What can YOU do working from home

We'll take it you've already tried the various work from home ads, considered envelope stuffing, telephone answering services etc., and have had your baptism of fire sending off cheques for £15, or £50, to some millionaire who's promised to share his secrets with you.

And you've figured that none of that works. Well, you've come to the one place on the net that won't ask you for a penny to explain how you can make a million.

If you belong to the generation that does not believe that the world owes you a living, and you're willing to work for your daily bread, why work for somebody else? Here's a collection of ideas of what you can do at home working for YOU - start your own business!

1. Running a website or a web based business. No! You do not need to be an expert in anything web related. You don't even need to know a lot about computers or how to build/manage websites. The trick is to identify what exactly you are good at, what you like doing, and open your mind to ways you can make money out of it. Or find someone who's already done it and buy him out. Buying a website.

2. Writing articles for other websites. Again, no special skills required. You don't need to be a published author, you don't even need to be good at writing! You can be stumped by spelling, perplexed by punctuations, and absolutely grim at Grammar but you can still make a living by writing (Yes, it's not all articles. There's demand for things like putting together useful resources, browsing through various websites in a particular niche and compiling a list of the best ones, collecting phone numbers off varioussites in a particular industry and building a directory, and various other opportunities that don't require a PhD in English Lit).

3. Buying and selling products youare familiar with on auction websites like eBay and QXL - from doll houses to motorcycle spares. 

4. Converting your hobbies or skills into a business from home (which may or may not use the internet). Some examples:

- Genealogy

- Pet Grooming/Minding

- Pottery/Painting/Other Craft Work/Teaching Craft Classes

- Knitting, Needlework, Alteration Services

- Baking/Cooking/Teaching Cooking

- Recording/Editing/Archiving of Photos/Music/Video

- Child Care, Teaching/Tutoring

- Reading (proofreading)

- Languages (translating)

Put your hobby/skill to work for you....

5. Other local opportunities: Apart from hobbies and skills there may be openings in your local area for a particular type of service that is not currently being met. And, the laws of supply and demand dictate that if there's no competition people are likely to be willing to pay you a high price for your services. Some ideas:

- House/Office Cleaning

- House Minding

- Door to door leaflet/local paper/coupon distribution

- Window Cleaning

6. Virtual Assistant opportunities: A VA is described as an independent entrepreneur providing administrative,
creative and/or technical services from the comfort of their own homes/home-offices. There are several organisations on the web catering for and advising VAs. Like this one. And work seems to be plentiful.

101 Ways to Make Money Online

There's no catch and I'm not trying to sell you an ebook. Or anything (read about conmen who do). None of the links in this article are "affiliate" links that generate revenue. I'm not even signing you up for a "Make Money Online" newsletter to pump you full of ads - the newletter I offer you exists to expose the tricks of the trade and, like this article, helps protect against the predators out there. 

Some ideas here are nice and have halos, others smell of dog urine ... but all these methods allegedly generate lotso dosho, and every single one is legal at least somewhere. There may be overlap; some ideas may be repeated (and some may not be covered at all), but I'm still maintaining there are 101 ways to make money online, partly because it makes a good headline. No, solely because it makes a good headline. It sucked YOU in, didn't it?

You won't get anything for nothing, but there are a lot of things you can get for nearly nothing. Like getting to pick holes in my list. Go ahead. Pick holes and then link back here to send floods of visitors to see how stupid I am.

I've put together a lot of these ideas from thousands of hours discussing businesses for sale with their owners. They've shared with me how their businesses operate, how they make money online, how they built their businesses up etc. They've given me access to their traffic stats, their earnings and accounts and tax figures. Many even gave me access to their Adsense or other "main earner" accounts. Some of those businesses were so irresistible that I bought them. And sold them. And bought others. It's a game. I love it.

Most of these business ideas can be run from anywhere in the world, even the United States, Australia and other non-English speaking countries. For consistency sake all figures are quoted in US dollars.

Each method is summarised in a single small para so appreciate it's not the complete unabridged version. And, no, I haven't tried each one, so out of the 101 business models to make money online 102 may be completely dud. But at our forums I do expand on some of the money-making ideas that worked for me.

