There are plenty of ways to make money online, but different people have different goals and abilities. Here are fifty easy ways to make money, ranging from spare change to things you can turn into a full-time career.
The Ground Rules
Every job is different, but most jobs you can do online fall into two categories: full-time employment or freelance work. These types of online jobs are extremely different from each other, and they have different expectations depending on who’s employing you. We’ve covered both types of jobs in this guide.
Many of the jobs listed below are available through agencies, which are intermediaries that help connect clients to skilled personnel. You don’t need experience in a relevant field to make money online, but some familiarity with industry expectations helps.
Every job listed below requires internet access (or they wouldn’t be on this list), but some need more hardware beyond that. The most commonly-necessary tools are a desktop or laptop computer, a smartphone or tablet, and a keyboard and microphone set.
Most companies prefer that you have a hardwired physical connection, rather than using wireless internet. Wireless systems are more prone to failure and disruptions, so use a better connection whenever possible.
Finally, each article includes information on whether a specific job has the earnings potential of a career, a hobby, or pocket change. These indicators do not show what you’re guaranteed to earn, just what’s the most likely.
1. Take Surveys
Earning Potential: Pocket Change
Surveys are a fast, accessible way to earn pocket change online. These surveys come from companies looking to gather more information about potential customers, so the more interest groups you fit into, the easier it will be to get surveys.
Payouts for surveys are low and can take months to accumulate, so this isn’t a viable option for a career. Consider signing up for several survey companies at the same time and cashing out from them all at the same time. That’s more productive than sticking with one company.
App-enabled devices, including smartphones and tablets, may be necessary for this job.
2. Invest Money With A Robo-Advisor
Earning Potential: Hobby
This may be cheating because it’s not a job, but investing your money with a robo-advisor is a simple way to start making more money through the internet. The caveat, of course, is that you need to have money to invest. Robo-advisors take some skill to master, but if you’re bored, they can help you achieve long-term financial stability.
Many people do this alongside one or more of the other jobs from our list to save up for retirement. It’s never too early to start saving money, so if you have some cash leftover, look into this.
3. Work As A Virtual Assistant
Earning Potential: Career
Virtual assistants are like secretaries, although the nature of your duties varies by company. Tasks could include scheduling meetings, collecting information, performing data entry, or doing anything else that an employer needs help with. Virtual assistants can work with clients from around the world, which is particularly useful if you have an odd sleep schedule.
That said, virtual assistants often use voice chat technologies to talk with people, so employers may expect you to have a quiet and private space to work in. That can make it harder, although not impossible, to be a virtual assistant if you’re raising a child or otherwise have limited control over the noise in your area.
4. Rent Belongings
Earning Potential: Hobby
Did you know you can rent the things you own, rather than selling them outright? This isn’t as well-known as many other ways to make money online, but it can help you get extra income over time.
Renting belongings can take many forms, ranging from letting someone keep furniture in their house to visiting you so they can use specific power tools for a home project. In general, the more useful something is, the more likely it is that you can rent it for money.
This method requires more advertising and active management than many other jobs, so consider trying to rent multiple items. For your protection, consider requiring security deposits if people want to borrow anything especially valuable.
5. Use A Cash Back Credit Card
Earning Potential: Hobby
This is a sneaky way to make money, and it’s most relevant if you’re already in business and want to buy things in bulk. For example, if you regularly order tens of thousands of dollars in merchandise from overseas, using a cashback card can get you a lot of money, extremely quickly.
The downside to this method is that it’s a poor choice if you weren’t already planning on making bulk orders. You won’t make a lot of money with this method unless you’re also spending a lot, but some people can benefit.
If this trick fits your situation, make sure you look for the best rate of getting cashback and no cap on the amount you can earn. When you’re buying in bulk, the difference between 1% and 1.1% cashback is enormous.
6. Teach Courses Online
Earning Potential: Hobby
Teaching is a specialized skill, but thanks to the spread of cameras into average households, it’s easier than ever to record yourself and teach other people. If you record a high-quality video and edit it well, you can sell it to companies that offer online courses.
The key to succeeding here is being knowledgeable about your subject and knowing how to teach it to others in a concise, user-friendly way. It’s okay to have some personality in your videos, especially if you use that to keep people engaged, but focus on education above all other considerations.
Similarly, you should decide early on how much you want to try and earn when teaching courses online. Popular subjects have many people competing for views, so they can be hard to find success with. Yet, topics that are too niche won’t get enough viewers to be profitable.
Consider partnering with a company or a brand if you want to teach videos online. That can give you a ready-made audience and make this a better proposition for long-term income.
