10 Ways to Make Money Online:

1. Blogging
Blogging is one of the best ways to make money online because you are part of a community. If you're good at what you do you can gain credibility and be recognized for your blogging across the internet. For instance, you probably recognize the picture above and the blog associated with it.
Along with gaining credibility there is also the potential to make a lot of money. Peter Cashmore, founder of Mashable, is reported to make $166,000 a month, all from the one blog.
If you are new to blogging and interested in making money you should check out the blogs Shoemoney and Problogger. These blogs have a lot of tips for beginners on how to make money and get traffic.
2. Create Your own Second Life Store
I'll admit it, I'm a recovering Second Life addict. Second Life can be a lot of fun, it will make you want to spend hours there. If you haven't heard of Second Life, its a virtual game where people can do pretty much everything they do in real life, including shop, which there is a lot of.
According to the SL website, there has been $1,265,653 USD spent on Second Life in the past 24 hours. This money is spent on virtual clothes, cars, even guns, which individual shop owners make and sell. There's less risk here then owning your own real-life business, but it can be just as fruitful and a lot of fun.
3. Share Your Videos
There are sites that will pay you a share of their profits to share your videos on their website. A good video has the potential to earn you thousands of dollars - just think about how much Chris Crocker would have made if his videos were on a profit-sharing website. The videos don't have to be professionally done, just look at most of the videos on Youtube. People actually prefer amateur videos. If you like being in the spotlight this can be one of the funnest ways to make money online.
4. Share Your Pictures
Sharing pictures online is something people do every day - why not get paid for it? There are dozens of sites that are offering a revenue share for the page views that your pictures get. If you spend time on Flickr you should consider opening an account on a profit-sharing photo site. You can still have your pictures on both sites while making money on one.
A great thing about making money on these sites is that it can be a passive income. You can put your pictures up on a site, and as long as they get page views you will make money, even if you don't return for months. Some of the picture-sharing sites are pretty fun and will have you wanting to return, though.
5. Try Your Luck on Moola
Moola is an internet game site like no other. They give you a penny when you sign up that you can double by playing a game against another player. You keep doubling your money every time you win a game. You can cash out after you win $10, or you can play for the grand prize of $1,000,000. Its free to try and its super addicting.
6. Network With Friends
Since revenue-sharing sites have blown up this year, there are now a handful of sites that will pay you to do the same thing you do on Myspace. The most popular one is Dada - which pays you to chat, upload your pictures, and refer your friends.
If Dada's not for you, you should check out Mylot, Gather, and Squidoo. With so many options there's bound to be one that you will enjoy.
7. Play Guitar
You can earn extra cash by uploading your videos on Guitarvids.net. You can put up videos of you and your band, or make guitar instruction videos. Whatever you do this is probably one of the easiest and funnest ways to make money online if you're a guitar player.
8. Design T-Shirts
Getting paid for your original designs is probably one of the most rewarding ways to make a living. There are three major websites that you can sell your t-shirt designs through for free. You can also sell your designs on aprons, calenders, and bumper stickers. If you love to design clothes and merchandise but hate sales, consider entering a t-shirt design contest instead.
9. Post on Forums
Posting on forums is one of the fastest and easiest ways to make money online. Granted, the pay isn't that great, but it may pay your water bill, and you'll have fun while doing it.
Check out my post where I review paying forums, or you can learn how to become a full-time forum writer.
10. Give Advice
If you are knowledgeable in any area there are places online where you can give advice to people who need it. There are few things that are funner than giving your opinions on topics you care about - and you don't need an advanced degree to do it. You can give dating advice, tips on gardening, even gift-giving suggestions. You can get paid an hourly rate, anywhere from $6-$20 to give advice over the phone, through e-mail, or through web chat.
Making money through blogging and other online means is a great way to earn some cash to pay off those credit cards debts. Next time you get one of those offers for cash back credit cards or low interest, high reward business credit card offers, consider using the money you make online to pay them off so you won't be in debt.
