Earning is in the mindset and capability of an individual to transform talent into value. Making money is a broad category.
Over the internet, one would find ample opportunities how to make quick money. This includes participating in lotteries, gambling at casinos, taking up quizzes, surveys, clicking on ads etc which work for a short term due to their very nature of being unpredictable.
On the other hand, a long term strategy would be to invest effort and time in generating a steady source of income with the talents one has. The world is filled with complimenting opportunities and it would be a surprise to find some one without a talent that would compliment anothers need.
This blog is intended for visitors who are interested in a long term strategy:
1. Earning money with work from home flexible options
2. Finding additional sources for generating income with Marketing and Advertising
3. Looking for self employment opportunities onlinee and
4. Taking it a step further by generating employment online.
Summary:
Active Income (Development/Design, start earning now):
1. Freelancer.com : Ample jobs in lots of categories
2. oDesk.com : Guaranteed earnings on hourly basis jobs in various categories.
Passive Income (Web development, usually takes 2 months or more to generate income):
3. Consumer Wealth System : A head-start to earning as an affiliate.
4. Wealthy Affiliate : A longer term framework of earn as you learn.
5. Google Adsense/Amazon associate membership and ad placements.
The Smart Strategy: Build capital from active income and invest in generating long term passive income.
The review:
Just like a start-up, who is passionate about converting an idea into reality, so is the idea of earning online. While the common perception is that
earning online is a simple job of writing blogs, placing ads, bidding/winning jobs, in experience it is both smart work and hard work. Ask the gurus who have been earning online and most of them would agree that it’s quite a deal of hard work since it involves a great deal of research, optimizing your pages to attract visitors and writing content that the user finds valuable and awards you with a click on one your interesting ad campaigns. Do exercise moderate caution as you approach new jobs and take it easy a step at a time.
Consider the 80-20 rule. 80% of the income is generated from 20% of the jobs online. The hard work is identifying genuine opportunities and smart work is in being able to focus on 20% of them (that result in higher earnings with nominal efforts). At this point for further discussion, online income generation can be classified into:
1) Active Income
a. Working on jobs
b. Filling up surveys
2) Passive income
a. Generating income by placing ads or requesting donations for the below services
b. Writing valuable reviews
c. Product comparison websites
d. Consolidating best price offers
e. Developing helpful widgets, modules (web development etc)
Since passive income streams take time to add value, it would be ideal to distribute effort between active income and passive income so that you have enough funding to source yourself until the passive streams start generating significant income.
It would be smart to steer clear of jobs where you would have you to up surveys and click on advertisements. Why ?
1. The earnings generated from such jobs are short lived,
2. Effort spent on such activities do not provide a healthy growth path for the individual in the long term,
3. There’s no significant value addition,
4. That’s bad karma (i know). Neither have you used the product being surveyed nor are you interested in the ad that you are clicking on.
Simple bits of satisfaction make a strong foundation of long term success and those simple bits are the result of converting one’s talent into considerable value for the customer(be it an employer or be it a website visitor).
While you might want to consider one or more of the above options, the one’s being considered are:
1. Working on jobs
2. Writing valuable reviews
Working on jobs(Active Income):
Projects that can be found online are pretty demanding, in terms of effort, cost and schedules. While “Word Processing” jobs like data entry, medical transcription etc involve a lot of hard work, Architect/Designing jobs for software, websites, ads involve a lot of smart and creative work. In either of the above, the candle either below the chair or above the head 
has to be actively waxing for sure. Consider the 80-20 rule here too. 20% of the jobs result in 80% of the income. While some jobs might inadvertently stretch the schedule with ever changing requirements (at the delivery stage), a few others might have issues with on time payment. Nevertheless, it’s important to keep moving on and winning new jobs consistently. It would be healthier to win 2 jobs a month and deliver on time as compared to winning 5 jobs in a week and slogging for the next 5 months handling irate customers and delivery pressures. This however is a factor of the multitasking and delegating capabilities of an individual. The suggestion would be to start cool, identify the patterns and then go BANG.
Another tip, is be as cautious of new employers as an employer would be of a new job seeker who are yet to earn a reputation, historical feedback and payment profile. Since this does happen often, try to find some way of getting into an early commitment from the employer. One example would be to request for an upfront payment which at the least should offset the job fee that the portals charge and would ensure the employer is serious about getting the work done.
Of the many attractive opportunities available online, the below two seem better organized and well structured. The rest do not seem as organized or demand upfront payment from individuals (and hence smartly generate income).
Freelancer.com (Free):
This site is a free, well thought of employment framework and less of a portal. With around 1 million users and having transacted more than $101 million to date the framework is pretty mature and aptly crafted to bring talent to customer needs. One would find an opportunity in almost every category on this planet (valid ones though), some of them being,
1. Website designs,
2. Logo designs,
3. Software/Games development,
4. Mobile apps development,
5. Sales, marketing and Advertising,
6. Legal services etc.
While the obligations of freelancer.com end at the point where the job seeker and employer agree on a job, the messaging and milestones payment framework are pretty helpful in organizing project interactions and realizing payments, transfers to PayPal/bank accounts and hence taking the job to satisfactory completion.
