25 Ways to Make Money Online in 2021!

Note: There exist numerous ways in which you can make money online. Most of these require no more than time commitment while others require both time and capital investments. Ideally, the more time or resources you devote to an online income generating idea, the higher the rate of return.

1. Invest in the stock markets

There is no limit to the extra – wholly passive – incomes you can earn from your stock market investments. Traditionally, you needed to be an accredited investor with the backing of serious capital in the form of disposable incomes before approaching a stock exchange broker. Today however significant changes in the shares and stocks industry like the introduction of penny stocks, fractional shares and the entry of online stock brokerages and robo advisors like Betterment or RobinHood that accept deposits as low as $1 have leveled the playing field.

To invest here, you don’t need prior skills or experience trading the stock markets. Most online brokerages have set up systems and human experts to help you create a balanced investment portfolio. Robo advisors have on the other hand fully automated the process from deposit-taking to creating an investment portfolio and executing trades. Some will even provide you with preset portfolios that you can then customize to fit your investment needs.

How much can I make? Here, the returns are highly dependent on the amount invested and your approach to the market. You can make between 4%-12% of the invested amount per annum.

2. Create a blog or website or buy an already profitable one

With revenues from google ads and direct on-site promotions, there is no ceiling to how far you can scale your earnings from a blog or website. There also are numerous ways in which you can monetize your blog or website from selling products and services, to getting paid to mention or link to other blogs and website.

The only caveat to raking in decent incomes from blogging lies in the fact that getting your blog off the ground and amassing the necessary monthly traffic that attracts healthy revenue ads takes time. You must also commit to researching about the different topics and updating the site with fresh content regularly. The aspect of time and growing the site from scratch can, however, be avoided by buying an already established and fairly profitable blog or website.

How much can I make? With blogging, there is no upper limit, however, a good number of bloggers make between $1,000-$10,000 a month, with a few others earning over $10,000.

3. Start an ecommerce store

You don’t need special skills to open an ecommerce store, not with the countless ecommerce website templates currently flooding the internet and availed for free or pennies. Neither do you need any startup capital, especially if you plan on promoting other people’s products? The best thing about this is that virtually anyone with access to a computer and internet can engage in one of form ecommerce services or another.

Plus the fact that there is no limit to the number of ecommerce stores you can open or how much commission you can earn makes ecommerce trading one of the most scalable online ventures. You, however, need to understand that there are three types of ecommerce ventures you can engage in:

Sell own products: Large ecommerce traders like Amazon and Shopify allow you to create online stores with them from whence you can market and sell your products. If you decide to sell own products, you have the option of customizing your personal design or getting generic products from such sites as Alibaba and personalizing their labels.

How much can I make? With eCommerce, how much you make depends on the amounts of sales you make or the sales done through your website. There is no ceiling to the amount you can earn.

Sell other people’s products: Manufacturers are always looking for new ways of scaling their sales. Pitch some of these and offer to market their products by handling the processing and delivery of each of their products bought through your site.

Dropshipping: You also have the option of completely dissociating from the products and their delivery to the consumer and only including buy links on your website/blog. However, each time a client buys listed product through the link on your site, you earn a commission.

4. Invest in a peer-to-peer lending company

Bank savings accounts were once featured on the list of legitimate ways of earning extra incomes. But that was until inflation and an under-performing economy pushed the interests here well below 2%. In their turn cropped up peer to peer lending sites like LendingClub and Prosper that offer investors in excess of 10% per annum for deposits.

And apart from the high deposits, you also might want to save your cash with a P2P lender due to the fact that registering and starting to earn here is straightforward, they have low minimum deposits and some have automated their processes to guarantee you fully passive income generating idea.

 

How much can I make? with peer-to-peer lending, conservative estimates put the returns here between 8%-11% per year.

5. Consult and coach business owners

Startups, as well as small and medium enterprises, are always looking for ways in which they can cut their operational costs without impacting the quality of their services. And this involves engaging inexpensive remote workers and part-timers for some tasks within the organization.

If you are a skilled corporate worker and have amassed skills in such roles and tax reporting, payroll preparation, or any other necessary but non-permanent service required by these businesses, you can always let them peck your expertise for decent but occasional gigs.

Start by joining the numerous freelance and contract working sites like WeWorkRemotely.com and Fiverr where most of these list their services. For more localized businesses and tasks that may require actual presence within the enterprise, check out listings on such popular sites as Craigslist.

