With the current global pandemic, there is no better time to discover how to make money online without paying anything. The problem a lot of people have is that most of the common ways to make money online require a bit of investment or a lot of time.

I recently left an average paying job (yes, in this pandemic), why? The job was messing up my mental health.

While a lot of people will panic in this season and continue to stay on the job, eventually losing their sanity, I could afford to leave the job. Why?

Over the years, I have curated skills and ways to make money from home, some of which cost me nothing and took little time from me.

I believe I am in a good position to answer the question “how to make money online without paying anything”.

How to Make Money Online

Take a few minutes to read and digest this article. If you are an avid reader of 1000nairadaily.com, you will know that we share legit tips on how to make money online daily. These are tested and true tips.

Every business requires a form of investment, and it can either be time or money or both. Not everyone has money to invest in businesses, and to be honest, you came here to discover ways to make money without spending.

I agree, the general idea sounds ridiculous and is almost Ponzi-like in nature but… hold on.

Over the years, people have made money online doing a series of activities ranging from affiliate market to freelancing.They figured out how to make money online without paying anything

On one end of the spectrum are freelancing gigs that require you to have some skills, like programming skills, web or graphics design and writing skills. On the other end are Virtual assistant jobs and affiliate marketing gigs. Some of these jobs require you to have basic writing, communication and marketing skills

Apart from myself, there are thousands of success stories of persons who have made money working from home and some of them did this without paying anything.

Statistics show that in 2019, 31% of freelancers were earning over $75,000 per annum and that if they need to, a quarter of freelancers can get a job in 24 hours!

Imagine that! So yes, it is possible to earn money online without paying anything

Now that you know all this, are you ready to learn how to make money online without paying anything or you still want to lie in bed?

28 tips on how to make money online without paying anything

I have already established that business requires investment: Money or Time or both. In the absence of money, time is a good way to make an investment, and it pays overtime. I have curated 28 ways on how to make money online without paying anything. Some of these options can serve you long term, and some of them are just for short term purpose.

Note that it will be a whole lot easier for you to find jobs online if you have some skills, but the good news is that you can learn a lot of skills online for free, so buckle up! A lot of these skills have a short to medium learning curve and pay pretty okay. The beautiful thing about skills is that you learn on the job. Let us say you start today, in 6 months times, you would have become almost an expert in whatever skill you choose to pick up today, and you will have been making money online while you were improving.

1. Freelance content writer

Freelance writing is perhaps one of the most popular freelancing gigs. It is a great way to earn money online. You can get writing jobs on freelancing sites like Upwork, Fiverr, Guru,Freelancer.com and others. Although some of these sites are a bit tricky to get jobs from for a beginner, there several resources that will help you boost your chances of landing your first job.

This is one short term online money making job that can grow to become long term.

2. Graphics designer

Like freelance writing, you can make money online as a graphics designer. Upwork is also a great place to get gigs as a graphics designer. What if you do not have the skills but will like to learn? There are sites where you can get free training in graphics design.

3. Web/App designer

One great aspect of having any tech related skill is that for the most part ,you can work from anywhere. The quickest way to build a portfolio and get more jobs on places like Upwork is to deliver excellent jobs. The more great jobs you turn in ,the more recommendations you get. Again, you might have no tech or web designing skills, mobile application designs a fast-rising niche. A lot of Small businesses want to develop Mobile apps for their businesses or ideas. You can learn how to develop mobiles with or without coding. Places like Udemy, Cousera and Allison offer free online training for Mobile app development.

4. Print -on-Demand business

A Print-On-Demand (POD) business is a great way to make money especially if you are creative. It requires no initial investment and you do not have to keep inventory. This business requires you to have a website where you can sell whatever you design. The popular POD items are T-shirts and accessories.

To start , you can sign up for a POD service, utilize their tools to design the items you wish to sell and upload the items to the website you will be selling from.

When people place orders for your design, the service prints the order and ships it to the customer. They charge the customer and give you your share. Sites like Zazzle, Redbubble, Sunfrog and Printful give upcoming POD business a better chance of making some money.

5. Virtual assistant

In this day and age where remote work is becoming the norm, it is not strange to see a core Administrative role like the assistant role going remote also. As a virtual assistant, you will be helping business owners handle a bunch of administrative jobs so that they can focus on the business. Anyone with a couple of hours a day to spare can take up this job. The learning time for this job is short and if you have prior experience in such a role, the better for you. You can find virtual assistant roles in most freelancing sites.

The tasks you will carry out as a Virtual assistant are regular secretarial tasks. There is a chance of turning this into a long term gig.

