Covid19 has changed the way we look at jobs. Many of us no longer see jobs as something secure anymore.
As more and more businesses have to close down due to lack of customers or restrictions, many of us who work for those businesses get retrenched.
It’s time to dive into the internet and see if we can earn not just small money but big money.
In this post, I’d share 7 ideas to earn money online. Note that some of the ideas are quick and easy, while others need planning and take time (and luck).
The quick and easy ones usually give ‘small’ money while the ones that take time (and luck) give you so much money that you don’t even have to return to a conventional job.
Here are 7 ideas on how to earn money online:
1. Test Other People’s Websites (UX Testing)
UX stands for User Experience. UX testers are needed as many new businesses, or even old businesses, build a brand new website. They need feedback on how their website performs. The most common feedback they’d like to know is usually around how difficult or easy it is to navigate through their website and to get what a customer wants. There are various companies offering quick money for a quick test. This website, TryMyUI is one of the most popular one and easy to apply. They give $10 for a 20-minute work. Not bad at all.
2. Upload Designs to Print-On-Demand Companies
Print-on-Demand is a type of business where you upload your design and choose where it fits, including T-shirts, towels, iPhone cases, bags, and much more.
When a customer is interested in your design, say, on a T-shirt, this customer buys it from the company where you upload your design. The company will then print your design on a T-shirt, and ship it to the customer.
The company receives payment directly from the customer and gives you the commission, around 15%, for the design. The potential income is unlimited. If your design happens to be popular you can potentially earn much more than you earn on an administrative job.
For example, a T-shirt sale price is $28.90. You get a 15% commission, which is $4.33 per shirt. If there are 1000 buyers per month, that’s $4.33 x 1000 = $4330. Per month.
There are many companies that offer this type of service. Some of the most popular ones are Zazzle and Society 6.
Note that you don’t have to be a designer to ‘design’. You can use a free tool like canva to help with the design or if you don’t really have the skill to design, you can just write something funny or catchy like this one below.
3. Join Affiliate Programs
This option is suitable for people who are active in social media. There are heaps of affiliate programs out there. In a nutshell, an affiliate program is a program from a certain business that allows you to earn a commission for introducing the business to your friends/audience. The business gives you a link, you paste that link and when someone clicks that link and proceeds with a purchase or subscription, you earn a commission.
The most straight-forward affiliation is Ebay and Amazon. You simply screenshot (or download) the picture of the product you want to show to your audience, upload the picture to your blog, Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, and include the instruction where to buy it, which is the affiliate link.
Commission from eBay affiliate, for example, can be somewhere around 3-4% per sale. Therefore, the higher an item sale price is, the higher commission you’ll earn. If you sell an art painting for $3800 like this one, you’ll earn 3% commission which is $114. That’s just one sale. Imagine you sell 20 of them, that’s $2280. If you keep selling things at a similar price like that and make 50 sales per month, you earn $5700 per month.
4. Freelance
Freelancing has become popular since people start to realise that working from home is a better option as there is no commute time. Freelancing also gives you the freedom to work when you want, as long as you deliver what the clients ask for.
Fiverr is one of the most popular platforms when it comes to freelancing. However, Fiverr is not the only one. Upwork is also popular. Unlike Fiverr that is more suitable for easy jobs on a low budget that starts from $5, Upwork is for larger projects that require specialist knowledge.
A typical software developer in Upwork usually earns around $90 an hour. If they work 40 hours a week, that’s $3,600 per week. Or $14,400 per month.
Have a look and you can decide which one suits you better.
5. Teach
If you’re good at explaining something, you have a mobile phone that can record a video and a mic that records your voice, you’re ready! You don’t need perfect lighting or a fury microphone that costs hundreds of dollars, although knowledge on basic lighting to record a video would be handy. But as long as you can record the instruction clearly and you can upload it, you are on the way to earning a good amount of money that can replace your full-time job.
If you’re camera-shy, you don’t even have to have your face on the video. Just record the screen with the free software Active Presenter, and record your voice. And if you speak English as a second language and are afraid that people may not understand you, you can use the free Google Translate, click the speaker icon to let it speak (see below image), and record the speech with Audacity software, which is also free.
You can then upload your tutorial video to Youtube, Udemy, or Skillshare.
Just giving you a rough idea about how much you earn as a teacher in Skillshare. The earning is usually around $0.05 and $0.10 per minute-watched. This means that if your students watched 10K minutes of your class in the first month, you’d earn between $500 and $1,000. That would be just 10 minutes of watch time per student if you have 1,000 students watching your class. That’s just one class. If you have 20 classes? $20,000.
It’s even possible to become a millionaire just from teaching in Udemy. The top 10 Udemy instructors by earnings for just ONE course is at $942,000. (Source: Blog Teaching Guide)
6. Photography
With under AU$1000, you can get a nice, brand new mirrorless camera like Sony A6000 to take great pictures and sell them online. Platforms like Shutterstock and Deposit Photos are very popular and have a lot of buyers.
Depending on the picture size, Shutterstock gives at least 10 cents per picture and Deposit Photos gives at least 30 cents per picture. If there are 1000 buyers buying your pictures, you can easily make $300. If you have 1000 pictures and each picture is bought by 10 different people every day in Deposit Photos, that’s 1000 pictures x 10 different buyers x 30 cents = $3000. If that happens every day, or say, every three days, you’ll make $30,000 in a month.
For those of you who are not yet ‘professional’ and keen to be a professional stock photographer, here are some tips: 7 Photographers Share Tips on How to Become a Professional Photographer.
7. Videography
A brand new GoPro8 costs under AU$600. You can start recording about the situation in the country or city where you currently live, like how quiet it’s been since the Covid19, and upload it to Youtube. Or you can sell it as editorial to Shutterstock and Deposit Photos. Videos are priced higher than photos.
You can also attach the GoPro8 to your bicycle, motorcycle, or car, and drive around strange places or roads. There are so many easy ways to make interesting videos to sell or upload on Youtube.
A YouTuber can make around $3 to $5 per 1,000 video views. This easily translates to $3 million for 1 million views. For further info about how much you can earn and how to become a Youtuber, read this blog post.
How to Market Your Designs/Products/Services?
From personal experience and numerous YouTubers I’ve watched, the following methods work and they’re easy to implement:
1. Choose Your Niche
When you’re designing for cats, then your niche would be cat owners.
2. Research Where Your Niche Is
Going with the above example, you’ll need to find out what social media most cat owners use.
3. Set up a Social Media Account Based on Your Niche
Supposed most cat owners use Instagram, then you’ll need to set up an account in Instagram, upload some cute cat pictures (but remember, don’t infringe anyone’s copyright!) and cat products or designs that you made.
4. Put the Link of Your Designs/Products/Services
Put the link of your designs/products/services on the bio so people can easily see and click it.
5. Start Following
You’ll then need to start following as many cat owners as possible to market your designs/products/services because when you follow an account, the account owner gets a notification and they’ll at least check what your Instagram is all about. This is a great way to market your designs/products/services.
6. Rinse and Repeat
Keep following accounts that belong to cat owners and keep uploading pictures that are relevant to your designs/products/services. Remember to use Canva to help you with the design. It’s free (you can go with the pro account if you want unlimited designs) and it’s one of the best tools I’ve known so far.
