Ways to Make Money Online
Unfortunately, we live in the world of unequal opportunities. But, the internet has made positive adjustments which give everybody a chance to achieve financial well-being without any investments or useful relationships. Wherever you are, if you have an internet connection, you have the same opportunities as billions of other people around the world. Let’s look through the most credible methods of making money online in 2024:
- Content writing
- Blogging
- Affiliate marketing
- YouTube
- Trading
- Selling photos
- Becoming a virtual assistant
- Doing research online
- Reviewing websites and apps
- Participating in focus groups
- Becoming an online travel agent
Next, we’ll tell you how to make money online without investments in terms of those methods, and how to reap the maximum benefits from them to increase your income and make it stable.
Content Writing
You see written content every day on the web pages you visit in the form of articles, blog posts, announcements and press releases (event content), technical and other tutorials, guides and descriptions. However, it’s not the same type of writing that you did in school, like compositions, summaries or dictations.
Content writing should be unique and creative enough to immerse users in the essence of the texts and to help them embrace the idea, motivate them for the certain action, convince them of something or provoke certain feelings. In this case, you can succeed and earn money online for free.
How Much You Can Earn
You can make anywhere from $500 up $2,000+ per month writing content for diverse web resources. The exact amount depends on your skills, type of content and the volume of of articles you produce. The rates for top content writers can range from as low as $15 dollars an hour to as high as $80, though most fall in the $30-50 range. The prices depend on markets, the writer’s location and experience, as well as his/her expertise.
How to Start
As a rookie, you’ll be looking for a good start. In our digital era, there are plenty of job boards that give good opportunities to beginners. To start, you can use:
You can find short-term tasks or full-time contract work there. Your specialized skills can get you on a cool project team.
Some skills are required to earn money online without paying anything by writing content. Let’s look through some recommendations that would be very helpful for you at an early stage of your new career:
- Use a task management program (Trello, Google Sheets or others)
- Use an image editing program and editing apps (Grammarly or Hemingway)
- Practice writing constantly
- Create a portfolio
- Keep track of all your projects
- Jot down content ideas
Using a job board is not the only way to start your career as a paid content writer (however, it is the fastest and the easiest). You could start a blog that you then can use to showcase your skills. Another approach is to find related communities on social media (Facebook or LinkedIn) to get a job.
How to Become an Expert
You should keep an eye on the quality of your work and continue to gradually improve your writing up to the highest standards. Here are some common recommendations to make your texts more valuable:
- Form a killer title and first paragraph
- Keep it simple, sans exaggeration
- Edit, read and edit again
- Deliver value through your content
- Conclude with a powerful note
- Pay attention to the critics
To make it easier to get started, and make quick money online for free, you should pick a niche at first. After mastering that niche, then you can try to become a multitasker. Besides, you should learn different writing styles, but finding your own is crucial.
Blogging
Plenty of people have their own blogs, but not everybody seeks to gain benefits from them. However, it is possible and profitable. A blog is a site with mostly written content, where the author writes about a certain topic from his/her own perspective. They then go on to correspond with readers to make direct contact.
Blogging is a hobby and it’s a good way to share your knowledge with the world. The reader’s’ interest and positive comments are just a bonus, but they can bring in a lot of revenue if you want. While your blog is gaining popularity and the number of subscribers increases, you can add products or services on your blog to sell.
The easier approach is to sell your blog space for ads. You shouldn’t need to find advertisers, because your blog will be popular and they will have already started hunting you. You can join Google Adsense or other contextual advertising networks at the beginning.
How Much You Can Earn
Blogging allows you to make money online from home for free, but how much can you get? The payments depend on you as a blogger. Are you independent or are you employed as a blogger for an established company or website? For the last one, the ranges vary from $19,000 to $79,000 a year. Freelancers can get $10,000 or more for just a post!
Your salary will depend on several factors – the frequency of updates, the relevance and quality of your content, the competitiveness in the niche you’ve chosen and the effectiveness of your marketing strategy to build an audience and generate traffic.
How to Start
Here’s a general guideline for understanding how to create a functional blog that would generate demand and avoid mistakes:
- Find a good descriptive blog name that is relevant to your topic
- Choose a great domain name and domain extension (.com, .net, .org, etc.)
