20 Easy Ways to Earn More Money Right From Your Computer

Think about how much more you can put into a savings account or invest in a retirement account with that extra income.

According to a survey of over 20,000 freelancer workers, the average worldwide hourly rate for freelancers is $21. If you set aside an extra hour a day to make money online, you could make upwards of $7,000 a year with only an hour of work a day!

And remember, it doesn’t have to be freelancing -- it’s just one of the many ways you can make money while sitting at the computer:

1. Sell Your "Stuff"

When she began getting interested in selling things online, Beth Marbach saw it as just a way to make a little bit of side income, but fast forward over a decade, and Beth has made over $4 million by selling designer shoes all over the globe.

However, you don’t need to be like Marbach to find success selling online.

Do you have electronics, toys, clothing, or virtually anything lying around that you don’t need anymore but are still worth something? Turn those “useless to you” items into cold hard cash.

There are a plethora of sites where you can sell your belongings, but the favorites are:

• eBay
• Craigslist
• Etsy
• Facebook Marketplace

2. Get Paid for Your Unique Skills

Before trying to sell services online, Redd Horrocks worked an average job with over $24,000 in credit card debt. Horrocks, who had done some voice acting work in college, took to the website Fiverr to try and make some money to get out of her large debt.

Little did she know that she would soon be earning upwards of $9,000 a month! Fiverr is a site where people can sell their services for $5 or more.

This can be anything from selling drawings, logo creation, tutoring, voiceover work, and more!

If you enjoy doing or are skilled at a particular service, it is worth considering selling it online because you could make some serious coin.

There are also a few other sites that provide a similar platform for selling, such as:

• Fourerr
• Fiverr
• TaskRabbit
• PeoplePerHour
• Guru.com

3. Rethink Your Savings Account

Would you believe it if I told you that with only about 10 minutes of work at the computer, you can potentially earn hundreds of dollars over the year? Well, it’s true, and you can do it by switching your savings account to an online bank.

Many individuals in America have savings accounts, but very few are taking advantage of the real savings that are out there in the form of online banks.

Online banks are financial institutions that don’t have “brick and mortar” locations and thus can provide their customers with much better interest rates than traditional banks.

In fact, while most brick-and-mortar banks offer savings accounts with around 0.01% APY on your savings, online banks are known to offer hundreds of times more.

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4. Adjust/Rethink Your Investments

Similar to the last entry, taking a few minutes/hours to adjust and deeply examine your investments can have monumental returns in the long run.

For example, those educated and informed about what they are investing in and are aware of the market are likely to have more success than someone who just guesses or leaves their investments alone.

The fact in the investing world is that many people set up their investments and just leave them, even if their philosophies and goals in life have changed.

By rethinking and adjusting your strategies, you can feel better about the future and potentially make thousands and thousands of dollars as well if you make educated investments.

5. Start Your Own Online Business

Steve Gadlin hit it big after appearing on the hit TV show “Shark Tank” to show off his business and look for investments. Gadlin owns and runs a website selling custom stick-figure cartoon cat drawings. He has earned upwards of $300,000 from this business, which would shock almost anybody.

There is a very good lesson to be learned from Gadlin. He had a particular skill (Gadlin's skill was the ability to draw cartoon cats quickly) and created a business out of it.

Do you have a unique skill that could produce a product or service that someone will pay for? If so, you could take a shot at starting your own online business, too.

6. Freelance Writing

You have probably never heard of the name Bob Bly, but there is a good chance that you are jealous of his life. Bob Bly has been a freelance writer for over 25 years and currently makes over $600,000 working from the comfort of his own home.

While it’s unlikely that you’ll make that sort of money from the get-go, freelance writing is a fantastic way to make money right from your computer. Many freelancers can earn hundreds and hundreds of dollars for a single article if they are respected and have made a name for themselves in their field of interest.

The term “freelance writing” is a very broad one, and you can write in many industries, such as sports, entertainment and business.

As long as there is content on the Internet, there will be a demand for writers. If you are interested in getting started in freelance writing, there are a number of places you can search for jobs, such as:

• BloggingPro
• Elance
• Upwork
• ProBlogger
• Craigslist

7. Turn Your Blog Into an Income Stream

When he was 19 years old at home in Aberdeen, Scotland; Pete Cashmore decided to start up a little blog focusing on social media news, and ten years later, the same blog has millions and millions of visits per month. You may have heard of it: Mashable.

