15 Geeky Ways to Make Money From the Comfort of Your Computer Chair

If you are like me, you probably spend a lot of your free time in front of your computer.  When I’m not working or doing stuff with the family, I’m often on the internet either playing games, reading news, or browsing sites like Reddit.  It finally hit me one day that I could start doing something more productive with the free time that I have when I’m just sitting at me desk.  It turns out there are actually quite a number of ways that you can make some extra cash from the comfort of your own home.

Though there are plenty of ways to make money on the Internet, becoming a rich online entrepreneur isn’t easy or fast. It requires lots of hard work to be successful, but that’s just a fact of life in anything that you do. If you want to make real money, you have to invest time and effort. Of course, some ways of making money online are easier and faster than others.

One of the great things about working from home is that you can work at your own pace and on your own schedule.  You don’t need to put another 40 hours a week in to make money online.  In fact, some “side hustles” can actually end up being passive income, meaning that once you get it rolling, it will be making money for you 24/7.

In this post, I will share some real ways to make money online through blogging, freelancing, and selling products online in stores such as eBay and Amazon.  Think about how many extra hours you spend doing “nothing”.  Do you think you still don’t have time to give one of these methods a shot for a little extra cash?

HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE?

Earning money online is really just as easy (or hard) as making money offline.  Now if you have done any internet searches on Google or YouTube, you’ve probably seen tons of entrepreneurs out there waiting to tell you about a secret formula for making quick money.

In reality, there is no way you can become rich overnight by just clicking a button or watching a video. Earning money online requires hard work and persistence. If it were as simple as these self-proclaimed gurus make it sound, then everyone would already be doing it.

If you are ready to see this as an investment in yourself, there are plenty of methods for generating extra income from the internet. Many of them are low cost so time will be your main investment. Some of these are quick, while some are long-term ideas for making money.

1. AFFILIATE MARKETING

In affiliate marketing, you promote other people’s products for a commission. You can find digital products like e-books, themes and courses through websites like ClickBank, MaxBounty, or ShareASale. Many online retailers also have affiliate programs that can usually be found by scrolling to the bottom of their page and clicking the affiliate link.  The biggest and most popular is the Amazon Associate Program.  In fact, many of the items in this site’s store link to Amazon.

Whenever a person clicks on a link that is tied to your affiliate program, there will be a cookie put in their browser that lasts for a set amount of time, usually from 24 hours to 30 days.  Anything purchased by that person during that time frame will net you a commission, even if it wasn’t an item that they clicked on to get there!

2. MAKE MONEY BLOGGING

Blogging has become one of the most popular ways of earning money online. You can blog about anything no matter how bizzarre.  Odds are there is probably a niche out there with interested readers. Blogs will earn you money by showing ads, selling affiliate products or your own products. Making money through blogs requires a lot of time and effort, and should be seen as a long-term plan that can reap massive passive income down the road.

You can start a blog for free, but doing so will not give you a custom domain name, but rather an unprofessional looking name such as: YourBlog.Wordpress.com.

If you are serious about blogging, you are better off purchasing a domain and hosting from sites like Bluehost. Domain names can be purchased for just a couple bucks a month, and hosting can be as low as $3.95 a month. It is easy to start up a blog with it’s own hosting in less than an hour.

3. CASH IN ON FIVERR

Fiverr.com is a website where other people offer their services for $5 and up.  People offer various gigs such as writing blog articles and research papers, graphic design such as logo creation, video creation, and digital marketing.

For example, if writing is your thing, you can offer to write blog articles for websites for $5-$10 per article.  Get really good and become a “pro” and that fee can end up being $300 or higher for a 1000 word article! It is free to get started, create gigs, and get paid through PayPal.

4. INVEST IN THE STOCK MARKET

It is certainly possible (even easy) to make money investing in the stock market. It is also possible (even easy) to lose money really quickly if you don’t know what you’re doing. There is a lot of great resources on the internet to learn the basics to get you up and running.

Almost all brokers let you do everything from buying and selling, stock research, and examining stock charts from your computer. TD Ameritrade‘s platform, Think or Swim, is considered one of the best and most powerful tools out there for trading.

If you are new to stock market trading or want to get your feet wet, I highly suggest the Robinhood app.  The awesome thing about Robinhood is that they don’t offer any trading fees.  Most brokers charge anywhere from $5-$10 per trade which can eat away at your profits quickly, especially if you have a small account to start with.

Robinhood is 100% free to use but it is only available as a moblie app (a web app is scheduled for 2018). They do offer a paid member called Robinhood Gold which allows you trade 30 minutes before the market opens and for a couple of hours after it closes.  It will also allow you to trade your unsettled funds right away, meaning if you sell some stock, you can immediately use that money to buy something else as opposed to waiting a couple of days to post to your account.  These are nice little perks, but nowhere near necessities to have, especially if you are just starting out.

They also have a free stock promotion going to build their user base.  If you join via THIS LINK, you and I will both get a random free stock. There is a 1 in 150 chance of getting high priced stock like Facebook, Apple, or Microsoft.

5. INVEST IN CRYPTOCURRENCY

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard of Bitcoin.  It and other cryptocurrencies like Ether, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash have exploded in popularity this year and have made a lot of people a lot of money.

Be forewarned that cryptocurrency is a HIGHLY SPECULATIVE market. It is advised to have a strong stomach and strong hands to hold your coins during dips.  The market is very volatile with periods of huge, erratic swings in price.

