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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