How to make money
By now I think I’ve been pretty clear: all those miraculous methods that promise earnings of thousands of dollars a month through the Internet are scams, yet I keep getting many messages from friends asking me how to make money on the Internet. It will mean that I will return to the subject once again trying to be as clear as possible.
Except for a few cases in which you manage to set up a real business, it is impossible to make good money on the Internet. You have to work hard and deal with the competition, just like you do in the “real world”. However, there are online services that allow you to carry out small jobs, sell used items and supplement your salary in various ways. Let me be clear: we are talking about very few euros per month, but trying doesn’t hurt.
If you have items to sell, you want to bet on your passion for writing or you think you have the right idea to start a successful blog, get involved right away! Take a look at the tips I am about to give you and try to put them into practice to turn your time on the Internet into a source of income, however small or limited in time. I cross my fingers and wish you to achieve your goals. Good luck!
Index
- Selling items on the Internet
- Ads and auctions
- Open an online store
- Writing articles and books
- Open a blog
- Earn money with social networks
- Earn money with surveys
- Finding work on the Internet
Selling items on the Internet
Are you looking for a solution that allows you to put some cash in cash quickly? So a few stories: collect all the technological gadgets you no longer use, empty the cellar and sell your used items on the Internet.
Ads and auctions
The best services for selling used items are classifieds, which are free and do not include commissions on concluded deals. A couple of examples above all? Subito.it and Kijiji (eBay) which allow you to publish ads for all kinds of products and do not even require a mandatory registration. To start selling, all you have to do is connect to their home page and press the Insert ad button.
Of course, you are not the only one who knows Subito.it and Kijiji, this means that your ad will quickly take a back seat and to make it stand out again you will have to buy extra services – costing 1 or 2 euros – which allow you to keep your ad on the front page or put it in the “showcase” for a period of 24 hours.
Another service you can turn to is eBay, a historic auction site that still represents an absolute reference point for all those who want to sell items on the Internet. It still manages to guarantee excellent visibility, however it provides commissions, equal to 11.5% on each deal concluded, to which we must add a commission of 0.35 euros per transaction + taxes on shipping costs, which make it less convenient than ad services. If you are interested, I have also written a guide on how to sell on eBay: use it to take your first steps in the world of online auctions.
If you have books to sell, you can rely also PickMyBook, Booketplace and ComproVendoLibri, Internet sites that allow you to sell, buy and exchange books of various kinds (including schools).
Open an online store
Would you like to set up a business based on selling items online? Then I advise you to open a virtual shop. How you do it? There are various solutions that you can consider.
If you don’t have a lot of knowledge in the technical field, you can open a store through Shopify, a service used by over 1,000,000 stores around the world that allows you to create professional e-commerce in a few simple steps, even if you don’t have any knowledge in programming or Web design (it is possible to choose from hundreds of customizable ready-to-use themes) It works directly from a browser or from an app for Android and iOS / iPadOS.
Shopify offers unlimited secure hosting and bandwidth, a free shopify.com domain name (with the option to purchase a custom one or use an existing one), free SSL certificate, the ability to have unlimited products in the store, and a powerful system to start. marketing campaigns via Google, Facebook, email or SMS.
It also allows you to analyze your sales data in detail and easily manage orders, customers, inventory and carts (with also discount codes for customers and the ability to manage abandoned carts). It has prices starting at $ 29 / month, with blogs and 24/7 support in English, but you can try it for free for an initial trial period without entering any payment details and without renewal.
To take advantage of this possibility, all you have to do is connect to the official website of the service, type your email address in the appropriate box and click on the Start free trial button. Next, you have to type in the password you want to use to log into your account, the name you want to assign to the store and press the Create your store button.
At this point, specify if you have already started selling, what your current income is and if you are creating a store for a customer, provide the other requested information, click on the Next button (or on Skip, if you want to skip this step) and indicates the address to receive payments.
You will therefore find yourself in front of the Shopify management panel with, on the left, the menu that allows you to access all the sections of the service: Home to access the main dashboard; Orders to manage orders; Products to manage products; Customers to manage the customer list; Analysis to visualize sales data; Marketing to set up marketing campaigns; Discounts to set up discount codes for customers; App to enrich the store with additional functions and Online Store to customize the appearance and content of the pages. More info here.
Are you doing well with IT, or do you want a more advanced and customizable store than the one provided by Shopify? Then take into serious consideration the hypothesis of buying a web space and “installing” a CMS on it like Magento, Prestashop, Drupal or Joomla. I told you in detail about this type of solution in my tutorial on how to open an ecommerce: read it if you want to learn more.
The third way you can take is to open a virtual showcase in already established shops. eBay, for example, offers the possibility of opening an online shop with prices starting from 17.00 euros for 200 items sold per month with the “Buy it now” mechanism or with a commission of 30 cents for each open auction. To learn more, connect to this web page and consult the documentation relating to professional sellers on eBay using the links located in the left sidebar.