Coinbase, is probably the most well-known cryptocurrency exchange and also has a referral program similar to Robinhood. If you want to take the plunge into crypto, you can click my referral and once you buy or sell $100 of digital currency, we will both get $10 worth of free Bitcoin!

6. TAKE ONLINE SURVEYS FOR MONEY

Online surveys are a very simple way of making money online.  Companies hire market research firms to gather feedback from their consumers and target audience.  These firms use online surveys to gather the data needed for their assignments.

In return for your time filling out the survey, they share a portion of the money with survey participants. Because this is considered a relatively “easy” way of making money, the potential payout isn’t as high as other methods and doesn’t offer any passive form of income since you physically need to be filling out the surveys to get paid.

Some popular sites for online surveys are Swagbucks, VIPVoice, and Harris Poll.  There are many other great survey sites as well.  They all offer different rewards from straight cash, gift cards, to points that can be used for discounts at retailers.  Just make sure that you don’t fall for any scam survey sites.  If they ask for money for a membership fee, stay away!

7. EARN MONEY DESIGNING WEBSITES

If you can design websites, there is plenty of work for you out there. You don’t even have to be very proficient in HTML either.  You can use tools like Adobe DreamWeaver or Kompozer to create a portfolio of website designs to show your clients.

8. MAKE MONEY FLIPPING WEBSITES

You’ve probably heard of “flipping houses”, where people buy a house, fix it up a bit, then sell it for more than they spent on it.  Well just like houses and real estate, website domains can be flipped too.  Think of it as the internet’s version of real estate.  You can think of a catchy domain name, get it registered for a few dollars, then sell it for a lot more.

You can also buy domains that are cheap and then sell for a profit.  If you are good at building websites, you can create a new website or blog from the ground up.  After it gains traction and you start making money from it, sell it on a website such as Flippa. On an average, you can sell websites for 12 times its monthly income.

9. GET PAID TO ANSWER QUESTIONS

There are actually websites that pay people like you for answering common questions on various topics. If you are knowledgeable in a certain field, these sites will pay you to answer questions via text message, live chat, or email, depending on the site. You can find websites such as JustAnswer, Ether, and Studypool where you can make money by offering your knowledge and expertise.

10. DESIGNING T-SHIRTS FOR CASH

Many people design T-shirts and sweatshirts for local vendors in return for cash. If you are good at writing witty phrases and designing cool graphics or montages, you can make money selling self-deigned T-shirts on websites like CafePress.

11. MAKE MONEY ON YOUTUBE

YouTube is the most popular website on the internet behind Google, and the popularity of online videos is still growing, so it isn’t too late to jump into the market.  You can start with nothing more than your phone to shoot interesting videos and upload them. Make regular and interesting content, gain subscribers and views, and you can start monetizing your channel per view and show ads to gain revenue.

12. MAKE MONEY ON TWITCH

Who would have thought that one day it would be possible to make money by letting strangers watch you play video games? Twitch can allow you to do just that.  It is free to get started.  Simply head over to their website and sign up to stream.  You’ll need an Xbox One, PS4, or a pretty decent computer and some broadcasting software.

Once you start your channel, try to keep a fairly consistent schedule.  Make sure that you interact with your viewers, and let your personality stand out to help grow your audience.

You can make money through straight up donations from viewers which can be anything from $1 to $1000. Don’t count on the latter, but it has happened before.  Viewers can also tip in an online currency called “bits” via “cheering” for you.  Viewers can purchase them directly from Amazon or earn anywhere from 5-100 bits from watching ads. Each ‘bit” is worth about one & one-half cents.

If you can grow your channel and gain a steady following of at least 500 regular viewers, you can apply to become a Twitch Partner and allow you to add a “Subscribe” button to your channel.  For each subscriber you get, you will be paid about $2.50 per month!

13. DROPSHIPPING

The dropshipping business has exploded this year thanks to sites like Shopify.  The great thing about dropshipping is that you are selling items that you don’t own, so there is no inventory cost.  You sell the item for your determined price on your store, place the order on the buyer’s behalf, and have it shipped to their address from the wholesaler. You keep the difference in your cost to buy from the wholesaler vs. what you charge the buyer.

The wholesaler doesn’t do this for free though. When you buy from a wholesaler offering drop shipping services, they add a fee to cover the costs involved with offering this service (usually $2 to $5).  This means that your margins are thinner than selling your own goods, but that is trade off from not having to tie up cash or space in inventory.

There are tons of companies that offer dropshipping services, so you will have to look around to find the right product from the right company.  Some popular dropshipping companies are Doba, Dropship Direct, Wholesale 2b, and Ali Express.

14. SELLING E-BOOKS

Writing an e-book can be a great way to earn some extra cash.  Just come up with an idea about how to solve a problem of your target audience and create an e-book about how to solve it.  Even if you aren’t a great writer, you can get a little freelance help from Fiverr and get a good e-book to sell. You may already have most of an e-book written already if you are already blogging. Your blog posts could be turned into an e-book with some simple editing. You can then sell your e-book(s) on Amazon and price them based on your target audience. Don’t price it ridiculously low or high.  Most e-books go for anywhere between $2 and $10.

15. SELL HOMEMADE CRAFTS ONLINE

If you are handy at making crafts, you can use that skills to make various items and and sell them online on specialized websites such as Etsy , eBay, or Craigslist.

CONCLUSION

I’ve just given you several different ways to make some extra cash online.  Some can score you some extra spending money, while some could potentially turn into a good home-based business.  Get creative and I’m sure that you can come up with even more ideas, or tweak these into something even better!