7. Write An eBook
Earning Potential: Hobby
Like creating teaching courses, eBooks are a great way to supplement your income by helping others on a particular topic. In most cases, it’s better to write nonfiction geared towards specific industries, especially if your book involves teaching useful skills.
Everybody likes getting advice from an expert. The more experience you have in a particular area, the easier it is to write on that topic and succeed by selling your knowledge. Familiarity with advertising is also useful if you want to make more than a few dollars off it, so don’t expect this to provide a ton of money overnight unless you know what you’re doing.
You can make a lot more money by selling eBooks to relevant companies that want to use them as training material. In these cases, books should be more concise and clearly explain how, when, and what people should do to accomplish specific goals.
8. Write A Roleplaying Game Supplement
Earning Potential: Hobby
Many roleplaying games, such as Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition (D&D) from Wizards of the Coast, allow people to publish supplementary rules for their games.
This way of making money is much slower than many other methods because the time from writing to publication could be months, but it can also earn you hundreds of dollars at a time if you write a sufficiently long product.
The critical thing to keep in mind about writing a game supplement is that it should have both a specific goal and be appropriate for the game you’re writing for. Familiarity with the game rules is exceptionally useful, though experienced game designers may only need a short introduction to the system and a good editor.
If you don’t have any experience writing a roleplaying game supplement, write the entire thing before you make a proposal to any publishing company. Even if it’s not fully edited, having a long document that shows your understanding of the rules and ability to produce content will get you much farther than only pitching the basic idea.
D&D is the heavyweight in this area, and products for it have more potential than almost anything else. You can research products on sites like DriveThruRPG.com, a major retailer for gaming products, to see what’s selling well. That can guide your decisions and help you produce better content.
9. Run An Affiliate Website
Earning Potential: Hobby
Running a website is one of the most effective ways of getting passive income. This means you can set the site up, then get traffic and revenue for many months or even years to come. Your target audience limits your earnings potential, so the bigger the audience, the more you’re likely going to earn.
This is especially viable if you focus on a space that doesn’t have much competition yet. To keep with the theme of our previous entry, some roleplaying games allow you to host the content of their rules online. This can help drive attention and players, and ultimately make the game itself more profitable for the publisher.
However, you can run many other types of websites, too. These can range from informational blogs to hobbyist sites that attract readers from all over the world. The primary goal here is to monetize things, so figure out a way to make money off of your site that won’t drive your users away.
This could involve signing up for Google Ads, but it could also mean putting up affiliate links where you get a part of each sale. If you run several sites at once, even as little as a dollar or two a day can add up to a lot of supplemental income, and very quickly at that.
Most people cannot make a career out of running a website, so don’t expect this to replace a full-time job. However, since you can approach this at your own pace, it’s a good way to fill time when you don’t know what else to do.
Keep in mind that sharing content may require getting licenses from other companies. If you’re not sure how to begin, talk to someone else in the industry and ask for advice.
10. Make Digital Graphics
Earning Potential: Career
Visuals are a key part of browsing the internet, and a little art can go a long way for clients. That’s why working as a graphic designer can be extremely lucrative. This can be a full-time career, but you can also spend as little as a few hours per week designing and selling graphics.
The trick to succeeding here is finding a way to sell your graphics. Many graphic designers work on-demand to create things for customers who already have some idea of what they want. Selling original logos and designs is much harder.
If you want to make more money, consider selling packs of thematically-similar graphics. For example, rather than getting one digital street sign picture, most companies prefer having a set of as many types of signs as possible. Graphic packs are inherently more valuable than most single images, especially if you can sell them to many people at the same time.
11. Tutor People
Earning Potential: Hobby
Tutoring is relatively easy to get into, although you may need a webcam to interact with your students. Many college students do this for some extra money, but tutoring is a viable option regardless of age or even experience.
That said, tutoring is significantly more profitable if you’re offering specialized skills to professionals looking to advance their careers. One-on-one interactions in that field can let you charge quite a bit per hour, especially if you develop a reputation for quality classes.
Some tutors work with students from around the world. This is easier if you know their native language and can work in their time zones. Tutors like this usually work with children and focus on fundamental educational skills, so almost anyone can do it.
Most tutors focus on straightforward and limited subjects. For example, you might help prepare people for a specific exam, but tutors don’t teach people how to take exams to start with. People who teach in-depth skills are usually coaches (described below) instead of tutors.
