5 Ways to Earn Extra Income Online
Earning extra money requires consistency, hard work, and a willingness to fail.
You have probably heard that the Internet can be a great way to make extra money. It's true that you can earn a nice income from the comforts of your own home, but no one ever tells you how to do it. This article will try to change that.
A word of warning: Many of these ideas will be easy to understand, but that doesn't mean that they are easy to accomplish. Earning extra money requires consistency, hard work, and a willingness to fail, even if the basic ideas are simple to understand. With that said, here are five ways to earn more money online.
[See 10 Ways to Start Earning Extra Money Now.]
1. Write for blogs and news sites. If you're a decent writer, you can make some extra cash by writing articles for major websites. This includes news outlets and popular blogs, such as BNet, GigaOm,Entrepreneur, and Smashing Magazine, which may pay anywhere from $50 to $400 for a feature article. The best way to get started is to contact the editor, tell them your qualifications, and send over a few writing samples.
2. Sell your space on Airbnb.com. Airbnb allows anyone to turn the space they own into a hotel. It's like eBay for real estate. On the Airbnb website, you'll find people who are renting out a spare bedroom, a couch in their living room, and even a treehouse. As long as you own the space, you can sell it on Airbnb.
[See 5 Rules for Renting Out Your Space.]
You'll have to decide whether or not the risk of letting a stranger into your home is worth it, but it's an easy way to make extra cash from something that you already own.
3. Buy domain names, then sell them to interested parties. Domain names like "google.com" are the real estate of the Internet. Many businesses, both large and small, are willing to pay for that real estate. You can use this to your advantage and make some extra money.
Here's how to do it: Go to a site like GoDaddy.com or NameCheap.com and buy a generic domain name like "InteriorDesignSeattle.com." This will usually cost you less than $10. Then, look up Seattle in Google Maps, and search for "interior design". A list of interior designers in the area will come up. You can contact each of those designers and ask them if they would like to purchase the rights to the domain name.
[See 7 Ways to Earn an Extra $1,000 This Month.]
Because only one person can own that domain name, many businesses are willing to pay $150 or more for a good domain name--if for no other reason than to keep it away from the competition. This strategy could work for any local business in any city. To give you an idea of the potential of this simple strategy, if you bought a domain name for $10 and sold it for $150, and did that once per day, then you would make over $50,000 in a year.
4. Online posting for a fee. Most people know that you can sell the things you own on Craigslist or eBay. Many people even know how to post an item and sell it themselves.
But many of those same people don't want to take the time to do it. Or they have plans to do it, but life gets in the way and they never get around to it. However, you can be sure that they still would like to see some extra cash from their belongings. You can use this to your advantage.
In today's economic climate, everyone wants to earn more money and if you're willing to do the tedious work -like taking pictures of each item, posting them on Craigslist, and communicating with the buyer--you can keep a small portion of the sale.
You can charge a percentage (10 percent of the sale price) or a flat fee ($5 per item). Getting started is easy. Just contact your friends or family members who have a ton of extra stuff, tell them that you're posting a few items on Craigslist, and ask if they have anything they would like to sell along with it.
[See Social Experiment Tests How Far You'll Go to Find $20.]
5. The email newsletter to advertiser technique. If you're interested and knowledgeable on a particular topic (this could literally be anything from knitting to car repair to basketball), you can start an email newsletter on that topic and make money from advertisers.
Here is the "new age" publishing model that is working for many blogs and businesses: You start by writing free content about a topic on your blog or website. At the top of the site, you need to make sure there's a place to sign up and join your free email newsletter on the topic.When interested people find your site, they will read a little bit and then sign up for the email newsletter. As your newsletter grows, you can begin to contact relevant advertisers and sell space in your email newsletter.
For example, let's say that you're going to start an email newsletter on car repair. You can contact any business in the car industry--parts suppliers, automotive shops, even used car lots--and sell them advertising space.
How much money you charge depends on the size of your list, but there are some newsletters are making $3,000 and more per day just from these simple advertising slots.
Making extra money online isn't easy, but it doesn't have to be complicated. Give one or two of these options a try and you just might find yourself a steady side income.