There’s a ton of information on the web advising you on how to make money online, most of the advice amounts to nothing.
I’m not going to lie to you and say it’s easy because it isn’t. There are many ways to make an income online, and I’m going to show you the ways that worked for me and the ways that didn’t.
This isn’t going to be a massive list of survey sites! There are only a few that I do use and they are definitely worth a mention.
Survey Sites that Pay through PayPal Instantly
The following survey sites are the sites that I use regularly, they all pay through PayPal instantly when you request the money once you have reached the minimum cash out or points value.
There are only a small number of survey sites that I would recommend and they are Pinecone Research, Swagbucks, and Prolific.
Best Surveys To Make Money
Surveys will never earn you a full-time income but they will bring in some extra cash.
Prolific
Prolific will make you a decent amount of money over the year, but, it won’t make a full-time income. Use it to boost your income.
I’ve averaged around £20+ a month with Prolific since 2018 (very part-time). You could earn a lot more, say around £60+ per month as I did when I first tried it out. This can be achieved if you’re prepared to sit at the computer most of the day waiting for surveys to come through.
Make sure you install the Chrome extension so that you get notified when surveys appear as you don’t receive email notifications for all. Using the Chrome extension means that you won’t miss surveys and can maximise your profits.
Swagbucks
Swagbucks is worth a mention because it’s great for shopping through and letting the Swagbucks build up.
Let the Swagbucks gradually build and then cash them in through PayPal. I use this site when I fancy a takeaway and get points by clicking through the Just Eat link.
Pinecone Research
If you can get accepted to Pinecone research, they will pay you £3 per survey and occasionally you will get to try products. We’ve tried a fair few products over the years.
I’ve been with Pinecone for a long time now. The surveys are not that frequent so don’t expect to make lots of money. They have experienced issues of late with PayPal, however, money can be transferred to your bank.
Branded Surveys
This survey site was previously known as Mintvine, Branded surveys will pay you by cash or gift card. You only need 500 points to cash out, which is $5. Read about Branded surveys in my post here.
Not So Good
YouGov
With YouGov you earn points, and when they reach 5000, you can cash out £50. This can take forever and in my experience hardly any surveys come through.
YouGov also has a refer a friend scheme where you will earn 200 extra points for each friend that completes 6 surveys. Anyone constantly plugging YouGov is probably making money from referrals. Doing their surveys works out to around £3 an hour, so it’s up to you if you want to work a lot for little return.
Money definitely does add up by completing surveys and it’s money that you never had before, so, when you have some spare time it’s worth sitting down and completing the ones that pay the best. On the whole, I’d recommend Prolific.
Blogging
Blogging has helped me to make money, save, buy a house where I wanted to live and purchase a new car!
Don’t get me wrong thinking it’s easy because it isn’t. I’ve worked many hours on my blogs and blogging works if you put in the effort.
You can earn money through your blog from affiliate marketing, sponsored posts, placing ads on your blog and more.
I highly recommend starting a blog.
I own a few blogs and the hosts I use are Siteground & Ionos. Take a look at their WordPress hosting packages. I do recommend using either of these hosts.
No-Risk Matched Betting
No-risk Matched Betting is the quickest way to make money from the very first week you start doing it! You do however need some money as the float.
When first starting out you will need around £60+ to complete offers. I recommend using a company that knows what they’re talking about, will guide you in the right direction and show you how to do all the offers for a monthly fee.
Profit From Casinos
If you don’t like the idea of betting on sports and playing slots is more your thing, why not learn how to profit from Casino offers?
I actually prefer slots because you can win big. Look at my win on Jammin Jars below!
Profiting from casinos involves completing promotional offers and playing games and slots that have a high RTP (return to player).
You must play responsibly though and not chase any losses. This way you will profit long term.
From 22/06/20 – 22/12/20, I’ve made an extra £1750.17 tax-free profit!
From 01/01/2021 – 31/12/21, I’ve made £2128.44.
Start Profiting From Casinos Here. The Diamond membership gives access to casino bonuses as well as matched betting offers.
Play Slot Races
With big cash prizes up for grabs, slot races are a no-brainer. This is my absolute favourite site to join slot races on with prizes from £20 – £1000 per race.
Olive Press outline how to gamble safely.