More disclaimers will come when people sue me (suing can make you money, see #66)

Finding business ideas:

1. Spend all day browsing Site For Sale forums (like the list we have here) for the myriad ways people earn money online. People looking to sell their sites actually tell you how they make money! Pick one that suits you. Research it a bit, and away you go to start your own business. Or use a search engine to find ways to make money online. It seems so easy that it's almost impossible to find someone who doesn't know how to do it. But why stop at one search engine (SE)? Most people get to less than 1% of the top qualify info they're seeking because they rely on just one SE, don't have the vaguest idea of advanced search features available, and don't know the benefits to be had using specialised SEs, local SEs etc. ). More search ideas. Thousands of people have made huge amounts of money on the most unlikely of ideas.

2. Bundle the two above to tell other people how to make money online. They always want to know. It doesn't matter if you don't know yourself, you can still charge them for it. Trust me, over 90% of the people selling "Learn How To Make Money Online" products just read a few ebooks and now pretend they are experts. Don't go spending money on internet cons promising to make you a millionaire. Here's how to spot them.

3. Be more inventive with your search. Look for small business franchise newsletters. Or for home jobs in your particular niche or hobby. (And check point #2 above for those specialised SEs). You can also go through the appropriate DMOZ categories.

But using "search" is just the start of the game. There are simply so, so many ways. We hope you hang around to find out.

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4. Like the guy you can pay to stick a message in a bottle for you and throw it into the sea. He's made tens of thousands of dollars already. And there are several otherslike him in all parts of the world. They really are cluttering up our waterways. Do you live near a sea or river? Join the cleanup of those bottles and get your council to contribute. 

Domains 

5. The dot com gold rush made many millionaires but there's still plenty of money in domain real estate and still some good catches available. A good dot com may be difficult to find now. But there are a lot of gTLDs and ccTLDs from the .info to .eu to .tv to .co.in to .co and they all present opportunities being discussed in several good forums. Put your thinking hat on, buy a famous word domain for a few dollars and put it up on the domain selling sites.

6. Lost your thinking hat? Hang out at SEDO. DNForurms, Afternics and other places where domains are bought and sold. Provided you learn enough about the market to recognise bargains you could make a living from just buying existing domains and reselling them.

7. If you're smart you'll run dictionary checks against available domain names and auto-check them against search volumes (using OST,Wordtracker etc.) for that term and Pay Per Click (PPC) rates in the major ad networks (example) to work out which ones are likely to be more profitable (how to make money with PPC). If you can pick up the domain for a profitable term that's searched for often you can use a domain parking program. Or post a little bit of relevant content and get a link or two ... and the search engines will start sending you traffic. If the phrase people are typing in coincides exactly with your domain name it gives you a great head start with SEs.

8. If you're smart AND a linguist, you'd be doing that in multiple languages. And not paying for any domain till you've tried it free for five days to see if it does indeed get any type-in traffic (and how well that traffic converts). After you've tried it for five days and dropped it there's nothing to stop you immediately picking it up again for another five day trial. Strange, but true. It's not kiting, it's legal.

9. Misspellings. Massive opportunities still exist in the misspelling/typo market. People trying to get elsewhere land on your site instead ... and you sell them stuff (or use the domain parking idea). Some even tempt fate by making PPC opportunties out of typosquatting on trademarks. Finding typos has never been easier. There are many tools that will find misspellings for you. How easy can it get? 

10. Domain parking and type-in traffic: People sometimes guess at URLs. If they want a plumber they may try plumber.com though they've never used that site themselves. Find terms that people may be typing in (see our guide), buy the domain and populate it with ads. There are several ad programs tomonetise your parked domains. Or combine this with the previous idea to buy plummer.com or similar typo domains to make money online.

11. Drop catches. People sometimes forget to renew their domains and these expire. Picking them up will give you some remnant traffic from sites that link to this domain/people who've bookmarked it etc. In some cases the traffic can be pretty high. Provided you're fast enough to replace the copyrighted content that was there with something else you can make quite a profitable business from doing nothing else but this.

