20 ideas to make money online

A cash cow for the enterprising, the Internet is littered with opportunities to make a fast buck. While it rarely qualifies as a solitary source of income, the Net can easily help you supplement it. However, the amount you earn depends on the time and effort invested. Go through these 20 options and find out which ones work for you.

Blogging
If you're a passionate closet writer who wants to be published but can't find a way to do so, make each keystroke your way to wealth by penning your own blog. Starting a blog doesn't require extensive technical skills but it's important that you have expertise in the field you are writing on. This will attract visitors to your site. Building a large following will enable you to earn profit by luring advertisers, writing paid reviews or getting commissions for promoting other people's products.

Paid Writing
If maintaining a blog is difficult for you but you still want to indulge your passion for writing, you can jot down articles for other blogs or sites such as Weblogs, Helium or PayPerPost. Writing an e-book can also be a good option. E-books are investment free, with no cost for printing and shipping. If you have a strong command over languages, you can become a copy editor, where Webmasters will pay you to read articles and correct grammatical errors, sentence fragments, etc.

e-tuitions/Webinars
The demand for tutors is high and growing. So, if you like helping others learn, e-teaching could be the earning ticket for you. All you need to become an online tutor is expertise in your subject and a few spare hours per week. TutorVista, e-tutor, SmartThinking and Tutor.com are some of the sites you can enroll with. If you gain a good reputation as a coach, you could even conduct Webinars-lectures or seminars transmitted over the Net. College and university students are willing to pay to gain entry to a well-respected Webinar.

Affilliate/Reseller
For those who have the knack of selling, one of the best ways to make money online is to become an affiliate/reseller. An affiliate is a person who gets a commission for selling every product that he promotes, whether on his Website or through any other avenue such as eBay. You don't have to own the product. You only need to sign up for an affiliate program with a company and start selling its products under your referral link. Firms such as Commission Junction or Click Bank have a large pool of products.

Buying/Selling domains
Buying and selling domain names is another way to make money from home and requires very little investment or time. You can buy domains at their registration prices or even cheaper and trade them at a profit. However, always research on sites such as sedo.co.uk, afternic.com, ebay.com or other domain auction sites to get an estimate of the hottest selling names. The best way to find good ones is to use terminated domain lists, which contain several expired names that are back in the pool.

Freelancing for Professionals
Freelancing is a great option for professionals who are experts in their respective trades and know how to ensure customer satisfaction. Various freelancing and project-oriented sites allow companies that need help to describe their projects. Freelancers and small businesses offer bids, ideas or proposals, from which the buyers can choose what they find most suitable. Websites such as Elance cover everything from programming and writing to data entry and design, while RentACoder focuses on software programming.

Advertising
You can sell space on your Website or blog for advertisements and you earn when these ads are clicked by visitors to your site. The sorting and placing of ads is free. The profitability of pay-per-click advertising depends on the traffic level of the Website and, most importantly, on the clickthrough rate and cost per click. Google AdSense is the most popular option, while others are BidVertiser, Text Link Ads and Blogads. Direct banner and RSS feed are some other forms of online advertising.

GPT Programme
GPT or Get-paid-to sites are becoming increasingly popular among teens. You get paid for signing up for free Websites, newsletters, playing games and filling out online surveys. These are suitable for people who don't have a skill set but want to earn extra money. Taking online surveys is simple- register with a few legitimate, paid survey sites and answer questions. The topics range from shopping to politics. This might not help you make a living, but you can earn good pocket money. Contests2win is one of the trusted GPT Websites.

Online Marketing
Once a Website is created and optimised for search engine (SEO), the SEM or Search Engine Marketing begins. A treasure trove lies hidden here. An SEO/SEM expert, who is responsible for marketing a Website, can promote it in various ways. These include article marketing, writing press releases, forum posting, blog posting, submitting your site to directories and search engines, social bookmarking, etc. Most companies don't do this in-house and pay you to conduct the SEM for them.