12. Freelance Writing
Earning Potential: Career
Freelance writing isn’t the same as writing eBooks or similar products. Instead, this involves writing advertisements or informational content, like what you’re reading right now. Freelance writers research content, adjust the material to meet each client’s requests and otherwise aim to create valuable content for others to use.
The good news is that there’s no shortage of writing work on the internet, so you can work as much or as little as you want. It also pays well if you work with the right agency or company, so this can be a full-time career if you can keep your expenses down.
The hardest part of freelance writing is developing writing skills. Many colleges and universities will accept and pass material that no decent writing agency would even consider, which means this industry has much higher standards than many people expect.
Online tools like Grammarly can help you structure your sentences effectively, while other websites can suggest topic titles, help you produce keywords, and otherwise optimize your content for the internet.
However, don’t try to cheat the system. Some people rewrite existing articles or even plagiarize them outright instead of making original content. Search engines like Google penalize this sort of thing, and numerous services exist to help detect and deter fraud in this industry.
The good news is that freelance writing allows for more flexible schedules than most other ways of making money online. Agencies usually give several days for each piece of content they ask you to write, and as long as you finish on time, nobody cares when you write it.
13. Real Estate Crowdfunding
Earning Potential: Hobby
Property is always valuable – one glance at actual home values over time is enough to show that. However, being honest, most of us don’t have enough money to invest in buying or renting entire properties. That’s where real estate crowdfunding comes into the picture.
This is where crowdfunding comes in. The principle is simple: Many investors can put a small amount of money into a property and get a part of the revenue it generates for as long as the group owns it.
Since we’re talking about real estate, what determines a “small” amount is relative. Some companies go as low as $500, but others will ask for more. This is a great way to make money if you’ve got some extra cash lying around and want to do something with it.
Like all investments investing in real estate carries risk. It’s also not a fast way to make extra money. That’s okay if you’re looking to grow your savings with something that has generally predictable returns, but this won’t be a full replacement for a regular income stream unless you can invest a lot of money over time.
Be sure you stick with a well-known, reputable investment company. Some people try to defraud investors, so do your research before you spend anything on this plan.
14. Sell Crafts
Earning Potential: Hobby
In this context, “crafts” refers to all types of art and handiwork. Most crafts are physical, but they can be digital as well. Sites like Etsy are popular choices for everything from self-care kits to personalized birthday gifts.
Profits from crafts can vary greatly, ranging from a few dollars per piece to hundreds of dollars for larger or more-complicated items. Many crafters specialize in particular niches, such as sewing or fandom products.
In most cases, selling handmade crafts works better as a supplemental income stream and won’t replace a primary job. However, if you can find the right market, you may be able to make a full career out of this.
Remember to research your industry before you start selling things for it. For example, if you sell self-care products, you may need to put specific labels on your packages or invest in individual shipping containers.
You also need to find the right balance between product quality and the amount of time you spend on each product. If you’re only selling things as a hobby for a little bit of extra income, this isn’t as important. But, if you want to sell a lot of products, you need to be sure this provides enough of a return on your investment.
15. Test Websites Or Apps
Earning Potential: Pocket Change
If you’re tech-savvy, testing websites and apps can provide a tidy stream of income while also granting you access to some of the latest technologies. The needs of tests vary by client, so flexibility is essential when you’re testing things. Expect to fill out a lot of forms and questionnaires when you’re done with each test.
Familiarity with coding and programming is helpful for testing these products. If you can determine not just what’s going wrong, but why, that’s vastly more useful than simply giving your impressions about the product and can lead to more work in this field.
This position works best as a hobby because full-time testing doesn’t pay well and can be inconsistent. However, if you can occasionally spend an hour or two, you can make enough money to get a nice meal and leave it at that.
In rare cases, you may earn more than $100 per test, but this usually involves video conferences and other significant time commitments. That’s not a deal-breaker, but keep it in mind when deciding how much you want to try and earn through testing.
16. Become A Mechanical Turk
Earning Potential: Hobby
Amazon’s Mechanical Turk program, sometimes referred to as MTurk, is one of the most unusual freelance services available on the internet. This platform asks users to perform basic, often somewhat tedious tasks on behalf of clients.
Potential tasks include things like validating data, moderating content, or conducting research. Mechanical Turks frequently take part in augmenting machine learning or performing jobs that computers still don’t know how to do, such as making subjective judgments about things.
Tasks can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. As such, the payout can be relatively low for each task, but the system usually has enough work that you can do as much as you want, whenever you want. This makes it ideal for making extra money when you have an irregular schedule, or when you just want to work at your own pace.
Consider joining a community if you want to join the MTurk program. This can help you find and avoid troublesome clients, get answers to common questions, and otherwise smooth out your entry into the system.