All ways to make money online now.
Notice that ways to make money with a website are different from ways to make more money from it. Methods to increase your traffic or click-through rate will help you make more money, but they do not represent a method of making money per se.
For example, one could suggest that blending AdSense ads with the content is a way to make money from a website. In reality it’s not; it’s just a way to make more money by improving your ad click-through rate. The real monetization method behind it is a PPC ad network.
The list is divided into direct and indirect methods, and examples and links are provided for each point. Enjoy!
Direct Methods
1. PPC Advertising Networks
Google AdSense is the most popular option under this category, but there are also others. Basically you need to sign up with the network and paste some code snippets on your website. The network will then serve contextual ads (either text or images) relevant to your website, and you will earn a certain amount of money for every click.
The profitability of PPC advertising depends on the general traffic levels of the website and, most importantly, on the click-through rate (CTR) and cost per click (CPC). The CTR depends on the design of the website. Ads placed abode the fold or blended with content, for instance, tend to get higher CTRs. The CPC, on the other hand, depends on the nice of the website. Mortgages, financial products and college education are examples of profitable niches (clicks worth a couple of dollars are not rare), while tech-related topics tend to receive a smaller CPC (sometimes as low as a couple of cents per click).
The source of the traffic can also affect the overall CTR rate. Organic traffic (the one that comes from search engines) tends to perform well because these visitors were already looking for something, and they tend to click on ads more often. Social media traffic, on the other hand, presents terribly low CTRs because these visitors are tech-savvy and they just ignore ads.
2. CPM Advertising Networks
CPM advertising networks behave pretty much as PPC networks, except that you get paid according to the number of impressions (i.e., page views) that the ads displayed on your site will generate. CPM stands for Cost per Mille, and it refers to the cost for 1,000 impressions.
A blog that generates 100,000 page views monthly displaying an advertising banner with a $1 CPM, therefore, will earn $100 monthly.
CPM rates vary with the network, the position of the ad and the format. The better the network, the higher the CPM rate (because they have access to more advertisers). The closer you put the ad to the top of the page, the higher the CPM. The bigger the format (in terms of pixels), the higher the CPM.
You can get as low as $0,10 and as high as $10 per 1,000 impressions (more in some special cases). CPM advertising tends to work well on websites with a high page views per visitor ratio (e.g., online forums, magazines and so on).
List of popular CPM advertising networks:
• Casale Media
• Burst Media
• Value Click
• Advertising.com
• Tribal Fusion
• Right Media
3. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a very popular practice on the Internet. Under this system you have a merchant that is willing to let other people (the affiliates) sell directly or indirectly its products and services, in exchange for a commission. Sometimes this type of advertising is also called CPA (cost per action) or CPL (cost per lead) based.
Affiliates can send potential customers to the merchant using several tools, from banners to text links and product reviews.
In order to find suitable affiliate programs you can turn to individual companies and publishers like Dreamhost and SEOBook, or join affiliate marketplaces and networks.
List of popular affiliate marketplaces and networks:
4. RSS Feed Ads
With the quick adoption of the RSS technology by millions of Internet users, website owners are starting to find ways to monetize this new content distribution channel.
Feedburber already has its own publisher network, and you can sign-up to start displaying CPM based advertising on your feed footer. Bidvertiser recently introduced a RSS feed ad option as well, with a PPC scheme.
Finally, some blogs are also opting to sell banners or sponsored messages on their feed directly. John Chow and Marketing Pilgrim are two examples.
Related links:
• Feedburner
• BidVertiser
• Pheedo
5. Sponsors for Single Columns or Events
If you website has specific columns or events (e.g., a weekly podcast, an interview series, a monthly survey, a special project) you could find companies to sponsor them individually.
This method increases the monetization options for website owner, while giving advertisers the possibility to target a more specific audience and with a reduced commitment.
Mashable illustrates the case well. They have several advertising options on the site, including the possibility to sponsor specific columns and articles, including the “Daily Poll” and the “Web 2.0 Invites.”