12. A variation on the above. Sell the domain back to the previous owners. Note that you may want to tread carefully and get familiar with the rules for that TLD before you start sending off ransom notes. For example, with ICANN (domains that end in .com, for example) the moment you send the previous owners an email saying you've got their domain and you'll give it back for $10K... you've lost. It can't look like a ransom demand. Be reasonable and read the small print of the UDRP. No UDRP required if you're sitting hostage on twitter.com/theircompanyname or the equivalent at blogger, myspace or other big destination. LOL, watch them kick themselves and sack their web advisors who told them about taking the "dot info" but omitted to mention the importance of protecting the brand by owning the associated myspace directory (and others)! And it costs you nothing!

13. Run a domain management service. Hundreds of thousands of webmasters (or more) have a large portfolio of domains. A lot of them would like the boring bit taken out of their domain management. You can run their DNSes or just a service reminding them when each domain comes up for renewal. Or an automated monitoring service to tell them when one of their domains/sites is inaccessible.

14. Start a directory to list domains for sale. That's what people like SEDOdo. You can get money just for allowing domains to be listed in your directory.

15. If you're running a service putting buyers and sellers of domains/sites in touch with one another you could get money for add on services (like providing escrow facilities). For ideas have a look at what existing domain intermediaries offer.

16. Run a domain research service. Wonder what happens when a manufacturer is looking to name a new model car? Or starting a new range of clothing? They need trademark and patent research but now they also need some domain research. Which of the literally thousands of combinations and misspellings (+ <brandname>sucks.com) are taken and which do they need to buy? With a few of the free domain tools discussed on this page, here and one or two more - like free DNS tools - and a little time you could provide them a service they'd pay a lot of money for.

17. Start your own country: Whoa! yes, you're reading it right. If you've heard of Sealand (what is Sealand) you'll know that starting your own country is not that far fetched. Once you have your own WhackyCountry you can apply for a .wc (yuk) TLD. Sell millions of domains. Keep some for yourself. Ever wanted a Google.___? 

18. Perform domain services for businesses and then send them a proforma (even if they've never heard of you). Explain that it's free this time but you'll gladly keep acting for them for a small fee. For example, there are thousands of big businesses whose half-wit webmasters/ developers didn't put in a redirect from the non-www to the www versions of their sites (or vice-versa). One entrepreneur made a few thousands just from pointing out to businesses how they were losing hundreds of customers every year who were landing on http://xxx-companyname.comand finding nothing there.

I'll talk about domain opportunities some more on this page when I get a chance.
 

Buying and selling internet businesses

19. Many sites runs on "auto-pilot". A common price these sell for in site-for-sale forums is 12-24 months' worth of net earnings (silly price, but it's true). Provided you don't mess the site up you can recover your capital in as little as 12 months and then ... sell the site to recover your capital again. Double your capital every year. 100% return. Sack your stockbrokers. It really is a crazy world! How to buy a business.

20. Site flipping doesn't require as much capital and expertise as many people believe. Like property flipping, you buy one that needs a bit of TLC. Do it up, then sell it on for a whacking great profit. And, the beauty is you never have to deal with tenants!

21. How about cornering a little market? There are DMOZ categories with grandfathered sites (sites that have been listed for many years) which aren't being updated. If you can pick up a few sites in the same category and merge their content suddenly you "own" that niche. That opens a lot of possibilities as all roads lead to you and if you recommend a product on multiple sites, people are going to think that product is the best and are going to click your affiliate links to make you money.

The rest of the 101 to come later.
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Only kidding, only kidding,

22. Several jobs exist on a pay per hour basis but the better paid ones are probably contract jobs. Some examples of both: Copywriting; proofreading of web content/ebooks/newsletters etc. (elance, guru, rentacoder, graphicdesign,more).

23. Email or phone answering: Be one of the first line support staff manning a company's phone or email answering service. Filter out the easy questions by pointing the user to relevant sections of his manual and escalate those that seem genuine problems. You are saving the company's engineers' time and providing a valuable service - that they pay for. A variation of this is chat help where you actually sit at your PC and text chat to users who've reached a firm's website and clicked the help button. Sometimes a bit of training is involved.

