10 New Ways to Make Money Online

So you want to ditch your
corporate cubicle and join the
ranks of web workers? But you
have a mortgage, maybe a
dependent or two, and a taste
for Venti Mochas from
Starbucks? You can make
money in the new economy,
though it might not be as easy or cushy as keeping your old
economy job.
I’m not talking about advertising or affiliate marketing or selling
your junk on eBay. Those are so last millennium! I’m talking about
the new new economy.
1. Offer your professional expertise in an online
marketplace.These days, you can do more than just sell your
old books via Amazon and your old Coach handbags via eBay—
now you can sell your professional capabilities in a marketplace.
No longer are you limited to looking for a permanent or contract
job on Web 1.0 style job sites like Monster or CareerBuilder. The
new breed of freelancing and project-oriented sites let companies
needing help describe their projects. Then freelancers and small
businesses offer bids or ideas or proposals from which those
buyers can choose.

Elance covers everything from programming and writing to
consulting and design, while RentACoder focuses on software,
natch. If you’re a graphic designer, check out options like Design
Outpost or LogoWorks–you don’t have to find the customers,
they’ll come to you. Wannabe industry analysts might sign up for
TechDirt’s Insight Community, a marketplace for ideas about
technology marketing.
2. Sell photos on stock photography sites. If people regularly
oooo and aaaaah over your Flickr pics, maybe you’re destined for
photographic greatness or maybe just for a few extra dollars. It’s
easier than ever to get your photos out in front of the public,
which of course means a tremendous amount of competition, but
also means it might be an convenient way for you to build up a
secondary income stream. Where can you upload and market
your photos? Try Fotolia, Dreamstime, Shutterstock, and Big
Stock Photo.
3. Blog for pay. Despite the explosion of blogs, it’s hard to find
good writers who can turn around a solidly-written post on an
interesting topic quickly. GigaOM is always looking for bloggers
with great content ideas and solid writing skills. How do you get
noticed? Comment and link to blogging network sites. Write blog
posts that are polished and not overly personal (although showing
some personality is a plus).
4. Or start your own blog network. If you like the business
side of things–selling advertising, hiring and managing employees,
attracting investors–and have the stomach to go up against the
likes of Weblogs, Inc., GigaOmniMedia, b5media, maybe you
should make an entire business out of blogs. Don’t make the
mistake of thinking you’ll get a lot of time to write yourself though.
5. Provide service and support for open source software.
Just because the software is free doesn’t mean you can’t make
money on it–just ask Red Hat, a well-known distributor of Linux
that sports a market cap of more than four billion dollars. As a
solo web worker, you might not want to jump in and compete
with big companies offering Linux support, but how about
offering support for web content management systems like
WordPress or Drupal? After getting comfortable with your own
installation, you can pretty easily jump into helping other people
set them up and configure them.
6. Online life coaching. Who has time to go meet a personal
coach at an office? And don’t the new generation of web workers
need to be met by their coaches in the same way that they work:
via email, IM, and VoIP? You could, of course, go through some
life coaching certification program, but on the web, reputation is
more important than credentials. I bet Tony Robbins isn’t certified
as a life coach–and no one can argue with his success. For an
example of someone building up their profile and business online
as a coach, check out Pamela Slim of Ganas Consulting and the
Escape from Cubicle Nation blog.
7. Virtually assist other web workers. Freelancers and small
businesses desperately need help running their businesses, but
they’re not about to hire a secretary to come sit in the family
room and answer phone calls. As a virtual assistant, you might
do anything from making travel reservations to handling expense
reimbursements to paying bills to arranging for a dog sitter. And
you do it all from your own home office, interacting with your
clients online and by phone. You can make $20 and up an hour
doing this sort of work, depending on your expertise.
8. Build services atop Amazon Web Services. Elastic
computing on AWS is so cool… and so incredibly primitive right
now. Did you know that you can’t even count on your virtual
hard drive on EC2 to store your data permanently? That’s why
people are making money right now by offering services on top
of AWS. Make it easier for people to use Amazon’s scalability web
infrastructure like Enomaly has with elasticlive, a scalable web
hosting platform built on AWS.
9. Write reviews for pay or perks. If you blog for any length
of time on a particular topic–parenting, mobile phones, or PCs, for
example–you will likely be approached to do book or product
reviews. You can get free stuff this way, but are you selling your
soul? Is there any such thing as a free laptop? These are decisions
you’ll have to make for yourself, because no one agrees upon
what ethical rules apply to bloggers. Even less do people agree on
services like PayPerPost that pay you to write reviews on your
blog. Check out disclosure rules closely and see whether such a
gig would meet your own personal standards or not.
10. Become a virtual gold farmer. A half million Chinese now
earn income by acquiring and selling World of Warcraft gold to
gamers in other countries. If you’re not a young person living in
China, this probably isn’t a viable option for you. But what’s
intriguing about it is the opportunity to make real money working
in a virtual economy. People are making real-world money in
Second Life too.
Looking for more money-making ideas? Check out “10 More
New Ways to Make Money Online” for some great suggestions.
What other new ways do you know of to make money online?

Source: webworkerdaily.com/2007/02/22/10-new-ways-to-make-money-online/