Best Ways to Make Money Online
Legitimate Ways to Make Money Online
Market research companies like to collect data on consumer trends and spending habits so major brands can learn how to better market their products.
This research is most often conducted via online questionnaires, and they’re always on the lookout for new survey participants.
If you’re a first-time survey taker, we recommend starting out with They’re currently offering a free $10 sign-up bonus and they’re the largest legitimate survey site in the world.
Here’s how Swagbucks works:
✔️ Register: Build your profile (takes less than 5 mins).
✔️Earn Rewards: Complete surveys and earn rewards in the form of “Swagbucks”.
✔️Get Paid: Redeem your Swagbucks for PayPal cash deposits or e-gift cards.
If you’ve ever spent time taking paid online surveys, you know that you can earn money online every month while sitting at home in your PJs. You won’t get rich, but a few minutes a day generally adds up to a few dollars, and few dollars a day is enough to cover a utility bill by the end of the month.
Other survey sites we like include:
- Survey Junkie – Up to $45 per survey.
- Vindale Research – $1 sign-up bonus.
If you’d like in-depth information about the survey sites before getting started, you can read more about them in their respective DollarSprout reviews.
2. Leverage Money Making Apps
Inaction is often the byproduct of not keeping things simple. In short, stop looking all over the place for some weird way to make money and just get started with something.
An easy way to do exactly this is to leverage some sort of money making app. Top trusted online earning sites, such as Lyft and Postmates, are just two of the many gigs where all you need is a smartphone and vehicle to get started. These companies on connect people looking to make extra money with consumers who need their services.
If someone needs a ride somewhere, you give them a ride through Lyft.
If someone can’t go grocery shopping, you grab their grub and deliver it to them through
No exhausting job search. No interviews. Just an application and a background check and you’ve got yourself a new side hustle in just a few days’ time.
How to get started with Postmates:
First, start by downloading the Postmates app and following the setup instructions.
Once you’re accepted into the driver fleet, Postmates will send you a free delivery bag and prepaid card so you can get started.
Postmates requirements:
- Be at least 18 years of age.
- Motor vehicles used for delivery must be properly insured.
- You can deliver via car, truck, van, motorcycle, scooter, bicycle, or even by foot.
- You must consent to, and pass, a background check.
- An Android or iOS device capable of running the app.
Next, watch this short video by Jon from The Rideshare Guy. He does an excellent job explaining the ins and outs of the app and shares a few tips on how to earn money online with Postmates’ surge pricing feature.
Be strategic about the number of orders you take on and where you deliver to. Subtle changes in your delivery routine can make or break your expected hourly earnings.
Strategies that can boost hourly earnings include:
- Stacking multiple deliveries within a one-hour period.
- Keeping track of high ROI areas in your town.
- Leveraging blitz pricing and otherwise high-volume order times.
- Being personable and delivering order receipts in person (increasing the likelihood of receiving a tip).
3. Cash in on Sign-Up Bonuses
Want $15 for a few minutes of your time? Of course you do.
Lucky for you, rewards sites like Ebates and Dosh can make that happen. These sites offer cash incentives for people to download their apps.
What’s the catch? None, really. The above apps, and other cash back apps
like them, act as affiliates for online merchants. Whenever you make a purchase through one of the apps, they get a small commission from the store. They then pass a portion of that commission back to you as “cash back”.
Example #1: You buy a pair of Nike shoes through the Ebates app. Ebates gets a $10 commission because you purchased the shoes through them, but then they give $7 of it back to you. It’s basically a way to get sale prices on things that aren’t otherwise on sale.
Better yet, you can sometimes double (or even triple) dip and use the apps on top of normal store sales and coupon offers.
Example #2: Nike has a site-wide 20% off sale. Ebates offers an additional 8% off and you have a store coupon code, for $10 off, that you found on the internet. A $60 pair of shoes suddenly comes in at $36. Not bad.
Since they’re free, we recommend signing up for both. Any time you go to make an online purchase, just compare deals between the apps and use the best one.
For more information on the cash back apps (along with savvy hacks for earning more money), check out their respective reviews.
4. Try Trim
They say a penny saved is a penny earned.
That same adage looks a lot better when those pennies are replaced with dollars. And while this next app doesn’t exactly allow you to make money per se, it’s importance can’t be understated.
Enter Trim. An app that can save you hundreds of dollars a year with almost no effort on your part.
How is this possible?
Well, Trim starts by taking a look at your monthly spending and then looks for places where you’re overspending — like abnormally high bills or subscriptions you forgot about.
You might be surprised to see how much you’re spending on things you don’t really need.
The best part about Trim is that it can actually lower your bills.
Once the app shows you all the subscriptions you spend money on, you pick the ones you want to cancel and Trim does it for you. Next, the app goes after those high bills and actually reaches out to the companies on your behalf to negotiate a lower payment.
There’s almost nothing in this world that we hate more than high bills and elevator music. Let Trim handle both for you.
5. Make Money Online by Watching Videos
I mentioned Swagbucks earlier as a reputable survey site, but it turns out that taking surveys isn’t the only thing they’ll pay you to do.
You can also make money online with Swagbucks by watching short, ad-like videos on a wide variety of topics (like entertainment, news, sports, and more).
Perks include:
- A $10 sign-up bonus for new users
- The ability to watch videos on your computer, tablet, or mobile phone
- A wide array of entertaining clips from leading content sites
Again, it’s probably fair to assume you won’t get rich by doing this, but setting your phone down and letting the videos play through on silent seems like a pretty easy way to make money online to us.
6. Earn Money Online by Surfing the Web
InboxDollars is a market research company that pays you to use their search engine instead of some of the more prominent ones like Google and Bing.
The idea here is that they will learn more about people search habits and uncover patterns that may be valuable to companies trying to better understand consumers.
InboxDollars isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme, but if you’re wanting to know how to make money online for free, it never hurts to earn a few extra bucks for searching the web like you normally would.
Here’s how InboxDollars works:
- $5 sign-up bonus for new users.
- You get $0.15 for every 29 qualified searches you complete.
- Get $0.05 each time you enter searches on 4 or more days in a week (Gold Members get $0.10).
Want to learn more about InboxDollars? Check out our InboxDollars Review.