6. Online tutor

You can make money teaching kids and even adults online. You can teach the English Language to kids from non-English speaking countries. Almost every online tutor site will ask you to take some form of an exam or go through an assessment to prove that you are proficient in the subject you want to tutor. Teaching English to persons from non-English speaking countries is one of the easiest online tutoring jobs. You may, however, need to submit some form of proficiency in English certificates such as IELTS or TOFEL.

You can find online tutoring jobs in sites like Preply and Classgap.

This is actually a fun job that takes about 2 hours of your day and if you love teaching, then this job is a bonus.

7. Freelance Researcher

You love web surfing and spending time online. You know how to dig for information online and probably know how to find almost anything online, then you should jump on this.

There are people who will pay you to help themcarry out research on a topic or an entire project.

Like with most freelance jobs, getting started can be a bit slow, but as you continue to grow, your reputation grows also and so does your earning power .

Your University project was a good training for research, so you could leverage that experience to get your first research job. Check out most of the freelancing sites I have posted earlier for jobs in this field.

8.Translator

Being Bi-Lingual or Multi-Lingual can actuall be good for more than impressing people or navigating a foreign country.

You could work as a freelance translator and even help foreign students fine-tune their use of the English language faster. There are a lot of sites where you can find online translation jobs based on the language you speak fluently.

9. Affiliate marketing

Being an affiliate marketer, you are basically promoting third-party products for a commission on every sale. This is one of the popular ways to make money online and like all the other options, this one requires no form of financial investment, just time and a bit of sales pitch, after all, you have to sell to make money. There are several ways to carry out affiliate marketing.

You can signup for affiliate programs with sites like Jumia and GetResponse. In affiliate marketing, you promote the products or services on your website or social media pages by writing reviews about them, getting traffic and making sales.

10. E-commerce

Do not let the name fool you, every form of buying and selling that is done using the internet is E-commerce. That being said, you can make money online, by selling your products online. Generally, E-commerce is done using websites or landing pages like Shopify, but since we are trying to not spend any money here, why not start with your social media pages?

Whatsapp statuses have turned out to be great E-commerce pages.

What if you do not have something to sell? Check no 9. You can sell somebody’s product and make money from it.

11. Blogging

Technically, monetizing a blog can only happen when your blog is no longer hosted on a free platfor.

PS: Blogging is a long term investment.

Despite the snags in completely monetizing a free blog, you can actually start and grow a successful blog, earn money from sponsored ads, then proceed to make your blog premium, Yes free is good, but premium is better.

Setting up a blog and building it into a suucessful platform with enough trafi to attract sponsored Ads takes timeHowever, when done properly, it is a great way to earn money online for a long time.

There are some things you will need to do to run a successful blog

• Research and choose a niche
• Identify your audience and their needs.
• What questions does your audience have
• Find the answers to their questions and use them to publish quality questions
• Consistency is key. Ensure your content and the quality is consistent
• Ensure your content is optimized for search engine
• Create backlinks to your blog.

When your blog is ready to go premium, there are several ways to monetize it.

12. Guest Blogger

You may not have the time or patience it takes to build a successful blog,but there is another way to earn money from blogging. You can write for other blogs as a professional guest writer. Blogs are always looking for back links to help boost the blog’s ranking , so there is really no shortage of blogs to write for .

13. Social media manager

You might already be spending a lot of of time on social media so why not make money from it? Helping businesses to manage their social media account, generate content calendar and content, drive traffic to the social media page is an easy money-free way to earn money online.

14. Paid surveys

You can find paid survey jobs on sites like Vindale Research InboxDollars, Swagbucks, Ysense, and SurveySavvy.

The best way to earn good money with surveys is to make sure you sign up for as many survey sites as possible that way you can get more invites.

While so many persons complain of not making a fortune from paid surveys, it would serve you well to know that companies still pay thousands of dollars to get reviews of their product as it is a crucial part in the product development cycle.

But the secret is that they won’t put it out to the public so as to avoid spammers getting reviews from bots instead of humans. So they have a list of people in the survey industry and are actively sending out offers to them.

If you want to join Jackson’s list to receive high paying surveys update directly to your mail? Join Jackson survey’s list here

15. Publish and sell E-books on Amazon-KDP

A lot of persons have made lots of money from selling their E-books using Amazon’s KDP. With Amazon KDP, anyone can become a self-published Author and sell their E-books online.

That idea, that story you have in mind, it is time to write it. The one advantage you can count on when it comes to using Amazon to self-publish your E-book is the traffic. Self-published authors on Amazon make money from the volume of their sales as their prices are low.

