it work? Photographers can upload their images to any one of a number of huge databases, allowing magazine editors, designers or any organization with a website to buy them. And the beauty of stock websites: Photos can be sold any number of times—so you can continue to make money without any effort. Photography sites to check out include Shutterstock, Photoshelter and Getty Images.
19. Create How-To Videos
“In recent years, YouTube has grown into the go-to source for all manner of video courses and guides,” says International Living. “Instructors can monetize their videos by charging a subscription fee or password protecting content for paying customers only.” This article shares some tips from one real estate agent who made $100,000 in one month on YouTube. Another piece of advice from International Living: Get to know the phrases that people search for. To find potential search phrases, start typing “how to [your topic]” into YouTube’s search bar and notice what phrases are generated in the auto-fill dropdown. Make sure to use the same keywords when you write your video title, description, and tags.
20. Become a Copywriter
Want to earn a great income no matter where you live—a house by the sea in Latin America, an historic European city or even on a Greek island? Copywriting could be ideal for you. According to International Living, “copywriting is a mega-industry, ripe with opportunity. And yearning for people who can fuel it with fresh marketing messages and one of the best benefits of the freelance copywriter’s lifestyle is that you can get paid in U.S. dollars…yet live virtually anywhere in the world.” Express Writers has tips on how to become a copywriter and is also a resource for jobs.
21. Teach English
“If you’re a native English speaker, you may not realize it, but you already have the number one qualification you need for a fun, portable income that can hand you a steady paycheck from anywhere in the world,” says International Living. Some resources include GoOverseas, TeachAway (teach English online to Chinese students), iTutorGroup (teach English online to Taiwanese children and adults) and English Hunt (teach English on the phone to adult students in Korea)
22. Turn Your Interests Into a Podcast That Pays
“Podcasting doesn’t have to be complicated,” says International Living. With a microphone, laptop and free recording software, you’ll be up and running. Plus, podcasts don’t need to run every day (once a week is best) and are better when they’re short. There are a number of ways to make money from a podcast. The most obvious is commercial sponsorship, but you can also use it as a platform to advertise your own products or services. NPR has a great guide to launching a podcast here.
23. Set up a Content and Web Development Business
Do you know how to do web and content development? You can offer these services to anyone via online tools that make developing beautiful websites a snap. Some resources include WordPress, Weebly and Joomla.
24. Become a Translator and Interpreter
Do you speak another language? Anywhere you find expat communities—and where English is not the first language—you’ll find a need for interpreting and translation services. You can also do translation and interpretation online. You’ll find a number of resources for being a translator or an interpreter here; one of the best is Welocalize, which ranked at the top of this list of the top 20 companies for remote jobs in 2020.
25. Try Drop-shipping
Have you heard of drop-shipping? It’s a method of retail where the seller doesn’t actually have a physical inventory. Instead, when a customer makes an order, you purchase the item from a third party, and they ship it directly to the customer. “This means you’ll never have to fork over a single dime to store your products or maintain your inventory,” advises International Living. “And you’ll never have to buy products in bulk, hoping to sell enough to recoup your investment.” This method can be done with online selling platforms like eBay or Amazon. You can find out more about drop-shipping in this helpful article from Shopify.
26. Tutor
“Establishing your own tutoring service can be a lucrative business that provides you with a comfortable and flexible lifestyle,” advises International Living. “The best part of all, you can set up a tutoring business in almost any country in the world.” A tip: Offer discounts to clients who promote your business. “Word-of-mouth marketing is still one of the most valuable marketing tools you can have when starting out,” advises International Living. The site Tutors has a list of the best online tutoring jobs, and you can also apply to be a tutor at Tutorme.
27. Become a Freelance Proofreader
Proofreading is another lucrative online career. “Most agencies will pay around 25% of the price of a translated document to a proofreader,” advises International Living. “Agencies charge about $75 for the translation of a five-page standard business document. So proofing the same document—which takes about an hour—pays out about $18 to $20.” You can work full time, part-time or around-the-clock. Mediabistro—a site that offers resources for media professionals—has tips on how to become a proofreader.
28. Type for Cash
Are you a fast typist? Transcribing is simple: Listen to an audio file through headphones and type it out. “As a transcriber, your pay is directly related to how fast you type,” advises International Living. “Transcription jobs are paid by the audio hour (the length of the audio file), rather than by the hour worked. The time spent on a transcript is influenced by the audio quality, background noise, the accent of the speaker and the speed at which people speak.” The average transcriber—typing between 75 and 100 words per minute—will complete one audio hour in four hours worked. Consider the company Rev, which hires freelance transcribers.
29. Create a Money-Making Blog
Do you have an area of expertise? Share your advice on a blog. If travel is your area of expertise, think about what you have to offer: Are you an expert in luxury travel or budget travel? Can you share advice about certain activities like hiking or shopping? “The more specific you get, the easier it’ll be to attract an engaged audience and to earn money with your site,” advises International Living. The sites Squarespace and Wix have tips on how to create blogs and can also host them.
30. Tap Into the E-Book Business
The e-book business is a great way to earn money. You can create your own (Kindle has a guide for how to do it). Or find a book that’s already been published in print and license it to publish online. You can pay the author 8-15% royalties based on net sales or a one-time payment for the online publishing rights.
31. Set up an Online Course
Or go beyond writing an e-book and create a whole online course with tutorials, PDF downloads and videos. It’s a great way to create passive income because people will pay for the info and can go at their own pace or post questions related to the course in a dedicated group. Here’s one resource for creating and selling online courses: LearnWorlds, which makes it possible for anyone to profit from their knowledge and experience by creating an online program.
32. Become a Life Coach (or Even a Travel Coach)
“Life coaching is a thought-provoking and creative process that helps people focus on both personal and professional goals,” advises International Living. “People use life coaching to overcome fears, boost their self-confidence, create goals and instill success-oriented habits.” You can find thousands of online training programs on how to be a life coach, and many certification programs offer an entire website setup once training is completed. If travel is your area of expertise, you can even become a travel coach. Read this story about a travel writer who became a travel coach.
33. Become an Audiobook Narrator
“Audiobooks are an increasingly popular form of entertainment. The convenience factor of smartphones has led to an industry boom,” advises International Living. “That’s creating a demand for freelance narrators.” This site has advice on learning how to become an audiobook narrator.
34. Internet Research and Surveys
Another way to make good money is by surfing the Internet in your spare time or filling out online surveys. “If you’re looking for a way to make an extra $1,000, $2,000 a month part-time—then Internet research is for you,”advises International Living. Add the site Qmee to your browser, and if you click on a search result, you’ll earn money. You can also earn cash for taking Qmee surveys and sharing your opinions on brands. Other survey sites include SurveyBods, Survey Junkie and Valued Opinions. Another way to make a series of small cash rewards while on the go? With the new app Current, travelers can make up to an extra $600 a year by simply listening to music and performing various tasks.
Wish you find your ways to make money online.
