I want to earn extra money online. However, with the Internet being what it is, there is so much false information, and since this is not my line of work, I’m not sure what is worth pursuing. I often hear about common methods like affiliate marketing, drop shipping, running an online store, or some jackass trying to sell me a course. I’m not saying these methods don’t work, but I don’t know where to start. Any advice is welcome, preferably from people with experience who do it for a living. I just need a sense of direction.
It’s easy to avoid false information on the internet. If you want some new skills, take some courses. There are many free courses, even from top universities. Udemy and similar sites have great courses starting at around $10. Instead of looking for ways to make money, learn new skills first and see what value you can provide for others.
I did muliple side hustles over the years and most were pretty paasive. What worked for me is just experimenting with different things. If something didn’t work out, I just tried something else. What works for each individual will be different though.
Ecommerce was my best performer. I also created a travel blog, sold domains, sold backlinks, wrote KDP books, wrote Gumroad books, wrote for Medium, flipped AdSense sites, and a whole lot more.
I didn’t have any special skills for any of these. I just learned as I went along. You can learn most things for free or by taking courses on places like Udemy. I always started before taking any courses though.
When you try stuff, you spot new opportunities because one thing leads to another. It’s also important to keep anopen mind and be curious about things. There are opportnities everywhere. Most people miss them or see them and just put them off until they are gone.
If you don’t have a job, definitely start there. It’s important to have a regular income to cover your expenses and invest.
Finally, take your time. Don’t rush the process. Take one step at a time. Earning small amounts to start is fine. The more skills you gain along the way, the more you’ll earn. Good luck.
@Floyd
Number 4 is usually not realistic, to be honest. Creating a full time income or making a lot of money will never happen fast and will always require time and effort.
Find a skill that can be done remotely and is valuable to other people. Preferably one you would be willing to do for up to 12 hours a day or more 7 days a week even when you are depressed or unmotivated.
Learn this skill, and then market it to people. If it is a valuable skill that you are very good at with a convincing portfolio of work, it’s not that difficult to market it.
Understand that attractive and “easy” ways of making money are difficult, far more time consuming than people usually assume at first, high risk, slightly luck based, and full of steep competition. The chance for failure no matter how much time you put into it needs to be considered, and many don’t do that.
Some high demand skills: software development, electronics repair, data analytics, accounting. There’s a million of them that can be found with research.
Runner-ups that you have to be exceptionally good at to stand out and make a living off of: Video editing, music production, photo editing, content creation. There’s a million of them that can be found with research.
The biggest piece of advice I can give for people who come in here just looking for the most “effective” way to make consistent money online is that if you can’t do it as much as you would have to put into a traditional job–sometimes far, far more and by your own motivation, not fear of getting canned–you will not have a lot of luck and you will waste a lot of time.
If you’re just trying to make a little bit of extra cash on the side of a traditional job? Anything I recommended above if you want to lean into it long term, or you can also do surveys (very time consuming for very small amounts of money), buy and sell things for more than you bought them for (difficult and time consuming to turn a profit), there’s tutoring (hard to find an in, but many people have luck with this), remote call center work (everybody is dying to make money online until you bring this one up), and a million others that can be found with research.
Just throwing this out there, none of that is passive income. But nobody posts about passive income in here and the mods don’t give a shit. This is just the “how do I make money easy and fast so I can quit my job” sub.
You can also invest your money from your job and earn risk-free to high risk returns on it depending on your risk appetite. My recommendation no matter what route you are looking to take is to pick something you can stick with and maintain realistic expectations.
@River
>This is just the “how do I make money easy and fast so I can quit my job” sub.
You don’t have to quit your job though. I kept mine and built my wealth twice as fast. Too many quit their jobs too soon. Even if you can, sticking with it even for a few years can build your wealth very fast. Suppose you earn $30k and then build side income that can replace that. If you still keep your job for 3 years, you have an extra $90k to invest. That can set you up for life.
But your advice is spot on. We need to learn skills if we want to earn money. Many here don’t seem to want to make the effort. But it’s easier than ever to learn new skills.
@Uma
My advice is also usually for people not to quit their jobs. Most of the time my advice is to just get a job, but I catch a lot of flak for it in here so it makes me want to spend less time trying to help people who are resistant to real advice.
The only problem with your advice (the problem is not actually with your advice) is that there are a lot of people in communities like this that don’t even have the discipline or commitment to work a normal job, let alone grow a business on top of that. But I agree.
I said what you quoted because a lot of people do not want realistic advice, they want someone to tell them they can quit their shitty 9-5 and get rich dropshipping or making AI content on Youtube. I catch flak for saying that too but I have spent a LOT of personal time trying to help people in subreddits like this over the years and it is very, very common.
@River
Yes, that’s exactly correct. Give good advice and you get downvoted. Tell them they’ll be a milionaire next week and you’ll be upvoted for your crappy advice.
People ask for advice but they actually don’t want it.
@Uma
Not gonna lie, I thought it was the opposite. I figured most people who want to start making money online understand that there is a lot of false information out there, which is mostly scams. So, when someone finally provides useful, realistic information, it would be welcomed or upvoted. It’s like finding a needle in a haystack. But I don’t spend too much time on Reddit, so you’re probably right. You know what’s funny? After posting this, I’m getting DMs from people claiming I can make 5-7k weekly with crypto. How lucky am I, right? Lol
I work online for a living and have do so for 8 years. The most important thing is to have the right mindset and expectations.
Before being able to give any kind of advice, you would have to share more about what your income goals are? And how much time and effort are you willing to put into it? And are you only looking for free ways to earn online or also willing to invest?
Without info like this, it will be impossible to give any good advice. If you share it here, I will be happy to share my opinion based on your situtation.
My favourite sites are Paidviewpoint and Clickworker. I’ve been groupping lots of Beermoney sites in a linktree feel free to ask anything, most of them are available globally.
feel free to ask anything, most of them are available globally.