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Ways to Make Money Online Without An Investment
The internet is a thriving world by itself and as such presents a million opportunities for anyone gritty enough to work at it to make money with very minimal financial investment to even zero. “Well, how do I that??” Glad you asked ? Let us show you how …
Can You Really Make Money Online?
If you’ve come to this article because you’re looking for ways to make money or earn cash online but just don’t have the money to spend on build your own fancy website, or buy some fancy “cash machine” you probably saw on some online ads, then you’ve come to right place.
Because like you, we hate scammers (and we’re on the alert 24/7 looking out for scammers to expose them so they don’t get to victimize honest people like yourself and us any further) selling those “make money quick” schemes online and that is exactly why we’ve scoured the internet looking for decent, ethical, and legitimate ways to make money online. We’ve found tons of useful ideas and tips we’d love to share with you in this post. We’ve done the dirty work so you don’t have to.
Our Top 6 Ways to Make Money Online with 0-$4 Investment
There are tons of ideas out there and sifting through them could literally take hours, or even days just researching them to determine whether or not they’re legitimate and can really help you make money.
Here, we’ve rounded up the best ways to make money online and grouped them into categories based on their key ideas and strategies. Most of these ideas and strategies we’ve tried and are actually using. So, we are only including an idea/platform on here that we actually trust and believe in. Plus, the list is in the order of difficulty of entry, sell-ability, popularity, mode of payment, and ease of use.
Excited? Here we go …
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Sell Your Unique Talent & Skills
The following are the top 3 micro job sites we can recommend based on good experience, ease of entry (which means, totally zero investment), and have (by far) the lower pay cuts than most.
- Fiverr
Got a special talent or skill? Why not make money off of it! Fiverr is a popular site where you can offer perform tasks and provide services and have people pay you a minimum of $5 per task completed or service rendered. How cool is that?
Offers at Fiverr range from genius to the most bizarre services (“bizarre” doesn’t even describe some of those weird stuff people offer to do and get paid for!).
- GigBucks
Similar to (and one of the popular offshoots of) Fiverr, GigBucks broke the $5 limit in that it allows up to $50 pay per gig. So you can simply create your profile and sell a gig for $5-50.
With enough creativity, a pretty cool talent that someone out there could really use, and a gig that you are really good at, this can potentially make you money fast … at no cost.
- Zeerk
At Zeerk, you can sell your gig(s) from $2 to $100, plus, what’s great about it is that you can initiate fund withdrawal after a client approves a job. That means, there’s no more long waiting time to process your payment. They do get a 10% cut on your pay (other sites take a full 20%).
- Fiverr
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Monetize Your Social Media Accounts
People spend the most time on their social media accounts every single day. And not many know that you can actually make money on these popular sites with a bucket of creativity … and lots of persistence.
Here are the top 3 social media sites you can actually start making money off of:
- Facebook
The key here is to build a Facebook page with lots of followers. And by ‘lots’, we mean … thousands. Creating a Facebook page is easy and free. You then need to pick a great niche topic you know you can really run with and be good at. Building a following in Facebook can take overnight or even years depending on your strategy and mastery of a niche.
There are several ways to monetize your page: 1) get paid by promoting products and events for a brand/company, 2) promote affiliate links (people click and purchase … you make money), 3) sell “likes” on Fiverr and Zeerk (lots of company facebook pages will buy “likes” to their pages).
- Pinterest
Just like with Facebook, the mos popular way to make money with a Pinterest account is by promoting other people’s products/services via an affiliate link (here’s our quick guide to getting started with Affiliate Marketing). If you’re just getting started (or haven’t an account yet) on pinterest—you have no followers yet—then, affiliate marketing is the best route.
Other means to getting paid by brands/sponsors include: curating a dedicated board that features a brand’s products exclusively, working as a Pinterest marketer for a company, and offering Pinterest VA services. All these, of course, assumes that you already have a good follower base on your Pinterest account to attract brands/companies to use your services.
- Instagram
This social media platform is currently the most popular among the 18-30 something’s (a huge audience segment) and for good reason. It’s easy to use, very addictive, and users are more engaged. What better platform to be making money off of?