How much can I make? The returns here highly depends on the level of your skills. You can make between $500- $3500 per month.

6. Create an e-book or tutor online

Today, people from all walks of life and in every corner of the world are always looking to acquire new skills. Are you a specialist in a field that you believe someone may be interested in, be it in English language, website design or internet security? Consider passing down this skill and the experience gathered over time to more people and get paid for it. In this case, you have the option of self-publishing for free on such popular sites as Amazon Kindle or hosting online classes on equally popular academic websites as Udemy and Coursera.

One of the most interesting things about ebook writing or tutoring online is the fact that there is no limit to how much you can earn from either income stream. Additionally, there isn’t a time limit to how long you can earn from the book or the online course. Like the conventional Loyalties from published materials and videos, you also can create a generational income stream. Plus you have the option of creating as many ebooks or tutorial videos as you probably can, effectively broadening your earning potential.

How much can I make? There is no upper limit to this. If the ebook is captivating, and you have done the marketing part well, then returns will be more and vice-versa.

7. Invest in online startups and property developers

Even with good cash flows and solid business plans, small and medium enterprises still have a hard time accessing credit services from legacy institutions like banks. This has, in turn, spurred the growth of online money lending sites – similar to the peer to peer lenders – but biased towards SMEs. The property development and real estate startups have been most affected as evidenced by the speedy growth of such lending sites as PropertyCrowd and Fundrise that specialize in advancing real estate oriented SMEs credit services. And you can invest in these online lending companies and earn up to 10% interests on invested amounts.

Unlike the peer to peer lending sites that lend to individuals, most loans advanced on these platforms are secured by both the company and its directors’ assets. You, therefore, are less likely to lose your investments here compared to the conventional P2P sites. Some will also give you an option of getting paid back cash or taking up shares in the funded developments or both. This presents you with an opportunity to venture and earn from the highly lucrative real estate industry passively.

How much can I make? Returns here are above 10% per annum.

8. Open a high yield savings account

How much does your bank pay as interest for your savings? With the national averages continually condensing towards zero, you will be lucky enough if you earn above 1% interest per annum for your cash deposits. And this represents earnings before capital gains taxes and account management fees. Simply put, the savings on your deposits are simply non-existent. What then is the solution? The online banks and their high-yield savings plans.

The primary reason most brick and mortar banking systems pay low-interest rates can be traced to the high overheads required to run these legacy institutions. Online banks, in contrast, maintain no branches or thousands of permanent and pensionable employees, only a few call centers and server rooms. And this makes it possible to cut down on the unnecessary expenses and pass down these cost savings to their client’s in the form of higher interest on savings. Some of the most popular online banks offering high yield savings accounts to their clientele include Marcus by Godman Sachs and PNC Bank whose interests on savings is set at 2.25% and 2.35% respectively.

How much can I make? Returns between 2% to 3% per annum

9. Get paid as a freelancer writer or content/video editor

Are you a skilled writer or content editor, or a video editing guru? Website administrators, authors, and media companies are willing to pay decently if you can help them churn out captivating content to their audiences or polish their original text or videos as a freelancer. Today, there are millions of websites and blogs all over the world and they all have one thing in common: they are always seeking out fresh materials to help improve their search rankings. And this has inspired the establishment of an entire global industry around this subject.

Feel rather confident about your content writing and or video editing skills, consider registering with one of the numerous freelance sites online as Upwork and Fiverr that help market your skills. Alternatively, you may consider writing interesting content and hosting it on such paid networks as the New Medium Partner Program that pays you depending on how many premium service subscribers read your piece. There is no limit to the number of posts you can make or the number of people your write-ups are exposed to and in effect no limit to how much you can earn from these sites.

How much can I make? The earning here vary widely based on you skills level. If you have the right combination of skills and experience, you can make anywhere between $2,000 to $12,000 per month.

10. Claim taxes back and help others tax prep

Tax remains a thorny issue for most people and whether you have multiple income streams or just run a small sole proprietorship, chances are you are probably overpaying. Thus the need to regularly harmonize your taxes due with what is already paid and claiming refunds on the excess amounts. These incidences of double tax payments are all-too-common and the tax man all-too-willing to refunds excess taxes. And if you are well versed with what most people and small business owners consider the most complicated aspects of life, taxation, you might consider helping others prep their tax documents and claim refunds for a fee.

