Method #4

Cryptocurrencies

For those of you not familiar with cryptocurrencies, they are essentially just all-online tolkens that basically reflect the amount of work your computer has put contributed towards solving a long string of ever-increasingly complicated equations ( this is one of the most rudimentary descriptions of them possible).

Cryptocurrencies act on certain websites in the same way money as we all know it does. The difference is that Cryptocurrencies NEVER actually bear a physical form and only exist online.

The most popular Cryptocurrency available are called "Bitcoins." They were developed in 2009 and upon their introduction into the world, were worth about 1 cent / 5 bitcoins. Hardly worth the power it takes to "mine" them ( "mining" in this sense means, designate processor power on your computer to solve aforementioned problems). However, something curious has happened recently as their value has increased exponentially (see chart ).

When I started mining them in early 2010, I averaged about 75 bitoins/day but stopped when I had about 1500 - 1675 because they weren't increasing in value back then and were essentially good for nothing - that plus I am inherently lazy.

With the exuberant amount of value Bitcoins eventually received during their bubble I actually didn't cash them out like many people did, but instead invested them in other forms of Cryptocurrencies - more specifically, Litecoin - speculating that they too will one day enjoy explosive growth in the same way.

If someone was going to invest in Cryptocurrencies today, I would highly advise AGAINST mining Bitcoins and aim more for the less established currencies - such as Litecoin, Namecoin, etc - because of a recent development of certain machines called ASIC miners ( Application-Specific Integrated Circuit ) which will give people that are willing to invest in them such a large foot up over everyone else, that everyone that wants to mine passively will almost certainly spend more money on power than they will earn by mining Bitcoins.

Mining less established coins on the other hand would be wise because of a few reasons with the most important ones being: there is not NEARLY as much competition when it comes to mining any currency other than Bitcoin and the fruits of your labor will be MUCH more significant if they explode in value like Bitcoin did.

This method is a bit of a risk - in that you may pay more in power than the value of the coins are worth - but a risk that appears to be a good one to take. If you would like to know more about Cryptocurrencies, let me know in the comment section and I'll add it to the page.

Method #3

Online gaming.

Yes. You read that right. I have a section on how to make money from online gaming.

Online gaming can be one of the most profitable ways to make money online - and fun - but is also one of the most volatile.

One way you can go about making money online is by picking a game you like and do some research to see if there is much in the way of tournaments for that game and kick butt at those tournaments. Online gaming tournaments are so popular in some places, that they ( called E-Sports ) have actually become the most popular spectator sports in the region. The most notable of these is South Korea and Starcraft: Brood War which has evolved into Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm. But other up and coming ones include League of Legends and DOTA 2. In the USA two of the most popular games for people to play professionally are the Madden Series and Call of Duty.

The methods above have the potential to earn a person hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, but the one caveat is that, like sports most Americans are familiar with - such as Football, Basket Ball, Baseball, etc - competition for one of those high paying spots is cut throat and will require hours upon hours upon hours of practicing ... and a really patient girl friend! But at least you will be having fun!

Becoming a force to be reckoned with in a single game is one way to make money, but the way I have made most of my money is actually from selling online items for games such as Diablo III and World of Warcraft.

(I'm going to give a VERY abbreviated version of this here, but if you would like to know more, leave a message in the comment section for what you would like me to elaborate on and I would be more than happy to)

My most recent jackpot was through the game Diablo III. This game is almost a gift to anyone that wants to make some insanely easy money since there is actually a component of it - called the "Auction House" - that streamlines the sale of online items, into money that gets deposited directly into your paypal account.

When the game first came out, the Auction House was not ready yet, so what I did - along with other like minded folks - was find as much in-game gold and rare items as possible and waited for the auction house to go online. When it did, items could sell for as much as $250 and gold sold for $1/100k gold. To put that into perspective, a well-geared character could earn as much as 300k gold/hour. "Oh that's only 3/hr. I could make that doing XY and Z." Think again my friend.