Problogger also runs group writing projects occasionally, and before proceeding he publicly announce the project asking for sponsors.
6.Premium Content
Some websites and blogs give away part of their content for free, and charge for access to the premium content and exclusive tools.
SEOMoz is a good example. They have a very popular blog that gives advice and information on wide range of SEO related topics. On top of that visitors can decide to become premium members. It costs $48 monthly and it grants them access to guides, tools and other exclusive material.
7. Job Boards
All the popular blogs are trying to leverage job boards to make some extra income. Guy Kawasaki, ReadWriteWeb, Problogger… you name it.
Needless to say that in order to create an active and profitable job board you need first to have a blog focused on a specific niche, and a decent amount traffic.
The advantage of this method is that it is passive. Once you have the structure in place, the job listings will come naturally, and you can charge anywhere from $10 up to $100 for each.
List of popular job board software:
• JobThread
• Web Scribe Job Board
• SimplyHired Job-o-matic
• Jobbex
8. Marketplaces
Sitepoint is the online marketplace by excellence. Some websites and blogs, however, are trying to replicate that model on a smaller scale.
Depending on your niche, a market place that allows your visitors to buy, sell and trade products could work well. Over the time you could start charging a small fee for new product listings.
The problem with this method is that there are no standard software on the web, so you would need to hire a coder to get a marketplace integrated into your website.
You can see an example of a marketplaces being used on EasyWordpress and on Mashable.
9. Paid Surveys and Polls
There are services that will pay you money to run a small survey or poll on your website. The most popular one is called Vizu Answers.
Basically you need to sign up with them, and select the kind of polls that you want to run your site. Most of these services operate under a CPM model.
10. Selling or Renting Internal Pages
Million Dollar Wiki made this concept popular, but it was being used on the web for a long time around (check Pagerank10.co.uk for instance).
These websites sell for a single fee or rent for a recurring fee internal pages on their domain. Usually they have either high Pagerak or high traffic, so that people purchasing a page will be able to benefit in some way.
Implementing this method on a small blog would be difficult, but the concept is interesting and could be explored further.
11. Highlighted Posts from Sponsors
Techmeme probably pioneered this idea, but somehow it has not spread to other websites. The tech news aggregator displays editorial posts on the left column, and on the sidebar they have a section titled “Techmeme Sponsor Posts.”
On that section posts from the blog of the advertisers get highlighted, sending qualified traffic their way. Considering that the monthly cost for one spot is $5000 and that they have around 6 sponsors at any given time, it must be working well.
12. Donations
Placing a “Donate” link or button on a website can be an efficient way to earn money, especially if your blog is on a niche where readers learn and gain value from your content.
Personal development and productivity blogs, for instance, tend to perform well with donation based systems (one good example being Steve Pavlina).
A small variation of this method appeared sometime ago with the Buy Me a Beer plugin. This WordPress plugin enables you to insert a customized message at the bottom of each article, asking the readers to chip in for a beer or coffee.
13. In-text Adverting
In-text adverting networks like Kontera and Vibrant Media will place sponsored links inside your text. These links come with a double underline to differentiate them from normal links, and once the user rolls the mouse over the link the advertising will pop. Should the user click on it the site owner will make some money.
Some people make good money with this method, but others refrain from using it due to its intrusiveness. It is also interesting to note that very few mainstream websites have experimented with in-text advertising.
14. Pop-ups and Pop-unders
Pop-ups are a common yet annoying form of advertising on the Internet. If you are just trying to make a much money as possible from your website, you could experiment with them.
If you are trying to grow the traffic and generate loyal visitors, however, you probably should stay away from them. Just consider the hundreds of pop-up blockers out there: there is a reason why they are so popular.
Ad networks that use pop-ups:
• Tribal Fusion
• PayPopup
• PopupAd
• Adversal
15. Audio Ads
Also called PPP (Pay Per Play), this advertising method was introduce by Net Audio Ads. the concept is pretty simple: play a small audio advertising (usually 5 seconds) every time a visitor enters into your website. The user should not be able to stop it, creating a 100% conversion rate based on unique visitors.