Freelancer.com also provides Gold membership that would reduce the job fee to 3% of project values as compared to the 10% fee charged once the employer accepts your bid on the project. They also provide tests/certifications in various categories (programming, SEO, Web dev etc). Try freelancer.com now for free and starting earning flexibly.
Note:
1. Apply only to relevant job postings. As beginner there’s a tendency to apply for a lots of jobs
2. Establish a rapport with quality and timely delivery. Customer satisfaction is the key here, some employers might be just fine with extending delivery schedules where needed for a product that’s a complete and of moderate quality. (Customers who are time critical or bang on quality rarely post jobs online.)
3. Stay in consistent communication with the employer, even if there’s isn’t much to update. A single line update is often enough and feels great.
4. As a new entrant, depending on the skills, one might have to start with a not so passionate job and often bid for lower. But remember, developing rapport is the key here.
Guesstimate a bid and bid for a job you’re interested in. Follow that up with investigation using the PM (private message) section with well thought of and genuine queries, and then revise the bid accordingly. Employers often select bidders who seem interested and ask relevant questions about the job even if their bid is higher.
For someone who has been employed for quite a while, this might seem a harder bet to generate similar income. Yes it is, given that it also provides the flexibility of working on what one wants, flexibly, from where one wants.
5. Socialization is an important aspect that might take the back burner when one works from home. It’d be cool to participate in community activities and/or offer voluntarily services in areas of your hobbies and passions.
oDesk.com (Free):
While Freelancer.com works in contract mode (paid for job completion), oDesk takes it one notch higher by taking it to hire mode (paid on hourly basis). Call yourself an online coolie, guess oDesk wouldn’t mind. oDesk additionally offers opportunity for job seekers to work on hourly payment contracts and offers guaranteed payments for hours worked. While this might immune a job seeker to an extent from defaulting employers, this also invades (a bit) into the job seeker’s privacy, in terms of having to allow a web camera to capture pics of developer and allowing the app to capture screen snapshots at regular intervals (you do have the option of deleting the snapshots just in case they aren’t relevant). The framework is tightly bound to the individual having to reveal their identity. While this might not seem comfortable to seekers who are planning to generate additional income and might not seem legally friendly either to regular employers, the guaranteed income generation is contractor pro and offsets the above constraints. At times, employers who post on freelancer are seen on oDesk as well. That probably answers as to why some employers become unresponsive after some time (neither login nor reply to queries). That’s fine, it’s part of the game. For the rest, oDesk = Freelancer, in the opinion of iTop5.
Join oDesk now for free and start earning.
Writing valuable reviews (Passive Income):
Passive income sounds interesting. This is like investing in stocks or mutual funds that at the best generate profits but never generate losses.That’s cool!. However, to generate valuable content for product reviews one would have to invest a great deal of effort into getting to the heart and soul of the product, get to know about vendors/competitors profile and analyze the way your visitor would . If the review were just an introduction to a product, visitors today are smart enough to navigate to the manufacturer’s portal rather. So where’s the value. The online visitor is seldom patient enough to invest time on more than 5 review sites. In addition to writing a valuable review, one would have to ensure that the search engines highlight these reviews on Pages 1 or 2. As Dave, one of the successful guys put it, it’s almost the same for a link to be on page 3 and on page 300, both are seldom/never visited. For some one who is tolerant enough to wait for a couple of months or more, to generate income gradually, this is a great option. What more, one could study, write blogs, comparisons in one’s areas of interest, which as well converge with popular topics that visitors are interested in. An initial investment is required to catch up with the professional IMs (Internet Marketers). The below sites give a head start. There are positive reviews. visit them and take a call, but within a specified time, for the internet is filled with so many links to IM that it might take months to go through all of them.
Consumer Wealth System:
A quick introduction to IM (internet marketing) and start earning online built with beginners in mind. These courses give a definite head start to Internet Marketing that could otherwise take months to master/discover. The CWS deals with,
1. IM basics
2. Tools required for IM
3. DOs and Donts
4. How to top search engine results
Try CWS with a 60 day money back guarantee.
Wealthy Affiliate,
For some one who would rather get the fundamentals complete before jumping into waters, this would be the course. While CWS deals with IM basics and provides a head start in less than a month (which is great), the Wealthy Affiliate program delves deeper beyond writing reviews and explores the realms of email, pay-per-click advertising and article marketing. Wealthy affiliate has programs that begin with 1 month and extend up to an year. However monetizing online opportunities can begin within a couple of weeks of learning. As for the basics both programs are competitively priced.
Wealthy Affiliate Will Not Make You Rich
WA will Teach you how to Make Yourself Rich.
Generating income from ads,
Once you are good at writing valuable reviews, blogs etc as taught in the above courses,
1. Place ads by subscribing to Google Adsense (cost per click),
2. Place targeted ads from any relevant affiliate programs,
3. Place ads from one of the many programs that offer cost per impression. s,
4. If you have a blog on social network sites that is visited often, you could get smart by placing Adsense or other ads that are relevant to the visitors you know for sure.
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Top 5 Internet Security suite.
