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There are multiple ways to generate an income on the internet, I won’t attempt to cover them all, just the main approaches that I have found helpful.  Like with most things in life, the more you put in, the more you get out.  The internet is a very competitive place, that is constantly evolving, but there are still some great ways of making money.

#1 Quick and Easy Ways to Make Money

If you are just after some extra bucks and you want the money relatively quickly, then the two sites that I would recommend at the moment would be Amazon Mechanical Turk and Bubblews.  You won’t make a living from these sites in my experience, but you might make $15 to $20 with half a day’s work.

Amazon MechanicalTurk was the first earning site that I found where I felt I could actually make dollars, rather than cents.  Unfortunately there has been a downward pressure on wages over the years, but MTurk is still a good site if you just need a few bucks quickly.  You complete basic tasks for requesters, the requester okays it afterwards and hey presto, you’ve got your money!  You can either spend it on Amazon products online or transfer it to your bank account. 

Bubblews is the new kid on the block.  In essence, you write an article that is at least 400 characters long (yes, characters, not words!) and post it on their page, as well as socially interact with other “Bubblers” (like and comment on their pages).  In return you earn a slice of the money that Bubblews generates from advertising.  You typically earn around $1 per article in my experience, but you are limited to writing 10 per day.  They are very quick and easy to write, however, as you can write about more or less any topic.  Some people claim bigger earnings, however.

#2 More Involved but Higher Earners

Even if you work hard, it’s unlikely that you will be able to earn a full time living with MTurk or Bubblews (certainly if you live in the USA, anyway!).  If you want to earn hundreds, or even thousands of dollars per week, you might want to consider trying a “passive income” strategy.  Essentially, you post articles and wait for the money to roll in from the associated advertising – that’s the idea anyway!  It’s not quick (think in terms of months rather than days or weeks!) but you do stand to earn more in the long run, in my experience.

Some sites make it easy for you, all you have to do is write the articles and they do all the rest.  The two sites of this type that I’ve had the most success with are HubPages and Squidoo.

HubPages has had a fairly turbulent time over the three years I’ve been a writer there, mainly due to the love/hate relationship with Google, who have a lot of control over how much traffic the site gets via their search engine.  The good times have been very good, however, and even the bad times I would say have been worthwhile for me.

(The HubPages Learning Center and forums can also a great place for a beginner to learn about all basics of driving traffic to your webpages, how search engines work, etc)

Squidoo is another content site like HubPages.  It took longer for Squidoo to grow on me, which was a shame, because I severely underestimated how lucrative Squidoo could be for a long time.  Unfortunately they got a mauling from Google last year which severely affected traffic and earnings.  I believe I’m seeing some tentative signs of a recovery at the time of writing, however.  We may never see a full return to the "golden age", though.

#3 Advanced Earning: More Control and More Money

Having your own blog/website might sound like a difficult thing to achieve but it is actually surprisingly easy.  

There are two main advantages.   

• The first is that you have far more control over what your blog/site looks like and what goes on it: for example, you can decide what sort of advertising and how much that you want to have on it.  
•  The second advantage is that you can potentially earn more money, if you can find a gap in the market, as the content websites like Squidoo and HubPages always get a cut when you use them.

You will need to buy a domain name, purchase hosting, and, if you aren’t an experienced coder like me, you will need some software to set up the blog/site, such as Wordpress.  I use Hostgator to do all three of the above things and it’s remarkably quick to set up (10 or fifteen minutes). 

I have written a brief guide to the above: How to Create Your Own Earning Blog or Website in 5 Easy Stages.

(There is some discussion on the internet as to which host is better out of Bluehost and Hostgator.  I have to say that Hostgator edges it for me, I have used them for years now and find them 100% reliable and their customer services to be exceptional.)

TIP: Copy and paste my coupon code "mturkcoupon" into the box when it asks you if you "Have a coupon code?" on the page where you enter your domain name on the Hostgator website, and you will get Hostgator for a reduced price! 

Disclosure: Some of the links above are affiliate links.  That means that I may receive a small commission payment if you use them to purchase a product or service.  Absolutely no additional costs are incurred by yourself, however.  I only endorse or recommend products and services that I use myself and rate highly (and many of my recommendations are free anyway).  I appreciate the support of everyone who uses my affiliate links to buy a product or service.