How to Make Money Online for Beginners

Real simple ways you can make money on the internet from home 

For a while, I thought making money online was a dream come true. If I could find a way to make money from my laptop, I could spend less time at work and more time taking back control of my life.

Have you thought similar? Well, thanks to the global pandemic, I realized just how realistic this dream is. I learned there are quite a lot of real ways to make money from home, with just a laptop and a WiFi connection.

Sounds nice, doesn’t it? It’s not only the life I want to live, but the life I want you to live, too.

Think about it. Eventually everyone will be back to their normal lives, with their normal jobs. But do you want to be?

Maybe this year was a wake up call that you didn’t like what you were doing. Maybe it was a sign that you can no longer rely on a single revenue stream — or that you don’t want to.

Whatever your why is, there’s no reason you can’t add a second (or third) revenue stream.

It’s no longer the norm to work your way up the ladder and afford the comfortable lifestyle of your dreams. Sometimes it takes a little hustle.

Your 9-5 is an investment in your company. Your 5-9 is an investment in yourself.

You should always grow your investment in yourself. It’s not selfish. It’s the right thing to do.

Wondering how to make money online for beginners? Below I’ve highlighted some realistic ways anyone can make money on the internet. You can do these all from your home and often without any upfront investment. 

Ways to make money online. From home. For free. 

Get paid to write for Medium

Have a knack for writing?

Want to get paid to do it?

Listen up.

Medium.com is a website where anyone can write and share articles — about anything. Medium hosts content on its website, and curates daily content into a digest and helps push it to interested audiences. But get this — Medium will pay you for your writing.

Medium charges readers a $5 per month subscription fee to get access to unlimited articles on its site. In turn, Medium shares the profits with its authors.

As a writer, you are paid for your page views. More view equals more dollars. It’s all about audience totals. If you have a limited readership and low traffic to your article, you might only generate a few cents. But if your article gets a lot of traffic, you may earn thousands.

Some Medium writers have grossed $6,000 or more on a single article. That’s nice passive income, if you ask me.

To get started, just sign up for the Medium Partner Program and start writing — about anything. You might share stories, advice, ideas, or generally value-driven content. You may send your articles to publications on Medium to help you generate more traffic.

Note that not everything you write will get you a ton of money. But Medium is a quick and easy to get a second revenue stream going. And who knows, you may just have one break through and get you paid in the hundreds, or thousands.

If you have a knack or interest in writing, why are you not on Medium?

Cash in selling stock video footage

Not everyone likes to write — and that’s OK.

More of a photographer or videographer? I have good news.

Video is taking over the media landscape. To sell online, marketers need visuals — and video is the trendiest of them all. Video, as you might guess, is something marketers aren’t afraid to pay for.

Many marketers have turned to content builders like Canva, where they can take stock images and video and turn them into specialized marketing material for their business. But one piece is essential to make that all come together — stock footage.

The internet has dozens of platforms where creators (that’s you!) can sell stock footage, including Getty, Shutterstock (a popular favorite), Video, and VideoHive. All have about the same upload experience, but some do offer better rates.

Shutterstock contributors earn 30% of the purchase price paid by the customer. Shutterstock will set the price for you and take care of all the logistical work. You just create, post, and watch passive income come in.

High-quality stock footage that sells well include travel, food, sports, and leisure content. Stock videos typically range from 10 to 30 seconds without any cuts or edits. Even more, 4K video brings in more money – and you don’t need a fancy camera to make it happen. Did you know? Most iPhones can shoot in 4K.

Own an iPhone? Great! You’re halfway to making your first stock video.

Make money writing and reviewing resumes 

Do you have a job?

Care to help someone get theirs?

Right now, plenty are out there looking for work – or looking for something better. Needed to get that job is a resume.

What you might not realize is that nobody really knows how to write a good resume. It’s not their fault. Nobody taught them how.

Because few have experience in writing a good resume and do so infrequently, not many have confidence in their resumes. For that, they seek guidance. That’s where you come in.

Resumes lead to jobs, and that makes their return on investment pretty high. Some have taken to gig work websites like Fiverr to offer resume reviews, resume design, or resume writing. It’s simple to get started. But first, you should know a few tips.

Rather than pointing out the bad things, identify areas of improvement and discuss how they could address them. Not everyone will trust you enough to make those changes.

If you’re doing basic editing, you’ll check for spelling and grammar. You may also check the formatting and ensure it looks good from a simple design-perspective. You may charge more for the additional service you provide.

I’ll admit, there’s decent competition out there offering this service. You can increase your value by increasing your knowledge and staying up-to-date on what works. If you can bring your clients success and show proof of concept in your service, you can scale your service.

What you earn as a resume writer is anywhere between $20 to upwards of $1,000, per resume. Much of that depends on your reputation as a writer, who your client is, and what all you provide.

Do note that people are willing to spend accordingly for a quality resume review. After all, this is the one thing standing between them and a job.

Two things that will make you stand apart as a resume writer: Being a good listener and identifying excellence. People have a hard time writing down what they have done or recognizing the depth of their job. Experts in their field don’t realize half of the stuff they do on a daily basis. It’s key for you to pull out that information and get that on your client’s resume.

Create and sell YouTube thumbnails 

Yes, this is a real thing.

YouTube is a huge space. Creators there are making a lot of money through Google AdSense. Other blogs probably hinted to you that one of the best ways to make money online is through YouTube. But making YouTube videos is often time-consuming — and most YouTube creators earn little or nothing at all.

Being a YouTube creator isn’t for everyone. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get some skin in the game. You see, YouTube creators are usually pretty busy content planning and making new content that they outsource quite a lot. In fact, you’ll find that few YouTube creators do their own video editing, audio mixing, or posting.

