The Top Ways to Earn Extra Cash Online – With No Special Skills
There are plenty of ways to earn money online, but the majority of them involve putting in a lot of time and effort with the hope you’ll eventually become the author of a super-popular blog or a best-selling app. That’s all good and well if you happen to be passionate about blogging and SEO, or if you’re a great programmer, but for the average Joe it’s not particularly useful.
If you’re just a regular person looking to earn some more money to help pay the bills or save towards that mortgage, then what is there that you can do online that doesn’t require learning a whole slew of jargon and pouring hours into a new project? Here we will take a look at some of the things that really anyone can do to earn money online.
Offer Services to Webmasters
There is a big market online for a range of services in the form of webmasters. Site owners want to make money from their websites and blogs, but they need graphics, content and promotion in order to do that. If you can find those webmasters and offer them those things, then you will find that they’re quick to pay for your time.
The kind of work this crowd are looking for that doesn’t require specialist knowledge includes article writing (on a range of topics – depending of course on the nature of their websites), graphic design (okay that requires a little knowledge, but lots of people can use PhotoShop) and even just proof reading. Advertise on a webmaster forum and ask if anyone needs proof reading services and you’ll be surprised at how easily you can earn money this way!
Or, if you don’t like writing or proof reading, you can always advertise on the same forum to find someone willing to do the job more cheaply and then get them to provide a white label service. You find the clients, pass the work to them, and then keep the left over profit. No skill required!
Selling Things
A very easy way to make money online right now is simply to sell off some of your old things – whether those are DVDs, old computers or jewellery. eBay makes this simple to do, and it really doesn’t require any special skill.
Of course though this isn’t going to provide you with a long-term income, because eventually you’re going to run out of things to sell. That though is when you start buying more things and selling them on for extra cash. Now you’re a ‘reseller’ like many other shops and small businesses and this is a great business to scale up as you are able to invest more and more of your profits into ordering more stock.
The secret here is to buy things cheaply and to sell them for more – which means finding the right deals (think carboot sales!), learning how to package and promote (words like ‘premium’ don’t mean much, but they increase the value of your products), and finding the right audience who will want your goods.
Making Things
Of course another option if you don’t want to get involved with buying and selling, is to try selling things you make.
Now of course this is probably going to require some kind of skill, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be technical and all of us at least have some creative talents that we can monetize – this can be as simple as just threading some beads onto a string to make a necklace for example, or as complicated as doing woodwork or even painting pictures.
Once you’ve figured out what it is you want to sell, you can then go on eBay to begin making sales, or you can try using social media and a website to sell through friends and your extended network via Facebook. Another option is to try a site like Fiverr – here you won’t get much per-sale, but you’ll be surprised at just how much money you can start raising if you have a popular item and you can mass produce it quickly.
These are just a few ways you can earn money online even if you know nothing about business or technology. There are many others – you could even start ‘vlogging’ on YouTube. So don’t be deterred and you should find something to suit your skill set.
Shruti Vaghe, the author of this article, is a freelance blogger, currently writing for, Benson Mortgages, mortgage specialists in Toronto. She is great with graffiti and is an ardent swimmer. You can get in touch with Nancy on Twitter @ShrutiVaghe.
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Category: Online Business
