How to earn money online without an investment
There is an old say – “you need money in order to make money”. This might be true in some industries. But in the 21st century, you can earn money online without an investment. In this post, I’ll share a few of the leading methods of how to do that. All the following methods are legit and no scams.
10 leading methods for how to make money online for free, no scams!
In the following list, I’ll start with the methods for how to make money online for free and fast, yet those will not make you rich. Then I will move further describing how to make a lot of money online. But please bear in mind, that those methods require practice and more time before you’ll see results.
Method 1 – Collecting money for the everyday activities that you already do online:
According to the TechnologyReview , the average American spend 24 hours a week online. According to PC magazine , the average adult spends 5.9 hours per day consuming digital media. Who is more accurate I don’t know, but in both cases, this is a lot of time that we spend online! Would it be nice if we were able to get paid for that time?…
Actually, we can!
Most people don’t know, but there are some programs that will pay you money just for doing whatever you do online everyday. Just for searching your favorite subject via their searching engine, or following their links to your favorite shopping website, complete your buying online via their links, watching video via their platform, etc.
Completing those activities will grant you points, that later on, you’ll be able to convert to gift card or money via Paypal.
What do you need to do?
Whatever you already do online – search for content, watch movies, play games, buy stuff. But, do it via the program app and/or browser.
How Much can you earn?
Few cents for each activity, that can add up for few dollars per week
Recommended websites:
Method 2 – micro jobs or micro tasks:
Another option for earning easy money online is completing micro jobs or microtask.
What are micro jobs? – Micro jobs (or microtasks) are short and simple activities that usually take a few seconds to a few minutes to complete. Tasks like tweeting on Twitter, sharing/liking on Facebook, tagging pictures, etc.
What do you need to do?
Complete simple tasks like tweeting, tagging, sharing, liking, etc.
You can see the list of task that you are qualified to fulfill and how much you will earn for each task, and then choose the tasks you are interested in, complete the task and submit a proof for that.
How Much can you earn?
Few cents up to a few dollars for a task.
In contrary to the former method, in this case, you are earning money, not points.
Recommended websites:
Method 3 – Answering surveys:
The most familiar way for how to make money online, no scams is this one – answering surveys.
What do you need to do?
Register for a survey program (and there is a lot of them), fulfill a questionnaire to determine your demographics profile and then wait for a relevant survey to be sent to you. Some surveys are long and tedious but some are very short and easy to fulfill (like those of Slicethepie and Google opinion reward).
How Much can you earn?
Few cents up to a few dollars for a survey.
With this method, the income is not steady. You need to wait for a survey that matches your profile to be sent to you.
Recommended websites:
As you probably noticed…
in all the former 3 methods above you don’t need to be a skilled worker and no need for special ability or talent is required. Money can be earned very quick, but those methods won’t make you rich.
But on the other hand, if you are already surfing the web or if you have few minutes to kill while waiting for your Latte, why not make some pocket money and earn your cup of coffee while waiting?…
In the following 3 methods, we’ll move one notch up the ladder, you need to be skilled in order to do them, but they will make you much more money online.
Method 4 – Writing IT reviews
If you are a skilled IT professional such as software engineer, IT lead or manager, project manager, someone who is in charge of buying software, etc.
You can actually use your experience and credentials for giving reviews and participating in surveys of leading analytics firms.
What do you need to do?
- Complete your profile in LinkedIn to be recognized by your skills and position. In most of the platform, you’ll need either to log in with your LinkedIn profile or to recognize your skill, position, and experience.
- Register for peer reviews in the leading analytics firm website (check the list below).
- Complete the review/survey once asked.
How Much can you earn?
Usually between $5-$25 gift card/debit card.
Although this is much more than the “regular” surveys mentioned in the former methods, please bear in mind that those surveys are usually conducted only once-twice a year.
Recommended websites:
Method 5 – Writing Articles
Maybe you are not an IT professional, but say no despair…
If you have some writing skill, you can take advantage of that.
You can join one of the following writing programs and make money for writing articles even if you are not a professional writer.
