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4 Ways to Make Money with an Online Side Hustle

ways to make money online

Entrepreneurs today have more opportunity to create income than perhaps ever before, and likewise people have much more opportunity to become entrepreneurs.

Freelancing, creating income through video production, utilizing the internet to monetize your skill or your popularity… the options are endless. And the best part is, people don’t need to drop their jobs to dive headlong into their new venture.

The ‘side hustle’ is all the rage, and it’s easy to see why: but maybe less easy to see where to start. Here are some ideas for all you budding entrepreneurs!

Make Money with an Online Side Hustle

1. Affiliate Marketing

If you have a large following on your blog, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, or any other social media, you could make a considerable amount of money through affiliate advertising.

Most people use Amazon, and it’s pretty easy to set up. Simply apply for an affiliate account on Amazon’s website, and then generate unique links to products you enjoy to share with your followers.

Every time someone buys a product after clicking your link, you get a percentage of that sale paid to you as a fee for the advertising you’ve done. While Amazon advertises up to 10% of the sale as income, most items linked will probably net you less, but if your following is large enough this will still be some nice income!

If you don’t yet have a large following that could allow you to take advantage of hustles like this, it may be worth your time to investigate how to grow your Instagram followers, or the following of your Facebook, Twitter or any other social media. You can’t make money from affiliate marketing if nobody sees it!

2. Copywriting

If you’ve got some excellent writing skills, there’s a big market for you to take advantage of in the field of copywriting. The role of a copywriter is to take a prompt from a business and write it into an article or content for a webpage.

So, maybe one day you get an assignment from a business looking for an “About Us” page on their website along with a desired word count and a deadline. You write it out, submit it to the website you’re working for, and get paid when the document is accepted.

Copywriters are usually paid by the word, and depending upon who you’re writing for this number can vary widely. Don’t overlook the lower paying gigs, especially when you’re just starting out, as they usually also have the lowest expectations, making them much easier and faster to complete. Some copywriters only take on these low paying jobs, as knocking out a bunch of easy jobs quickly may end up paying as much or more than fewer, more difficult jobs.

3. Transcription

For those with only the most impeccable ears, there’s a seemingly endless need for transcriptionists online. If you have experience transcribing or even a job or certification in some branch of the field, there are a ton of sites out there that you can find with just a simple web search.

The pay for this type of work varies, and even how you’re paid, as some sites do by the job and others do by the minute of original audio; so be sure to look into the pay scale in depth before signing on and doing too much work for them!

If you’ve never transcribed before, start with the lower-paying jobs, because just like with copywriting these are the easier jobs. Transcribing is much harder and more time-consuming than people realize, but if you believe you’ve got great ears it never hurts to try submitting a sample to one of the big sites!

4. Freelancing

If you don’t want to be working for a company that is surely taking some percentage of your work, and you’re willing to get your own customers and generate sales, then you may want to look into freelancing.

A lot of freelancers advertise themselves and their services using sites like Fiverr or freelancer.com, but you can also find plenty of success browsing local classifieds for jobs that you can complete. Popular freelancing career fields include journalism, graphic design and web coding.

This is a great option in addition to the previous ones, as expert advice is always to have as many sources of income as possible, but it is definitely for the more entrepreneurial minded among us. Just keep in mind that if you’re willing to put in more work, more income is the result!