Over the decade, the internet has slowly integrated into our daily lives. We use the internet for entertainment, socialization, and for buying or selling goods. These days you can do almost anything while using the internet. Be it grocery shopping, or paying for bills. And because the internet economy has been a huge success, many businesses and companies are slowly adapting to this fast-paced and interconnected market.

Earning money online can be as simple as looking for job posts on forums such as the Empire27 forum where you can read all about jobs and search for articles related to remote work. Remote work is another term that has recently been attracting a lot of job seekers – especially that of the newer generation, who are enticed by jobs regardless of their location because the tasks and jobs are available just by being connected to the internet. It is a global and forward approach to engaging with the fast-growing community online.

But just how possible is it really to earn legit money online? First, let’s define…

What is “Earning Online”?

As we found out earlier, earning online is a form of making money with the use of the internet. It may be as complex as running a website or blog and making money from posting ads, or as simple as selling your services to online companies that operate on the internet. There are various ways to go about it. Let’s just define it as earnings made from different sources of the internet. The income that you get from these jobs can be typically categorized into two.

On the internet, there are 2 types of ways you can earn income — active and passive.

Active Income

Active jobs online are the typical jobs that you have that earn you a salary after rendering a service or task. Many of which can either be full-time, part-time, freelance, or contractual work. It is the most common type of online work. It can be simplified as putting in time in exchange for money.

Passive Income

In theory, passive income puts in the work once, and then the money should roll in. Its money is earned from activities where you have little to no active involvement. It is like earning money through posting advertisements on your website or vlog and earning money through it, or investing money once and seeing a high return of capital in the future.

Proven Ways to Make Money Online

Whether active or passive, earning online is certainly possible. All you need is the internet and your phone. Here are some possible ways to make money online.

1. Become a freelancer

Being a freelancer means working as a self-employed, independent worker rather than being employed by a company or business. Freelancers usually work part-time or on a short-term basis. Because of the wide array of jobs a freelancer can do, it has become a rising trend in the online earning scene. According to a study conducted by Upwork, a freelancing website, there are more than 57 million freelancers to date. Another popular website is Fiverr. Tasks in Fiverr usually paid 5$ minimum, hence the name. It’s also a good website to check out if you are planning to outsource any service.

2. Start a YouTube Channel

Did you know that it’s possible to make passive income from starting a Youtube channel? It is estimated that Youtubers or Bloggers get paid between 25k – 350k PHP per month! There are several ways to do it. The most common way is being paid by ads generated from people who watch your videos. But not everyone gets paid instantly. To start, you’ll need about 4000 watch hours, and at least 1000 subscribers. When you generate enough views (about 10,000 subscribers)you can venture out into selling products, promoting brands (sponsorships), and affiliate marketing. Just keep making those viral video content and the money will follow!

3. Do Amazon tasks

Amazon is one of the most successful start-up companies ever. Jeff Bezos, its founder, is also one of the richest men on the planet. Although this job won’t make you a millionaire like Jeff, it’s possible to earn a decent amount of cash from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk or MTurk. MTurk is an online marketplace where you can find tasks or micro-jobs that you can perform online. Tasks include data validation, research, content moderation, and so on. The most common job on MTurk is tagging images. Most images that we see online are tagged with keywords in order for them to appear on the search engine browsers like Google. However, there are still a lot of them that aren’t tagged or organized yet that is websites like Mturk offers to pay individuals for doing so.

4. Sell items on Facebook Marketplace

If you’re willing to venture out into a small business online, it is quite profitable these days to set up a shop on Facebook. You can sell by creating a page for your store, or Livestream your shop to your viewers! Selling your items on Facebook is free and does not require much to start selling. Just be aware of bogus buyers and scammers!

5. Be an Online English Teacher

Teaching English as a second language for those who aren’t native speakers has been a very popular choice for those who seek remote or online employment. All you need is a computer, webcam, headset and fast internet speed. It has been around the online earning scene for quite a while now and by this time, there are many companies that accept foreign tutors, especially Filipinos. Some of the ESL platforms include: 51talk and WeblioPH

6. Sell images on Shutterstock

If you enjoy taking photographs of your surroundings you can definitely sell some of those to websites like Shutterstock. On average one stock photo can sell for about 30-50 pesos. Put in a couple of 1000 images across other platforms, then it is possible to make an extra 5-7k PHP in a month.

7. Answer paid surveys

There are many companies out there that seek information from customers. These can be done through the use of survey websites. In return for participating in their survey questions, you are paid a few pesos per survey. Check out MOBORG and Milieu for Filipino targeted clients.

8. Trade or invest in stocks and currencies

Trading and investing is a form of passive income you can earn from the internet. It has been proven to be a very lucrative form of earning money online and there are certainly thousands of people who have profited from the careful timing and reading of the market. However, trading and investing come with a risk. One should always remember not to invest all of his/her capital or they might risk losing a lot of money. Only trade money you can afford to lose. Before you dip your toes into this last portion of our article, it is important to study and learn first all that you need to know about trading and investing.

The internet has made it possible to earn money from our fingertips just by being online. Moreover, earning online provides us with the unique opportunity to have more freedom to work wherever and whenever we’d like. Being connected to the internet gives us endless possibilities to learn, venture, and gain innumerable skills that would prove valuable later on.