If you’ve heard of crowdsourcing (and even if you haven’t), Amazon’s Mechanical Turk program is a great place to get involved. Much like at Elance, you input your info and skills. You then are able to search for different menial tasks ranging from identifying inappropriate web content to transcribing audio recordings to basic data entry work.
Just like at any other job, the more work you do, and the better your quality, the more opportunities you’ll have to make money. The payouts are often small, and your payment is received in Amazon credit, but Mturk is a great place to make mindless money while veg’ing on the couch watching TV.
15. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a social media site for professionals. This isn’t a direct way to make money, but it’s a great way to connect to your current and potential peers, customers, clients, vendors, and more here. You’ll build a reputation and get in the loop on important developments in your chosen career path and/or industry. One day an old college buddy may hit you up for a dream job you never considered at the exact moment you
16. Care.com
If you’re an experienced nanny or babysitter, Care.com is the place you want to make money. By listing yourself on the Craigslist of Childcare, you’ll broaden your reach and increase your odds of finding the right gig at the right time. You can be pickier with what kids you watch when you have the reputation and traffic to pull in more customers. Join Care.com and start making money by investing in the future of our youth.
17. ThePirateBay
I support bootlegging – I don’t see it as being immoral or unethical in any way. I used to bootleg quite a bit in my youth, and I still do on occasion today (although not yet today in particular, I more meant “in the present”). If you want to hustle for your money, do what you must, baby. Download some software, music, movies, or other assorted digital goodness here and start slangin. It’s not an easy life, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.
18. iTunes
If you’re a musician, writer, artist, tech nerd, pundit, or can produce any type of audio, video, or text worth consuming, you may be able to sell some stuff in Apple’s flagship iTunes store. By selling your
work here,
you’re able to stand next to the marketing clout of big business. You
can make a healthy living off the iTunes store, and there’s no better
time than now. Learn more about iTunes with this lifehack.19. Yelp!
If you have a business, you want to get listed on Yelp! You may not use the software, but some people do, and they use it religiously (and I don’t mean they’ll kill you over it). By listing your business on Yelp!, you’re putting yourself on the map. From here, you also need to start using Yelp! Write reviews of places you go. It’ll be worth it in the long run.
Soon, you’ll have a dozen or so reviews under your belt and can hire yourself out as a Yelp! reviewer. There are ethical and moral questions to doing this, but the title of this piece is “ways to make money,” not “ethical ways to make money,” and I am a former Bank of America/Countrywide employee, so what’d you expect?
20. Wikipedia
Another seemingly free site you can make money from is Wikipedia. People who say it’s easy to edit Wikipedia have clearly never tried editing Wikipedia – it’s a pain. Thankfully it’s a pain for companies as well, so many of them are willing to pay editors to assist them in the editing process. You’ll become a bounty hunter in a way, choosing your own lines to cross and keep. If editing is something you like to do, and you’re willing to put in the work it takes to learn Wikipedia’s dispute process, roll up your sleeves and try this one out.
21. Blogging
I make the bulk of my money from blogging. In addition to the advertising revenue streams mentioned above, I also receive flat rate payments for blogging from various blogs throughout the web. I’m paid to write as a whistleblower, financial analyst, reviewer, commentator, and more. Writing for other sites builds traffic to my personal blog. The traffic for this blog gives me clout to present to advertisers.
To create your own blog, you don’t even need a web domain. You can start a completely free blog on either WordPress or Blogger. Each of these sites has its ups and downs, but you can’t beat the price. You generally want to keep blog posts between 150-500 words until you have a few dozen under your belt. Links between your blog posts encourage people to stay on your blog once they find it, increasing traffic. Once your blog is up, promote it on social media for the greatest effect.
22. Kickstarter
If you have a passion project, Kickstarter may be exactly what you need to get it off the ground. Celebs like Zach Braff and Melissa Joan Hart have used this site in attempts to fund their movie projects. Some crack dealers in Canada inspired a “crackstarter” campaign from Gawker for pictures of the Toronto mayor smoking crack with them. All you need is a dream, a goal, a budget, and a great pitch to convince people to come to the site and donate to your Kickstarter campaign. Panhandling isn’t dead – it’s gone digital…
23. Extreme Couponing
If you’ve never heard of extreme couponing, check out this lifehack on the subject. Once you’re versed on the idea, what you have to do is a bit difficult at first, but it’s a great way to both save and make money: go to hip2save.com and get a feel for the types of deals that are out there (both online and in the physical world). Once you’re comfortable with the process, start searching for the best deals in grocery, retail, and online shopping. After a month or two of extreme couponing, you’ll have enough cleaning, hygiene, and food supplies stocked up to save a noticeable amount of money. Now maybe you don’t need to make as much…?
24. Social Media
No matter what you do to make money online, promote it on your social media accounts. You have a base of people who are already interested in you and have a vested interest in your brand – why would you not want to take advantage of that? By promoting yourself and your projects on your social media accounts, you’re greatly increasing the chances of people actually giving you money in exchange for your goods and services. Stop being shy and get out there.
No comments:
Post a Comment