Making themes
As more and more people seek an online presence, the demand for Website templates and WordPress (Blog) themes will keep increasing. If you are good at Web designing and coding, you can earn a lot from designing Web themes. In this segment, there are mainstream Websites, such as TemplateMonster and ThemeForest, which act as a marketplace where you can sell your themes. Templates are sold and priced depending on the rights and features that are bundled with them.

Selling photos
If you enjoy photography and are good with a camera, you could be sitting on a huge reserve of revenue. There are people who will be interested in your collection of images. Nowadays, it's easy to take your photos to the public, providing a convenient way to build a secondary income stream. Many stock photo agencies, such as Fotolia, Dreamstime and Shutterstock, offer incentives for people to earn from their photos.

Support & service
Providing coding or fixing other Webmasters' issues is another great way to earn extra bucks. There are simple jobs ranging from adding a script to setting up sites, but knowledge of Web coding is essential. One can offer support for Web CMS (content management systems) like Drupal or Joomla. After you are comfortable with your own installation, you can help other people to set these up and configure them.

Stock/forex trading
Joining the stock/forex market may seem a bit risky. However, you can start small and continue researching till you gain experience in this area. Once you do, it will be easy to earn from exchanging foreign currencies and/or stocks. Their rates fluctuate depending on supply and demand, and economic and political influences in the world. The aim of any trader is to spot which currency/stock is likely to rise or fall in value against another. The more time you put in, the more you will earn.

Selling your own brand
If you have a flair for designing cool images, don't bother about creating your own inventory. As long as your design can be printed on a product, you can pocket some money. You can upload designs on various Websites such as CafePress, and if somebody orders these designs, the company will print them and distribute the products. It could be designs for T-shirts, hats, bags, books, posters, calendars, greeting cards, etc. You will receive a commission for each sale. Other such sites include Lulu and Zazzle.

Virtual Assistant
Small businesses always need help in running their processes, but may not be willing to hire a full-time employee. As a virtual assistant, you are expected to perform practically any administrative task that a traditional secretary or assistant would, such as make travel reservations, handle expense reimbursements or pay bills. You can do it from the comfort of your home, interacting with clients either online or by phone. Your expertise will decide how much moolah you rake in.

Inbound call centre
Many companies, who are facing space constraints, especially those in metro cities, prefer to hire workers outside their offices or outsource certain processes. You can set up an inbound call centre at home to handle such jobs. Research different companies that are outsourcing their work as they may have opportunities for inbound call centre agents. You can work for more than one company. This can be either a part-time or fulltime engagement, depending on your need.

You Tube
If there's a dramatic performer hidden inside you who craves applause and adulation, upload yourself on YouTube. You can be a filmmaker, musician or comedian who wants a wider audience. Your earnings will come from ads displayed on your video page. This process is similar to the pay-per-click advertising program common to other Websites and blogs. Sites such as Flixya and Mediaflix can be helpful in this regard.

Researching for others
Don't be morose if you can't write, design or code. Lack of talent cannot stop you from making money online. If you're willing to work hard for a few hours a week, you can take up simple research jobs for other people who don't have the time to do it themselves. You could search for opportunities in organisations that provide funding for research and offer to assist them through online investigation.

Building Applications
With smartphones gaining popularity, the demand for their applications, or apps as they are popularly known, has also shot up. There are over 3 million apps for the iPhone and over a million apps in Google's Android market. Most of these are selling like hot cakes. Developing and selling your own smartphone app is becoming a lucrative way to make money on the Internet. Apps cost virtually nothing to develop and entail no storage or shipping costs. So they enjoy the best profit margins.

Transcription
Medical transcription involves making written copies of oral material dictated by doctors or other medical experts. These may include history and physical reports, clinical notes, consultation notes, reports, letters, psychiatric evaluation and so on. The dictated material needs to be transcribed swiftly and accurately, which is the most challenging aspect of the job. To become a medical transcriptionist, you need to have a good knowledge of medical terminology and a high typing speed along with accuracy.

How to Make Money Online with a Cooking Recipe Blog

This article is for those that like to “play” in the kitchen, for people that enjoy preparing meals and testing and trying new ingredients. There is a way to make money online with a recipe or food blog, and in this post I will provide a somewhat detailed overview of that process along with some relevant tips and tricks.