17. Rent Your Car
Earning Potential: Hobby
Did you know that many people don’t drive their cars as often as they could? A car rental program allows you to lease it out to people for hours or days at a time. The negative side is, of course, that you can’t use it while you’re renting it out to someone else.
Reputable rental companies allow you to keep the majority of the profits, but they do keep some for themselves to help protect your car and make any repairs needed. Be sure to read all rental agreements carefully before you turn over your vehicle to ensure you won’t be on the hook for excessive maintenance fees.
This way of making money online is most effective in city environments, where a higher number of people increases the transportation demands.
Unsurprisingly, it’s much less prevalent in rural areas where most people have private transportation.
18. Perform Physical Tasks
Earning Potential: Career
This isn’t as online-focused as many other jobs, but you can arrange for the work itself through the internet and may never need to meet your customers face-to-face. Performing tasks is like being a handyman, but encompasses various other duties that can help people.
For example, you can assemble furniture in people’s houses, help move delicate types of furniture, or even stand in line for product releases. Tasks come in many styles and locations, so work is usually available if you take the time to search for it.
Tasks work best as a hobby rather than a full-time career. Some tasks aren’t needed often enough to support a livelihood, while others have irregular commitments that can interfere with the rest of your schedule.
Many physical tasks need a minimal degree of physical fitness. This could range from standing on your feet for hours to lifting and carrying heavy objects. Like most positions, fulfilling tasks is easier if you have experience in a related industry.
19. Operate A Drone
Earning Potential: Hobby
This is another job that blurs the line between online and offline work. But, drones are an increasingly useful tool for many companies, so registering and flying a drone can make you an impressive amount of money if you apply yourself.
Jobs that use drones can include aerial inspection of hard-to-reach areas, land mapping, or event photography. These days, many realtors hire photographers who use drones to get aerial shots of properties and give potential buyers a better understanding of what they’re investing in.
However, this does take more investment than many other online jobs. Drone pilots often need certifications to use drones for commercial purposes, and it can take quite some time to earn that if you’re starting from scratch.
This job is ultimately best for hobbyists who want to make some money by flying drones rather than regular work replacement.
20. Write Software
Earning Potential: Career
These days, apps for smartphones are all the rage, and certainly where a lot of the money is. However, you can make money writing software for many types of devices, and it’s all doable from home.
The best software is purpose-built for a specific, well-identified group and designed to address a problem or issue they have. Don’t try to reach too far when you’re creating software for others. Instead, make the software as small and simple as possible to ensure that it does its job correctly.
Once you have the core of your software, you can expand it with new features and options as necessary. Completing the core of the product is what convinces people you can do the rest of the job, though.
Similarly, decide how you want to sell your product. You could crowdfund the release once it’s sufficiently written, or you could try to publish it through another company. You can even sell your software directly through your website.
Whichever route you choose, knowing how to sell the product is nearly as important for profits as knowing how to make your software.
21. Transcribe Audio
Earning Potential: Career
As a transcriptionist, your job is to quickly and accurately convert spoken audio to text. This may involve transcribing content live, but it could also include working with audio recordings. Some transcribers only correct text-to-speech software to ensure accuracy while others copy every word from the audio by hand.
Transcriptionists specialize in different areas, so familiarity with an industry helps a lot. Medical transcriptions are particularly valuable if you’re trying to earn money, though they do require adhering to patient privacy laws.
Some transcriptionists support communications for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. This typically involves listening in on one side of a conversation, then correcting the text before delivering it to the other individual in the call.
Regardless of employer, speed and accuracy are essential parts of this job.
22. Translate Content
Earning Potential: Career
Translation is as much an art as a science, and many companies are willing to pay a lot of money if you can translate material well. Just like transcriptionists, translators often specialize in specific industries. For example, translating medical content requires familiarity with complex, industry-specific terms.
Most translation jobs fall into one of two major categories.
Fiction translators work with novels, scripts, and other story-type content. This requires understanding the nuances of grammar in each language enough to convey the meaning of the words and the author’s style. Many people specialize only in this role.
Nonfiction translators usually work with business-related material. This may include advertising, how-to guides, manuals, or similarly dedicated content. Some nonfiction translators work only with one client, but most have many customers.
Speaking languages natively is the best, but if you weren’t raised with a given language clients will typically accept certifications or other proof of experience. Naturally, some languages are more popular than others, but there’s a translation market for practically every living or dead language.