24. Good at web design, HTML, CSS? Create designs (templates) and flog them. You can sell each one multiple times to webmasters who don't have the time or patience to get familiar with the intricacies and quirks.

25. Monitoring Wikipedia/ forums/ blogs for mentions of a particular name, brand etc. A recent expose showed that several Wikipedia entries were being manipulated by a US political party who had several stooges signed up for just this purpose. Wouldn't their opponents want to know each time they're manipulating some facts? Find someone who needs some news "managed" or needs to know when news is being "managed" and get paid for it. You need to be "proactive" as these jobs aren't "advertised" but the fact that they aren't advertised means that others don't know about them, you have an advantage. And there are opportunities in almost every language.

26. Directories: start one. Webmasters pay to be listed in your directory. The better your directory the more you can demand. Niche, hand compiled directories are a million times better than the SERPs dross and both companies and users know that.

27. Filling in surveys. True, there are a lot of duds around but there are still some programs that pay you for doing mind-numbingly dull tasks like filling in surveys. If you aren't fussed about privacy and are willing to disclose all your personal details (or fictional personal details) there's usually someone willing to pay you, From YouGov to Ciao. This - and some of the next few - are called IFW or Incentivised Freebie Websites, more here.

28. Get paid to read email. Why would companies pay for that? Plenty of reasons, not least that a human eye can spot SPAM that even the best program doesn't catch. Even the best anti-spam program has some false positives and some companies can't afford to have any.

29. Do other filtering. There are people who'll pay money to have you filter through those millions of ebay listings to find them the specific objects/ curios/ stock/ book that they really, really need. Another filtering idea: Businessmen looking to buy sites regularly visit the Site Buying/Sellingforums and trawl through thousands of listings a week. Get talking to one or two of them, offer to get familiar with what they are looking for and to do the looking for them.

30. The web has allowed easy access to industrial quantities of free stuff. For example, in 2007, a major manufacturer of cricket bats had a problem. Cricket bats can't have knots in them so most of the wood from the willow tree has to be discarded as scrap. Not a few bin bags full but 70 tons. Per week. Yes, lorry loads per day! Free. They listed it on the eastex.org.uk site. Opportunity: Find a company that sells bark mulch for gardens. Find out how much they are paying to buy wood. Offer them 70 tons of fine willow a week at 50% of their current costs provided they pick it up themselves. Or contact manufacturers of chipboard/cat litter/use-your-imagination. OK, eastex may not still have that particular opportunity... but there are others. And on other sites.

31. CPA = Cost per Action. Apart from filling in surveys people pay for all kinds of other things. Like clicking on links (though you may want to check that you're not participating in click fraud).

32. Posting in Forums: Like hanging out in forums and chatting to other people? Owners of new forums have a problem. If there aren't a lot of conversations going then people don't stop to talk. So they get the chat flowing by paying for posts. So, jump in, start chatting and get paid.

33. Do something silly. The milliondollarhomepage guy got famous for selling worthless pixels on his page. But, because he was in the news/having his 15 minutes of fame people focused on that and paid money for what they would normally have realised was fairly worthless links. Yes, people are stupid. ClickHereYouIdiot. But some of these "stupid" people are millionaires today.

34. Do something more useful and less silly. Find a need in a niche and fill it. People complaining in forums about how they can't find replacement parts for a certain type of car? Find someone who'll make it and be the broker. People complaining about limitations in a particular niche software? Find a programmer to design a solution and start selling it.

35. Have expertise in a particular subject? Write regularly on that subject and give away your knowledge for free. People will bookmark your blog and visit regularly. The money is in allowing companies to advertise their products and services to your very eager audience. There are third partieslike payperpost, blogvertise, creamaid, Blogitive, reviewme, loudlaunch etc., who handle the finding of advertisers.

36. Don't have expertise in a particular subject? That doesn't stop bloggers. Some of them blog on the most mundane things - from what they had for breakfast to how they spent their day. And still the advertisers come. So, don't blog to demonstrate your expertise. Blog to demonstrate your camera obsession and show all the stupid pictures you take everyday. Or blog about breastfeeding your kids.