Similar to Facebook and Pinterest, most users who make money on Instagram use affiliate marketing, sponsored posts, and selling products/services. BUT, the difference is that growing an Instagram follower/fan base can be easier and faster than the other two.
- Facebook
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Sell Your Photos & Creative Stuff
If you’re a heavy online-and-tech user (mobile phones, tablets, laptops, etc), chances are you’d have ammassed tons of photos on your phone or tablet by now. Orrrr …. If your’e among the rare breed of dslr hobbyists left, then you’d have taken some gorgeous photos someone else can use on their blog/website.
Well, in any case, you can sell your photos on these websites:
- Dreamstime
This site has a huge base of photographers and hobbyists earning good money off high quality photos. Read up on their rules and policies, brush up on your photography skills, pick out your best shots, and go sell. But of course, it’s not that easy (heck, nothing is quite that easy these days, really) … again read their guidelines, take lots of photos based on topics that are on demand, and you could be on your way to your first sale. The best thing about selling stockphotos is that you keep getting paid each time someone purchases a download of your photo(s). Think ‘royalties’, baby 😉
- iStockPhoto & ShutterStock
This two are probably the more popular platforms than Dreamstime as their approval process are a bit less rigid than the latter. However, they pay lower commissions for your approved photos and graphics compared to Dreamstime. Of course, same strategy applies: submit your photos based on topics, get approved, and get paid for downloads. Just remember, stock photography takes lots of patience.
Sell Stuff Online
If you’re making stuff (ex. handmade crafts, unique art, etc.), or have excess stuff you don’t use or can’t just give away for free, or even, you can cook certain dishes exceptionally well (your friends and family, at least, love it and rave about it), then these 2 online selling platforms are a good place to start.
- Facebook Marketplace
If you’re constantly online (looking for ways to make money … hence, you found this article), chances are you are also a Facebook user. You probably seen ads on there as well that point you to ‘Marketplace’. It’s straightforward: take really good photos of the items you want to sell, go to Facebook Marketplace and post your listing. It is important that your provide detailed and accurate descriptions of your items and always be available to answer inquiries. Best thing about Marketplace, unlike other platforms, Facebook does not collect listing fees.
- Instagram
Yes, it’s totally possible to sell your stuff directly on your Instagram posts, however, you’d still need to build a good follower base to get more visibility for your posts. There are no fees for promorting your products/items directly via a post (use popular #hashtags to capture the right audience).
Affiliate Marketing
In simple terms, affiliate marketing allows you to make money off any merchant/company/brand/author’s products/books by referring customers/buyers to them.
The way to do that is by promoting/marketing their products/books (you are an affiliate) on your social media accounts and blog (if you have one or plan to start one) so that when someone ‘clicks’ on your affiliate link and that person purchases the product/book you are promoting via that link, then you get paid handsome commissions. The trick is to find high commission and highly sellable affiliate products to promote.
If you’re totally new to this, you may subscribe to our FREE email course on everything affiliate marketing.
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Bonus: Build A Career Online
- UpWork
Formerly called oDesk, thie freelancing platform has grown exponentially for the last 5 years as more and more freelancers are joining and thousands are already growing profitable careers thru it.
It is easy, and free, to get started on UpWork. The key is to build your profile completely and stand out with great communication skills to get interviews. Remember to start out with a ‘realistic’ pay rate.
- Freelancer
Similar to UpWork, this freelancing platfom works pretty much the same way except that it is a bit more trickier landing contracts (projects) on here. You need to build a portfolio to attract invites and stand make your job pitch stand out enough to get interviews, however, it’s mostly a battle of “pricing” in this platform.
- UpWork
Conclusion
There are many more ways and strategies you can find online that can help you make money, however, the above are by far among the best that’ll cost you nothing (no upfront fees) to get started.
Again, we believe that anything worth doing (much more “honestly earning money” from) is worth doing with a lot of patience, consistency, and an attitude of constant learning.
The internet is a world full of opportunities and it has leveled the playing field for economies worldwide (from startups to big brands) so that even ordinary users like us can build profitable businesses and careers on.
So why wait? Get started today!
