When your income is not enough for your everyday needs, budgeting can only help you in a limited way, and you are still going to experience financial problems. The only solution for this would be to add a second income by taking a second job or have a member of your family find work. Sometimes this is also not convenient, or even possible, because of the difficulty of finding a job, or your schedule and other responsibilities do not permit it.
One opportunity that is also worth exploring is to make money online. On the internet, you can work at your own time and spend as much effort as you want. It can even be fun.
In making money online, you have to be entrepreneurial. Like starting your own business, earning a substantial amount of money is not easy, at least , in the beginning. To be successful, you have to do a lot of hard work, and use your skills and smarts. You have to be creative and resourceful. You also have to educate yourself on how to be a savvy marketer and knowledgeable about new internet or online technologies.
Below are some tips on how to make money online:
1. Buy Domains – You can think of an original good domain name, which you think will cost more later. Also, you can buy a good registered name from domain markets, and flip it for a profit. Good domains usually have popular keywords in them. Because of changes in technology and popular culture, new highly-searched keywords (with commercial possibilities) pop up all the time, you just have to be alert to them. Also, there are domain name opportunities in some non-sexy niches or industries.
2. Develop websites or blogs and attract visitors – You can develop websites, make it popular, and make money from their audience. Websites with good content that is in demand attracts a lot of traffic or users. You can also do search engine optimization and social media promotion to get page views. You can attract visitors organically (through Search Engine Optimization and social media) or pay for your traffic through search advertising such as adwords. When your website gets many visitors, you can make money from:
a. Google AdSense & contextual ads – If you create a website with good content, you can display Google’s advertising or that of other contextual ads service providers. These ads are automatically targeted by Google based on the topics of the pages on your site. If you have a parenting-related website, for example, the ads tend to cater to parents. You get paid when your web visitor click on the ads.
b. Ad Sales – If your site attracts a lot of traffic, you can approach marketers to buy ads from your site. There are also online advertising networks that will take care of putting ads on your pages, and you get paid for the number of page views as well as clicks on the ads. Advertising networks include bidvertiser.com, publisher.yahoo.com, chitika.com and kontera.com
c. Affiliate Programs – Here you will be promoting products of other businesses, and you get paid a commission every time you send a customer to buy or do specific actions on the businesses’ websites (such as giving their email addresses and other personal info). You can sign up with affiliate networks to promote products of their member businesses. The more popular ones are clickbank.com, which sells mostly digital products, cj.com, shareasale.com, and even Amazon.com and Ebay.
d. Sell products or services – If you create products or offer services, you can also promote these through your website. You may also buy products directly from manufacturers and sell them on your site via e-commerce.
e. Dropshipping – This is another way to sell a product from your website, but you do not physically stock the product. Here, you transfer customer orders to shipment details to the manufacturers, and they ship the product directly to your customer. You make a profit from the sale.
f. Asking for donations – If your site is so good, and the visitors appreciate the work you do, you can directly ask for donations in cash or goods.
g. Subscription revenue – You may also ask people to pay to access the special parts of your website or content. You can also publish helpful newsletters that readers find worth paying for.
3. Sell websites – You can sell a developed website with incoming links and a large number of visitors.
4. Sell tools, software, apps, templates or backgrounds – If you have a penchant for programming or designing, you may create tools for webmasters to use on their site.
5. Do freelancing – There are a lot of skills needed on the web including writing articles, link building, social networking, creating graphics, website design and programming. Evaluate your skills or develop new ones, and look for freelance opportunities on websites like Elance.com, RentACoder.com and uphype.com.
6. Write an ebook – If you are an expert on a field that is interesting, informative, or solve common problems, you can create a digital book which is cheap to produce. To help you sell your ebook, you can an affiliate program on Clickbank.com or PayDotCom.com. Here, you are the one paying other website owners and marketers to promote your book, and they get commissions on every sale.
7. Conduct Teleseminars or Webinars – Again if you are an expert or very knowledgeable on topics that are of value to many people, you can deliver teleseminars or webinars through software programs such as GoToMeeting.com.
8. Conduct Audio eCourses – Sometimes rather than read, people find it more convenient to have their educational materials on audio to be listened to while driving or walking. You can deliver these via autoresponders with emails that include link to your mp3. Again, your topic should have value to many people.
9. Create a Membership Site – If you have an expertise for a topic that many people are passionate about on an ongoing basis, as they want to be updated about new development, techniques, tips and tricks, you can earn recurring income via membership sites. Aside from information, you can also provide valuable data or data analysis. There are online software available that allows you to set up a site automatically, and handle tasks such as billings, adding and cancelling subscribers, password problems, and more.
10. Sell stuff on Ebay – You may have a ton of unused stuff, and you can sell it on ebay, an auction site that allows ordinary individuals to sell. You can also attend garage sales or go to used stores to look for treasures, and sell them to ebay at a profit.
11. Sell photos on Stock Photos sites – Photos are in demand in advertising as well as in websites. If you love photography, you can open an account with sites such as iStockPhoto and upload your photos. If one of your photos happens to be the perfect one for a print ad, brochure or an article on the web, then you will make money from your photo.
12. Sell products with recurring income – These products are usually those that people subscribe to or sign up on a regular basis, such as web hosting or membership sites. You can find these products on sites such as Lifetimecommissions.com and Residualincomefinder.com.
13. Become a Virtual Assistant – Virtual assistants are independent contractors who (from a remote location, usually their home or office) support multiple clients in a variety of industries by providing administrative, creative, and technical services. You can register at Virtualassistants.com or for more information, go to Ivaa.org.
14. Be a Mechanical Turf Worker – Amazon is working with businesses and developers to connect them to workers from home who want to choose their own work hours with tasks that (as of yet) cannot be done by computers. Most tasks are easy, takes less than a minute to complete, but pay a few pennies. Those who just wants extra money can make these pennies add up. (http://www.mturk.com)