These millions of visits have translated into an estimated $95 million net worth for Cashmore, who is among the most influential young entrepreneurs on the planet.

Blogging has taken off in recent years, and there are an abundance of readers out there who are interested in reading about a number of different topics.

So if you have an interest or skill that you feel people will enjoy reading about, why not start a blog and see what happens? You never know. You could even be the next Pete Cashmore.

8. Take Online Surveys

While taking short and simple online surveys isn’t likely to make you Warren Buffet, they provide a surefire way to make some extra dough for your evening and weekend enjoyment.

These sites hire individuals from across the globe to complete thousands of different surveys and pay the survey-takers in various ways, from gift cards to reward points to cold hard cash.

As expected, most online surveys pay a few dollars for a few minutes of work. Of course, the longer a survey takes, the more in-depth it is, the more you will get paid. There are hundreds of websites that you can find these surveys, including:

• MySurvey.net
• ValuedOpinions
• iPoll
• Pinecone Research

9. Craft eBooks that People Will Buy

People say writing is a dying breed, but those people, indeed, haven’t met or heard of Mark Dawson.

Dawson is an e-book writer and entrepreneur who has sold hundreds of thousands of copies of his series of books centered around an assassin named John Milton. As a result of this hugely successful series of e-books, Dawson says he pockets “six figures” per year and hopes to make much more going forward.

Before you think he was a brilliant writer, and that’s why he is succeeding, that’s not the case.

This is a guy who used to work as a D.J., a factory hand, and even a door-to-door ice cream salesman. This proves that if you have a good idea for a book and a drive to make it happen, you, too, can become rich.

There are several sites and tools that can publish your book for you, such as:

• Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing
• Smashwords
• Lulu
• Booktango

10. Perform Micro-tasks

Have you ever been bored on the internet and just aimlessly browsing the internet or repeatedly refreshing your social media accounts? Who are we kidding, of course, you have.

Well, the next time you find yourself wasting time on the internet, why not perform micro-tasks and make real quick and easy money?

Micro-tasks are essentially small jobs/tasks that can be completed in seconds and can make individuals a few cents for everyone they do.

These tasks can range from using search engines, playing games, discovering content, and much more.

There is a variety of sites in this niche, and the sites all pay out various amounts in various ways, but you can expect to earn anywhere from a few dollars an hour to upwards of $30 for the more painstaking work.

Some of the many players in this niche are:

• Swagbucks
• InboxDollars
• Zoombucks

11. Become a Virtual Assistant

Before becoming a virtual assistant, Michele of “Your Virtual Assistant” was just a regular woman in the rat race who had a 100-mile commute to and from work every day and was unsatisfied. After researching the idea and starting her virtual assistant business, she now earns six figures a year from the comfort of her own home.

A virtual assistant is basically an individual who helps out a busy business or person with a variety of tasks that can be done online and away from the actual physical office space or work area.

The idea of virtual assistants is very big in the real estate industry as busy/successful real estate agents are so busy meeting with clients that they don’t have time to do mundane tasks such as administration, sales support, and social media (but virtual assistants are prevalent in a number of different industries).

12. Paid Reviews

If you’ve ever seen one of those YouTube videos where a blogger or personality reviews a product, they are normally paid for that.

Now, it is unlikely that you have the necessary social media or online following to warrant someone seek you out for one of these reviews, but have no fear, you can still make money with paid reviews.

For example, a good portion of those reviews you read for products on Amazon or apps in the App Store, are largely written by people just like you.

Sometimes the company will ship you a product out to test and then write about, but other times they will just have ou research the product and craft the review from that.

While this may not be the most honest way on the list to make money, there are thousands of jobs out there doing paid reviews for people just like you.

13. Create an Online Course

Do you fancy yourself as educated and proficient in a certain topic? If so, then you could potentially find yourself earning upwards of $2,500 per month like Katrina Mayer.

Mayer teaches in the health and wellness industry and is very consistent with her teachings and meetings, which makes her very successful.

If you feel you are specialized or proficiently educated on a certain topic, you might make a great teacher and could potentially set yourself up for a great bit of income if you manage to get a lot of individuals signed up for your class.