- Employ a blog host and software to get a template
- Customize your blog (change the design)
- Write several blog posts
- Publish the blog
- Promote the blog to gain traffic and an audience
- Start monetization
To succeed in blogging, you should be passionate about your topic, but also about your long-term business model. Analyze competitors and take into consideration potential challenges. If you need more tips, visit Travelpayouts for valid information.
How to Become an Expert
Interesting content is paramount and helps grow your income. There are two main ways to monetize – take money for ads or sell something. Other ads may not be as profitable as you want.You allow other people to use your traffic. This means that you may earn money on an ad, but it may not resonate with your audience and cause dissatisfaction. However, such an approach doesn’t demand much of your time and effort, so you can take this route if you don’t care about your “personal space.”
If you are selling a physical or digital product, you should know for sure that your readers need it. Then, you should get your leads’ contact information in exchange for a valid giveaway.You can make a sidebar opt-in box on your site, as well as a popup to encourage users enter their email to win the giveaway.
We’ve prepared a set of useful articles to make your work easier:
- How to start a travel blog
- The cost of creating and maintaining a travel blog
- Blog promotion tips — paid and free methods
- How to create high-quality content for your site
- How to make money from a travel blog
- 11 best WordPress themes for quick creation of a travel website
Affiliate Marketing
If you want to make money online with no money to start, you can join affiliate marketing and become an affiliate. That means you direct your site/blog visitors to the product and get commissions for purchases they make. In this case, you can combine blogging and affiliate marketing to get more revenue.You can trash the blog and use affiliate arbitrage to resell traffic via PPC. For this purpose, you should know more about making money without a website.
How Much You Can Earn
Affiliate rewards usually start at 1% and can reach 10% or even more. The percentage depends on the company’s policy. Additionally, you can get extra promotions and privileges.
Note that you do not get money for clicks, but for real purchases. Moreover, if you get $500 today, it doesn’t mean you’ll earn the same amount tomorrow.
Affiliates are divided into levels according to their income. Low-level affiliates usually earn up to $100/day. The affiliates at the highest level manage to earn a profit of more $10,000/day.
How to Start
First, you should find an appropriate affiliate program, taking into consideration the program’s terms and conditions, along with your own preferences. To choose a niche you already like is much better than to start from scratch. You should select an evergreen niche like traveling. You don’t need pay anything to earn via travel, just follow the steps:
- Join Travelpayouts
- Get your personal affiliate link to flight tickets, hotels or other travel services
- Share this link on your blog or even with your friends
You will be rewarded for each purchase that was made through your affiliate link. After you make your first profit, you can re-invest it to create a blog or continue to develop your current project.
Set up your own blog or website and fill it with content related to the product you promote. Then, start development by using relevant keywords – this is not a fast way to make money, but it’s a good way to build your own source of steady income.
Content can be diverse – product reviews for individual products, comparisons, information-based articles, guides, etc. You should use an appropriate set of marketing tools to gain more traffic – PPC, email marketing or SMM, for example.
How to Become an Expert
Affiliate marketing is not rocket science, but you should acquire some knowledge first, though. Your goal will always be traffic generation to direct users to the merchant’s resource through your affiliate link.
You should care about both free and paid traffic. Utilizing social media marketing is very helpful for getting traffic. Doing videos on social networks is extremely effective today. Don’t forget to use anchor links in order to make them short, friendly and attractive users.
Another crucial skill is copywriting. Note that only a few affiliate programs provide you with ready posts. You will need to prepare articles yourself or hire someone.
We’ve prepared a set of useful articles to make your work easier:
- 25 best affiliate programs
- 13 affiliate marketing mistakes to avoid on start
- How to find the best affiliate niche website ideas
- How to better integrate Travelpayouts’ tools inside of articles
- 10 tips to boost your Travelpayouts affiliated travel booking website
YouTube
It is possible to make money online with YouTube without having millions of subscribers. You can create your channel with a great earning potential depending on the niche you’ve chosen and the level of engagement that you create. If you already have your own blog and a strong subscriber base, you can start making money quickly. You can also earn via video ads, sponsorships and crowdsourcing.
