Working is a part of our journey through life and let’s face it, most of us are not born privileged so earning is an essential part of our life. With the internet becoming home to practically every service that you can think of, it is no surprise that finding work online is the new trend. A lot of people are looking for jobs that they can do from anywhere, be it the middle of a bustling town or a faraway place in the countryside. The point is, everything is present at the tip of your fingers. All you need to do is know where to look. A lot of websites are available that can let you work for other people against a remuneration that you can negotiate on. However, there are a lot of other very interesting things that you can explore to start earning online.
Want to make a quick five dollars?
This is not a weird question you get asked by your annoying elder brother for his errands. This is basically the concept behind one of the biggest online job platforms in existence. Fiverr is a website that allows people to share their unique skills and then find work that matches their skills. The concept is pretty straight forward and so is the website. You make an account, you share your skills and pretty quickly, you will find someone willing to give you something to do. Of course, the $5 amount is not fixed and you can do whatever you think catches your eye. This is especially a useful platform for college kids and people starting their careers.
Become a freelance writer
The value of writers has increased more than ever as people consume tons of information every day on the internet. Freelance writers are the backbone of most of the written content currently available on the internet. Good writers can end up commanding quite high fees for their work with the passage of time. If you think you have what it takes to outshine the competition (there’s a lot of that) then you should definitely give this a try! There are loads of well-established websites like Freelancer, Fiverr etc. that provide a great platform for writers to connect with people who want content.
Amazon Mechanical Turk
You have probably heard about Amazon online store (I mean who hasn’t really). This particular venture is a virtual marketplace where people come to get their work done from other people. However, it is a bit different from other sites as most of the companies you work for are not hiring people directly. With Amazon working as the middle man, they automatically match workers with the tasks at hand. Most of these are massive in size and there may be several people working on the same thing e.g. data crunching, research etc. Not only does it save cost for companies, it allows you to work in a highly well-maintained virtual environment.
HR Specialist
One of the biggest mainstream services that is rapidly growing on the internet is recruitment. A lot of companies simply don’t have the time to do physical interviews and go through long hiring processes. They simply hire HR specialists to do the job for them. Companies like Bohire, Referearns and Zyoin are taking a very interesting approach to the task, however. Instead of finding people themselves, they “crowdsource” their recruitment to everyone on the internet. You refer someone for a job on these sites, they get hired and you get paid for the referral. It is that simple!
Online Referrals
While referrals did work conventionally, using them on the internet has not been a popular thing until recently. A lot of merchants selling their goods online are now willing to pay referral fees to people. Platforms like uRefer provide a great way of making money by referring people to merchants online. Being a middleman is not very difficult nowadays and you can easily persuade people to buy things through referrals. A lot of people take thing further and even start complete businesses that only provide referrals to merchants by reaching out to consumers. So much so that this practice has turned into a whole phenomenon for bloggers as well who partner with merchants directly as well.
Graphic designing
This is one of the oldest professions present online and joining is no longer a hurdle for even the most novice designers. While earlier you had to have a good online profile to be noticed by a potential company/customer, now anyone can sell their ideas. A lot of websites are now based entirely on crowdsourced graphics. Designers simply make an account with such a website and upload their design portfolios. Every time a customer buys a design made by you, you get paid immediately with a nominal part of the payment going to the platform itself.
Photography
The concept behind this line of work is exactly the same as the one discussed earlier with graphics. However, the size of the market for this one is a lot bigger and commands bigger payments too. We are all very well aware how much worth a good photographer can carry and the internet makes sure maximum people can take advantage of that. With customers now pouring from all over the world, you can sell your photographs to anyone you like. To start it is best that you join a website that either sells stock photos or needs specific content. Once you have sufficient PR, you can even start your own website and keep all your earnings.
Affiliate Sales
Affiliate programs are a great source of income for people with all kinds of interests. If you can talk about products professionally then this can turn into a real career path for you too. Take any kind of products you are interested in and start talking about them. Soon enough merchants on the internet will start taking notice if you are doing a good job and make deals with you for referring people to their products. Amazon sellers do this very frequently and people have literally become millionaires by doing this kind of work!
Social Media
Now that you are a grownup looking for a source of income, you can look at social media websites as a source of income instead of entertainment. Nowadays content sells better than anything and if you can create good content, you can make a lot of money. Social media sites run mostly on advertisement revenue but they needs a platform that can host these advertisements. The most seamless way to do so is to embed them in the videos and other content you watch. So a person with a large enough number of followers can opt to show ads in their content. This leads to earnings just like any other advertisement campaign i.e. you get paid for every time a person watches or clicks on an advertisement on your content. Successful content creators have used platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Instagram etc. to earn ridiculous amounts of money!
The potential of earning money online is virtually limitless. No matter where you look, you will see some kind of avenue leading to a unique source of income. All that really remains to be seen is how you can utilize these opportunities and turn them into sources of income for yourself!