Making your own Digital Products
If you own a WordPress blog you can create a shop and sell from it using a free e-commerce plugin called Woocommerce, or if you’d rather you could sell on a platform like Etsy. I use both.
Making digital products like printables, e-books, and digital art is a great way to earn extra cash. You only have to make the product once and it can be sold over and over.
I now sell digital products on Etsy after completing a really good course about making printables. This is one of the most useful courses I have purchased and I also get sent templates every month that can be edited in Canva or Adobe Illustrator.
If you’re interested in selling printables on Etsy, this ebook will teach you how to capitalize on seasonal trends to make sales. It’s free for a limited time.
Becoming a Pinterest Virtual Assistant
Training to become a Pinterest Virtual Assistant will give you the opportunity to earn around £25 -£40 per hour or more with experience.
This is a job that can be done at home and businesses often need their Pinterest accounts managed.
There’s only one course I would recommend, you can read my post on becoming a Pinterest VA and what’s involved if this interests you.
Make and Sell Dog Treats
If you’re a dog lover, this home-based business would be perfect for you. Start a dog bakery business selling treats online or in person. My post on how to start a dog bakery business at home will fill you in on how to get started. You may wish to look at this free training workshop to give you an idea of what’s involved.
Sell on Fiverr
If you provide a service, why not advertise on Fiverr? I’ve recently started selling on Fiverr and have had orders come through very quickly. I love it because the money side is sorted out for you and can be withdrawn to PayPal when the payment has cleared.
Start Dropshipping
Drop shipping is a selling method where you advertise products from a dropship supplier at the RRP on your e-commerce store. When a customer places an order, you purchase it from your supplier at the wholesale price and pocket the difference. I used to do this by selling personalised gifts.
There’s no need to keep stock, so it’s a great way to make money from home if you don’t have the cash to pay out for stock in advance and have limited space in your home.
Read my post on how to start dropshipping which will guide you on what to look for when searching for dropship suppliers.
Print-on-demand companies like Printful provide a dropship service. This allows you to create and sell custom products online and they will print your design onto the product and ship it directly to your customer.
Ekm has four dropshipping integrations. Syncee is for online shops that are looking to source goods like homewares, clothing, toys, and more.
Anyone looking to get started with dropshipping for the first time can take advantage of the integration at £0 for the first 25 items. There are also larger plans available for businesses that would like to offer a wider range of dropshipped goods.
There are also three print-on-demand integrations available for online shops that would like to sell merchandise with their own design or logo printed onto textiles. These are Two Fifteen, Snuggle, and Printify. Visit EKM to find out more.
Publish No Content and Low Content Books
This is a great way to make a passive income, I love creating notebooks sketchbooks and planners. There are many publishers who make thousands per month creating books and publishing them on Amazon KDP. Take a look at my post on how to make money with low content books, or read all of my posts about KDP.
What Doesn’t Work for the Majority – MLM
I tried extremely hard to make MLM work for me but it didn’t. The products were overpriced and I hardly made any profit by selling them.
The company I joined allowed selling on eBay, which is the only place I could actually sell anything! With eBay fees and having to price products higher than the RRP, I hardly ever made a good profit.
With MLM there are only a few people at the top who earn the big money, BUT, they have to recruit, recruit, and recruit to make sure they are fed money! They earn from their recruit’s sales.
Most people who join below them struggle to sell anything or make any money. Many reps lie about their earnings, claiming they are living a fantastic lifestyle when they just aren’t.
I was lied to and urged to purchase a product by the girl who was in my upline, she claimed it sold well. Years later I still have this product and she was promoted to the next level after I bought it, so she was using me for her own gain!
A lot of people joining MLMs often pay out of their own pockets to purchase products just so they qualify for the next level in their MLM. This is pointless and basically throwing money down the drain.
There are a lot of horror stories around MLM, bullying, silencing, and being told you’re negative if you dare to question or disagree. I suggest reading Elle Beau Blog for more information if you want to find out what goes on in some of these companies.
On a positive note, I do like some companies such as Avon, their products have been around for years. As I like Avon products, I decided to become an affiliate rather than a rep.
So, there you have it, some of the things that work well and not so well, I’ll be adding to this post in the future when I find more methods of earning online.