23. Coach People
Earning Potential: Career
Coaching is like tutoring, but it operates at a higher level. That makes it more valuable than tutoring, especially if you’re coaching clients in profitable industries that can afford to pay extra for your services.
While tutors may help with specific problems, coaches help teach fundamental skills and prepare clients for overcoming problems on their own. For example, you may coach managers to become better leaders, or you may coach public relations employees to improve workplace sensitivity.
Coaching people requires some flexibility in your schedule, so this job works best if you have a lot of free time and can charge enough to make up for the irregular aspects of it.
Experience is one of the most valuable parts of being a coach, so some people turn to this later in life. The more time you spend learning about an industry, the easier it is to coach others to succeed in that area.
24. Narrate Books
Earning Potential: Career
If you enjoy speaking and have a professional-level microphone, consider narrating books for companies. Only a small percent of books ever get converted to audio format despite the demand, so there’s enough work here to make a full career out of it.
Like all voice-related jobs, this one relies on your ability to speak well, so problems with your voice can affect your income. It is possible to make a career out of narrating books, but it’s safer to do this part-time and ensure you have another stream of income in case your voice gives out.
Professionalism is valuable in this field, so voice and speech training can make all the difference in whether you get jobs. At times, companies also look for specialized voices or skills, so you don’t need a neutral tone or accent.
Experience with editing audio tracks is also helpful. You may need to piece clips together and remove any errors before you submit it, so experience with editing can improve your income and opportunities.
25. Sell Stock Photos
Earning Potential: Hobby
This is a specific subset of photography. Stock photos are images that companies can use for various purposes since it’s easier to use a picture that already exists than it is to hire a photographer and get them to take a photo.
Don’t expect smartphone cameras to suffice for this, though. For success in selling stock photos, you need an expensive, professional camera and some experience editing photos. This job also requires a lot of creativity and the ability to predict what types of photos companies are most likely to want to use.
Stock photos can include anything from landscape shots to groups of people in various situations. Companies online will buy your photos, taking stock photos usually requires visiting the nearest city at a minimum, so be ready to travel.
If you’re an experienced photographer, you may be able to convert existing pictures into stock photos. This can be a quick way to make a buck since the majority of the work is already done.
For more: Brutally Honest Microstock Photography
26. Edit Written Content
Earning Potential: Career
Creating written content isn’t just about the writing itself. Almost every piece of written material goes through an editing process, whether it’s an informational article for the internet, a news report, or even a tabletop gaming supplement.
This is important for ensuring the quality and accuracy of written materials.
Editors exist on a level between managers and content producers, and without them, most content wouldn’t be as good as it is.
Some editors take on other roles, such as communicating with clients or assigning work to freelance writers. Regardless of the form this job takes, it requires consistent attention to detail and the ability to spot small errors in large texts.
27. Manage Live-Streamed Events
Earning Potential: Career
With the growth of high-bandwidth internet plans and video streaming options, live-streamed events are an increasingly popular way for groups and organizations to hold meetings and events between geographically-separated people.
While most people focus on the content itself, however, a single person could run most or all of an event from the comfort of their own home. This is the side of an event most people don’t think about, but if you have the right equipment, you can manage some incredibly-complex events.
This online job is harder to get into than most others because it usually requires years of experience and thousands of dollars of equipment. However, if you qualify, you can earn a lot of money for each event and enjoy plenty of time off between jobs.
28. Data Analysis
Earning Potential: Career
Businesses love data. From customer interests to the performance of particular products, stores, or advertising campaigns over time, data drives many of the actions of the world’s largest and most valuable corporations. If you want to make money online, that’s also a major opportunity.
Analyzing data requires a mix of math skills and creativity. The real value of most data collections is knowing how to transform that data into a useful form. For example, if you can determine why sales are higher or lower at a particular store, you can look for ways to improve that.
Data analysis often requires programming skills, so some familiarity with coding software can help you succeed in this role.
29. Become A Dating Consultant
Earning Potential: Career
If you’re great with dating, you can become a dating consultant over the internet and help other people learn to interact with others. Experience is by far the most useful aspect of this, but a discerning eye and the ability to adapt your advice to each client’s situation is also useful.
Dating consultants usually have one-on-one video or chat sessions with clients. During these sessions, you may help identify a client’s weak points, provide fashion advice, work on opening lines, and help other people learn how to continue building relationships after starting them.
Most dating consultants are men because societal pressures urge men to make the first move in approaching someone, but women can succeed in this field as well. Some people seek out opposite-gender consultants to get further insights.
