1. Amazon: Publish your own Kindle books
Real people who love writing and marketing are finding that they can publish their own digital books directly to Amazon using their Kindle Direct Publishing platform. Take for instance blogger Thomas Strock, who made $6,716.05 in one month alone from all his Kindle books. Not bad for an 18-year-old.
2. Google AdSense: Set up your own niche websites
I love reading the way that Spencer Haws – not the basketball player, but the webmaster – sets up websites focused around a variety of topics and then places Google AdSense ads on them to make money.
3. YouTube: Make money via video ads
If you know your way around your smartphone’s video feature, try to earn a $4 million per year like vlogger PewDiePie by uploading interesting videos to YouTube.com and monetizing them, praying they go viral.
4. Squidoo: Write interesting articles
There’s a noteworthy monetary trail on Virginia Allain’s Squidoo page that shows how her income has climbed and fallen over the years. As of August 2014, she made $676 for the month via the site.
5: iTunes App Store: Sell your own app
You don’t even need to be as technically inclined as Harlan Yee, a developer who made nearly $500 in July 2014 from his mobile apps. Even if you don’t know how to code apps, you can hire developers on sites like Elance to code them for you.
6. Upwork: Hawk your words
Speaking of Elance, the husband and wife team – Troy and Valerie Mellema – who run their “Words You Want” freelance writing business on the site, show current earnings of more than $450,000 over the past 12 months. Enough said.
7. eBay: Sell things around your house – or buy things to sell for higher prices
Tons of people have turned to eBay.com to make extra cash. Simply search through the “sold” listings to see the kinds of items that have sold recently and for how much. Whether you start off as a smaller seller like this blogger Yolanda, who is using her eBay profits to pay off her student loans – or whether you become a big player who buys shoes en masse and resells them for a profit, if you like selling and shipping stuff, give it a try.
8. Fiverr: Make money of just about any talent
If you scroll through the most popular sellers on Fiverr.com, you’ll note that they make money by offering everything from voiceover work to Photoshop skills.
9. iStockPhoto: Upload your photos, videos and illustrations for earnings
If you have a penchant for taking pics or drawing vector illustrations and the like, you can sell them as stock artwork on sites like iStockPhoto, where you’ll see that exclusive contributors and sellers like Beach Cottage Photography have experienced loads of downloads.
10: Instagram: Turn your social media photos into prints for a profit
Instagram.com isn’t just for sharing interesting pics or showing off your skinny waist in a corset. These days, photographers like Daniel Arnold have learned that he can make $15,000 in one day from the site. Even 15-year-old Ryan Parrilla has gotten in on the action and sells his beautiful Instagram photos as prints.