37. Join the social networking bandwagon, build up a lot of "friends" and advertise (what?!) the hell out of them. Send them to pages where you promote affiliate programs and you could walk away with five figures every month. There are people who make a lot more. More on how to make money with Facebook.

38. Or use tools like Twitter and Facebook to promote your offline activities - like the music you create. The Arctic Monkeys were record label/ talent scout/ music agent free.

39. Sell trinkets to avid users of social networking sites. They love them. Especially shiny ones. Myspace backgrounds, templates, animations,scripts, icons and other "myspace resources" are a multimillion dollar industry. 

40. Writing a newsletter. Building a mailing list is a long term plan and it pays dividends but don't expect immediate results. If your newsletter is good and you promote it well you can collect hundreds of thousands of subscribers (who all get the newsletter for completely free). The more subscribers you have on your list the more advertisers pay to feature in your newsletter.

41. Find something that won't sell, let your imagination run wild. Be willing to think the most outrageous thoughts, the most impossible items to sell. Who would have guessed there'd be an active market for urine. Yes, that stuff you flush away. No, I'm not taking the ... mikey. Start selling youroutrageous item and you may find that a market already exists. For example, you can also sell your hair,. Yes, there's a huge demand and criminals are now raiding hair salons instead of banks! If the BBCrecognises the opportunities in hair it must be pucca, right? You can also sell your your eggs and breast milk... or rent your uterus.. Don't have eggs, breast milk or a uterus? Neither do I, but there are markets for bloodand assorted body parts too.

42. Build a community. While some webmasters see lower returns from forum-type sites it's probably because they're using contextual programs like Adsense. One of the biggest webmaster communities (forum) is free to join and free touse though it's very busy, uses massive bandwidth and costs its owner a bomb. Yet, he makes a very profitable income fromorganising conferences/tradeshows. His "community" ensures every one is a sell-out.

43. Be a link monkey. Webmasters want people to link to them. It makes them feel loved. And it helps them rank higher with search engines. But they don't have the time to go begging. You do that for them and get paid per link. If you're smart you'll find shortcuts and charge people a lot of money for identifying and approaching possible link "partners".

44. Related to the link idea above - start a directory submission service. There are lots of directories around like the ODP. Many take free submissions but you have to do these by hand. When you're familiar with the submission process at a few of the top ones it takes you a lot less time to make submissions. Webmasters have to register, wait for a reply, jump through other hoops etc. They'd rather outsource it to someone who can do it faster and has the time.

45. Another flavour of link-building: Dropping mention of your client's site in forums, blog comments etc. Yes, clients pay for it. There are spamming ways of doing it and some more decent ways. If you can make relevant posts, posts that contribute to the discussion and provide only those links that are beneficial to that thread, you'll be in high demand with webmasters looking to spread the word about their good content. For example, if you genuinely feel that this list of 101 ways to make money is the dog's testicles - and you participate a lot in webmaster forums - you're bound to come across threads where dropping a link would help your forum mates. Some website owners pay for that. (Update: I've now got a detailed article on how you can make money from blog commenting.)

46. Press release websites often need people to screen user submitted releases for profanity etc., before running the "news". Well known blogs often require the same kind of vetting service for user submitted comments to blog articles. Niche directories that take automated submissions need to prevent against SPAM so could use a human review of each submission. There are numerous such opportunities. Spamming site owners with offers of your service may not get you anywhere. The key is to identify a site that looks like it could use this service and make a personal approach.

47. Write an ebook. It's as easy as falling off a chair. Know something about something? Whether it's about growing cabbages, writing PERL, plucking nose hair or being a good cop - if you're a good marketer, or pay a good marketer, you can probably sell a few thousand copies of your ebook. People pay online and download it, no publisher, printer, book shop or other cumbersome details to worry about. In fact, you don't even need to do the selling. "Affiliates" do it for you (on commission). And, there are ebooks telling you how you can write and sell ... ebooks! Is writing a whole book too much effort? You could write articles for the businesses that resell your material to multiple buyers, it'll help get your name out there.

