In today’s tough times, most are hard-pressed in making ends meet even if they’re currently employed with regular source of income. For some, a job is no longer an option and would rather venture into other money making ideas that can potentially replace their job income.

This article outlines the top 5 online money making ideas a lot of creative people use to earn extra (or full time) income that makes end meet or to actually put food on the table.

The internet has not only changed how we communicate and research for information but offered a lot of income opportunities to ones who are willing to grab it.

1. Freelancing – One of the most common ways to make money aside from having a traditional job is to offer your services as a freelancer. If you’re an artist, you can position yourself as an artist for hire. Building an online portfolio is extremely pivotal to being an artist for hire. An illustrator needs to be able to show potential clients what they can offer them if they take them on as a client. Independent authors and web publishers are constantly looking for people to design book covers, websites, and logos for them. This is a great income source for someone who enjoys doing graphic design. My friend, does this quite successfully and by having his own website that attract organic traffic, he sets himself up above the many other freelance graphic artists around.Another popular way of making money as a freelancer is to become a freelance writer or editor. Self-publishing books has exploded in recent years. There are a lot of independent authors looking for editors who would like to have their work edited for a more affordable price than the norm in the publishing world. You can editing jobs or be a ghost writer to help the author craft the whole book if you know what you’re doing.

On the lower end of this scale, you can accept article writing gigs and help online publishers like niche website owners and bloggers continuously feed their sites with fresh quality content. The key here is quality content, to build ongoing relationships with your clients and build your reputation.

Freelance writing is a great money making idea because you can completely control how much work you take on. if you’re just getting started, websites like Odesk.com and Elance.com are great places to land your initial gigs. Pricing your service competitively will help you attract clients and build your reputation on these freelance job boards but if you’re considering to go this route on a long term basis, I suggest that you build your own website to build your reputation, attract more clients, and turn this into a real business that can potentially replace your day job.

There are a lot of services that you can offer as an online freelancer. If you’re a developer or a programmer, you’ll definitely make more money online by offering software development services.

2. Become An Online Retailer – Ever bought something off Amazon and eBay? Most of these sellers are people just like you and me operating their own bookstores, gadget shops or computer retail stores off their homes. There are two ways you can start selling stuff as an online retailer.One is by buying stocks and keeping inventories to ship yourself or to become a dropshipper where you partner with a dropshipping supplier that will ship your inventories to your buyers from their warehouses. Option two takes a lot of work but it can be tricky when it comes to pricing, delivery and item quality as you don’t really get to see (or touch) your products before they are shipped to your customers.

The best way to get started with this money making idea is to start selling junk you can find inside your home (ladies, I’m not referring to your husbands!). The average person has a lot of things in their home that they never use. Items like old jewelry, unwatched DVDs and unused craft items are perfect. You can also buy things that are on bargain bins and sell them online for regular prices or get stuff from your local thrift stores or library sales.

The key is on being able to check the current prices of the items you’re looking to resell before you buy them to make sure you’re actually going to make a profit. This is where your smart phone will come handy, all you have to do is download price scanning/comparison apps like FOB Scan.

3. Sell Fiverr Gigs – Yes, Fiverr gigs! It may not seem like much but Fiverr gigs are no longer limited to $5 per pop. You can offer your initial service or product on the standard $5 pricing but you can offer upgrades from $20 to $50 per pop. Some of the gigs you can offer are voice overs, small graphic jobs, short videos, SEO pushes, and other small and fast jobs that you can do for a few minutes of your time.

4. Open Up A YouTube Channel – As mentioned in my previous article, YouTube users watch over 4 billion hours of video a month so there are always people willing to watch your videos. A person who plans to make money off of YouTube needs to decide on a niche or what they want to talk about in their videos. Do they want to teach a tutorial or give a commentary? If someone owns all of their material legally, than they’re eligible for the partner program.

With original ideas and constant promotions, an internet entrepreneur can set up shop on YouTube in a matter of minutes. Although it might take a lot of work, the payment after a while can be pretty big but just like any other content marketing businesses, 10 YouTube videos won’t make you a happy camper. It’s always a numbers game, think of it as having your own TV show where you’re the host, producer and channel owner. You can read this article for more on how to make money with YouTube.

5. Create And Sell Your Own Products – A lot of online marketers found that they can make money faster with creating their own products than creating blogs or niche websites. This of course if beyond the realities of most beginning online marketers but if you have some time to spare, product creation isn’t really that difficult as you may think. Creating an infoproduct (eBook or membership site) on a subject that you know and love will reward you hundred times over. Come to think of it, if you have a product of your own, a lot of other affiliate marketers are willing to sell your products on their websites and email lists for a commission helping you reach a very wide audience that’s impossible for you to reach on your own.

There are a whole lot more money making ideas people use to make money online but these by far are the top ideas that you can put to work for you right away, specially the top 3. Building and publishing your own blog or website is the best way to build a business system that will build an awesome source of passive income in the near future but the top 3 ideas listed above will help you make money right away.

Offering freelance services on established freelance job boards helps you piggy back on their traffic being that they’re the “go to” places for people who are looking to outsource stuff they don’t like to do themselves.

Retailing on Amazon or eBay can also attract sales faster than if you’re going to build your own online store as they already have the traffic of shoppers whose mindset is to scout for products they want to buy online. It’s free to list products on Amazon and you only get charged when you actually sell something while eBay will charge you a few dime when you list a product for sale.

Fiverr on the other hand is the world’s “go to” place for small jobs people want outsourced. It may not be as promising as the first two money making ideas listed herein but they do pay for each gig you deliver.

Source by Daisy Graham Jones