Your Portal – Social Facts, Information, Articles

How many times have you been told that you will be paid for completing some surveys or referring some friends to a website? How many times has the promised cash turned out to be a scam? Well that number is going to stay the same, because these 20 ways below are 100% legitimate. Don’t expect to start raking in thousands of dollars – realistically maybe a few hundred a month.

1. Sell Stock Photos

Stock images are images that are posted somewhere/anywhere with the express intent that it may be used by other artists in their own artwork. Use of these images in this fashion are subject to the artist’s license, which may or may not require the payment of fees. There are many enormous websites out there that you can sell your stock photos to – in essence, you can sell your photos and make a percentage of all profits, or hands down sell them for a set price. iStockPhoto, Dreamstime, Stockxpert, Fotolia, and Shutterstock are five such sites that I’ve checked out for you. Remember to think about it wisely before uploading everything you have. Research trends in the market first. If you’re talented at Adobe Photoshop or other photography, then this might be your gold mine!

2. Amazon’s Mechanical Turk

Mechanical Turk is an excellent way to make some quick extra cash. I can tell you now, you might only make a few bucks per hour, but at least it’s easy! Most tasks require only a minute or two and you’ve earned yourself some pocket change. If you do enough of this, you’ll make enough for lunch for the whole week. Sign up for free, then complete qualifications to earn access to higher-paying tasks.

3. Sell Stuff On eBay

Start by selling your own personal extra stuff that you don’t need. Once you’ve made some easy money, move on to the bigger and better thing: go to your neighbors and offer to sell their stuff on eBay. Tell them it can be anything and that you want 35% of the sale. I’m sure your neighbors and/or friend will be more than willing to be rid of their old junk. Go to eBay.

4. Write Articles for Freelance

It may not pay as well as other options, but the demand for articles has risen dramatically in the last year. Write around 250 word articles and submit them to directories. Potential clients include bloggers, marketers, forum owners, and small businesses. You can write articles in a niche in batches and sell them as a package to one or more clients, or you can offer your services for hire per word or article and let your client give you direction. It’s important that you choose a topic that is hot or you probably won’t get as many requests/purchases. Here are just two of many freelance writing sites: Freelancewriting and Freelancewritinggigs.

5. Write Articles for Magazines, Newspapers, or other Publishers

If you have a passion for journalism you should not hesitate to step up to this plate. Make sure you have a plan and you know somebody to contact at the publication you wish to submit to. The good news is that there are publications in pretty much any niche you can think of. To get you started, go here: Writing

6. Write Articles on eHow

If you know the basics of keywords and search engines, you can make a good monthly income from eHow.com. eHow pays you a percentage of the ad revenue they make from each “How to” article you create. If you are half-decent at writing, I’m sure you can make a few “How to” articles each day. If you do this each day for a couple months, and if you choose the right topics, I wouldn’t be surprised to see you making over $200 each month. Once you’ve written a guide, it stays there forever and you will continue to milk money from it as long as there is a demand for it. Go to eHow.com.

7. Become a Virtual Assistant (VA)

There are entire books written on how to become a VA, so you’ll have to read up on this in more detail and research it. I advise that you concentrate on a niche that is in demand. In addition, reach out to potential customers directly and let them know what you can do for them instead of going to freelance web sites. Finally, you may want to consider resources such as virtualassistant.org.

8. Transcribe Audios

This is very easy and quick money – although of course, not great money. Sign up on oDesk or eLance to begin. This job requires good listening skills and a strong understanding of the English language. You may also want to invest in a foot pedal if you plan to transcribe often. Make sure you know how to transcribe interviews before you start your first job.

9. Make Youtube Videos for Affiliate Products

Enjoy making silly videos? Even short, silly videos can sell products online. I made a video that was 13 seconds and it got over 5,000 views within a week. Find a product worth promoting that has an affiliate program, then target your video toward potential customers of that product. In your video summary on YouTube, place your affiliate link for the product, and after the video, do a 30-second sessile frame showing a short URL where people can buy the product. If your video is funny, informative, or useful, you may sell some products. Check out the leader in affiliate products: CJ

10. Write an eBook Targeting People in Need

Find people who are incredibly desperate for the information you provide and then do easy research to find a real solution to their issue(s). This makes the customers happy and you gain some cash. The hardest part about this is finding a niche and exploiting it. If you do that, you’ll be rolling in the money.

