10 Legit Ways to Make Money Online

[toc]The recent economic crisis has left many people out of work and searching for quality jobs that just are not there. As a result, many people are looking for legit ways to make money online to replace or supplement their 9-to-5 desk jobs. If the stuffy office side of business just is not a good fit for you right now.

Here are 10 Legit Ways to Make Money Online You May Want to Consider

1. Affiliate Marketing 

The first of the 10 legit ways to make money online is affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing involves a business relationship between advertisers, publishers and consumers. Advertisers have a product they need to sell, but they need help getting their product to consumers. Publishers are the people who help the advertisers market their product in exchange for a commission.

Affiliate marketing is one of the easier legit ways to make money online. You simply get as many people as possible to complete whatever task the advertiser asks you to have them do, whether it is clicking on an ad, calling a specific phone number, entering their information in a form or buying the advertiser’s product. You can advertise on your website, on your blog, on Craigslist, in online chat rooms or on your social media accounts. Affiliate marketing requires no start-up money and is very easy to do.

2. Consulting

If you are highly qualified in a specific business area, consulting might be one of the legit ways to make money online best suited to your skills. Consultants are people who help businesses reach their full potential by helping them identify their problem areas, capitalize on their strengths and develop solid business plans moving forward. Businesses will pay big dollars for qualified consultants who have the knowledge necessary to give their company a business advantage.

As a consultant, you can work in a vast variety of fields such as accounting, employee training and development, marketing and branding, management, and human resources. This is one of the better legit ways to make money online for you if you are very knowledgeable in a particular field and know how to help businesses succeed. You must be personable, attentive to details, and possess leadership capabilities.

“The real key to making money in stocks is not to get scared out of them.” – Peter Lynch

3. Online Investing

If you have some money set aside, one of the legit ways to make money online that may work well for you is online investing. To make money with investing, you use your own money to buy stocks, bonds and tangible assets such as gold. Over time, if the value of your investments increases, your money increases as well. Investing requires no actual day to day work, though you do need to research to pick the right stocks and bonds or pay someone to do it for you.

While investing is one of the legit ways to make money online that can earn people outrageous amounts of money, it is not for everyone. Online investing may be right for you if you have some money already, you can wait patiently for your money to grow and you do not mind taking the risk that your money may decrease before it increases, if it even increases at all.

4. Teaching

When people need to learn information or how to do something, they often turn to the internet for answers. This makes teaching one of the most helpful legit ways to make money online. Depending on what you are knowledgeable in, there are several ways you can use your teaching skills to make money online. If you have a teaching degree or a degree in a related field, you may get a teaching job at an online school or University or you may sign up as an after-school tutor for struggling students on a tutoring site such as tutor.com. If you have general know-how or a specific area of expertise, you may make money publishing instructional YouTube videos or webpages.

5. Freelance Writing

Another one of the legit ways to make money online that has the potential to pay well is writing freelance articles. Whether you have professional writing abilities or simply decent grammar, you can earn money writing online. You may find freelance work for newspapers, magazines or websites. You may write and publish your own E-books, write item descriptions or give product reviews. It is surprisingly easy to find paying freelance writing jobs; all it takes is a self-motivation and basic grammar skills. Once you have improved your writing abilities and begun to build up an audience, freelance writing has the potential to be one of the legit ways to make money online that puts a lot of money in your pocket.

6. Selling Products Online

Selling products online is another easy one of the legit ways to make money online. You can start on a small scale by selling unused stuff you have lying around your house and work your way up to buying and selling items for profit on sites such as Ebay and Craiglist. You can also sell a company’s products such as Thirty-One bags or It Works! wraps. To make money selling online, you need to be self-motivated and a hard worker. You need to be outgoing and persuasive so you can convince many people to buy the products you are selling. If you have a quality product, convincing others to buy it should not be a problem.

7. Blogging 

Do you have unique and interesting stories or information to share with the world? If so, blogging may be one of the legit ways to make money online that works best for you. Bloggers make money by writing interesting content and putting ads and affiliate links on their pages. When people click on the ads or affiliate links, the bloggers get paid a commission. Anyone can start making money from their blog with Google AdSense, Pay-Per-Post and Amazon Associates, though you should not expect to earn much until you establish a large following. Once your blog is well-known with thousands of viewers every month, specific advertisers may contact you directly to put their ads on your blog. You should not expect to make much money from blogging right away, but if you continually post interesting information and develop a large reader base, you can establish yourself as a full-time blogger.

8. Creating Web Design

Since the invention of the internet, businesses have been looking for more and more ways to use the internet to market and grow their businesses. Nearly every company now has a webpage. However, most company owners do not know much about web design. This is where you come in. If you know how to create high quality web design, companies will pay you top dollar to design for them. You can create interactive infographics, webpages, logos and webpage templates. You can create and sell high graphics and photos for businesses to use on their webpages. This is one of the legit ways to make money online that does require the knowledge base to create these designs, but if you know how, you can make a living from it.

9. Helping Websites with Search Engine Optimization

Another one of the legit ways to make money online is to help websites appear towards the top of search engine searches. This is called search engine optimization and you can help businesses with it by helping them create unique and accurate page titles, writing descriptive meta tags for them, restructuring their website so it is easier to navigate, writing high quality text for their website and including images on their site. Helping websites with search engine optimization is one of the legit ways to make money online that takes little background knowledge to begin, as there is a wealth of information online for you to learn about this topic.

10. Capitalizing on Your Unique Skills

While many of these legit ways to make money online require people to have a specific skill or knowledge to make money, you are not out of luck if your skills are a little more unique. Sites such as Fiverr.com allow people to market the most unique of skills from doing side flips while holding a sign, handing out fliers to thirty people or hand knitting a polar bear. You earn around $4.00 per gig when first starting out, but you have the potential to earn much more if you have a skill that is in high demand and you market yourself well. While Fiverr may or may not launch you into a career doing your specific talent, it is a way to make money online that anyone with any skills can do.

These 10 legit ways to make money online should offer you a good place to start when looking for legit ways to make money online using your particular skills and abilities. They are not the only ones out there however. You can make money doing anything if you have the skills and drive to catapult yourself to success. Try one (or several!) of these legit ways to make money online and you may find yourself with all the success the internet has to offer.

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Sources for images: Flickr