16. YouTube

When it comes to making money online with YouTube, you have to be consistent and deliberate about it. The difference between those who make enough money from YouTube to make it a full-time career and those who don’t is the determination put into it.

Setting up a YouTube channel is the easiest part. The quickest way to gain subscribers and drive traffic is to become an expert in a particular niche and be consistent with your content quality.

You make money on YouTube from ads and through affiliate marketing

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17. Social Media Influencer

Social media influencers utilize their large following to advertise products and services. It is a form of affiliate marketing hosted on social media platforms. As an influencer, you influence your followers to shop a particular product by reviewing them on your social media pages.

A lot of times, the Influencer has a code that is used to place orders with the vendor. Influencers make money in different ways. They either get paid directly to advertise the products on their page or like with affiliate marketing, they get paid a certain commission on each sale

To be a social media influencer, you need to have a large number of followers and know how to engage them.

18. Transcriber

Transcribing is one freelancing niche a lot of persons have not tapped into.
It is understandable because people generally think writing and design when they hear freelancing.
However, if you are a good listener and you type fast, making money on places like Transcribeme is pretty easy.
The learning time is short and this is one gig that can grow into a long term thing.

19. Teach short courses on Udemy.

Yes, that’s right.
You may have used Udemy as a resource for learning, but you can also use it as a resource for making money online.
Udemy has a lot of categories where you can teach short courses based on your skill and make some money out of it.
You can check out the categories available on Udemy.

20. Gaming.

Who would have ever thought that the time spent in playing video games will turn into a lucrative business idea, one that can be converted to long term?

You can turn your hobby into a real decent cash cow.

Simply stream your games live on Twitch, YouTube or Facebook Gaming and get paid via donations from your viewers and advertising revenue.

Twitch is the world’s most popular video game live streaming service, a Twitch gamer can make $250-$300 per 100 subscribers. Facebook Gaming growing fast as well.

21. Sell videos and Photographs online

Phone photography is fast becoming a thing. People have started using their smartphones to create incredible images.
Do you have a knack for taking amazing pictures with your phone or camera? You can list your photographs on Shutterstock and Adobe Stock and make money from them.

22. Sell your creative arts online

Perhaps you are not a photography person, your niche is in creative arts.
There is a market for you.
Over the years Etsy has given creative artistes not only a way to make money online from selling their arts but also provided a community of support for them.
However, to list a product on Etsy cost 20 cents, hopefully, that is not too much.

23. Dropshipping

I especially love E-Commerce dropshipping because it requires no investment and no form of inventory.
How does it work?.
You simply create a website with the product listing of the products you will like to sell. Again, social media pages can suffice for this.
You will then source for the products after you have gotten the order from the customer.

24. Testing Apps and websites

Every day, thousands of new websites and apps are launched. One of the phases of product development is beta testing. It allows the product developers to know where to make improvement on usability and user interface.
You can make some cool money on the side, helping to test websites and apps for a couple of hours each day.
One of the most popular sites for this is User Testing.
You can also check out Tester Work.

25. Become a consultant

Who says your work experience can’t get you something extra on the side?

Depends on what they mean, you can trade your work experience for some cool cash by setting up an online consultancy business. With no degree or title!

You will be simply helping your audience solve problems based on your area of experience.

26. Editor/Proofreader

Like a freelance writer, you can get a paying gig as an editor. Almost every freelancing site has Editing gigs.
You have to be proficient in the language, understand grammar and be well detailed.
Some sites have in house qualification assessment you have to go through to make you eligible to take on editing gig.
The start off might be slow, but with good reviews, you begin to grow, so make your first impressions count! You may check our post about fiverr to see how get customers while working as an Editor/Proofreader from home.

27. Start and grow an authority affiliate site.

This is slightly different from affiliate marketing in the sense that it takes a while to build , but it is a long term investment .

What is an authority site?
It is literally a blog that focuses on a particular niche and creates contents to cover every angle of that niche or topic.
It is a long-term site that has contents tailor suited to the needs of its audience’s problems. You gain your audience’s trust by answering their questions. Then you begin to market products that solve such problems to them.
The average time needed to build such a business is about 2 years, but once you do, the money comes in.

28.Other freelancing gigs

I cannot completely exhaust all the freelancing options that are available to you, But if you visit sites like Upwork, Guru, Fiverr and co, you will find some freelancing requests or offers that you might enjoy doing. Personally I always recommend freelancing gigs as one of my go-to tips on how to make money online without paying anything

1. Skills
2. Keep learning
3. Keep searching.
4. Build your portfolio

Are there any other legit ways you know how to make money online without paying anything?

Kindly leave a comment below, I will love to hear from you.

Category: make money online

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