But that's where it gets sticky. While playing the game by hand and making $3/hr isn't the worst deal in the world but there are programs often referred to as "Bots" that essentially play the game for you, slaying the monsters of Hell, picking up gold and collecting rare loot. Long story short, I invested $1500 into a powerful gaming computer and made:

300k gold/hr

Bots don't get tired so they ran 24/7

It took Blizzard ( the company that created diablo 3 ) about a month to get the auction house online, so that was a month of me hoarding gold and items:

(300k g/hr) * (24hrs) * (28 days ) = 201,600k gold 

( $1/100k gold ) = $201,600 from selling online items... No joke. Unfortunately I didn't get to keep the full amount since Blizzard takes 15% of sales and PayPal takes another 15% and then of the remaining 70% I had to pay some hefty taxes. At the end of the day I had a little over $80k - which all went to school loans.

One final tip is that depending on the computer you use, you can run multiple copies of the game at once, after the peak of selling gold, I got to a maximum of 8 characters collecting gold/items for me at once.

The downside with making money by capitalizing on games release/demand is that profits drop off sharply at some point. As of now, I think the price of gold is 10 million gold/25 cents and because having a computer program play for you is against the Terms of Service set forth by Blizzard, if they catch you "cheating" in this way, they could ban your account - which simply means that you would have to pay $60 for another game serial key and build the character from scratch. Also, you have to keep an eye on the video game market to see which games are coming out soon and which ones carry the heaviest demand - Diablo III was/is the best selling PC game of all time.

If you don't believe me, do a simple google search to confirm everything that was said here and I welcome anyone to post opposing views in the comments section.

Rating:

When game first came out: 10/10.

Now: 3/10 for Diablo III and 4.5/10 for World of Warcraft.

Method #2

Surveys, Reference, and Microtasks

There are certain sites that allow you to complete a survey for a certain sum of money. The amount of money awarded is usually related in someway to qualifying for the survey, being the demographic the company wishes to survey; and the length of the survey, which can range from 5 minutes to 2 hours.

The amount of Surveys on any particular site is limited, but by signing up for multiple survey sites - I have signed up for 7 - you make yourself much more available to fill out surveys. Much like what as said about completing HIT's is that completing surveys can be very monotonous work, but you do get paid nonetheless.

On many of the survey sites you may end up visiting, they also may have a "Special offers" or just "Offers" section that allows you to visit a certain site for a certain amount of money, fill out a credit card application, or even by simply installing a program that will allow a company to track your web surfing habits to better target certain demographics.

And finally there is also the business of providing "referrals" for sites - that is, getting other people to try the site for themselves. The thing with this method is that it takes time for you to develop enough of a follower base to get to possibly sign up. Starts slow, but picks up quickly. Some of the ways I have gotten people to check the site(s) out is by posting the link on my Twitter, Facebook, having it in my signature for many of the forums I frequent, and even by posting simple fliers around my university.

One clever little piece of info is that when people do signup/visit the site via a referral - rather than going and signing up without one - is that the person signing up ALSO gets a small bonus.

One thing you will soon learn about making money online is that every little bit counts, especially if you have your hand dipped in several pots at once!

My favorite site is This one.

Ratings:
Surveys - 3/10

Micro tasks - 2/10

Referrals - starts at 2/10 but eventually has worked up to 7/10.

Method #1

HITs - Human Intelligence Tasks

So one of the easiest/straight forward ways to earning some cash online is through completing HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks) which are micro tasks that cannot be completed or automated by computers.

Such tasks may include:

1. Transcribing Subtitles/Captions for movies.

2. Transcribing an audio file

3. Identifying all of the street lights in a photo - or something equally as random.

4. Get provided with a search term that you paste into google, and describe what your search results came up with.

5. Writing short articles - get paid /100 words.

Review of completing HITS

Completing HITs can lead you to have to learn interesting stuff you would otherwise not have come into contact with otherwise. With that being said, most of the work available can get to be quite tedious and may take long enough such that you may find that your time is worth more to you than the money earned. There are opportunities to make more decent sums of money out there - such as transcribing - but those jobs can be hard to come by at times.

Score: 2/10

Lets do it guys!

After reading this page, you will find out how I make close to $6,000 per month from ONLY doing things online. I know this may sound "Too good to be true" but it really isn't. If you actually read the article you will see that some of the ways I make money online are completely different than almost any other site that tells you how to make money online.

I will describe each method that I am familiar with and use myself. After a short description I will provide a review for each method so you can see which you think would best suit your tastes.