Spoiler alert: I make money online a lot of ways. Blogging isn’t currently one of them. That’s right. I’m writing a post about how to make money online, and I’m not encouraging you to start your own blog (though I’ll gladly add yours to my reading list if you do!). Instead, I wanted to shed some light on how virtually anyone can make money online.
Shopping
Ebates – $100-$200/year
No one is going to get rich using Ebates, but it is a simple tool get a small kickback from most online shopping. Now that I finally installed the Google browser extension, I don’t even have to remember to use it. Fancy pants technology does it for me.
Credit Card Rewards – $500/year
In the spirit of full disclosure, some of this comes from brick and mortar shopping, too. This also doesn’t include points or miles that I earn churning credit cards. Nope, this is plain old swipey swipey to buy things that we need and want. If you pay the slightest bit of attention to bonus categories throughout the year, you can earn anywhere between 1-5% cashback on your purchases. If you couple that kickback with Ebates, you’re doing pretty well for a few clicks of your mouse.
Selling
Poshmark and More – $1000+/year
Of all the ways that I make money online, this one takes the most effort. Don’t fret. It’s pretty minimal, especially once you get going. I’ve written about how I make money on Poshmark and how to get over a selling slump before, so I’m not going to repeat myself here. In fact, I’ll come clean and admit that I’ve gotten a little lax—blame the baby!—with Poshmark this past month. Instead, I’ve focused more on selling textbooks for our grad classes on Half.com. The moral of this story is that even if you’re not a clotheshorse like I am was, you can still use different sites like Half.com, eBay, and more to discard your duds and any other castoffs.
Investing
Vanguard – $7000+/year
From last August through this August, my Roth IRA with Vanguard is well over $7,000 in investment returns. Now, before I become that blogger who tells you I did nothing to earn this money, let’s get a few facts straight. I am a chickenshit investor. Truly.
It took me what amounts to forever in blogger years to move my money from a cobweb-laden CD to an actual investment account. I was terrified that I was going to lose money. In fact, if we’re being totally honest, I was fairly convinced that I was going to somehow end up owing the market money. Yup. Not only was I a nervous nelly, I was also more than slightly misinformed.
If investing is new to you or seems a lot like taking a spin on the ol’ Roulette wheel (put it on red!), earning money with Vanguard—or any other investment group, app, or doohickey—will require something of you. It requires you to ask questions, inform yourself, and take a leap. After that, we can white knuckle our way to riches together while time, the stock market, and our fine friends at Vanguard who management my Target Retirement Fund do the heavy lifting.
So Tell Me…How do you make money online?
Shopping, Swagbucks (surveys, videos, etc), investing, entering contests…but like you, not really blogging. The biggest way I “make” money online is reading stuff that makes me not waste it.
I love ittttt. We use a 2.5% cashback rewards credit card to earn extra moolah. This is our first year using this card, but I anticipate we’ll rack up $700 in points. We use these rewards at the end of the year to buy Christmas presents for family–it’s our way of saving for the holidays all year. 🙂
I also make a good chunk of money doing freelance writing through Upwork. I’m not getting rich or anything, but it’s a great way for me to make a few bucks here and there with time would have otherwise spent in front of the TV.
M-Turk is another way to make a little extra online. You won’t get rich, but every little bit helps.
Most of the money I make online comes through my blog. Most of that is sponsored posts, which I wish I could get away from, but it’s easy money! I was earning about $100 month from Amazon Associates, but they kicked me out of that program… (grr!).
I’ve been doing survey’s a lot again lately, since there’s a lot of downtime at my desk job. They don’t generate a lot of money though…
I really should look into things like Ebates or something like that that work for offline purchases since I never shop online.
Hey, Penny. I’m not making any money with blogging either. We tried Adsense and Amazon’s affiliate program for about six months and that proved utterly worthless. So we dropped them and haven’t reconsidered. We’ve also been approached about banner adds and sponsored posts. But none of the people making these requests had anything to promote that we really cared about. Mrs. G and I are resigned to the possibility that our blog just may not be suited to generating income. And that’s okay. We started blogging to share our story and connect with others. We didn’t start blogging to make money. In the near future, we’ll make some money online with Craigslist. If everything goes a planned, we’ll be moving up to the Wake Forest area of NC next year, and there’s a whole mess of furniture and stuff that we don’t want to take with us.
The amount of money people miss out on by not using cashback sites! Also with selling stuff, I made a drastic change to switch from eBay to Amazon FBA, once I knew I had a baby on the way. It’s such an efficient way of selling, if you can find enough stock to make it worth your while
Online tutoring is the biggest earner for me right now. I collect some VERY modest earnings from my blog, Swagbucks, and freelance writing (when I find time).
It’s pretty awesome how there are so many ways to earn money on the internet. I truly believe that anyone can find a way to increase their income (even marginally) with their computer, or phone.
Quite similar! Swagbucks, MyPoints, ebates & MrRebates (though these two are really just reducing spending rather than making money), investing with Ally, saving cash funds with good interest rates with Ally, investing in taxable accounts at Vanguard for myself and in our 529. Periodically I might make a wee bit of change from Google ads and Amazon, but that’s much less regular. I might make a few bucks selling with Poshmark. We Craigslist things as and when we work through our stashes of stuff. I think that’s everything?