If the tumbling world economy has you worried, don’t despair: we’ve got your back. The Internet, as you may have heard, is a wonderful place, full of money making opportunities if you know where to look. Our list of 12 ways to make extra cash online will point you in the right direction. None of these ideas will likely net you a full time income on their own — though there are certainly people who have managed to do so with each — but a couple of them in tandem, or in addition to your usual freelance work or day job, can make you some much needed extra cash.
If you know of any others, we’d love to hear your money making tips. Please share them in the comments.
Freelance Projects
Even as companies are laying off workers left and right, that work still need to get done by
someone. Often times, companies will turn to freelancers on a per project basis as a way to save money and get things done quickly. Further, for smaller, one-time projects, it doesn’t make sense for many companies to hire a full-time employee, so frequently they will turn to the freelancer marketplace. There are many places to look for freelance jobs, but the large bid-based job boards are a good place to start.
eLance,
Guru,
ScriptLance, and
sologig are some of the best known.
Become a Topic Expert
About.com provides users with a guided tour of the web’s best sites in a wide range of topical areas. Each area of the site is maintained by a paid guide who is an expert in that area. The job of a guide is one part blogger, one part directory curator, and one part columnist. There are always openings for
new guides and compensation starts at $725 per month. Guides are paid based on the amount of traffic they bring in and some make in excess of $100,000 per year.
Moonlight as a Designer
More and more smart companies are turning toward design contests to crowdsource their design work and get professional-quality results more efficiently. For designers, contests offer a steady stream of potential clients and a way to build up their portfolios. The clear market leader in the space is SitePoint’s own sister site
99designs. With almost $3 million in prize money awarded, and hundreds of open projects at any one time, you’ll never lack for work. ReadWriteWeb has a
good list of other contest sites for designers to find even more opportunities.
Sell Your Stuff
Becoming an
eBay millionaire is far from a piece of cake, but making some extra money in tough economic times is definitely doable. We all have some stuff in the attic that we never use, have outgrown, or just no longer need. Put it up for sale on eBay or
Craigslist and make some extra cash. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, after all.
Cash in on Your Photos
Amateur-produced stock photos are a huge business. Last year
iStockPhoto paid out $20.9 million in royalties to contributors. So selling your photos is indeed a possible way to make some extra, passive income, and there are a number of places where you can try to sell your pictures. We recently published a list of
15 such stock photo web sites, many of which give bonuses for exclusivity.
Flip a Website
Buying and selling web sites has also become big business, and unlike the house flipping market, the bottom hasn’t fallen out of the web site market.
SitePoint’s Marketplace has grown into the web’s number one place to buy and sell web sites, and many people make a living doing just that.
Help People Search
If you’re good at finding things on the Internet, then you can make a few extra bucks helping people locate the information they need. Web search site
ChaCha employs an army of
search guides that help people do web searches. You won’t make big bucks doing it, but it’s not a bad way to make some spare change in your down time.
Sell Your Writing
Finding a full-time job as a writer isn’t easy (trust me, I should know!), but selling your freelance writing (and audio, video, and images) has never been easier thanks to
Associated Content. AC is a network of content producers that allows anyone to submit content and be paid for it when it is distributed to their partner sites. The site says it has paid out over $1 million to content producers.
Name a Product
Even if you’re not a designer, you can still get in on the crowdsourcing action.
NameThis is a contest site similar to 99designs, but rather than competing for design projects, users compete to come up with names for new products and services. If you fancy yourself a clever wordsmith, there is money to be earned at NameThis.
Design a T-Shirt
On the other hand, if you’re a design star, you may want to try your luck at t-shirt design for
Threadless. Winning designs get $2,000 in cash, and $500 worth of free t-shirts, plus all the prestige that goes along with being a Threadless winner. Non-designers can submit slogans for a shot at a $500 cash prize.
Do Odd Jobs
Amazon Mechanical Turk is a people-power API from Amazon that lets companies easily outsource tasks to humans. These tasks are often mundane, and don’t pay much on their own, but they can be a good way to make extra cash just by doing things like reviewing restaurants, evaluating search results, and rating videos.
Shill Products on Your Blog
Have a blog? If you want to make a little extra cash,
PayPerPost offers a way to write sponsored blog posts about products and services for money. There are some ethical ramifications here, so we’d advise that you always clearly disclose when a post is paid and avoid jobs that require a positive review.
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