Make money online with little or no start-up cash, if you make crafts or resell items, review products, write or edit, use social media, or provide a service.
Just because you don’t have the money to start a business, does not mean you cannot make money online without start-up money.
Don’t fall for those emails with headlines such as, “Make Money Online” or “Just $50 Can Buy an Online Opportunity to Make Millions.” Some are legitimate, but seriously if you make millions online, why do you need my $50?
However, I am not here to make you smarter about not getting fleeced by online predators.
These are not in order of the best or worst opportunity because every opportunity is what you make of it. None of these are “get rich quick” schemes, and all these require hard work or a time commitment. The amount of effort you put into any legitimate initiative will determine your results.
1. Make Money Selling Crafts or Reselling Things!
But, if you have a product that sells without a website, imagine how well you can do with one. The same goes for reselling things. Say you found hundreds of widgets at a yard sale and you are reselling those individually. Look at these great sales platforms:
I really like Shopify because it gives you the ability to open a shop right from your Facebook page. This also gives you the ability to connect with your customers instantly with Messenger. Shopify has the potential to reach millions of potential customers and sales on Shopify have already reached $34 billion.
What’s more setting up drop shipping is easy when you read Tim Ferriss’s #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller, The 4-Hour Work Week.
2. Make Money Reviewing Products
What I really like about this job is being able to keep the products I review afterward. Granted not all companies allow you to do that. And, not everything you review is worth keeping. However, many are and if you don’t want to keep an item, you could always resell it. Drop shipping comes in handy for the products that must be returned and for those you resell. Just box it back up and change the address.
You don’t need a lot of writing skills to make money online with this job because it’s usually just 100-200 word descriptions. The hardest part is coming up with another way to say this product is great. Here are five websites that allow you to make money writing reviews:
- Swagbucks – Gift cards for watching movies and taking surveys. Get $5 just for joining.
- User Testing – $10 per test – watch a 20-minute video and get $10 on PayPal.
- Review Me – This is good if you have a blog, they pay by check after $25, to your card after $20, or to PayPal after every review.
- ReviewStream – Review movies, books, clothing, or restaurants for $2 plus a $.10 residual or pay-per-click (PPC). This is paid every time a member votes on your review. You must earn $50 before payment to PayPal. Review Stream has a good reputation for paying.
- Amazon – Everybody knows Amazon is a good place to make money online, but not everyone knows how to get paid for reviewing products.
There are lots of other sites that offer payment for reviews, if you don’t like any of these, just Google “How to get paid for reviewing products.” Or, buy the book for just $.99.
3. Make Money Writing & Editing
I could write a book about this area because this is what I do. Although I have a degree in Journalism, it was so long ago I don’t remember much of that. So, don’t worry about a degree, just get started. With all the online tools, for editing, it’s easy to make money online writing or editing without a degree, such as Grammarly, Ginger, CorrectEnglish, Smallseotools, and even Word’s Review – Spelling & Grammar Check just bang out an article and use the tools. Sure, you will still make some mistakes, but you must start somewhere.
Something I like about Grammarly is if you have a blog, you can write a review or post about it and make $25.00 as an affiliate, plus PPC.
From Grammarly: “Requirements for Blog Entry:
– Entry must be honest and reflect the author’s own views
– Content must represent Grammarly in a professional and relevant manner
– Proper punctuation, grammar, and spelling should be used (take advantage of the free upgrade offer!)”
Writing for Content Mills
With Textbroker and some other content mills, you can write articles that contain mistakes and still get paid. In most cases, people that request articles here are looking for cheap content $5 or $6 for a 500-word article, which is mostly for search engine optimization, so they contain keywords and then the person that bought the content edits what they receive for use on their website. Many of these sites are set up to make money online by using keywords on websites that use AdSense’s PPC. However, the better your grammar, spelling, and formatting the higher you will get ranked and the more you will get paid.
| Level or Quality Rating | Pay for Open Orders | Per 500-Word Article |
| Level II – Two-Stars | 0.7 cents/word | $3.50 |
| Level III – Three-Stars | 1.0 cents/word | $5.00 |
| Level IV – Four-Stars | 1.4 cents/word | $7.00 |
| Level V – Five-Stars | 5.0 cents/word | $25.00 |
Your completed assignments are evaluated generally after every three accepted submissions and your rating could go up or down depending on your most recent five articles. You will not get rich writing for content mills, but you can eat if you’re quick. A few new entries to the mills are Contently, ClearVoice, and eByline, who brag, you keep everything you make. And, these pay a lot better than Textbroker.
There are literally thousands of places online to find work writing or editing, such as Guru, Upwork, Skyword, Craigslist (Manila, LA, or NYC) or just Google, writing and editing jobs. A good place to build a free portfolio for written articles, photography, and fashion.
Getting Started Writing/Editing
Below is the book I read that launched my career writing and editing:
Direct Link: The Fast Track to Freelance Success Online
Kathleen’s book inspired me to start a freelance writing career. This book answers the questions many beginners and some that have been struggling for years need to know. Questions such as, where to begin, how to price your work, how to sell yourself, and how to persevere and perform, but more importantly how to repeatedly find work that pays well, where to find that work, and how to create a system of daily prospecting that keeps you busy and even sends work to you.
Kathleen states, “Even as busy as I am now, I still average at least two hours a day prospecting and bidding on new projects.”
How do I know her system works? Because she has given me thousands of dollars in work, just this year. In fact, I average about $800 a month subcontracting from her. Let’s face it, who couldn’t use an additional $200 a week?
4. Make Money Online Posting to Social Media
Everyone knows you can find a job on LinkedIn, but you can also make money online by posting articles, images, videos, and ads on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and many other social media sites. Many companies will pay you as a virtual assistant to post ads, promote products, services, and brands, and assist them in growing their business. There are many, many opportunities for Social Media Managers, up until a year ago I didn’t even know there was such a title. Some places to start are:
Keep your eyes open, join groups in your niche, share articles you find interesting and comment on those articles (Not just, “Great article, I enjoyed it.” but, put some thought into your response and leave an opening for others to respond without being controversial.) Within the groups you belong, you will become a person people respect.
5. Remote Jobs, Services, or Work from Home Opportunities
Another way to make money online from home is what is known as telecommuting or remote work, such as:
SpeakWrite is one of those services that pay people to transcribe audio or video to written documents from home. You can also request these types of jobs on Guru.com and Upwork.com, among others.
LiveOps, a home-based business where you can earn around ten dollars an hour (more with commissions) as a call-center representative.
Leapforce is another work from home adventure, evaluating websites for Google. In most places, and there are lots of opportunities in other countries, you must have a degree, but if you are pursuing an IT degree you may be able to start working, so just apply to find out for sure.
OneSpace, another source of remote work, just create an account, pass a qualification test, have a PayPal account, and you can start accepting work.
Does That Help?
That’s a rhetorical question because I know if you really want to make money online, these are some great places to start. Even if you are just looking for a few hundred a month to pay the rent or buy more groceries, if you apply yourself, you can do it.
If you need someone to write quality content for your website’s About Us Page, Blog, Privacy Policy, Terms & Conditions, etc. check out my portfolio, testimonials by clients, and send me a contact request.
About Me
Stephen Dalton is a retired US Army First Sergeant with a degree in journalism from the University of Maryland and a Certified US English Chicago Manual of Style Editor. He is a freelance journalist currently living in the Philippines.
You can see his portfolio here. Email thewriteresults@yahoo.com
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