Filing personal tax takes no more than a few minutes, but you just can’t believe how much some people are willing to pay to have someone do it on their behalf. Small businesses are also constantly looking for professionals to help them file their business taxes correctly and avoid overpayments. Most of these classes of individuals will flock the internet looking for tax professionals to help them out throughout the year and landing their business helps you create a steady source of extra income.

How much can I make? There is no upper limit, the more clients you have, the more you get to earn.

11. Buy and sell domain names

Individuals and businesses alike have been trading domain names for decades and you stand to make top-dollar earnings as a domain broker. It starts by identifying premium but unclaimed domain names on such popular domain name repositories as GoDaddy.com that sells them for as low as $0.99.  You then have to market them on popular domain name sales platforms as Sedo.com. And if they have a commercial value, a new or existing business will always come looking for it.

To a large extent, how much you make here is solely dependent on your research and negotiation skills. Case in point about  some of the most expensive domain names ever sold was VacationRentals.com that sold for $35 million in 2007 and Insure.com that went up for $16 million in 2009. There are equal proponents of buying and selling domain names as there are its opponents. The possibility of landing a domain name for a future multi-million dollar company willing to pay as much to acquire the domain should be enough to keep you on the edge, constantly looking for promising business leads and matching them with most relevant domains.

How much can I make? Premium domains can fetch from a few hundred dollars to millions. There is no uppper limit to how much a domain should cost.

12.Collect and sell classic movies, games or CDs

Have access to some old school video games or classic movies and music? These too can be a source of extra income. The fact that you can sell virtually anything on such online ecommerce sites as Amazon Marketplace and eBay expounds your income streams by making it possible for you to sell stuff you no longer use. The best part is that you can easily rip the songs and movies into a digital storage system and sell the shell and its artwork.

Don’t have any more to sell but have an eye for fast moving classics, consider positioning yourself as a collector. Every day, the internet and the collectibles niche sees the entry of newbies who either undervalue their items or just don’t know how to present them to the right audience. A collector’s job involves gathering these classics, repackaging them, and presenting them at a higher value to the right audience.

How much can I make? Most classic collections are sold through online auctions that have no upper limit. You, therefore, have the final word on how much you  sell your classic collections.

13.Rent out an extra room, garage or backyard

By now, you probably have already heard about Airbnb, the online company that lets you rent an extra room in your house to both local and international tourists. The platform is most suitable for individuals that live in the coastal cities as well as other frequented regions of the world. The best part is that it doesn’t require any extra investment or input on your part, only have to keep the rooms clean. How much you make here is totally dependent on a host of factors like the frequency of the bookings, the number of rooms available, and your set accommodation fee.

You can also maximize how much you make here by making more room available for the travelers. For instance, if you are heading out for vacation, you may consider renting out the entire house. Alternatively, you may also add your backyard to the list of accommodations available for booking for campers. But people aren’t just looking for extra rooms while on vacation, some downsizers are looking for extra space for their belongings. Hire out the garage.

How much can I make? Airbnb doesnt maintain a standard charge for rooms advertised on their platform. You set your own prices for the room or entire house and this can start from below $20 to $100+ per day.

14.Make money through affiliate or network marketing

Affiliate and network marketing – also known as Multi-level-marketing – refers to the art of helping different brands or product and service providers reach new markets and score sales. It is one of the most popular forms of marketing where you get paid a small commission, in the form of either an agreed amount of money per closed deal or a percentage of the sales proceeds. Affiliate marketing primarily involves promoting the product or service online and providing external links directing potential clients to the product and service’s sales pages.

Network marketing, on the other hand, involves creating a mesh of affiliates to help you market the product or service. Here you earn every time a client purchases from the advertised brand directly from your links as well as every time they buy from affiliates serving under you. In either case, you can consider promoting the product on social media, but it is highly advisable that you create a blog that you can use to consolidate a market base on your affiliate. For instance, if you had an automobile blog, you can consider becoming an affiliate for vehicle parts as this goes in line with your blog’s traffic.

How much can I make? Starting out as an affiliate marketer, attracting traffic to your blogs, and recruiting new affiliates for the Multi-Level-Marketing is alway the hardest. Past this phase, there is no limit to how much you can make, with elite affiliate marketers posting over $10,000+ in monthly incomes.