48. Become an expert in a particular niche, perhaps affiliate programs for kids' products, or mailing list services ..and charge for your advice either at online webinars ... or even at local business events. The great news is that this is the internet and becoming an expert in a niche often requires nothing more than spending lots of time (online) reading and absorbing. No school to attend, no fees to pay.

49. Data sorting and other mundane jobs usually pay by the hour. This is the online version of envelope stuffing except that there really are opportunities to do these jobs online. It's a matter of looking in the right places and avoiding all those scammers looking to part you from your money by asking for upfront fees.

50. Good at graphic design? Design and offer logos and iconsdownloadable for free (and without watermark on payment of a fee). Good icons sell for several hundred dollars a set. And each set can be sold again and again.

51. Create an award and some fancy logos to go with it. The more credible they look the better. Award them to websites you like ... provided they pay you an "admin" fee every year to continue using the logo. Giving awards used to be a useful way to get backlinks. But when people's egos are sufficiently stroked they'll pay to continue boasting about how good the "rest of the world" thinks they are.

Work, but not as you know it

52. Affiliate programs can be great fun and very lucrative. The trick is learning to generate traffic, funnelling it to your merchant and hiring expensive accountants to handle your massive tax returns. It has made more millionaires than you'd believe and I've personally met many of them. I hope to write a lot more about making money from affiliate programs in the months to come.

53. But if fine-tuning ad CTRs and monitoring ROI is too much like hard work ... be your own affiliate customer. Credit card companies, mortgage companies etc., pay anywhere upto $100 per form filled on their site (per valid lead). Go apply for some credit cards and mortgages BUT do them through your own affiliate links and make a few hundred dollars per day. Sign up in as an affiliate in your wife/husband/dad's name to get around the occasional restriction that applications in the affiliate's own name don't generate the commission.

Pure fun54. 

Like playing computer games? There's money in gaming. Top players get paid handsomely for participating in tournaments, attending gaming fests and endorsing products. OK, Tiger Woods does make more but does he have as much fun? I mean, have you ever seen himhappy? Like deliriously happy ... and shouting for joy? No. Because his golf club don't have no buttons. But it's not just for big hitters. Anybody can make a few hundred bucks a week.

55. MMORPG, or multi-player online role playing games are virtual worlds where otherwise sane humans lose all perspective and all sense of reality. Or they pretend they do. They spend money on invisibility cloaks, virtual machine guns, characters and even virtual money! It's hard to explain how it works but Be The Seller, there's a thriving economy there worth millions of dollars every year. Whether it's WoW or SecondLife.

56. Adult entertainment: Like dressing up kinky? Do it front of a webcam and adult webcam sites will pay you. (John Prescott need not apply.) Like chatting dirty? Are you a balding man who likes pretending to be an 18 year old blond, female model? The online equivalent of the premium rate phone lines is where you can earn money all day just having fun. I won't provide links - use a search engine and find them yourself.

57. Or get paid for promoting other adult sites. This is like other affiliate programs except that you get to give away stuff on your site (usually cut-down/lower quality versions of videos and pics) for free. These entice visitors to click through for the larger resolution version which requires a small subscription. So, free content for you and - if you can get enough visitors to click through and subscribe - a healthy commission cheque at the end of the month.

58. Mystery shopping: Shopping on behalf of firms to see how staff on the floor are treating customers. Buy products, have holidays, eat at restaurants and have the tabs all picked up by your employers... as long as you provide them some feedback on what the service is like in-store. There are worse ways to earn a living. Some sceptics say they have fun but don't earn a great deal. Others disagree.

59. Spend your time entering competitions. Despite the name "competitions" rarely require skill, they are nothing but glorified lotteries/ sweepstakes. The most challenging question they are likely to ask you is, "What's 1+1?" Try searches like "competition entry" and "win a prize".

60. Or enter contests of skill. Good at SEO? There seem to be a lot of SEO competitions around. Good for nothing? I tried Google on a search for Good for nothing competitions and I get a lot of results. :-) Weed out 99% as junk and you should still have some good 'uns there. Good at taking or editing videos and have a good idea? Video sites like metacafe pay you if your video is popular enough (this guy made $100K). See, also, this NYT article for inspiration. And this is a good piece on how to make money on YouTube.