What do you need to do?
Register for free and start writing articles according to pull of requests.
How Much can you earn?
Your earning per article is determined by two factors – numbers of words in the article and your skill level. As being a more talented writer, your work is with higher quality and will earn you much more money.
But even if you are not a gifted writer you can still earn few dollars. For example, according to the Textbroker website, the lowest writer rank is 2 star which means – “Could contain spelling, grammatical and punctuation mistakes” and you’ll still get paid $7 for a 1000 words article! (just for comparison, a 5 stars writer will earn $50).
Recommended websites:
- iwriter –
- open for writers from around the globe.
- Much more variety of content types for writing to choose from – Articles, Article rewrite, blog post, press release, ebooks, Kindle book
- No need to submit a writing sample, your rank (stars) is being determined by your clients.
- Textbroker –
- open only to US citizens.
- You can write only articles.
- You need to submit a writing sample to get your rating (stars).
My 2 cents on this method…
if you possess some writing skills, don’t waste them on others! Write for yourself! Check the last method for how to take advantage of your writing skills to make much more money via blogging and affiliate marketing.
Click here to start a blog for free and to learn how to use it for making a lot of money online.
Method 6 – Selling Photos/Graphics/Videos online
Okay, so maybe you are not a talented writer…but maybe you are an avid photographer, Or maybe you are a professional/hobbyist graphic designer? If you know how to create cool graphics or photos, you might be able to make some money out of it.
What do you need to do?
Take pictures/videos and/or create graphic designs, etc. and sell it online on the following dedicated websites.
How Much can you earn?
You can earn between a few cents to a few dollars for each photo that is being bought (depending on the picture resolution and program terms).
Recommended websites:
- Shutterstock – Beside graphics, photos, and videos, you can sale also sale music that you’ve created. I strongly recommend this program due to their non-inclusive agreement (which means that you can also sale the same content on other websites) and the fact that the copyrights in all content remain yours.
- Istockphoto
- Fotolia/Adobe Stock
- Zazzle – While on the former programs, you can only sale a digital asset ( a photo, video, picture, etc) and fees are set by the platform, On Zazzle you can:
- Publish your designs on thousands of products (for ex. Shirts, cups, signs, business cards, etc.)
- Set your own royalty rates – you set the price and your commission %.
- No inventory to maintain
So as you probably noticed…
With the last 3 methods that I’ve shared with you, you won’t make fast money but you will earn much more per activity than with the first 3 methods. But still, with those methods, although you can make a nice complementary income, you won’t be able to leave your regular job.
So in the next (and last) 4 methods I’ll share with you how you can make a lot of money online. With those methods, you can definitely build an alternative source of income.
Method 7 – Freelancing
Well, when you read ‘Freelancing’ you might think that we refer to very professional web designers and developers, etc. But although they have a major part in the online freelancing, there are a lot of other opportunities – Like being a personal virtual assistant, being a part-time accountant, giving legal consulting, and even give relationship advice, healing, etc. take a look in the following list of topics taken from Fiverr:
What do you need to do?
Register to the following websites and complete your profile and in some cases (like in Fiverr) what is your offer and fee. In Fiverr for ex. You will state what do you offer to do and what is your requested fee. In the other two (Upwork & Freelancer) you will see a list of jobs and you’ll bid for the relevant for you.
How Much can you earn?
Usually from a few dozens to a few hundreds of dollars for a job. But there also cases of few thousands of dollars for a job. Choose your job wisely 🙂
Here are some for example:
Recommended websites:
Method 8 – Selling stuff on eBay/Amazon/Etsy
If you know what you are doing, want to say – if you study, practice and have a lot of patience and tolerance for mistakes, you might be able to make a huge amount of money selling online via eBay/Amazon/Etsy. This topic can be discussed in a complete posts series by its own. Yet I’ll try to give a very high-level overview of what is involved.
What do you need to do?
Simple 🙂 – sale stuff online on the following websites.
