Making money online

Making money online

Working from home and making money online as a sole income is not as easy as it sounds, but it is possible. I am not saying that you'll become the next Mark Zuckerberg or Andrew Mason and will earn millions. But you can supplement your income or even get your sole income by working online.

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We have touched on making money online in the blog article about paid online writing jobs.
There are literally thousands of online writing jobs out there. The most legitimate sites to work for are Elance and Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Payment is guaranteed, however if you work any of the jobs on Mechanical Turk, unless you live in the USA or India, you will not be able to get paid out into your bank account. Workers from countries other than the USA and India can only convert the money they make into an Amazon.com gift certificate.

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You can also make money writing blogs for other people or advertising on your own blog. Blogstash lists over 55 websites that will pay you to blog. Most of the Advertisers will pay you to write a positive review about their product or service.
However, in order to get people to advertise on your blog  and live of your blog's income it needs to have a large amount of traffic. Your best bet to make money with your blog from the beginning, is to list a Google Ad Sense account.
This program can be used on any website that has traffic to earn money from advertising.

Another way of making money online is to start up your own group buying website a la Groupon. Consider though, that you will need to go out and get deals and if the site is not going to be just a small  Groupon-clone, you'll most likely have to employ sales personnel and spend money on advertising.

If you live in a country where the group buying industry is not yet established you will do well in starting such a site a.s.a.p. Who knows, at a later stage Groupon might even buy you for a few million.
But hurry, Groupon spreads like a virus and who knows when it infects you.

In South Africa for example, group buying has only become popular during the later half of 2010. Sites who were preparing to go online late 2010 / early 2011 had already come to late. Little did they know that small local group buying site Twangoo had approached Groupon for a buyout and cut a deal for a few million Rand. Groupon hit South Africa in early 2011 and right away many other group buying websites started emerging. Entering the market with no budget, after Groupon and with a few other major players already established, makes no sense. The main players in the market are backed by big media houses and multimillion Rand companies, who have the money to advertise on TV and radio stations.

There are other more subtle ways to make money online, like joining Leapforce and becoming a qualified-at home independent agent. They offer jobs like Search Engine Evaluation, available in different languages like English, German and French.

If you want to play it on the morally rather shady side, consider entering into the sex trade. Even during the recession the industry was still booming. There are many options, that offer a lucrative income - running an adult dating website, an escort service or a porn website.

Whichever way you decide to earn your income online, be aware of scammers like PaidOnlineWritingJobs.com who require you to make a payment before you can start working. There are many free sites that allow you to start working and earning money immediately.

Be prepared to invest a lot of time and hard work before you will start earning your sole salary online.

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