One other thing being outsourced? YouTube thumbnails.

You can connect with YouTube creators directly and provide your service, or connect with a website for gig workers like Fiverr and offer your skill. It’s simple to get started, even if you have little or no design experience. A few quick YouTube tutorials can guide you through the process.

Design builders like Canva even offer templates to make the process easy. It’s typical to see a YouTube thumbnail go for $10-20 each, which is pretty good for something that takes 15 minutes to create.

Why don’t creators make them themselves? Most don’t know how to do it well. Plus, at $10-20 a pop, it’s a small risk for something with a high return on investment.

Take surveys through Amazon to receive a couple dollars in kickback 

There’s a number of sites out there looking for gig work.

Fiverr is a favorite. Upwork is another. TaskRabbit another, too.

And yes, even … Amazon? Yep, the place you spend your money actually has an option that pays you money. It’s called Amazon Mechanical Turk. It’s a crowdsourcing marketplace that makes it easier for individuals and businesses to outsource jobs to people who can do them virtually.

Businesses use Amazon Mechanical Turk to gain consumer insight and guide business decisions. Other uses are to conduct market research. Educational groups will also use it for psychological, political science, or sociology-focused research studies.

Surveys are simple and take anywhere from 5-10 minutes, on average. For participation, if you qualify, you will usually receive a couple dollars in kickback. It’s not much, but you can make decent money in a short period of time. It’s simple, too, sharing your two cents.

To get started, you’ll sign up as a worker on Amazon Mechanical Turk by providing basic information about yourself. It’ll help automatically filter you for qualified surveys. Amazon will take care of the money for you, and you’ll get paid quick and easy.

Offer services on gig websites like Fiverr 

Welcome to the world of freelance.

Fiverr and Upwork are just two of the many sites designed specifically to crowdsource freelancing. I’ll focus on Fiverr, which gets my endorsement for the better of the two. Why I like Fiverr is it makes freelancing simple without any upfront costs or major time investment on my part. Whatever your skill, the options to freelance are limitless.

Fiverr will connect you to an interested buyer, who can search based on his or her specific needs. Rates are set up front, so there are no negotiations.

When you’re new to Fiverr, you want to focus on offering a low price so you can get your first review. Those with more reviews show up more and get more gigs. You might ask a friend to buy your gig and leave that initial review to get started faster.

You might be sitting there wondering what skill you have to offer. Know this: there is opportunity for you to freelance. Here’s just a sampling of what people are looking for on Fiverr:

Graphic design — If you are a skilled artist, there’s a place for you on Fiverr. Companies with limited budgets are looking for logo design or branded material.

Caricatures — This is a neat space on Fiverr. Think there isn’t a market for caricatures? You’d be wrong. Illustrators are in high demand — for professional work and novelties, like caricature art.

Digital marketing — What options does a brand with limited resources and a small budget have to make a splash in marketing? One option is to outsource its marketing operations. Plenty are doing just that, outsourcing social media marketing, email marketing, and SEO, to name a few.

Translations — Slightly regretting the four years of Spanish you took in college? Me, too. But if it’s still fresh in your mind and you can translate, turn to Fiverr. Translating is an underserved niche, and a major money-making idea for you to try out.

Copyediting — Are you a hound for good grammar? If yes, turn to Fiverr. You can make good money quickly editing everything from professional documents to college applications.

Transcribe — Before marketing, I worked as a journalist where nothing was more time-consuming as transcribing audio. Those feeling the strain have found the remedy to outsource this to Fiverr. If you’re a fast typist, this is right up your alley.

Video editing — You a pro in Premiere Pro? Video editing is time-consuming and overwhelming for those of us who don’t do it well. More creators are pushing out video to YouTube and rightfully don’t want to slow down with the video editing process. You guessed it, outsourced to Fiverr.

Drone videography — Do you have a license to fly? Many have found the need for drone videography, but don’t have the resources to make it happen on their own. Here’s your chance to put your Christmas gift to practical use.

Audio voice-over — Have a voice for voice-over? Maybe you have that charming British accent that people love. You could be paid quite nicely to record a voice-over.

Music lessons — Know how to play the guitar? I don’t (sighs). Where have people turned for music lessons? Turns out, Fiverr.

Podcast editing — Why is it that everyone has a podcast? I don’t know. What I do know is that podcast quality matters — and that means good editing. Many podcasters are handing over their audio for a nice clean up. 

Put your money to work investing with a robo-advisor 

You may have noticed many people have made money as novice investors through commission-free trading apps like Robinhood. It’s a nice source of passive income to collect annual returns.

But investing is often time-consuming, especially if you attempt to time it. Today the stock market is up. Tomorrow it may be down. Trying to keep up with the ebb and flow of the market is challenging, if not impossible. Picking the right stocks is a challenge for the inexperienced, as well.

You may take the guesswork out of investing with the help of robo-advisors. A robo-advisor — popular names include WealthFront and Betterment — builds a personalized portfolio and uses an algorithm to select investments for you. Likewise, it monitors your portfolio and looks for opportunities to buy or sell assets.

Investing with the help of a robo-advisor may bring in passive income and steady annual returns. Keyword is may. I must warn you of market volatility and cannot guarantee that you will come out ahead. Collectively, investing is an option to make money online and from home.

Bottom line 

For the longest time, I thought making money online was only for web gurus and internet junkies. I couldn’t imagine it’d be something that I could do myself — not without extensive knowledge and training.

But then it hit me just how realistic it is to make money online, even as a beginner. It’s worth dipping your toe in the water to realize the potential you have making money online. Try one or two (or a few) of these options and see what sticks.

I’d love for you to be the next Fiverr success story everyone is talking about. I’m excited to see what you do.

How have you found ways to make money online? Share with me in the comments section below.