 

Documenting the process

First, you might want to commit to coming up with a recipe each day. You have to prepare meals every day anyway right? Fast food, delivery, and take out is primarily unhealthy and expensive. People want to learn ways to eat at home cheaply, conveniently and healthfully. Your “job” could be to share your approach. It could be fun and rewarding.
Perhaps you have a speciality that you can create a weekly recipe for, such as a flavored hummus recipe.
Now, it’s important to jot down the steps and the measurements for the recipes. For the enthusiastic, filming and taking photos of the process will bring you steps head of anyone else attempting the same.

 

Starting a recipe blog

The simplest approach is to get a domain name, some cheap shared hosting (both can be purchased from HostGator), and to install WordPress (which is free).
Then, your best bet would be to purchase a premium WordPress theme that leverages “Recipe semantic markup.”
To keep this article succint-ish, I will just say that recipe markup will enhance your recipes within search engine results, bringing in more traffic to your web site.

 

Monetizing your recipe web site

Now for the making money part. There are numerous ways that the web site can generate a revenue. I will go through the main ways here.
For each recipe that you publish you should link the ingredients, and equipment used, to their own pages on your site.
For example, create a separate page for a blender which reviews the blender that you use. Also, for each, or most of the ingredients, having their own page which details their health benefits, origins, or other interesting information is beneficial for the sites visitors.
Then from each of those pages you can (and should) run a geo targeting script that determines the country of the visitor. Then you could link the visitor to the appropriate Amazon web site for their country: Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk, etc.
And, if you become an associate (or affiliate) for those Amazon sites, you get commissions for any purchases made.

 

Why use Amazon?

Amazon is a widely known, widely trusted online store that sells a wide range of products. Also, when linking to Amazon with an “affiliate link,” which is simply a link accredited to you so that you get commissions on sales, you will also be rewarded when Amazon up-sells to the customer.
Since there is a wide range of products available on Amazon, and Amazon offers free shipping on purchases over a certain amount, customers often fill their baskets with other items, items that you will get commissions on as well if you reffered the customer to the site to begin with.
Amazon has a lot of upsell methods in place including the “customers who bought this, also bought…” followed by a list of other related items.
Sure, the commission percentage isn’t as high as when promoting digital items as an affiliate, but the high trust factor and the commissions awarded for extra products make it worth the efforts.
Commissions for small appliances, like juicers and blenders, can generate amounts between $10 and $30 or more which isn’t bad at all.

 

Taking it all even further

Besides doing the above, you can really knock this money making idea out of the park by performing some of the following tasks:
1) Social photo sharing: Including your original photos on social photo sharing sites like Flickr and Pinterest can bring traffic from different sources. Embed the photos from those sites into yours to increase page load times and reduce bandwidth usage.
2) Social video sharing: In the same way as with photos, creating unique videos and posting them to social video sites like YouTube can increase exposure and bring more traffic. Also, embedding videos into recipe pages increases the value of the page from both visitors and search engines perspectives.
3) Recipe book creation: You could benefit immensely by adding your recipes to a stand-alone document as you go along.
If you have the time and gumption, it would be valuable to include each recipe into its own document, including links, and exporting it as a PDF file.
You can do this using free tools. OpenOffice.org Writer lets you create PDFs and retain hyperlinks. Most “free” software will not let you keep hyperlinks in tact in the exported PDF unless you pay for an upgrade, but OpenOffice does.
Each of these single-recipe booklets I would share on PDF sharing sites like Scribd and SlideShare.
Also, I would add related recipes to a larger PDF book. Then, you could either sell the book after ‘x’ amount of recipes are included, or “bribe” people with it to get them on your mailing list, or simply share it like you did the single-recipe booklets.
Then, of course, create a booklet with all of your recipes, and either share it, give it away to subscribers, or sell it. You could post it on Clickbank for example and let other people sell it for you and give them commissions for doing so.
4) Enhance recipe posts: Besides embedding multimedia into the posts (your unique photos from Flickr or Pinterest, and unique videos from YouTube) you can also do a write up for each post.
Rather than just including: Equipment list, ingredient list and procedure, also write something about the recipe. It could be anything including: the nutritional value of the main ingredients, reviews from family members on the taste, your motivation for creating the recipe, a vivid description of the taste, smell and texture, and how it feels in your mouth, and so on.
Just focus on creating unique valuable content always. By content I mean: the recipe itself (cite the inspiration if relevant), the written content, and the multimedia content.

