What's the easiest way to make money online?

Yes, you are right. I think the best and easiest way to earn money at home is through the internet.

You can either earn money through

1. Take Surveys Online

You can try to make money by taking survey online. However, it is not possible to make a living by filling up surveys and you will not be able to make a sustainable income. However, it is the simplest and the most straightforward way to make money online as it does not require any special skills and qualification.

Below you can find a list of legitimate paid survey sites you can sign up.

• Pinecone Research
• PaidViewPoint
• Opinion Outpost
• Swagbucks
• iPoll
• Vivatic
• Global Test Market
• MySurvey
• iPanel
• Ipsos

However, there are pros and cons making money through paid survey sites.

• Pros:
• Easy and straightforward
• You do not need any special qualification
• Free and you do not need to have special tools
• You can participate and take surveys anywhere you want
• All you need is a laptop/ smartphone and internet connection
• Cons:
• Small rewards from taking surveys. It is possible to make $5 per month if you work extremely hard
• Easily get screened out in the middle of the survey
• Lose all rewards after expiration duration
• It does not allow you to make a sustainable income. You need to constantly participate in taking surveys every day.

1. Affiliate Marketing

Alternatively, you can become an affiliate marketer.

I graduated as an engineer and after years of working 9-to-5, I got fed up with the routine work and decided to do something else that could earn me an opportunity to spend quality time with my family and make extra cash.

I started as a blogger and expected to make some extra cash like anyone else. To my surprise, it turned out well where I made more money than what I could as an engineer.

My preferred way is to become an affiliate marketer because it allows me to make a lucrative and sustainable income through blogging. You can easily make $300 - $500 per day by becoming an affiliate marketer.

To make money from blogging (affiliate marketing), First, you need to find your niche. A niche means a target or a subject that you are going to write about. A niche can be your interest, a hobby or a skill. Any subject can be your niche, for example, people blog about collecting match boxes, bug photography, work-out program, or even daily political scandals and etc.

Remember one thing is when you are finding your niche, avoid being too broad with your selection. For example, do not blog about Work Out Tips and Motorbike at the same time. Both of them fall on different categories and they just can't simply be put together. You could do a post about your niche (e.g. camera, guitar, trekking) and include affiliate links to any paid ones (e.g. Amazon or ShareASale).

Create great content is not enough to make a lucrative income online today. You will have to make use of social media platform to promote your content and drive traffic to purchase items via your product reviews.

My site earned my $7,000 within six months. Of course, I worked extremely hard at the beginning and success did not happen overnight. I spent almost 5 hours per day after work to make it worked. As my site matures, I spend 1 to 2 hours every day writing, optimizing my site, connect to social media and reply readers' emails.

The best thing is the earning potential doesn't stop there and the revenue growth is still climbing up every single day (provided I publish articles regularly). At the time of writing, my site is making 5-figure revenue every month.

Anyway, my answer is if you're passionate about a subject and you have decent writing skills, blogging definitely could be an alternative career path for you to make a living. All you need is to become an affiliate marketer.

You will also find the pros and cons working as an affiliate marketer.

• Pros:
• The earning potential is enormous due to the exponential growth of the internet users
• It allows you to make sustainable income online
• It allows you to quit your nine-to-five job and allow you to spend quality time with your families
• It is a legitimate online business
• There are many affiliate programs on the internet you can participate (e.g. Amazon, ShareASale, Apple, FreeflyVR)
• Cons:
• It requires a lot of effort and time
• You need to blog from time to time (constantly publish content)
• You need to learn how to do affiliate marketing
• You can’t do it alone. It requires mentor-ship. You can do it alone with trial and error method but it takes a while to figure out the methodology
• Easy to get scammed as a newbie as there are many so called internet Guru out there to steals your money and only deliver empty promises.

I agree it is not easy to stand out on the market as there are millions of bloggers out there. However, it is still possible for a newbie to make a sustainable income online by choosing the right niche. For example, everyone is talking about virtual reality now. If you are interested in VR and you blog about, I believe there will be a huge potential in making good money from it. Note: Freefly VR offers affiliate program to earn commission.