30. Become A Personal Trainer
Earning Potential: Career
Most people think of personal trainers as people who work at the gym, but with the rise in home-based exercise systems, you can also do this online. This is a great way to expand your training opportunities, particularly if you can be flexible with your time.
Working as an online personal trainer is like working in-person, but involves live video conferences during each of the client’s exercise sessions. A high-quality webcam and microphone are essential for success in this role.
Important: If you’re providing medical therapy, not general fitness advice and guidance, states may require you to obtain special licenses for providing telehealth services. Contact your local licensing agencies for more information.
31. Become An Agency
Earning Potential: Career
If you have management skills, consider becoming your own agency. Instead of doing all the work yourself, you can find freelance employees to do the work for you and pay them a part of the profits. This can help you earn more than you’d be able to make alone, especially once you hit the point where you can’t scale your own work up.
However, running an agency also requires taking on more responsibilities than most other roles. This job requires making contracts, finding customers, pricing services, managing deliveries, paying taxes, and otherwise taking care of every aspect of your business.
Most agencies focus on specific areas of expertise. Writing agencies are particularly common, but agencies can also manage photographers, voice actors, graphic designers, or any other service that customers want.
32. Provide Customer Service
Earning Potential: Career
Customer service isn’t limited to answering phones. These days, many customer support personnel work on social media, in chat rooms, or through email. The one thing all have in common is that you can do them from home without any particular trouble. There are a few things to keep in mind if you want to provide this sort of support.
First, customer service personnel usually work in shifts, so you won’t have as much flexibility in your schedule as many of the other jobs on this list allow. Second, most companies insist that you follow their guidebooks for responses, and you may not have easy access to a manager for stranger cases.
Customer service jobs don’t pay especially well, but you can make a career out of this, particularly if you can remain sympathetic to customers throughout your workday.
33. Become A Security Guard
Earning Potential: Career
No, not for your own home, unless you live in a skyscraper, and they want to have someone on-site to check things. Many companies are turning to remote security services because they don’t require someone on-site at all times. If the site has enough cameras, you can watch it remotely and alert the police or another security service as-needed.
This is a rare job, and it requires an excellent internet connection to support simultaneous video streams. However, if you like staying up at night and can pay attention to many video streams for extended periods, consider looking into security as a career option.
34. Provide Notary Services
Earning Potential: Hobby
Notary publics are the quiet workers who keep many of the country’s most important systems functioning. From acknowledging deeds of ownership to administering oaths, notaries process millions of things each year as impartial witnesses working on behalf of state governments. Often, you can provide these services from the comfort of your home.
If you aren’t registered, consider becoming a notary public. You can make quite a lot of money this way if you know where to find customers, and the fact that the country has millions of notaries shows how much demand there is for this little-mentioned role.
However, keep in mind that some states do not offer commissions for remote notaries. That can prevent this from being a viable way to make money online.
Keep in mind that notary publics are far more limited than qualified attorney notaries-at-law, who have more legal authority.
35. Conduct Surveys
Earning Potential: Career
While it’s easy to take surveys from home, it’s more profitable to conduct them yourself. These come in several forms. Many people use internet-based phone surveys to contact people on behalf of research companies. This is especially common for political research, but surveys also investigate products, brand recognition, and other matters.
Other people create and manage digital surveys for companies. These usually involve email campaigns and help companies make essential decisions about the future of their business.
If you interact with people, conducting surveys from home requires having a particularly thick skin and the ability to remain calm and professional in stressful circumstances. It may also require working unusual hours since many phone-based surveys occur in the evenings.
36. Provide Voice-Overs
Earning Potential: Career
Providing voice-overs is similar to narrating audiobooks, but it usually focuses on shorter videos. Voice-overs for things can range from a couple of seconds to several hours of content at a time. Most voice-overs are for characters in videos, but people may also hire you to provide sounds for video games or to take part in creating music.
Like all voice-based roles, this online job requires having professional-quality equipment. The initial investment means you’ll need to work harder to pay that off, but professionals can make an entire career out of this. Other people limit their income to the hobby level and use this as a way of getting extra money.
Consider attending classes if you want to provide professional-quality voices. There’s a distinct difference between people who have training and people who don’t, and clients who listen to a lot of demo reels learn to pick up on these differences.
Flexibility is more important than having a distinct voice, but clients particularly love voice actors who can do both.
37. Edit College Admission Essays
Earning Potential: Hobby
Getting someone to write your college essay for you is cheating, but editing college essays is a legal and legitimate service you can provide to other people. This is usually a time-limited position because most people write their essays when they’re applying for colleges and don’t need help with this for the rest of the year.
