Make Money Online Slowly

You won’t get rich quickly by doing small jobs online, but you can make money online slowly and bit by bit. It may not be the get-rich-quick scheme you were hoping for, but every bit counts!

How to Make Very Little Money Online

When I was unemployed, I was pretty desperate for money. I woke up every morning and applied for at least 3 jobs a day, and then I had lots of time on my mind and not much to do. I’m sure that I’m not the only one who fantasizes about time off to do whatever it is you need to do, but the reality is that it gets old pretty quick after the first day. This is particularly true if you have no extra (or any) money to spend.

Shopping, going out all cost money. Even “free things” cost money if you factor in transportation. Experimenting with fun new meals or baking- all cost money. Organizing your closets is good but can be done quickly, especially if you are not buying new containers or labels.

Make Money Online Quick

All this is to say that I entered the “make money online quick” wormhole. There is A LOT of information on the subject. Try googling it. You will find many, many links promising to “make you rich quick” or “make thousands of dollars online.” Some of these are outright scams.

Never pay money for a course or program to teach you how to make money online. Many others are legit…. With pretty big caveats. The fact is, you can make money online. You probably won’t make the big bucks unless you have significant time, resources, or luck.

How to Make Money Online

Here are some of the biggest opportunities to make money online and the drawbacks of each, and then I will tell you what I did to make money (albeit very little) when I was looking for ways to make money online.

Blogging

I feel like I am the expert in this truth: blogging is NOT the quick or easy way to make money. In fact, most blogs make zero money or a few cents. Those that do make money make a small amount, and very few make a lot of money. HOWEVER, making ANY money from blogging takes TIME. Lots of TIME. As in months and years. Not only that but there is a significant outlay if you want to do really well in a short amount of time.

Besides hosting fees, if you want to grow quickly, you need social media schedulers, automated systems, paid plugins, and mastermind groups. All these add up. And as mentioned before, even with all these aids, it takes a LONG time to make actual money. Definitely not a get-rich-quick or even a make–a–few–bucks scheme.

Fiverr

I have never sold anything on Fiverr, but I have purchased things. I never had a quick skill or talent that I was able to market cheaply. But if you do have a talent or skill that you can utilize to create something quickly, then Fiverr maybe a good idea for you.

Again, it is highly doubtful you will make a lot of money quickly. It takes time to get good reviews, and you aren’t getting paid a lot, but it’s better than nothing; if you have something to market, then you should definitely try it! The good thing is that you don’t need to spend tons of time or effort before you get a contracted job, so there is minimal risk involved. Is Fiverr better than Upwork? Get the rundown here. 

Surveys

You can make money online by taking surveys. You can’t make big money online taking surveys, though. I never found survey sites to be worth my time. Not because of the small amount they pay because I would have been grateful for anything! But because of the extremely high payouts required. Meaning- you don’t get paid until you have racked up thousands of points or a lot of money.

Realistically, you would have to do tons of surveys even to get any money at all. I wasn’t in a position to wait a few months for a dollar. I needed the dollar now. Not later. Some bloggers do spend a lot of time maximizing their survey earning potential. You can read an example of someone making money with PanelBase here. 

What did I do?

MTurk

I spent a lot of time on MTurk or Mechanical Turk. Amazon runs MTurk, and basically, they pay very small amounts of money for you to do small tasks.

YOU WILL NOT GET RICH DOING MTURK.

You will barely make a few dollars, but I love that there is no minimum withdrawal amount, and they deposit the money directly to your bank account. So no matter how much you make- you can withdraw the money as soon as approved (a few days at most). You will not make a lot of money on MTurk- I cannot keep stressing this.

Many other personal finance bloggers disparage MTurk because of the very few payouts, which is true. Many of the tasks pay as low as $.01. Really little. But when I need some money- any money. Then I was happy to make a few dollars a day. Making $100 a day from this is unlikely.

Every day I would log on and sort from highest to lowest. Then I would start from the top and do all the highest paying tasks first. Keep on refreshing as new tasks are added constantly.

To put this in perspective, I don’t estimate that you can make significantly more than $10 a day (and that may be a generous estimate, especially if the system is overloaded with workers). However, when I need it to make any money, this worked quickly for me.

There are online jobs that you can get that will make you money. However, these will take a lot of time- a real full-time job. If you like writing, check out the 5 best freelance writing jobs.