61. Good at poker? You can make a living from playing it all day long (or go broke).

Bonus method: Start a video blog.

Like surfing?

62. Become an estate agent. Not a real one; in places like the US that's too much effort. No, you can act for buyers without all that formality by being a buying agent. Clients have a clear idea of what they want but you have the time to keep hitting rightmove -or wherever your local listings are - to find them that special property. In the UK "buying agents" charge 1-3% of the property value.

63. Concierge services: If you know the exact type of bra you want but can't find it would you pay someone a few dollars to find it for you? You'd be surprised how many busy people would.  Whether it's a list for the supermarket delivery or a bathroom tap unavailable locally - for some people the hour or two hunting is not worth the $10 you'd charge. Maintain preferences for your signed up customers - so they can tell you to order "milk" without having to specify semi-skimmed, 2 litre, cardboard packing etc. - and close relationships with local businesses and even I'd sign up.

64. Be a researcher. At places like answers.com people pay for you to go research an answer to questions they don't have time to answer themselves. Like, "How do I choose an SLR camera?" and "What's the name of the theme song to the TV program A Bit of Fry and Laurie?" Note: Google has now closed theanswers.google.com service but if you're that good at hunting things out you'll find that there are other places where people pay for answers. And, I'm not just talking paid homework help.

It smells

No, I'm not endorsing any of the plans in this section but this article wouldn't be complete without mentioning these unmentionables.

65. Has someone has violated your online rights? Perhaps they don't have a privacy page on their site as required by law. Or haven't made their site disabled friendly (illegal in some parts of the world). Sue them. Particularly if you can get one of those no win-no fee vultures to act for you. A guy called André-Tascha Lammé kept getting calls from salesmen selling him stuff. He sued them in the Sacramento, CA, small claims court (easy to do). Guess what? Apparently the law in the USawards you $500 each time a telesales person makes an unwanted call to you. Lammé walked away with $6,000. What's the law where you are?

66. They haven't violated your rights? Sue them anyway. Why do you think so many people sue Google on the most unlikely pretexts: giving them incorrect results, showing anti-Christian sites in the results, having advertising, being racist, not being racist? Find something unusual enough to sue them about and some dumb tabloid editor somewhere will pay you for an interview. Even if they don't you'll generate publicity, get column inches, get people to your site...Ka-Ching.

Or be the scum that sue companies for small amounts just because it's be cheaper for them to settle than defend. Even if the grounds for the case are petty and silly.

67. Sell photographs: Live in a big city? Hang around at celebrity watering holes, click some photos. There's always someone online willing to pay for interesting ones - there are sites specifically for the buying/selling of photos like these. Get "lucky" and click the UN Secretary General picking up a hooker and you can buy that dream home in the Bahamas quicker than he can say United Nations Secretary General. Find Paris Hilton in another compromising video and.... you can buy Bill Gates. More mundane photos will get you money in places like these: 1, 2, 3.

68. Perform domain hunting services for businesses and then send bill them (even if they've never heard of you). Some businesses will pay up. A 0.01% success out of a million could be worth $100,000 (at a modest $10 each). For example, you could setup a program to extract company names from a Yellowpages database, run them through a misspelling generator and automail each company a list of domainsyou've identified that it would be in their interest to register as these are very similar to their company name. That's a service, right? The UK authorities have been clamping down on a lot of these operators... but that's only the UK based ones!

69. Exploit people's soppiness. Once upon a time there was a site with lots of lovely pictures of a beautiful little bunny who was very, very happy. And his owner loved him very much. But he needed money so he asked for money on the site and promised that if he did not reach his target he'd eat the bunny. He provided graphic recipes with bunny dish mock-up pictures. Donations followed, fast and swift.

