We could all benefit from a little more diversification in our income streams. Thanks to the ubiquity of the internet, it’s easy to start side-hustles and get some additional income flowing in. In this post, we’ll cover 5 free ways to earn extra money online. You don’t need to put up any capital and with most of these methods you can be up-and-running within a few minutes.
Offer Services on Upwork
Upwork.com is a great website that brings together service providers and customers that need those services. You can create an account for free. You just provide some basic information similar to a resume such as desired rate, projects you’ve worked on in the past, jobs you’ve worked at in the past, and any educational information. Once you have your account, you can bid on jobs that have been posted and you can also respond to invitations to open jobs. Upwork is great because there’s a wide range of professions represented on the website ranging from Web Development to Legal Research and Accounting services. Whatever your skillset is, chances are good people are looking for that on Upwork.
Sell Services on Fiverr.com
Fiverr’s claim to fame is simple services done for $5. In the last couple of years, services that cost more than $5 and upgrades to those services (such as faster delivery) for more than $5 have become more prevalent. With Fiverr, you list a ‘gig’ by adding an image, description, and various options. Users can come on the website and search for gigs like yours. If they choose to purchase your gig, you’ll receive the order, perform the work, and then submit it for review.
Blog on WordPress.com
Blogging is a semi-passive way to make money. It won’t result in immediate payouts and is far from a quick way to make cash, however, it is a way that requires no up-front money. You can create a free blog on WordPress.com, customize it to your liking, and start posting content right away. You can also promote your content on social media websites like Twitter, Facebook, and Quora for free. Once you start to develop traffic, you can monetize that traffic either with Adwords or by inserting affiliate links in your content. Amazon has an affiliate program that you can access at this link here. Any traffic that you send to Amazon results in you getting a percentage of the sale.
Sell Your Used Stuff on eBay
eBay lets you list up to 50 items for free. All you need is a cellphone to take pictures of your item and a valid PayPal account. You can choose to list items for sale at a specified price, or you can have ‘auction’ style listings that will be awarded to the highest bidder. I personally prefer eBay to Facebook or craigslist because it doesn’t require any meeting up to exchange cash for goods. Instead, the customer can pay you via PayPal. Once the payment clears, you can purchase shipping from eBay, and drop the item off at a post office.
Sell Your Used Books on Amazon
You could sell more than just your used books on Amazon, but because of the ease of shipping and the fact that books are frequently purchased ‘used’ from merchant-fulfilled sellers, used books would be the best place to start.
You can sign up for an Amazon account on sellercentral.amazon.com. If you were wanting to list your items Fulfilled-By-Amazon (FBA), you’d have to pay to ship the items to Amazon. Since this list is about ways to make money without spending money, you can list your items for free if you “merchant fulfill” which means you’ll handle fulfilling the order and shipping the item to the customer.
You can list for free, store the book at your house, and as soon as an order comes, you can stick the book in a poly-mailer, purchase shipping from Amazon (this would come out of the proceeds of the sale), and then drop it off at the post office.
Count Money
This list is not comprehensive. It wouldn’t be possible to create a blog post or even a book that could document all the ways to make money online, however, this list should serve as a starter to get your thinking about the possibilities. The internet, and ecommerce is still in its infancy and as time continues, even more opportunities will present themselves.