Make Money Online

Making money online used to pretty much require you to have your own Web site, products to sell and some marketing savvy. But a new generation of dot-coms have arisen that will pay you for what you know and who you know without you having to be a web designer or a marketing genius.

But it's hard to tell hype from the real deal. I did a search on "make money online" and "making money online", and much of the information out there is just promoting various infoproducts, mostly about Internet marketing. I see why people sometimes ask, "Is anyone making money online besides Internet marketing experts?" So I put together a list of business opportunities with legitimate companies that:

• Pay cash, not just points towards rewards or a chance to win money
• Don't require you to have your own Web domain or your own products
• Don't involve any hard-selling
• Aren't just promoting more Internet marketing
• Give a good return on your time investment

In the interest of objectivity, none of the links below are affiliate links, and none of them have paid or provided any other consideration for their presence here. These are legitimate companies with business models that allow you to get paid for a wide range of activities.

Online Money Making Secrets

Money making secrets for online business ventures include affiliate marketing, online stores, paid surveys, MLM businesses, hired-for-service opportunities and many other ways to earn an income for almost any adventurous person. Many novices as well as seasoned entrepreneurs have proved that there are several ways to make cash through Internet methods that are viable and very productive. It may seem that there are many secret ways to make money online merely by the fact that the Internet is still a mystery to many would-be business owners or to others who need to hire out their services. Exploring the various Internet money-making opportunities that are currently available can help to de-mystify the online business mystique.

Technical advancements and unrealistic hype are two of the main reasons that online money-making opportunities seem to be out of reach to the average person. Many people over the age of 35 are not as computer literate as is required to even explore the many cash flow opportunities that lay dormant within the virtual world. Tapping into secret ways to make money online requires a modest amount of technical knowledge, but not a vast array of IT skills that only a college graduate can posses. Users that have a general knowledge of computer related skills that include Internet connection requirements and general computer functions can break into some money making secrets that will add extra income or could provide for a fulltime living via the Internet.

Advertising hype is all over the Internet, making it confusing for many Internet users to determine which opportunities are legitimate and which are merely smoke and mirrors. A lot of advertisements offer secret ways to make money online as if hardly anyone else has tapped into its particular opportunity. Since it is virtually impossible for any governing body to regulate what is and isn't allowed on the World Wide Web regarding information, it is best to filter through each opportunity using certain common sense guidelines. Advertising hype that offers to provide massive amounts of quick income with virtually no work should most likely be avoided. While there are a few people in the world who may have hit on an idea that provided them massive wealth in a few months, by and large, this is not the norm.

Money-making opportunities that require the user to pay a company a fee in order to make money are rarely good ideas. Investing in a franchise or paying for viable tools to earn an income is realistic, for example, but paying others for a job opportunity is not always successful. In most cases, a company should be paying the skilled person for their expertise rather than vice versa. Opportunities that offer free or very low fees for pre-built business opportunities may also imply that all a person needs to make huge profits from their money making secrets are included within their particular business package. Buyers should beware and always read the fine print as to the extra marketing tools that will need to be purchased in order to make the business successful. This form of hype can cost more and more as the months go on without large returns on the initial investment. Companies that offer these opportunities make money off of the marketing and business tools that are constantly being advertised to their owners.

Although there are many pitfalls and some disappointing information on the World Wide Web as to legitimate potential for making an income, there are many legitimate sources to investigate that can offer ways to earn cash online. Secret ways to make money online are really only secrets to the less informed. In order to find a way to earn cash through Internet methods, research is the first order of business for anyone. Keeping in mind personal talents, expertise, and abilities that can be brought to the table for a business idea are key to matching up with the right online opportunities. For example, those who have really made it in affiliate marketing use content rich sites that exploit an area of expertise that they may possess or wish to knowledgeably target. Systematically building an affiliate site can be monetarily rewarding as the building blocks of information, SEO strategies and solid affiliate programs are added.

Some MLM business opportunities can be viable as well, although MLM ventures should be thoroughly invested before jumping on the bandwagon. For years, MLM schemes have been touted as one of the top money making secrets in both the offline and online world. Many people have made large, yearly incomes from these ventures, but many also have been scammed or disappointed by unsuccessful efforts. Some of the earmarks of a good MLM opportunity will be longevity of business, good reports from longtime owners and a clean financial history for up to 10 years. While many people are anxious to get in on the ground floor of an MLM opportunity, thorough research as to any opportunities' organization, structure, service, support and marketing education is tremendously important. For those who want to find secret ways to make money online, a balance between riding the first wave of a great idea while exerting cautious research is highly recommended. There are many secrets to making money online in today's continually evolving virtual marketplace for anyone who is willing to learn just a little about computers, the Internet and themselves.