There are a number of websites in this industry, such as:

• Udemy
• Skillshare
• Coursera

14. Play Pretend Jury

Have you ever been watching a crime drama on TV and thought to yourself, “man, I wish I could serve on a jury like that”? If you answered “yes,” then boy, do we have an opportunity for you.

It is actually possible for an everyday person like me and you to potentially make hundreds of dollars from serving in an online mock jury.

These are not real trials but simply just online tools used by attorneys to brush up on their skills.

If you are chosen to sit in the panel of jurors, the trial case material will be sent to you. The information will be in the form of text or audio as you deliberate on both sides of the argument, and then you will write in your decision and be paid.

The pay ranges from around $5 a case and can get up to around $60 dollars, depending on the site you use and how long it will take you.

Some of the sites that offer these opportunities are:

• eJury
• Online Verdict
• Trial Juries

15. Streaming Video

In one of the strangest success stories on this list, South Korean woman Park Seo-yeon makes around $9,000 a month streaming video.

The type of video she streams is simply her eating mounds of food. Apparently, this is a large industry in South Korea where she and as many as 3,500 other pro eaters eat on camera for “gastro voyeurs” who enjoy watching people eat.

Now, if you’re not comfortable eating food on camera for money, there are many other types of streaming videos out there that make people money.

These can range from streaming video games online for fans to watch to writing and performing your own songs.

Of course, YouTube is the best-known medium, but there are a number of other sites where you can stream video and make money, such as:

• Twitch
• Ustream
• Veetle

16. Become an Online Transcriber

Are you looking for a flexible job that allows you to work at home, doesn’t involve making sales calls, and requires very little experience to get started?

If so, you should look into becoming a transcriptionist. An online transcriptionist is somebody who listens to audio files and types out what they hear.

Though this may sound simple, it can be difficult to comprehend sometimes, which is why it pays better than a lot of the other online jobs.

For example, Lisa Mills has been a transcriptionist for years and says that the lowest amount she has ever made is $15 an hour and she regularly earns more than $25 an hour, all from her home computer desk.

There are a number of sites that provide this type of service, including:

• TranscribeMe
• Rev
• Tigerfish
• oTranscribe

17. Your Great Photos Are Worth Money

Could you believe that a 42-year-old man from Maine made $2,000 for something that took him only a fraction of a second to do?

Well, that is exactly what happened when Adam Hamilton sold a photograph to Puma for the impressive $2,000 price tag.

In the modern day with almost everyone over the age of 10 having a camera-equipped smartphone in their pocket, everyone can be a photographer.

These smartphone cameras are consistently getting more advanced every year, which means that almost anybody can take fantastic photos.

Some of these enthralling photos can be worth money on sites that sell images.

There are several sites that will buy your images and sell them to the masses, including:

• Shutterstock
• iStockphoto
• Fotolia
• Alamy

18. Editing Audio

With the massive amount of podcasts and radio shows out there on the internet today, this is one of the most in demand ways to make money on this entire list. The name of the game in editing audio is to help the conversation “flow” in whatever you are editing.

That can include editing out “ums” and “ahs” or cutting out parts of the conversation that don’t make sense. While you may think this is a tough thing to learn, the opposite is actually true.Using products such as Sony Sound Forge or Final Cut Pro, one can practice and perfect this art very quickly.

19. Rent Out a Room

Are you interested in a way to potentially make thousands of dollars a year from doing absolutely nothing?

If you answered “yes” to this question (and have a spare room(s) in your house), you might want to consider renting out the room for students or other tenants.

Depending on the size of the room and which area of a city it is located in, you can potentially fetch hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month from renting it out.

In larger cities, there is no shortage of people looking to rent, so by simply putting an ad on your local classifieds site, you are likely to have your choice of a number of different tenants.

Also, if you live in a popular travel destination, consider using Airbnb to rent your room out and have the pleasure of meeting a new traveler every few days or weeks.

20. Teach English Online

We’re going to hazard a guess that most people reading this article speak English, and if so, you have all the prerequisites needed to make thousands of dollars teaching English online potentially.

There is high demand from countries all over the world (especially those in Asia) for native English speakers to help teach them the language.

And don’t worry; you don’t need to speak a second language most of the time to make money doing this, and the work can be done from the comfort of your own home with little more than a headset.

Some of the many sites that you can look at to find these jobs are:

• Italki
• VerbalPlanet
• TutorABC