Easy Ways to Make Money Online
Content Updated on December 28, 2007
If you want to earn some cash (or something worth cash) without much effort, there are things you can do online that won't take you much time or effort. These aren't things that will bring in a major income, but they will bring in a few extra dollars and gift cards, both of which come in very handy for gift-giving holidays.
Advertisement Clicking
Basically, you get paid to click on ads.
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MyPoints
They send you email, you click on the ads in the email, and you get points. You can earn additional points by purchasing items through their site or purchasing items/services from the companies advertised.
Surveys
Surveys take a few minutes to do, and you usually earn a few dollars or points that you cash in.
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Survey Savvy
Get paid to take surveys online and by phone. Plus, get even more when you refer friends. (Excellent pay. Use the earnings calculator to find out how much you can get.)
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E-Poll
Sign up and start taking surveys. You earn points that you can redeem for cash and other items. I get back at least one reward per year.
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MySurvey
Sign up and start taking surveys. You earn points that you can redeem for cash and other items. I get back at least two checks per year.
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Opinion Outpost
Just sign up and start taking surveys. You earn points that you can redeem for cash and other items.
Pay-Per-Click (CPC) Advertising
To do this, you'll need a website or a blog.
You can create your own pay-per-click service (if you know how to write a spiffy CPC code), but it's often easier to sign up for a CPC service and third-party services make it easier for advertisers to find you. Just sign up for a service, put the ads on your site, and then sit back and wait for the money. Most pay-per-click services change the ads based on the content of the page (i.e. keyword targeting), so the ads are usually relevant to your audience (and that encourages them to actually click on the ads).
Of course, if you want to increase your chances of getting money from pay-per-click ads, you'll need to focus on increasing your website traffic.
My favorite third-party CPC advertising services:
Cost-Per-Mil (CPM) Advertising
To do this, you'll need a website or a blog.
A mil means 1,000 in Latin, so cost-per-mil ads pay you a certain amount of money for every 1,000 times that the ad appears on your site. For this type of advertising to be profitable, your site needs to have lots of page views.
Again, if you want to write your own CPM code or install a CPM ad-rotator program, great! But most of us will use a third-party service because it's easier, and it increases your exposure to advertisers. My favorite again are:
Flat Rate Advertising
To do this, you'll need a website or a blog.
Unlike pay-per-click ads, flat rate ads pay you one flat fee to appear on your site for a specified period of time (such as for 1 week or 1 month). With flat rate ads, it doesn't matter how much traffic you get to your website or blog.
You can sell your flat rate ads directly, or you can use a third-party ad service. Third-party services usually requires less effort on your part and increases the chance that somebody will want to advertise, but they also take a percentage of the revenue. My favorite third-party service for flat-rate ads is AdBrite.
Affiliate Links / Cost-Per-Action (CPA) and Cost-Per-Sale (CPS) Advertising
To do this, you'll need a website or a blog, or you can put affiliate links in emails, forums, etc. (but that borderlines on spam).
Affiliate links are a bit less profitable than pay-per-click advertising because you don't get paid if a site visitor just clicks on the link; they actually have to buy a product or service, sign up for a newsletter, or perform some other action. Nevertheless, you can make money from it, and once you set up the links, you just have to wait for the money to come in.
My favorite affiliate programs:
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Amazon.com
Amazon.com has probably the biggest affiliate program. They have a good reputation, so customers trust them. They also have just about every product you can think of.
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Commission Junction
Commission Junction has also been around for awhile and has a good reputation, which is why many big companies (whom your website visitors will trust) choose to do their affiliate programs through CJ.
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