The company is still rolling tests, but some users are reporting to get from a $4 to a $6 CPM. Regardless of the pay rate, though, this is a very intrusive form of advertising, so think twice before using it.
16. Selling the Website
Selling your website could be your last resource, but it has the potential to generate a big sum of money in a short period of time.
Market places on online forums like DigitalPoint and Sitepoint are always active with website buyers and sellers. Keep in mind that they most used parameter to determine the value of a website is the monthly revenue that it generates, multiplied by a certain number (the multiplier can be anything from 5 to 30, depending on the expectations of the seller, on the quality of the site, on the niche and other factors).
Some people also make money trading and flipping websites. They either create them from scratch or buy existing ones, and after some revamping they sell them for a profit.
Related links:
• How To Buy A Website And Flip It For Profit
• How To Sell A Website - How Much Is Your Website Worth?
• Where to sell a website? How to go about selling it?
Indirect Methods
17. Selling an Ebook
Perhaps one of the oldest money making strategies on the web, using a website to promote a related ebook is a very efficient way to generate revenue.
You could either structure the website around the book itself, like SEOBook.com, or launch the ebook based on the success of the website, like FreelanceSwitch did we the book How to be a Rockstar Freelancer.
Related links:
• Writing an ebook for your blog
• How to sell ebooks
• Processing payments for your ebook
• How to sell digital products online
• List of ebook selling software
18. Selling a Hardcover Book
Many authors and journalists leverage their blogs or websites to sell copies of hardcover books. Examples include Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell.
While most of these people were already renowned authors before they created their website, one could also follow the other way around. Lorelle VanFossen did exactly that with her Blogging Tips book. First she built her authority on the subject via her blog, and afterwards she published the book.
List of self publishing and publishing services:
• Lulu
• Self Publishing
• iUniverse
• WordClay
19. Selling Templates or WordPress Themes
As more and more people decide to get an online presence, website templates and WordPress themes become hotter and hotter.
On this segment you have mainstream websites like TemplateMonster, as well as individual designers who decide to promote and sell their work independently.
Brian Gardner and Unique Blog Designs are two examples of websites that make money with the sales of premium and custom WordPress themes.
20. Offering Consulting and Related Services
Depending on your niche, you could make money by offering consulting and related services. If you are also the author of your blog, the articles and information that you will share will build your profile and possibly certify your expertise on that niche, making it easier to gain customers.
Chris Garrett used a similar strategy. First he created a highly influential blog on the blogging and new media niche, and afterwards he started offering consulting services to clients with related problems and needs.
21. Creating an Email List or Newsletter
Email lists and newsletters represent one of the most powerful marketing and money making tools on the Internet. They offer incredible conversion rates, and the possibility to call people to action in a very efficient way.
Creating a big list is a difficult task though, so if you have a popular website you could leverage it to increase the number of subscribers on your list.
Yaro Starak is a famous Internet marketer, and if you visit his blog you will notice that right on top he has a section encouraging visitors to subscribe to his email newsletter. Yaro generates five figures in revenues each month from his email newsletters, proving that this method works.
List of software to manage email newsletters:
• AWeber
• SendStudio NX
• PHP Autoresponder
• Constant Contact
22. Private Forums
While the Internet is populated with free forums, there is also the possibility to create a private one where members need to pay a single or recurring fee to join.

SEO Blackhat charges $100 monthly from its members, and they have thousands of them. Obviously in order to charge such a price for a forum membership you need to provide real value for the members (e.g., secret techniques, tools, and so on).
Performancing also launched a private forum recently, focused on the networking aspect. It is called The Hive, and the monthly cost is $10.
These are just two examples. There are many possibilities to create a private and profitable forum, you just need to find an appealing angle that will make it worth for the members.
List of popular forum software:
• vBulletin
• Simple Machines Forum
• phpBB
• Vanilla