How Much You Can Earn
Nobody can say exactly how much you’ll earn, because of many factors influence the result – CPM (cost per million), views, CPC (cost per click), watch time, CTR (click through rate), user retention, traffic source, traffic region and video category all play a role. You only start earning money after 4,000 watch hours for the previous year, plus 1,000 subscribers.
You can forecast your result using the Youtube Money Calculator that was developed to calculate the estimated income from your videos or channel. The calculations are based on the factors listed above. For example, if your daily video views equal 20,000 views/day, you can get from $28.50 up to $47.50 dollars a day.
You can combine different income sources to earn more. Read about how you can earn from a YouTube channel. This interview with a channel owner may also be useful for you.
How to Start
First, build your channel and then add keywords in the settings to allow people to see your channel in the YouTube SERP according to their requirements. The second step is to add high-quality, yet brief content. Note that uploads must be on a regular schedule and you should track the results of each one.
Your next task is to build an audience to increase monetization and that starts with allowing YouTube to place ads in your videos. Then, you should set up Google AdSense to let the service send you money per click or per view.
How to Become an Expert
To grow as a YouTuber and to improve your content, you should always check your analytics to see how your strategy is performing. Here are some additional tips:
- Don’t use YouTube exclusively for placing videos. Share them wherever possible – social media sites, blogs, etc
- Join YouTube as a partner to get access to more content creation tools
- Use services to create free quizzes and polls to encourage people to answer your questions. In this case, you get paid for visitors and you get audience feedback at the same time
- Improve your content by using various high-quality equipment like software, cameras, tripods, etc
- Make eye-catching descriptions
Don’t view your subscribers as traffic. They are real people and that’s why you should always try to respond to them. Answer their questions and discuss their comments. Your loyalty and readiness for communication is an effective tool to build an audience.
Trading
Another way to make money online for free without scams is trading. That essentially means exchanging one thing for another. You could buy and sell plenty of things – currencies, shares, oil, crypto or anything else. You don’t need to be the owner of the product, but you can deposit and trade on a special platform that takes commissions from payouts. However, financial trading carries risks with it:
- Marketability – the possible decrease in the liquidity of your investments
- Currency translation – when the value of your currency falls against another currency
- Hidden transaction costs
- The price you expect may differ from the price you really get
- An opening stock opening is different from its last close
You should actively avoid frauds in this niche. The most credible platforms are Ally Invest. It’s the best for cheap trading. E*TRADE is mostly a good fit for beginners. Be very carefully though.
Warning: Trading without knowledge and skill can be dangerous and we do not recommend using this method without both. Learn through this demo-account using fake money.
How Much You Can Earn
Your income is determined by your level of risk aversion – the riskier you are per trade, the more you get. On average, if you invest $1,000, you can make around $100-150 per year what is 10-15% p.a. Your revenue depends on the strategy you choose. It usually consists of many components and its profitability can be measured according to its win-rate and risk/reward ratio.
How to Start
First, you should learn the stock market. That will help you understand the value of the company and its shares. Then, you should consider your means and assess the risks properly. The next step is to find out which platform relates the most closely to your purposes. It should be reliable and honest, provide you with a set of tools for research and offer low commissions.
Warning: Practicing before depositing is crucial in trading. That’s why it’s best to choose the broker with a demo mode to use to study. Before trading, you should choose your strategy and constantly check its effectiveness.
How to Become an Expert
To achieve success, you should steady your income and grow your benefits regularly. If you choose small or medium-sized stocks, you can win a jackpot, but suffer heavy losses. Trading on large platforms allows you to enjoy stability.
If you are rapidly losing money, get out of the market and don’t try to get revenge.You should identify your point of failure. Don’t be greedy and buy more, because the price hike is a result of market manipulations and not company efforts. One more tip is to only trade at your own expense and remain calm despite market conditions.
Sell Photos
If your main goal is to earn money online without investing, and you’re a creative person at the same time, you can earn revenue through stock photography. Stock photos are licensed pictures used by businesses, web-designers, marketing agencies and media companies. How do they work? You take photos and then sell them to global companies like Shutterstock or Fotolia.
