142+ Ways to Make Money Online

Selling Products You Own

When we think of “making money online,” we often immediately think about affiliate marketing or selling digital products.  Sometimes, it’s easy to forget one of the oldest forms of making money online…selling products you own! Clear out your house, apartment, or bedroom.  Instead of throwing things away or letting them pile up and make a mess, get some money for them.

1. Gazelle - This is a great place to sell back your gadgets that you don’t use anymore (like your old iPhone, laptop, etc.).  I was able to sell back my iPhone to them for $150 and put that money toward a new iPhone 5.  They even pay the shipping cost for you to ship the product to them.
2. Amazon – You can actually sell back or trade in items you own to Amazon and receive Amazon gift card credit.
3. eBay - The most popular auction site online.
4. Craigslist - The most popular (and free) classified site online.
5. Backpage
6. Half.com
7. Shopit
8. Oodle
9. Sell.com

Selling Products You Don’t Own

…Also known as affiliate marketing.  This is perhaps the most common or hottest way to make money online at the moment.  You recommend a product, using an affiliate link.  Someone clicks through that link , purchases the product, and you get a commission.  It’s a simple concept, but sometimes difficult to execute.

One common way to do it is to create a niche site – a site generally focused on one type of product or sub-market – and populate the site with relevant articles, with affiliate links embedded.  One of my current challenges is to add $20,000 per year to my passive income portfolio by creating niche sites that focus on Amazon products.  Here are some good sources for products to sell as an affiliate:

1. Amazon Associates – When someone clicks on your Amazon affiliate link, you’ll receive a commission from anything they purchase within 24 hours.
2. eBay Partner Network – Earn a commission on eBay auctions that people find via your affiliate links.
3. Commission Junction – Huge marketplace of affiliate offers.
4. Clickbank – One of the largest marketplaces for eBooks and other digital products.
5. E-Junkie – Similar to Clickbank, but I find it a bit more difficult to navigate and find certain digital products to sell as an affiliate.
6. Google Affiliate Network - I view this as pretty similar to Commission Junction.
7. DigiResults – Very similar to E-Junkie and Clickbank.

Selling Products You Designed, But Don’t Own!

In some cases, you may want to design your own products (we’re talking simple things, like t-shirts, magnets, mugs, etc.), but you don’t want to take on the cost of having inventory that you can’t sell.  The below options are great for this situation – for the most part, it’s free to set up a virtual storefront, and you earn money when your products sell (and if nothing sells, it costs you nothing).  These are generally great if you already have an established brand and want to sell your branded gear.

1. Cafe Press – Easily design products like t-shirts, mugs, etc. and sell them from a virtual storefront through Cafe Press.
2. E-Shirt – Cheaper alternative to Cafe Press that focuses primarily on t-shirts.
3. Spreadshirt – Similar to E-Shirt.
4. Zazzle – Very similar to Cafe Press.
5. Shirt City – Another shirt design site/store.

Taking Surveys

This isn’t really my cup of tea, but there are several sites that will pay you to take surveys or give your opinions.  Important note: Don’t ever pay to sign up to a site that offers to pay you for surveys.  Here are ones that, based on my limited research, are legitimate.

1. Dollar Surveys
2. Opinion Outpost
3. Toluna
4. Global Test Market
5. MySurvey
6. Pinecone Research
7. ZoomPanel
8. Permission Research
9. Synovate
10. MyView
11. Test Spin
12. Clear Voice Surveys
13. Hot Spex
14. Survey Spot

Writing Reviews

There are some good sites out there that will pay you to write reviews on your blog for various products and services.  I haven’t done much of this, but I’m hoping to eventually incorporate it into my niche sites.  Some of them are picky about what blogs they accept/approve, so you may have to wait until your blog is older and more established.

1. Social Spark
2. Pay Per Post
3. Expo TV - Get paid for doing video reviews of products you own.
4. Blog To Profit
5. Bloggerwave
6. Blogging Ads
7. Blogitive
8. Linkworth
9. PayU2Blog
10. Sponsored Reviews

Stock Trading / Investing Online

If you’re willing to do a bit of research and take on the risk, you can buy and sell stocks online.  Some people make a good living trading stocks on a daily basis, while others have lost significant amounts of money doing it.

1. E*TRADE
2. Sharebuilder
3. Scottrade
4. TD Ameritrade
5. Trade King

Selling Your Photos Online

There are several sites that allow you to sell photos or images that you have created.  Here they are:

1. Shutterstock
2. Dreamstime
3. DepositPhotos
4. iStock Photo
5. Fotolia

Other Stuff

There were some things I couldn’t fit in any particular MMO category, so here they are:

1. SurfBounty – I’m generally not a big fan of this, but others have had success with it.  This site allows you to get paid for reading e-mail, surfing the internet, and participating in surveys.  Some of these types of sites are scammy, but I don’t believe this one is.
2. Flippa – Make money by reselling your websites and domains.
3. Career in online marketing – This one comes per the suggestion of Ian in the comments, and rather than rewrite what he said, I’ll simply quote him: “There are two types of careers. The first one, where you have to work out of an office, is not really making money purely online because it’s a job that requires an office presence (although an absolutely amazing one and one that may still make your list). However, another route is starting your own SEM agency. If you start your own agency, you can make a tremendous amount of money from the comfort of your own home if you work hard and are really good.”

My Favorite “Make Money Online” Blogs

These are some of the blogs that I subscribe to in my RSS reader.  Not all of these blogs will consider themselves “make money online” blogs, which I completely understand and appreciate.  What I’m saying, by listing them here, is that they’re great resources that will no doubt help you make money online in one way or another.

1. Smart Passive Income
2. Viper Chill
3. Escaping the 9 to 5
4. Virtual Business Lifestyle
5. Shoemoney
6. Jonathon Volk
7. Make Money on the Internet
8. PPC Ian
9. Murlu
10. The Life Design Project
11. Income Diary
12. Quick Sprout
13. ProBlogger
14. Profit Addiction

My Favorite “Make Money Online” Forums

I don’t frequent these forums too often (and there’s often a lot of garbage to sift through), but there are some gems of information here.  It’s usually a good place to check on reviews of various SEO software, see what people think about different changes in the MMO world (like when Google changes their ranking algorithm), and other miscellaneous MMO/affiliate marketing topics.

1. Warrior Forum – My favorite.  Be careful, you can get sucked into some of the threads here, and before you know it, you’ll find that you’ve just “wasted” 2 hours.
2. Digital Point – Not as good as Warrior Forum (in my opinion), but still worth visiting.
3. Black Hat World – I certainly don’t recommend or practice black hat SEO tactics, but occasionally there is some interesting information and discussion within this forum.

What Am I Missing?

Hopefully something in this article will help you earn more online.  With that said, I’m sure there’s still a LOT out there that I’m missing.  Share it in the comments!  If I hear some interesting ones that I completely missed, I will probably come back and edit this article to include them.

I put a lot of work into this article, so I’d be forever grateful if you could retweet it,share it on Facebook, or Stumble it using the buttons on the left sidebar.  Thanks so much!