A Beginner's Guide to Making Money Online

Today's article is a guest post from Daniel Kidd at BestMoneySavingBlog. Daniel reveals 6 tried and tested methods for making money online. Definitely go check out his blog.

I’m sure everyone who reads this has typed into Google ‘how to make money online’. I’m also sure that the majority of you have never actually made anything. Fortunately, I’m someone who has. Admittedly not enough to retire just yet, but I’d like to share a few money making methods with you. Please remember that none of these are easy or guaranteed to make you any money – but if you do things properly, there’s a good chance that they will.

Make money through blogging

There are millions and millions of blogs out there, and there’s really nothing stopping you starting one too. You can choose a subject that you’re passionate about or just write about your life. If you have something interesting to say and network with other bloggers properly, you’ll see the popularity of your blog increase. With this increase, you have the opportunity to advertise, use Google Adsense or try affiliate marketing (we’ll get to that one later).

Sure, there aren’t many people out there who say they’ve made a fortune from blogging, but there are many  who bring in a nice bit of extra cash on a constant basis.

The beauty of blogging is that you don’t have to pay to get going. With Wordpress, Blogspot and many other platforms, you can try it out for free. I would recommend buying your own domain name at some point though as free platforms don’t allow you to take advantage of all money making opportunities.

To make any money from a blog takes time, imagination, ability and effort – but if you put all these into it, there’s a great chance that one day you’ll start earning from it.

I have a blog about saving money that I’ve just started and hopefully I’ll be earning from it pretty soon. That said, I’m putting a lot of work into it and haven’t seen anything yet.

Make money freelancing

Depending on the kind of industry you’re in, freelancing can be fantastic for picking up money online. I work in internet marketing, and by using freelancer sites like Peopleperhour – I’m able to get a few leads every month. There was even a point where all my work was from this site.

Internet marketing isn’t the only type of job where you can freelance though. Writers, sales people, graphic designers and many more professions have the chance to earn while sitting at home.

Textbroker

Similar to Freelancing, there’s a site out there called Textbroker – made for webmasters who’re looking for writers, and writers who are looking for money. You sign up, choose your specialist subject(s) and write an article based on a subject of their choice. Your article then gets marked out of 4 stars (1 being poor and 4 being excellent – 5 star ratings are for people who’ve been writing for a while). The higher the rating, the more money per article you make. You can get around £5 for a 500 word article on a 4 star rating – 5 star is considerably more.

Youtube

If you have a website, you can choose to use Google Adsense – ads from Google that pay you every time someone clicks on the link. This works by Google charging the company a certain amount every time someone clicks one of their ads, and passing some of the revenue down to you. If having a site isn’t your thing, you might be more interested in Youtube.

If you have a few videos that are getting popular, you’ll receive an email from Google asking you if you want to opt in to Google Adsense on Youtube. If you consent, the next time you put a video up, Google will put ads on it. It then works the same as if you have a site – Company pays Google, Google pays you.

You need to have a very popular video in order to make good money, but I know loads of people who it’s happened to, so why not you?

Fiverr

Similar to freelancing. If you have a talent for anything, and I mean anything, advertise it on Fiverr. People on here are offering all kinds of services, all for $5. Don’t count on it making you a millionaire soon, but there’s nothing stopping you earning around $100 a month on there. If you don’t have a full time job to attend, you can obviously make more.

Make money from affiliate marketing

My favourite method – if done properly, this can, and has, made people rich. Companies of all sizes and industries offer affiliate marketing programs – you refer someone to their site from your site/social networking account/forums etc, and they pay you a percentage of everything this person spends there. Percentages are different with every company, as is cookie validation time (how long the person has to buy something – if the time has expired, you don’t make anything).

Affiliate marketing is by no means easy. My advice to anyone starting out is to choose something you know a lot about, write a blog giving advice to people about it and put your affiliate links on there. People are much more likely to buy something if they’re getting expert advice.

That said, affiliate marketing is difficult and, like everything else, takes time and effort. Expect to put in a heck of a lot of hours before you see any kind of income.

The internet has changed pretty much everything about the way we live. It’s in the majority of homes in the developed world, and there are hundreds of thousands of ways to make money from it. Remember though, so many people try, but not many succeed. If you think you’ve got what it takes, start earning now. 

Thanks very much Daniel, it's really appreciated.

Readers: Have you got any other methods of making money online that you want to add?

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