However, some students still need help editing their work once they get into college, so it’s possible to earn more money throughout the year.
Doing well in this role requires an eye for detail and familiarity with college writing standards. Schools sometimes have different standards for admissions essays, so being able to read and apply their guidelines is essential to this job.
38. Sell Teaching Plans
Earning Potential: Hobby
Many teachers are too busy to create as many teaching plans as they want to. Between meeting with parents, managing extracurricular activities, memorizing new guidelines, and dealing with students from day to day, some teachers hardly have any time to teach. That’s where selling complete teaching plans comes in.
The ability to create easy-to-follow guides for teachers is useful and provides a valuable service for teachers at all levels of education. This includes student teachers in college who may be busy with their own research and looking to get as much spare time as they can.
Like many jobs, experience is the key factor when it comes to selling teaching plans. At least ten years of experience in a classroom will help your plans sell better.
39. Maintain Fan Pages
Earning Potential: Hobby
Fan pages focus on specific brands, topics, or individuals and help keep track of news or celebrate accomplishments. For particularly popular subjects, fan pages can also provide steady revenue through direct product sales or affiliate links.
Maintaining fan pages isn’t hard, but it may require creating special licensing agreements. You may need to negotiate for the right to use certain pictures, display logos, and so on. Expect to communicate with a company or management agency if you want to have an official fan page.
The good news is that working with another company expands what you can do with your site. A relationship like this may allow you to use certain music, get unique content, or avoid getting copyright claims about the content you’re hosting.
Running a fan page requires some experience with web design and coding. You can hire someone to do this, but if you want to maximize profits, it’s better to do it yourself.
40. Sell Domain Names
Earning Potential: Hobby
Domain names are a central part of running a website, and they matter. Sites with clear, trustworthy names get more clicks from search engines, while people avoid websites with strange or garbled URLs like the virus-ridden holes people (correctly) assume they are.
The margin between these is where the opportunity for profit comes in. Selling domain names usually involves buying up domains that you expect to become more valuable in the future, then reselling them to interested buyers. Some people specialize in domains for specific industries, while others are generalists.
This job can be lucrative if you get the right domain names, but in most cases, profits are as dependent on luck as they are on the ability to predict future trends.
Fortunately, no company sells domain names directly. This is a good thing because the internet would be far more of a chaotic mess if it wasn’t centrally controlled. Every domain name ultimately goes through ICANN, which registers companies and allows them to sell existing domains.
41. Sell Songs
Earning Potential: Hobby
Music is a profitable industry, and you can tap into that profit by writing and selling songs. Melodies are more valuable than lyrics, which people often apply to songs after writing the basic tune. Thanks to the internet, you can submit and sell songs online.
This job is more complicated than many other online jobs because it’s not as reliable. Composers may write dozens of songs for every one that gets purchased, although the potential profits are huge if a song becomes popular enough.
Professional composers often spend almost all their time composing, and even that offers no guarantee of success in this industry. That makes this job better if you’re looking for a hobby or even pocket change, rather than selling songs as a full-time career.
42. Buy Websites
Earning Potential: Hobby
This is not the same thing as selling domains or creating your own websites. Buying websites is about investing in existing sites, or those with potential, to improve them and earn further profits.
People sell existing websites for many reasons. Boredom with the site sets in, or they could be too preoccupied with other things in their life. Either way, maintaining a valuable page can provide a tidy source of income, and it’s a viable way to earn money if you’re looking to invest.
Fansites are particularly valuable in this field. They aren’t owned by organizations, which means they can go up for sale in the first place. Fansites can also have a lot of visitors to them, which means more potential profits.
43. Get Commissions From Sales
Earning Potential: Career
Getting commissions from sales is a great way to earn money on high-value transactions. Affiliate sales are technically commissions, but this specific job focuses on larger and more valuable deals. Making sales could involve anything from sending out email marketing campaigns to cold calling customers and trying to close a deal.
This job works particularly well if you’re outgoing, enjoy talking to people, and can remain passionate about your assignments. Interest and energy tend to get the attention of potential customers, so introverts may find it more challenging to succeed in this position.
It’s possible to make a career through getting commissions, though this requires investing a lot of time. If you’re looking for less money, you can do smaller commissions at your own pace. Like many online jobs, experience is helpful in this role and will affect your earning potential.
44. Create Guest Posts For Blogs
Earning Potential: Hobby
Creating guest posts for blogs is like freelance writing and shares many of the same principles. Many freelance writers even work in this area. But, focusing on guest posts is a little different. That usually involves reaching out to others and either paying them or getting paid to put your content there, depending on how valuable it is.