11. Build a Niche Website

These sites are one of the most effective ways of making money. For example, a site on weight loss is one of the hottest niches right now. These sites get money when visitors click on their ads or buy products through affiliate links.

12. Offer Help to Local Businesses in Need

With this economy, small and local businesses are om trouble. Many own websites, but aren’t gaining anything from them. Others don’t have a website nor do they know its worth. You can help by learning search engine optimization, how to set up an email list, etc, and help these business set it up. If you give them what they want, you’ll be in a handful of cash.

13. Learn WordPress and Offer to Install/Upgrade Plugins

There are lots of website owners out there that don’t know exactly what they’re doing. You can help them by charging a fee for assistance to their site and they can get the updates they want. Currently, there is a huge amount of demand for these services. Find customers by contacting bloggers directly (through email).

14. Become the go-to Person for Installations of a Certain Part of Software

Anything from Quickbooks to Amember is fair game here. In the hosting industry, iDevAffiliate and Plesk Billing were the pieces of software we would have paid a lot of money to have someone else deal with. The more niche and more complex/annoying/frustrating the software, the better! Even if the software company offers free installation, you can make hundreds or thousands of dollars training business owners or their employees on its usage. Focus on one piece of software and become the trusted expert. Create videos and tutorials using screencast software like Camtasia to increase your profitability; this may also lead into a niche product that you can sell.

15. Interview People and sell the Interviews

My friend made over $2,000 from one interview recently. The key here is to understand a problem point that people are experiencing, interview an expert, and ask the expert the questions that the people experiencing the problem are having. Then create a small website and sell the interview. Of course, you need to have powerful copyright skills so that your website sells the interview well. You must know where and how to advertise. Don’t expect much from your first one, but by the second or third time, you should be set.

16. Become a Freelance “Web Geek”

From configuring a shopping cart to installing and tweaking blog themes, there are virtually unlimited projects out there for geeks who enjoy working with small business owners to get them up and running online. Find people looking for web geeks on the Warrior Forum or other places where entrepreneurs gather.

17. Enter Logo and Design Contests

Are you a good designer? Try your hand at creating a logo or other design that a company loves! 99 Designs is by far the most popular marketplace. Beware, however; you won’t get paid unless your logo wins against many others. So be confident that you’re the best, or you may be disappointed. I htink this is a great way for a newbie designer to build a portfolio and learn quickly what customers love.

18. Create Twitter Backgrounds

Competition is stiff, but if you are a savvy designer, this is a good way to pick up extra dollars. Even better, if you are an artist, this is a good way to make your art skills pay off. Consider that every design will need to have a reason why the customer should buy the book or follow that person on Twitter to have a real impact. Twitter backgrounds, in particular, are in hot demand right now.

19. Submit Websites/Posts to Social Media Sites

Honestly, really boring, but in high demand from bloggers and small businesses. This involves setting up accounts on all of the social bookmarking services and then bookmarking your clients’ websites or latest blog posts to help them get more traffic. You may be competing against software that does this, but in many folks’ opinions, it’s better to have a real person do it. Even better is if you can goose your accounts with plenty of friends and become a star on a few of the services; then every site you bookmark has higher credibility and you can charge more. To get an idea of the social media sites you will need to sign up for, start at socialmarker.

20. Edit Others’ Audios

This is something that is fairly easy to learn and also in high demand. On Windows, one good program to edit audio is Sony Sound Forge. I use Sound Forge Audio Studio, but if you are doing this professionally, you might consider the upgrade to Sound Forge 9. Even better is understanding the “flow” of an interview conversation and editing out portions that don’t make sense. Finally, learning to find and add intro music really gives podcasts that professional touch. Advertise your services on oDesk or eLance. I pay people to do this for the podcasts I am setting up on Inspiring Innovators, and it’s a job that can definitely be done from your house.