Ten New Ways to Make Money Online

So you want to ditch your corporate cubicle and join the ranks of web workers? But you have a mortgage, maybe a dependent or two, and a taste for Venti Mochas from Starbucks? You can make money in the new economy, though it might not be as easy or cushy as keeping your old economy job. I’m not talking about advertising or affiliate marketing or selling your junk on eBay. Those are so last millennium! I’m talking about the new new economy.

1. Offer your professional expertise in an online marketplace 

These days, you can do more than just sell your old books via Amazon and your old Coach handbags via eBay—now you can sell your professional capabilities in a marketplace. No longer are you limited to looking for a permanent or contract job on Web 1.0 style job sites like Monster or CareerBuilder. The new breed of freelancing and project-oriented sites let companies needing help describe their projects. Then freelancers and small businesses offer bids or ideas or proposals from which those buyers can choose.

Elance covers everything from programming and writing to consulting and design, while RentACoder focuses on software, natch. If you’re a graphic designer, check out options like Design Outpost or LogoWorks–you don’t have to find the customers, they’ll come to you. Wannabe industry analysts might sign up for TechDirt’s Insight Community, a marketplace for ideas about technology marketing.

2. Sell photos on stock photography sites 

If people regularly oooo and aaaaah over your Flickr pics, maybe you’re destined for photographic greatness or maybe just for a few extra dollars. It’s easier than ever to get your photos out in front of the public, which of course means a tremendous amount of competition, but also means it might be an convenient way for you to build up a secondary income stream. Where can you upload and market your photos?

3. Blog for pay 

Despite the explosion of blogs, it’s hard to find good writers who can turn around a solidly-written post on an interesting topic quickly. GigaOM is always looking for bloggers with great content ideas and solid writing skills. How do you get noticed? Comment and link to blogging network sites. Write blog posts that are polished and not overly personal (although showing some personality is a plus).

4. Or start your own blog network 

If you like the business side of things–selling advertising, hiring and managing employees, attracting investors–and have the stomach to go up against the likes of Weblogs, Inc., GigaOmniMedia, b5media, maybe you should make an entire business out of blogs. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you’ll get a lot of time to write yourself though.

5. Provide service and support for open source software 

Just because the software is free doesn’t mean you can’t make money on it–just ask Red Hat, a well-known distributor of Linux that sports a market cap of more than four billion dollars. As a solo web worker, you might not want to jump in and compete with big companies offering Linux support, but how about offering support for web content management systems like WordPress or Drupal? After getting comfortable with your own installation, you can pretty easily jump into helping other people set them up and configure them.

6. Online life coaching 

Who has time to go meet a personal coach at an office? And don’t the new generation of web workers need to be met by their coaches in the same way that they work: via email, IM, and VoIP? You could, of course, go through some life coaching certification program, but on the web, reputation is more important than credentials. I bet Tony Robbins isn’t certified as a life coach–and no one can argue with his success. For an example of someone building up their profile and business online as a coach, check out Pamela Slim of Ganas Consulting and the Escape from Cubicle Nation blog.

7. Virtually assist other web workers 

Freelancers and small businesses desperately need help running their businesses, but they’re not about to hire a secretary to come sit in the family room and answer phone calls. As a virtual assistant, you might do anything from making travel reservations to handling expense reimbursements to paying bills to arranging for a dog sitter. And you do it all from your own home office, interacting with your clients online and by phone. You can make $20 and up an hour doing this sort of work, depending on your expertise.

8. Build services atop Amazon Web Services 

Elastic computing on AWS is so cool… and so incredibly primitive right now. Did you know that you can’t even count on your virtual hard drive on EC2 to store your data permanently? That’s why people are making money right now by offering services on top of AWS. Make it easier for people to use Amazon’s scalability web infrastructure like Enomaly has with elasticlive, a scalable web hosting platform built on AWS.

9. Write reviews for pay or perks 

If you blog for any length of time on a particular topic–parenting, mobile phones, or PCs, for example–you will likely be approached to do book or product reviews. You can get free stuff this way, but are you selling your soul? Is there any such thing as a free laptop? These are decisions you’ll have to make for yourself, because no one agrees upon what ethical rules apply to bloggers. Even less do people agree on services like PayPerPost that pay you to write reviews on your blog. Check out disclosure rules closely and see whether such a gig would meet your own personal standards or not.

10. Become a virtual gold farmer 

A half million Chinese now earn income by acquiring and selling World of Warcraft gold to gamers in other countries. If you’re not a young person living in China, this probably isn’t a viable option for you. But what’s intriguing about it is the opportunity to make real money working in a virtual economy. People are making real-world money in Second Life too.