Guest posts are most valuable to you when you can create valuable content for the readers of a blog and offer helpful insights. For example, if you’re a veterinarian, you could submit guest posts to animal blogs to help people recognize danger signs and know when to bring their pet in for a visit.
There are blogs for almost every subject imaginable, so if you’re an expert in any field and can write professionally, chances are you can make guest posts for them.
45. Help People Prepare Taxes
Earning Potential: Career
A complicated tax code means people need help, especially when they have diversified income streams and investments. Most people are not sufficiently familiar with tax laws to do everything themselves, which is where helping them prepare their taxes comes in. This online job has several distinct forms.
First, and arguably the most common, is working as an accountant to prepare and file annual taxes. This is what most people need help with, and since almost everyone needs to file their taxes even if they don’t owe anything, there are plenty of potential customers.
The second form of this job is helping businesses with their taxes throughout the year. This is like being a temporary accountant and could involve filing things monthly or quarterly instead of annually. Many accountants do this to help get income outside of the main tax filing season.
Finally, some people help prepare taxes for specialized scenarios. For example, if someone wins the lottery, they may need to understand their tax burdens as soon as possible. These on-demand services are inherently unpredictable, but there is a market for them.
46. Provide Travel Consulting Services
Earning Potential: Career
Travel consulting is a people-oriented position that requires managing budgets and understanding objectives to help people get the best possible vacation. This job requires memorizing complex information about many destinations, as well as keeping on top of things like local travel regulations and seasonal impacts on the pricing.
Travel consultants may work through email, video chat, or over the phone. Many also help make reservations, buy airline tickets, and otherwise cut the amount of work that clients need to do. This job requires professionalism and good judgment, so experience is extremely helpful.
47. Clean Up Search Results
Earning Potential: Hobby
Every search engine wants to display useful results to its users. If the results aren’t helpful, people won’t use the engine. Yet, as good as algorithms are, they still aren’t perfect. That’s where people who clean up search results come in.
This job involves making predetermined queries, then providing information to determine which results are appropriate and which ones don’t seem to match the intent of the query. With enough work, companies can use this to refine their algorithms and improve each page of results.
It’s hard to make a full career out of dealing with search engine results, so this job usually works better as a hobby instead. Be prepared that many companies do expect you to do a minimal amount of work per week.
48. Enter Slogan Contests
Earning Potential: Pocket Change
Everyone loves a catchy slogan – that’s why slogans exist. Slogan contests are events where you can help companies find catchphrases, sound bites, or other short snippets that will convey information while resonating with their audience.
Many companies search through dozens or even hundreds of slogans to find the right one for their company, so profit margins on these contests tend to be low. That makes them better for pocket change than a hobby or full-time career.
49. Review Companies
Earning Potential: Pocket Change
It’s true; you can get paid to review other companies. Like slogan contests, this tends to be a low-margin role because most companies don’t want to pay too much for reviews. With that in mind, there are a few important things to remember when reviewing companies.
First, keep your reviews honest. Lying about a company for money isn’t helpful, and it could even get you in legal trouble if someone gets angry enough to sue. Instead, it’s always better to give your honest impressions of the company. Highlight both the good and the bad sides of what you see, then explain how the balance of those affects your final rating.
Second, learn how to research companies. The best reviews come from people who have extensive experience with a company or its products, but you can’t always spend ten years with a company before writing about them. Research can help you understand the company without needing to experience everything personally.
50. Look After Pets
Earning Potential: Career
Families love pets, but they can’t always take care of them every day. Whether they’re traveling for work or going on vacation for a week or two, someone needs to take care of their pets while they’re away. That’s where you come in.
Qualified pet-sitters provide food, grooming, bathing, and other personal care to pets while owners are away. The highlight of this role is that your house is your place of business, and it’s also nice that you may be with individual pets for extended periods.
While you don’t need any particular training to become a pet-sitter, experience is incredibly useful and can turn this into an entire career if there are enough customers in your area. Families particularly value licensed veterinary assistants, who they correctly assume have the knowledge and skills to look after different types of pets.
Some pet-sitters specialize in specific sorts of animals. For example, you could emphasize dogs or cats, which are some of the most popular pets in the country. A few pet-sitters specialize in handling rare pets. This is sometimes more of a hobby or a small part of a larger pet sitting business because it usually requires more training and has a much lower number of customers.
Success as a pet-sitter requires empathy and knowing how to make friends with animals that may be nervous or upset about being in a different environment. This is another area where experience is useful, so the more time you spend with different animals, the easier this job becomes.