How Much You Can Earn
Your profit is determined by your own skills, authenticity and creativity. It is important to note that some companies have strict rules and won’t pay you until they sell your photo. However, there are some sites that work on a pay-per-download basis, in which case you have a chance to increase your commission.
Your income also depends on the number of photos that have been approved. You may earn more for one photo that has been downloaded several times than for several photos that have only been downloaded once.
How to Start
There are many of stock photography websites. First, you should sign up on the stock photography website you decide to go with. One of the most popular ones is Shutterstock. Here are some simple steps to get started:
- Sign up on the website
- Download high-quality images
- Upload content with their platform to get tips for success
- Earn a fee every time your image is downloaded
Note that you will need an account at submit.shutterstock.com. You’ll have to provide personal information and verify your email. You can provide some photos, illustrations or videos for your debuted submission debut.
How to Become an Expert
Choose a single topic to sell more – business, everyday life, medical or education, for example. Take everything that happens every day in to consideration to help catch a moment and make your photo extremely natural. You should always look at what is happening on TV and in normal life.You can draw graphics as well, with the aid of drawing tablets (they make digital art easier and faster).
Most of the large stocks want you to shoot authentic people and things that inspire you. At the same time, some contributors track hits and competitor sales and want similar photos. Therefore, to become an expert you should focus on both your own preferences and the company’s policy.
Become a Virtual Assistant
If you have good planning and organizational skills, you’ll be pleased to know that becoming a virtual assistant is one of the most in-demand jobs these days. There is an increasing number of businesses and entrepreneurs who realize that they do not need someone on payroll and hire online assistants instead. Essentially, virtual assistants are self-employed professionals who do administrative, technical, marketing, sales, and other tasks for businesses through online tools.
Here are some of the most popular tasks that virtual assistants are hired to do:
● Cold calling to grow brand recognition and increase one’s customer base
● Taking calls and providing customer support via phone and email
● Scheduling customer meetings, calls, follow-ups, and more
● Social media management
● Lead generation
● Content creation
There are many advantages to becoming a virtual assistant. Most jobs offer flexible hours, so you can work from home at your convenience and, in many cases, you do not even need to leave your current job. Some businesses do not require a lot of experience and will even hire beginner assistants if they need help urgently. Over time, you can increase your hourly rate and land bigger clients as you build a portfolio of customers.
How Much You Can Earn
Your earning potential depends on your skills, company size, country, niche, and more. For example, in the United States, the average salary for virtual assistants is $25.03 per hour, while the minimum rate can start at about $8 per hour. As you specialize, you can increase your rate.
Note that the reward also depends on the complexity of the tasks you complete. For accounting and some technical tasks, you can easily make $30 to $35 per hour.
How to Start
Start by registering on freelance platforms that offer virtual assistant jobs and filling out your profile in detail. In most cases, you need to specify your educational background and professional experience. If you have any work samples or recommendation letters, make sure to add them to spice up your profile.
Here are some of the platforms on which to look for virtual assistant jobs:
● Upwork
● Fiverr
● Indeed
● FlexJobs
In addition to these major platforms, you can also look for local opportunities on job boards or simply market your services to companies you like.
How to Become an Expert
Working as a virtual assistant does not require deep technical expertise, which is why the niche presents many opportunities for beginner marketers. However, if you want to succeed, it is important to always continue learning and improving your skills. Here are a few best practices:
● Take training courses. The best way to dive into the niche is by taking some online training for virtual assistants and learning from the best.
● Determine virtual assistant tasks that you are already good at. Thus, it will be easier to find a job and improve your skills along the way.
● Build your online presence. Over time, you can build a network and create a website on which to market your services. This will help you come across as more professional to potential clients.
Conduct Research Online
If you are skilled at using Google to find information, you can earn money by doing research online. Many companies hire online researchers when they need to find reliable sources, check facts, and make informed decisions. To conduct research online, in most cases, all you need is a computer and an Internet connection.
Some advantages of earning money with online research include flexible working hours, low entry barrier, relatively high pay rates, a wide choice of platforms to do research for, and more. Briefly, doing research is one of the easiest ways to start making money online.