15. Source property for investors

There are numerous ways that you can profit from the ever lucrative real estate industry. And no, they all don’t involve staking in considerable amounts in investments. One such inexpensive way in which you can make decent extra incomes from the industry free of charge is by sourcing properties for investors who just don’t have time to do it themselves. The effectiveness of this subject, however, revolves around property valuations and requires you to have deep real estate industry knowledge if it is to bear fruits. Here you will be constantly looking for undervalued properties listed for sale and linking them with investors.

The trick here lies in identifying these properties before they get listed. And achieving this calls for tracking down the landlords and property owner associations meetings, crushing in, and pitching to as most property owners as possible. This can be done during your free time and therefore has no impact on your day to day job. Once you land a client that is willing to sell their property at below market value, you then approach an investor with a hard to rest offer and ask for a commission upon the closure of the deal.

How much can I make? In most cases,you will be earning a commission for every house you source and sell. This ranges from 2% to 10%+ of the property value.

16. Take online surveys and user test websites

You can also make extra incomes on your spare time by participating in online surveys. Today, customer reviews and general perception has become the key influencer of company goals. Therefore, every brand and institutions want to first check on the general opinion about their already launched products, services, and ideals as well as others in the pipeline. They are, therefore, regularly engaging online survey companies like Panel Opinion and Toluna to help fish out these perceptions. Most don’t require any special skills and often pay according to the amount of time you spend filling out the surveys.

Alternatively, you may consider becoming a test user for new websites. Like in the case of perception, website developers and administrators appreciate the role proper user experience plays in  converting visitors to actual clients. They, therefore, are constantly looking for individuals, both professional web developers and regular internet surfers to spend a few minutes on their sites and vet the ease with which one can interact with the site. Such popular sites  as UserTesting continue to dominate the website user testing scenes.

How much can I make? Most survey websites pay an average $5 per session while UserTesting pays $60 for every test.

17. Join a focus group or mock juror

What if you get paid by voicing your opinions on the taste or effectiveness of new or existing products you have previously used or by participating in surveys about the effectiveness of services received? You would then need to join an online focus group. Unlike conventional surveys, focus groups are more localized.

They deal with actual products and services, demands specific demographics for the participants, and attracts better pay – in excess of $100 per session. For instance, a beauty products company looking to test a new lipstick product line will be more biased towards a focus group consisting of young, professional, and female members. Given that these aren’t as regular as the surveys, you may want to join as many focus groups as possible to increase your chances of scoring a gig.

Mock juries are no different from the focus groups, with the only difference being that they involve giving a guilty or not-guilty verdict on cases. The need for online mock juries is born of the fact that Lawyers want to test the possible juror verdict before presenting their cases in court. They will, therefore, look to assemble an online mock juror that closely resembles that of the actual jury and ask them for their opinion on the given case. You don’t need to be a lawyer or have a law background to participate in this. And just like focus groups mock Jurors are irregular but offer decent pays.

How much can I make? Most focus groups pay between $30 and $150 per focus group session. Some will, however, require specific demographics and unique taks and pay as much as $450 per sesion. Mock jurors, on the other hand, pay between $10 and $60 per session or upto $150 per session for handpicked jurors.

18. Rent out your car to cab service and advertisers

You can also put your car to work and earn extra income, and No, it doesn’t involve driving for Uber or Lyft. Here we address the wholly passive ways in which you can earn from owning a car. Key on this list is renting it out with to cab service providers like GetAround and Turo when you are not using it. Getaround offers equally attractive pay and both cover the liability insurance costs up to $1million as well as damage or theft. The only caveat here is that you get to lose control of your car for the few days you rent it out.

If you don’t want to lose access and control over your car, consider listing it with such car advertisers as Wrapify. The company pays you to advertise the different brands on your car by using it as a moving billboard. How much you earn from this depends on such factors as the frequency with which you use the car but Wrapify claims to pay a minimum of $400 per month.

How much can I make? If you rented your conventional four-seater car to Turo for 11 days every month, the taxi service provider promises to pay over $385 monthly (or $4,600 per year).  Wrapify, on the hand, pays between $196 and $600 depending on the amount you spend on the road daily and the extent on the ad wrapper.

