There are many legitimate ways to earn real money online. Whatever we wish to use it for, whether for paying bills, rent or simply spending we would always appreciate where we could get that little money from time to time.

Whenever discussions on earning online comes up, what comes into peoples’ minds are often the “get rich fast” deals, these are scams or anyone who thinks they can earn a dollar fast by mere clicking on an ad has another thing coming. Making a living over the internet is the same as doing it in real life. It requires dedication, perseverance and a lot of hard-work. Here are nine realistic and proven ways to those ready to invest their time and effort to earn money using their computer and internet connection.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing has been around for a long time. For over twenty years, it has been a proven way of making money online. The first affiliate marketing program began appearing online around 1994. It is a revenue sharing model where content creators and marketers can push web traffic to websites where people make digital purchases.

Amazon is one of the biggest and most successful affiliate marketing program runners. The Amazon Associates program has been running since 1996! Since then loads of new affiliate marketing options have sprung up. If people buy a product, then the affiliate marketer will get a small percentage. The sales won’t amount to much but if you can build a website that gets lots of qualified traffic, your earnings will really go up.

Affiliate marketing opportunities could be classified into two. First you can look into companies that run their own affiliate programs. Second, you can form an affiliate network or platform. An affiliate network is a place where marketers can find companies that are running affiliate programs. They are usually smaller companies that are depending on the resources of the large network. Some best affiliate networks include: shareAsale, CJ Affiliate, Awin, Rakuten Marketing, Peerfly, Avangate affiliate network, etc.

So, for example, if you’re a site dealing with eyeglasses, all it takes is including an affiliate link near the product you’re talking about under the heading of “Buy now” or even something as simple as “Shop now.” It’s that easy to work an affiliate link into your website.

Blogging

People start blogs as a way of expressing their views or as a creative outlet. However, there are many cases of people earning a living from their blogs and some have even turned them into massive companies like Huffington Post. Creating a blog doesn’t make you money right away, but with a long term vision your writing improves, your skills grow and your site picks up more traffic. Here are useful tips to make money from a blog:

Focus on a broad topic like health, finance, personal growth, relationships or hobbies.

Create the best possible sources and aim for quality on any given topic.

Learn about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and how to rank your site in search engines.

Build a network with popular bloggers and other influencers.

These tips will lead you in the right direction thereby generating a large volume of traffic for your blog and you will have opportunities to monetize your blog such as paid advertising, selling your own courses and products, selling affiliate products.

Write and Sell an E-book (Amazon self-publishing)

By packaging your skills and knowledge into a downloadable e-book that helps people learn a skill, advance their career or start a business, you can make good money online with the help of tools like sellfy in order to quickly sell PDF files (like an e-book) to your readers. You can even upload your own book to one of the world’s largest book sellers, With Amazon self-publishing, you set the price, retain the right to your books and get access to Amazon’s massive audience. For every sale you keep 70% with Amazon taking the remainder as fee.

Online Coaching

If you are an expert in your industry, you could set up a coaching program online and add to your income. Technological growth has made it very easy to create membership sites where you can offer your coaching programs and be paid. Videos are quite a handy tool for online coaching programs; as such, you need a video distribution platform that is cost effective, having all the features needed for both free and paid coaching programs. Online services such as thinkific, kajabi or teachable can be used to launch online courses. You may also want to try some popularly used video software like Camtasia, Camstudio and Screencast-O-Matic.

Online Gambling

Many people have used online gambling as a way of making extra cash to sustain their day to day life, especially in times when jobs are scarce and there is total lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. Kingbillycasino.com has been on the top roll especially in countries like Australia, it offers players a wide range of features for making money online through gambling from the comfort of your home.

Launch a YouTube Channel for Entertainment and Education

YouTube is one of the world’s largest search engines (after Google) and it’s the third most visited site in the world. Rather than making money through subscriptions, YouTube channels are based on a traditional advertising system; meaning the more viewers you get, the more money you make. Once you’re approved for the YouTube partner program, you can start including ads on your videos. With every 1000 views, you make approximately $2 – $4 which might not seem like a lot, but if you have 100 videos with 5,000 views a month each, that would be $1000 – $2000 already. Just imagine if your videos start hitting millions of viewers.

Podcasting

Audio content is a viable content marketing avenue and is getting stronger than ever. 32% of Americans listen to podcasts monthly – that’s the same number of people that go to church regularly. By launching your own podcast, you get to create your own show, discuss topics that are interesting to you, build your audience and monetize your audience with ads and sponsorships. Companies like Buzzsprout offer good hosting incentives. They offer a $20 Amazon gift card just for signing up; they have a free plan, as well as paid plans ranging from $12 – $24 per month. Buzzsprout indefinitely hosts your files, provides unlimited storage, and 250GB of bandwidth per month (which covers about 20,000 to 40,000 plays per month). They also allow you to embed a podcast player right on your website and you can showcase either one episode or a playlist of your best episode.

Join Freelance Job Sites (Flexjobs and SolidGigs)

It may take a while to build up your personal freelance business. Yet, there is more demand than ever for freelancers. Interested in making money online? Then you could go into freelancing and join one of the top freelance networks such as flexjobs, solidgigs, contena, upwork etc. Sign up, build your profile, upload samples of your work and start making money by doing small freelance jobs.

eBay Referrals

We probably have an idea about making money by selling products on the world’s largest marketplace – eBay. But do you know you can make money without stocking, selling or shipping any merchandise at all? Becoming an eBay affiliate offers you such by just sending others to their website.

Go to ebay and find the affiliate link at the bottom of the front page. Click the link and join the affiliate program. The referral program is managed by commission junction and pays a referral fee of $25 – $35 for everyone who makes a purchase within 30 days of clicking your link.

Adding eBay links and banners to your blog or website would maximize your referral income. Let your niche audience know how they can find the items they’re looking or on eBay and ask them to use your links. You can use eBay’s flexible linking tool to send your customers directly to the page on eBay’s site where they’ll be sure what they’re shopping for. By doing so, you save your customers’ time and effort in searching for an item and you earn a nice commission at the same time.