10 ideas to make money online

A cash cow for the enterprising, the Internet is littered with opportunities to make a fast buck. While it rarely qualifies as a solitary source of income, the Net can easily help you supplement it. However, the amount you earn depends on the time and effort invested. Go through these 20 options and find out which ones work for you.

Blogging
If you're a passionate closet writer who wants to be published but can't find a way to do so, make each keystroke your way to wealth by penning your own blog. Starting a blog doesn't require extensive technical skills but it's important that you have expertise in the field you are writing on. This will attract visitors to your site. Building a large following will enable you to earn profit by luring advertisers, writing paid reviews or getting commissions for promoting other people's products.

Paid Writing
If maintaining a blog is difficult for you but you still want to indulge your passion for writing, you can jot down articles for other blogs or sites such as Weblogs, Helium or PayPerPost. Writing an e-book can also be a good option. E-books are investment free, with no cost for printing and shipping. If you have a strong command over languages, you can become a copy editor, where Webmasters will pay you to read articles and correct grammatical errors, sentence fragments, etc.

e-tuitions/Webinars
The demand for tutors is high and growing. So, if you like helping others learn, e-teaching could be the earning ticket for you. All you need to become an online tutor is expertise in your subject and a few spare hours per week. TutorVista, e-tutor, SmartThinking and Tutor.com are some of the sites you can enroll with. If you gain a good reputation as a coach, you could even conduct Webinars-lectures or seminars transmitted over the Net. College and university students are willing to pay to gain entry to a well-respected Webinar.

Affilliate/Reseller
For those who have the knack of selling, one of the best ways to make money online is to become an affiliate/reseller. An affiliate is a person who gets a commission for selling every product that he promotes, whether on his Website or through any other avenue such as eBay. You don't have to own the product. You only need to sign up for an affiliate program with a company and start selling its products under your referral link. Firms such as Commission Junction or Click Bank have a large pool of products.

Buying/Selling domains
Buying and selling domain names is another way to make money from home and requires very little investment or time. You can buy domains at their registration prices or even cheaper and trade them at a profit. However, always research on sites such as sedo.co.uk, afternic.com, ebay.com or other domain auction sites to get an estimate of the hottest selling names. The best way to find good ones is to use terminated domain lists, which contain several expired names that are back in the pool.

Freelancing for Professionals
Freelancing is a great option for professionals who are experts in their respective trades and know how to ensure customer satisfaction. Various freelancing and project-oriented sites allow companies that need help to describe their projects. Freelancers and small businesses offer bids, ideas or proposals, from which the buyers can choose what they find most suitable. Websites such as Elance cover everything from programming and writing to data entry and design, while RentACoder focuses on software programming.

Advertising
You can sell space on your Website or blog for advertisements and you earn when these ads are clicked by visitors to your site. The sorting and placing of ads is free. The profitability of pay-per-click advertising depends on the traffic level of the Website and, most importantly, on the clickthrough rate and cost per click. Google AdSense is the most popular option, while others are BidVertiser, Text Link Ads and Blogads. Direct banner and RSS feed are some other forms of online advertising.

GPT Programme
GPT or Get-paid-to sites are becoming increasingly popular among teens. You get paid for signing up for free Websites, newsletters, playing games and filling out online surveys. These are suitable for people who don't have a skill set but want to earn extra money. Taking online surveys is simple- register with a few legitimate, paid survey sites and answer questions. The topics range from shopping to politics. This might not help you make a living, but you can earn good pocket money. Contests2win is one of the trusted GPT Websites.

Online Marketing
Once a Website is created and optimised for search engine (SEO), the SEM or Search Engine Marketing begins. A treasure trove lies hidden here. An SEO/SEM expert, who is responsible for marketing a Website, can promote it in various ways. These include article marketing, writing press releases, forum posting, blog posting, submitting your site to directories and search engines, social bookmarking, etc. Most companies don't do this in-house and pay you to conduct the SEM for them.

Making themes
As more and more people seek an online presence, the demand for Website templates and WordPress (Blog) themes will keep increasing. If you are good at Web designing and coding, you can earn a lot from designing Web themes. In this segment, there are mainstream Websites, such as TemplateMonster and ThemeForest, which act as a marketplace where you can sell your themes. Templates are sold and priced depending on the rights and features that are bundled with them.