19. Sell your photo and video collection

Most of your photos are worth a few dollars, including the ones captured using a mobile phone and such sites as Pixabay and Shutterstock are ready to help you market them. Getting started here is pretty straightforward as it involves creating an account with any of these photo databases and uploading the different images you would like sold to the market.

You then will be paid an agreed amount of money every time someone downloads your images. This effectively means that there is no limit to how much you can make from selling these photos online. You should, however, understand that quality photos attract higher download volumes and that it pays to own a quality camera.

How much can I make? How much you make you make selling photos online is directly related to the number of downloads these pictures achieve. Such popular sites as Shutterstcok will, however, pay between $0.33 and $0.38 per downloaded image.

20. Promote businesses on social media (influencer)

You also stand to earn decent incomes as a social media influencer and serving as a brand ambassador for the different companies and products. In a bid to popularize their products and services, different companies are constantly looking for social media users/influencers with a massive following and paying decently to have them market a product or service.

This may be in the form of a mention in a video or post and link to the source company’s social media page or website. Ideally, the more information you provide about the product the more you earn. Some brands pay as high as six figures for mentions and tags by overly popular social media users. This extra income stream is highly scalable as there is no limit to the number of products you can advise on your timeline.

How much can I make? Instagram influencers with over 1 milion followers are paid the upwards of $10,000 per post.

21. Create a YouTube channel

YouTube is arguably the most popular video streaming site today and its administrators are willing to pay you for the videos you post here. There are two primary ways in which you can earn from YouTube. The most popular remains having the site embed adverts at the beginning and at different intervals of your videos.

And as your popularity surges and you amass a huge following for these videos, you will have brands approaching you for ‘special’ features, mentions and tags on your channel. How much you earn here is nonetheless pegged on the popularity of your videos.

How much can I make? YouTube shares 55% of its Ads revenue with its content creators. Conservative estimates place this at $1 per 1000 views. How much you make is, therefore, dependent on the popularity of your content.

22. Get paid as a virtual assistant

Small and medium enterprises, as well as extremely busy business executives, are constantly looking for virtual assistants to help keep their businesses affairs in order. Like the conventional company secretary, a virtual assistant is charged with the responsibility of managing the SME or executive’s day. They are responsible for handling the diary, reading, and responding to emails, booking travel tickets and arranging for accommodation and handling such tasks as minute tasks and data entry, receiving and responding to some business calls and messages. Do you feel quite confident about your organizational skills? Consider applying for a virtual assistant’s job with different executives and businesses. This is considered part of freelance gigs and these jobs are available on such freelance sites as Upwork and the CraigsList.

How much can I make? An average virtual assistant charges between $12 and $20 per hour depending on the complexity of the gig. As you broaden your skills and land more clients, you can start charging as much as $50+ per hour.

23. Sell your crafts on Etsy

Do you consider yourself relatively crafty and extremely gifted when it comes to creativity and design? You can put your hands to work designing and crafting different objects from jewelry, furniture, kids toys, and different handcuffed accessories and sell them online.

Start by opening an online shop with such craft websites as Etsy where you can popularize your crafts or receive orders for specialized crafts. The trick to making significant sales on the platform is going for the fast-moving crafts or coming up with highly unique handcrafted designs.

How much can I make? There is no upper limit, the more clients you have, the more you get to earn.

24. Narrate audiobooks or do Voice Overs

Have a great voice and access to a microphone? Brands are looking to hire you and will pay decently for voice-overs in their adverts. Voices.com, an online platform for voice-overs have created a unique marketplace linking great vocal talents with brands looking for voice over artists. Here, you don’t need special skills or training, neither do you need serious capital investments. Alternatively, you may consider catching up with authors and help them turn their textual content into audio scripts.

How much can I make? Voice Over gigs start from $100 per 15 seconds to $250+ for a 30-60 minutes audio and as much as $3,000+ per audiobook.

25. Become local news writer for an online magazine

You don’t need a degree in journalism to contribute to most international and regional news journals, just a good grasp of English and basic article writing skills. The influx of new websites from different parts of the world has created an increased demand for local content contributors. Some will pay for every approved post that gets featured on their site while others like The Examiner will publish as many posts as possible and share the revenue they generate from your articles with you. How much you make on such a site is therefore dependent on how captivating your article is as well as how many publications you get hosted by the site online.

How much can I make? There is no limit to how much you can make contributing to a news magazine and sharing in the ad revenue as this is directly dependent on the popularity of your posts.