Then don’t forget Amazon, which allows you to sell up to 40 items per month by paying 99 cents per item + commissions or a lump sum of 39 euros per month + commissions (for larger business volumes). If you want to learn more, check out Amazon’s official documentation for professional sellers.
Are you a craftsman? Do you like to make handmade items, such as rag dolls, necklaces, earrings or home decor items? Then you can also subscribe to Etsy, an online service that allows you to sell handmade items or vintage items (at least 20 years old) by paying 18 cents per listing + a 3.5% commission. For more info, see the “Selling on Etsy” section of the site.
Writing articles and books
After seeing how to make money by selling used items or other merchandise through your own digital store, here are some online services that allow you to supplement your salary thanks to your knowledge and skills.
If you feel particularly knowledgeable on a certain topic (eg gardening, computer science, animals, motherhood, etc.) and you like to write, you could subscribe to O2O which allows you to publish tutorials on various thematic Internet sites, receiving in exchange small fees related to the number of votes given by the public to the articles. The average fee is 3 euros per guide, which can only be collected upon reaching 25 euros in total earnings. To start publishing your content, register on the site by clicking on the Subscribe item located at the top right and, when the operation is completed, identify the topic to focus on among those listed at the bottom of the page.
If, on the other hand, you are an aspiring writer, you can try your way to success (and therefore economic return) by publishing your books on services like Lulu and Amazon. I have explained to you in detail how to use them in my guides on how to publish a book on Amazon Italy and how to publish a book for free.
Open a blog
Do you think you have the right idea to create a successful blog or website? So get involved and try to make money by turning your project into something concrete. If you don’t know where to start, take a look at my article on how to start a blog and choose the platform you prefer from those mentioned in the post. I recommend WordPress, which ensures maximum flexibility, can be used in any web space and allows you to monetize your content in various ways.
To learn how to make a site with WordPress, read my tutorial on the subject, while if you want to increase the success of your site, follow the tips you find in my post on how to advertise a site for free.
When it comes to monetizing content, you have several avenues at your disposal. First of all you can count on the banner ads of services such as Google Adsense, then there are the affiliate marketing services that allow you to earn a few cents on the sale of items on Amazon and other online stores using sponsored links.
If you want to deepen both topics, read my article on how to make money with Adsense in which I explained how to make money with banner ads and my post on how to make money with a site where, instead, I explained how affiliate systems work. .
Earn money with social networks
With a lot of luck and a lot of commitment, social networks and video-sharing platforms can also become a means of earning. The ideal would be to create a successful blog or site and take advantage of its social pages to increase earnings but, if desired, it is possible to achieve success on social media also from a personal point of view, thus making yourself known for your qualities and building a network of fans/followers on their activities.
Successful social pages can be used to increase earnings through affiliate marketing systems, by acquiring new customers for your business (e.g. selling items on your store) and much more. To learn more, check out my tutorials on how to make money on Facebook, how to make money on Twitter, and how to make money on YouTube.
Earn money with surveys
There are online services and smartphone apps that allow you to earn small (very small) amounts of money by answering surveys. The rewards are sometimes not directly in cash but in vouchers to be used on Amazon, Zalando and other ecommerce platforms. If you’re interested, here are some sites and apps that might be for you.
- American Consumer Opinion– one of the most long-lived and popular “panels” on the Web. To use it, just subscribe to it and wait for the emails inviting you to participate in surveys.
- MySurvey– this is an online community whose customers have the opportunity to influence future products and services by participating in paid surveys.
- i-Say– a paid surveys service by Ipsos, a historic market research company. You can pay with Amazon vouchers.
- High opinion– another very popular survey service. Pay with vouchers for Amazon, Zalando and other ecommerce services.
- Google Opinion Rewards– an app for Android, officially released by Google, which allows you to earn credits for the Play Store by answering surveys. Each survey can earn up to € 0.75 of credit.
If you want to learn more about earning through surveys and/or smartphone apps, read my tutorials on how to make money with surveys and how to earn money with apps in which I have explained to you in more detail how all these services work.
Finding work on the Internet
As pointed out abundantly at the beginning of this post, the Internet is not the new El Dorado. Earning large sums is as complicated as it is in the so-called “real world”, however, the big Net can prove to be a formidable tool for finding a job and earning a real salary.
In my post on how to find work on the Internet, I pointed out numerous online services that connect companies looking for personnel with aspiring workers. Sign up for one of them (or even more than one!), Upload your resume online and you will certainly increase your chances of finding a job.
There are also services, such as the very famous Fiverr, which allow you to earn decent sums of money by offering your skills for the realization of various jobs (eg creation of logos, language courses, website development and so on) : they could be useful for supplementing your salary.