 

Other ways to make money on a recipe blog

Besides sending customers through the Amazon sales funnel and getting commissions, and possibly selling your recipe books (either in digital, print, or both), you may want to consider other avenues for generating income.
You can consider selling advertising space with services like AdSense (for contextual and retargeting ads), or BuySellAds and BuyAds (for banner and Twitter advertising), or even independently.
Also, touched upon above was building a list and offering a recipe book as an incentive to join the list. Then you could send out a newsletter, which could simply be a collection of the recipe postings from the previous week to bring readers and customers back to the site.
You could also make announcements of new books, new products, or events that you have a connection with (either hosting yourself, selling yourself, or that you are an affiliate for).

 

Crowd recipe publishing

At some stage, even very early, you may want to open the doors to let others share their recipes on the site. This could keep you from having to publish every day, but also expand the audience.
Additionally, if your site is on a specific theme (discussed below) you might want to turn on WordPress MultiSite and let others blog about other aspects of that theme.
As an example, if your recipe site caters to recipes that are “autism” (i.e dairy and casein free) or “diabetes” (i.e. low sugar) friendly, a new blog, or family diary blog, on any of those topics can further expand the site.

 

Cater to a particular pocket of people

With web sites, it is often best (perhaps always best) to not try to cater to everyone. You can devote a recipe site to a specific audience and only create recipes that they would find interesting.
If you follow a particular lifestyle, like vegan or raw foods, it is that much easier. Simply, documenting what you do daily is the easiest approach.
To brainstorm ideas for a “pocket of people” here is a quick process to run through, with an example. This process can help you come up with a domain name, a tag line and the overall theme for the recipe or health site.

Tip 1) Visit Google and type in a phrase and watch what comes up from Google Suggest. For example: I began typing “what can I eat on…” (without the dots) and many things came up including:

what can i eat on the caveman diet
what can i eat on a low carb diet
what can i eat on the daniel fast

Another example: Starting with “recipes for…” came up with:

recipes for those with acid reflux
recipes for those with gerd
recipes for those with high cholesterol
recipes for people with high cholesterol and diabetes

These are examples of what people are searching for within Google. This represents a pocket of people that you can easily cater to and rank high for in the search engines to get traffic – traffic that can become customers.
Your site can quickly become the “go to” authority site in one of these niches because of low competition. In general, large food and recipe sites will have a page or category catering to these niches and that’s fine. But developing a site devoted to them will stand out in the search results.
You might have heard it already, but “there is money in the long tail”. Think about how many people are in the world!

Tip 2) Picking one of those phrases can become the “tag line” for the site. In WordPress, to edit the tag line, you will go to Settings > General.
Now, from there you can create a nice 2-word punchy domain name that represents the site. You may or may not want to include the word recipes, it really depends on your future goals. The days of exact-match domains are gone, so don’t worry about matching a keyword for the domain. Create a brand instead, something that will be easy to remember, and be simple to build a logo around at some point.
Let’s say we went with the first result “what can i eat on the caveman diet” for the tagline, here are some ideas for domains:

CavemanEats
FoodOfCavemen
GruntDiet
...and so on

There you have it. You have a domain name, a tag line and theme for your recipe site. Now, adding content on a regular consistent basis is key. It could be recipes all the time, or a mix of recipes and stories and other related content.
Perhaps the categories can be: Recipes, News, Diary
Even if you are not an authority on the topic (yet), and perhaps you are just in the process of learning about say “foods that I can eat having crohns,” you can document what you learn/do as you go, building out an authority site, and making money in the process.