If you are selling new stuff, you’ll probably want to sell it on Amazon, if you are selling used stuff, you’ll probably sell it on eBay and If you are selling stuff you make yourself (arts & crafts), It’ll better for you to sell it on Etsy.
If you wonder where do you get stuff to sale for free or almost for free, start with looking around you in your house. There are definitely piles of stuff that you are not using. Now don’t think “who’ll want this junk…” and skip over it. One man junk is other person gold! List it on eBay, you will be surprised…
If you have a small amount of money to spend (even $10 will be enough), go to thrift stores, yard sales, etc. and buy the stuff that you can sale x3-x4 on eBay.
How Much can you earn?
Depending on what you are selling. You set your own prices.
Recommended websites:
Method 9 – Bug hunting (Bug Bounty programs)
Okay, this method will not suit everyone. In fact, it’ll probably suite only a few of the people who are reading this post. But nevertheless, if you are one of them, and you haven’t heard about Bug Bounty Programs, this is a great opportunity for you to use your skills to make a huge amount of money. So what is Bug hunting or Bug bounty programs?
Everybody knows that software (And websites are a type of software) have bugs. No matter how much it’ll be tested and fixed they will always have bugs.
Recognizing this fact, a lot of companies, including the big ones (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc) are offering a reward for anyone that find a bug (usually a security breach) on their platform and report it to them.
What do you need to do?
Go over to bug bounty programs website (link below) and look for a request that matches your skills. Usually to find a security breach in the platform/website. And then start debugging and try to hack the system. If you managed to find it, kodus! You are on your way to make a lot of money 🙂 but make sure that record and report the way you have been asked by the program.
How much can you earn?
From a few hundred dollars to 10’s thousands! Per bug found and reported (depends on the program). I’ve read a post by a guy that claimed that he was granted $12,500! By one of the major companies for one! bug.
Recommended websites:
Method 10 – Affiliate marketing
With no doubt, from all the methods mentioned until now, this one is the best method when comparing the amount of time it takes to reach meaningful income and the learning curve vs. the amount of money you can earn online. But, first thing first – what is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is promoting other people products and service (via a unique link that gets to share with others). And when a sale is made to someone that came to the product site via your unique link, this sale is credited to you and you get a commission for that. This promotion is usually done via a blog.
Now, if you don’t know how to set up a blog and how to use it to promote affiliate products and services. Don’t say despair… you can register here to the free wealthy affiliate program which will teach you and guide you with step by step instructions on how to set up a blog and how to do affiliate marketing. And they will even let you set up two blogs for free on their platform.
What do you need to do?
- Register for the free wealthy affiliate program (WA)
- Follow the guide for how to choose a profitable niche that is also with interest you.
- Follow the guide and set up your blog.
- Follow the guide for how to choose subject to write on and how to write compelling posts.
- Follow the guide for how to find products and services that have affiliate programs in your niche and start promoting them.
How much can you earn?
In the beginning, you’ll probably earn nothing -few dollars, but with hard work and patience, you can earn from hundreds-thousands of dollars each month (and even more). The super cool thing vs. all the other methods is that with affiliate marketing you can create for yourself passive income.
Here how – promote products/services that are subscription based (for ex. magazine subscription or gym subscription). In this case, you’ll be paid commissions as long as your lead keep his subscription. Which mean you make the sale once, but get paid every month! While in all the other methods, if you want to get paid the next month you need to make a new sale.
Recommended websites:
My personal recommendation
If you have reached here, thank you and Kudos for you for accomplishing that.
So if you want to earn money online without an investment, as you can see, there are a variety of methods to accomplish that. Some will make you money online for free and fast, while others might take some time to see meaningful results, but will make a lot of money online.
My personal recommendation is Affiliate Marketing. No doubt this method will give you the best return for your time. If you like a free step by step guide, including hosting 2 websites for free, register to the wealthy affiliate program over here. This is the program I’m using this program to build my websites.
Have a question? Want to learn more? Or just want to share what is your preferred methods, Please share on the comments below.
Thanks.
Wishing you all to make a lot of money online!
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