How Much You Can Earn
The earning potential is unlimited when it comes to doing online research. Depending on the task, you may get paid per hour, per article, per project, etc. Companies can pay researchers from $15 up to $100 an hour. So, it all depends on how much you can spend doing work and how skilled you are.
How to Start
To start off, you can look for brands that need your expertise, create an account, and apply for jobs. Today, there is a number of platforms on which you can earn by doing online research in different niches. For example:
● Ask Wonder allows customers to ask particular questions and connects them to researchers who get paid to find answers. The tasks may include product or service recommendations, researching the competitive landscape, gathering statistics, and more.
● 10EQS invites experts from different niches to research and answer questions according to their expertise. It is important to be experienced on the topic. You may work online or agree to accept phone calls as well.
● Experts123 allows niche professionals to answer questions and even write expert posts to earn money online. You can contribute by sharing your knowledge about beauty, crafts, health, travel, technology, and more.
Some platforms require you to complete a trial search to prove your skills.
How to Become an Expert
While some companies accept entry-level researchers, others require niche expertise. As you complete tasks, you will be able to improve your research skills and gain more knowledge, resulting in better job opportunities. Try to look for companies that need your niche expertise in order to get higher paying roles. In addition, it is a good idea to sign up on several platforms to increase your chances of getting hired.
Review Websites and Apps
Another great way to earn online is by reviewing websites and mobile apps. User experience is an important step on the road to success, so it is no wonder that companies are looking for every opportunity to improve their websites and applications. Essentially, you will follow in the footsteps of a normal user to ensure that the user experience is good.
Here are some of the tasks you may be asked to complete:
● Test the loading speed of the website
● Find bugs and other technical issues
● Check the website performance
To share the results of your test, you might be asked to record your screen and voice, fill out a questionnaire, participate in an online interview, and more.
How Much You Can Earn
Many companies are ready to pay good money to get reviews for their websites and applications. Most testing jobs take up to 30 minutes, and you can earn about $10 per test. The rate depends on the complexity of the test, so technical tasks like bug testing are usually higher paying.
How to Start
There are a bunch of platforms that connect website owners and users who are ready to test sites. Here are a few to start with:
● Checkealos invites English- or Spanish-speaking testers from around the world. Sessions take about 30 minutes and you can earn $10 per session. You will need a PayPal account to withdraw your earnings.
● Enroll is another platform offering website-testing gigs. Register on the platform, choose your preferred testing method (smartphone or computer), and start taking on assignments. You will need a PayPal account.
● Ferpection allows you to take surveys on your phone, tablet, or computer. A 45-minute test is about $25. You do not need to record a video or audio. Simply take screenshots and answer questions. Payouts are sent via PayPal or in the form of Amazon gift cards.
Start by creating your profile on one or more platforms. You might be required to take a quick test to demonstrate your skills. To be able to work, you will need a smartphone, tablet, or computer and a good Internet connection.
How to Become an Expert
Many brands want to assure the quality of their offer. So, if you have some free time on your hands, you can test websites. Here are a few ideas for how to increase your earning opportunities:
● Do your best while testing websites to build a strong profile, as some platforms give tester ratings.
● Keep applying for different websites, so you can qualify for more tests.
● Grow your technical expertise and apply for more complex jobs.
● Take advantage of the courses and training programs that some platforms offer to grow relevant skills.
Participate in Focus Groups
If you enjoy sharing your opinion with others, you can help brands foster their product and grow their market presence by taking part in market research studies. Focus groups aim to identify the attitude of participants towards a particular product, service, brand, or even idea.
Basically, focus groups imply interacting with a small group of applicants. The research team may ask the group to discuss a particular topic, request their feedback, or have participants test the product.
There are different ways in which focus group research is conducted, such as:
● Group discussions
● Phone interviews
● Face-to-face interviews
● Assisted shops, when the research team joins you on a shopping trip
● Product tests, involving trying out sample products and giving feedback on packaging and advertising
How Much You Can Earn
Pay rates vary for each study, but are usually pretty lucrative. You can earn $10 to $25 per small survey or $50+ per hour for more complex research. Some platforms, which require narrow niche expertise, pay up to $750 per hour.
How to Start
Most studies are free to join and can be conducted online, via telephone, or even in-person. You can start by creating a profile on some research platforms and applying for relevant studies.
Here are some of the places to look for focus groups:
● Respondent.io is one of the leading focus group platforms. It is even trusted by brands such as IBM, Microsoft, GoDaddy, Dropbox, etc. This platform is always on the lookout for professionals, such as software developers, marketers, executives, enterprise software users, business owners, sales and support personnel, and more.
● User Interviews features online focus groups as well as other types of surveys and studies. The platform boasts over 2,200 studies monthly with average study payouts of $60.
● Take Part in Research is a platform that connects businesses to focus groups in the United Kingdom. This platform features group discussions, face-to-face and telephone interviews, product tests, assisted shops, trade focus groups, online surveys, and more.
How to Become an Expert
● Make sure to download and familiarize yourself with the online meeting tool that will be used during the session. Check to see if your camera and microphone work, and choose a quiet space to ensure you are not disturbed. This will allow you to focus on answering the questions and building a strong profile for future studies.
● To be able to participate efficiently in focus groups, try to be outspoken and collaborative. This will help the research team gather feedback and allow you to build authority.
● Some platforms looking for niche experts require you to verify your profile with a work email. This step will increase your chances of obtaining a higher paying job.
● Make sure to carefully fill out your profile, as many platforms use machine algorithms to match participants with research studies. The more information you share, the more likely the engine will offer you something relevant.
Become an Online Travel Agent
Travel can be overwhelming at times. As a result, some people prefer to ease the logistics off their shoulders and hire a travel agent. With a growing online market share in the travel niche, more and more of travel planning is being done online. So, if you have good research and organization skills and know how to find the best flight deals and vacation packages, why not become an online travel agent? You can work for a travel agency or be self-employed and get paid for helping people plan vacations and travels. In most cases, no special certification is required.
How Much You Can Earn
The payment depends on the type of employment. If you work for a travel agency, you can either receive a fixed payroll amount or get paid commissions on all the sales you make. Self-employed travel agents can establish the desired rate and offer it to their clients.
In addition, you can earn affiliate commissions from travel brands when booking tickets for your clients. Such commissions depend on the travel product and brand. For example, you can normally earn 1-2% on flight tickets, up to 10% on tours and activities, and so on.
With Travelpayouts, you can earn 50% revenue share on various types of travel products, from flight tickets to hotels to car rentals to cruises and more. You can access and manage over 100 travel affiliate programs in a single affiliate dashboard and withdraw your earnings altogether at the end of the month, so it is much easier to reach the minimum payout amount. Many brands at Travelpayouts accept traffic from online travel agencies, and on top, there are beautiful promo tools to drive more conversions and generate sales.
How to Start
You can start by researching travel agencies for available openings or look for online travel agent jobs on freelance platforms, such as:
● Indeed
● Upwork
● Jooble
How to Become an Expert
● Try to partner with travel brands to get discounts for your customers so you can grow a loyal clientele.
● It is a good idea to specialize in one or more regions to grow your expertise, learn how to get the best deals, and recommend deals to other clients interested in the area.
● Remember that you can earn affiliate commissions for online bookings for your clients in addition to a service fee.
Other Ways to Make Money Online Without Paying Anything
If you still have questions about how to earn money online quickly and easily without investment, here are a few ideas.
- Client work through digital marketing to sell websites and other tools for promotion online. For example, you can create logos or business cards if you are a designer. If you are keen on copywriting and SEO, you can fill websites with relevant content.
- Complete small surveys providing your feedback and opinions which can earn from $1 up to $20 per one survey.
- Join PTC websites to click and read ads. It takes just up to 30 seconds to view one ad and be paid for it.
- You can become a captcha solver who reads captcha images and types the related symbols. It only takes two hours a day and lets you put $2 for every thousand captchas in your pocket.
Indeed, there are plenty of other ways to raise money without any investments. These great possibilities made possible via the internet are giving equal chances for everybody to make a good living sitting in the comfort of their home.