70. Relationship Marketing: Who said relationship marketing was about companies building relationships with their customers? It's about marketing to relatives. About pimping products to your friends. Whatever the "network marketing" opportunities there ever were offline - from Amway to selling water filters - there's always a lot of stuff you can "personally recommend" to your friends online. People who don't open junk mail will open mail from you, because they trust you! And you can get paid for endorsing all manner of rubbish. (Till you lose all your friends, of course)

71. Become a volunteer editor in places like DMOZ and then take bribes to list sites. Is it illegal? In many parts of the world it probably is not, and so it does happen a fair bit. But, the less said about this bribery the better..

72. Petitions: People are constantly petitioning their bosses, their politicians, the rest of the world. Some of those petitioners pay for people to join their cause. Signing up again and again and again has proven lucrative for some, particularly those who know how to proxify their IPs.

73. Email SPAM. Nobody likes it, it's illegal in some countries, ISPs get very upset, recipients get even more upset but no list of how people make money online can be complete without a mention of this. What do you sell when you spam? Have a look at what type of spam YOU are getting, it will likely give you an idea of what pays. And the stock tips that seem to "accidentally" land in your inbox. But that's about all the help I'm giving you on the subject.

Or up your SPAM game to something more sophisticated. Plenty of ideashere - it's a simply awesome read.

74. Back to email SPAM. Wherever there's a big problem there's an opportunity: Run an free email service like Hotmail etc., but with a good SPAM filtering system. High startup costs, sure, but if you get enough people signing up you could be worth a few million very quickly. Google tried this with gmail and got about 4% of the market without advertising the service at all; accounts were given by invitation only. Now they make money from all the contextual (!) ads served within emails people send.

75. Start a HYIP and do a runner. See page 5 for more details on what this is.

Big bucks

76. While most webmasters use PPC to refer to Pay Per Click old timers use it jokingly to refer to P*rn (where *=o), Pills and Casinos. Those are probably the three biggest money areas on the net and have probably made more millionaires than any others. But they are very competitive and are difficult markets to er, penetrate. However, there are lots of legal, legitimate opportunities here some of which are expanded on here.

Arbitrage/brokerage

77. Example of a pure arbitrage opportunity: For a while buying traffic via Google Adwords and sending that traffic to pages of little content and Google Adsense ads generated reasonable profits when done astutely. Sure, Adwords and Adsense are two sites of the same coin. But I did say you needed to be astute to recognise where the opportunities were and you need to test, test, test. There are still lots of contextual arbitrage opportunities about. Especially when you work across programs (e.g., buy traffic from MSN, sell to Yahoo).

78. There are a lot of arbitrage opportunities in the finance world as discussed below but if economics and finance talk bores you to death, there's sports arbitrage. Different online bookmakers may offer different odds on a sporting event. By taking the better odds at each bookie you could come out ahead irrespective of the actual outcome of the event. If you're really clever you could make a program to do this for you. Why don't the bookies adjust their odds based on what their competitors are offering? Because they have to balance their own books. Their prices are decided based on how their own punters are betting.

79. Hosting: You don't need to buy a lot of server hardware to provide a web hosting service. Many big hosting companies allow "reseller" accounts where you sell hosting plans to customers and the hosting company will host them all for you under your Reseller account umbrella. You get to charge customers as much as you want. Some Resellers provide value added services and charge more for these. At places like WHT you'll find that resellers sometimes sell their customers as a "bundle" i.e., you can pay some money to buy a reseller "business".

80. Related to the above is free hosting where you provide small website owners free hosting and in exchange you serve ads to all their pages to make the revenue to pay the hosting company and yourself. Early pioneers of this model are well known names like Geocities and Angelfire.

81. Being a broker can be done in a thousand different ways. There are some entrepreneurs making healthy profits just by bidding for projects on places like elance and guru (and others) and farming them out to a bank of writers/programmers they use on a regular basis.

Finance

82. Trading from home is really catching on in many parts of the world. You don't need to be an expert on stocks & shares. You can trade on commodities, currencies, lots more. Trading futures allows you to leverage even small $100 amounts of capital into huge fortunes (or bankruptcy).

83. Gambling is a far cry from trading futures but a route to riches for many. No, not the traditional horse racing type of gambling where the only long term winner is the bookmaker. I'm talking gambling against other gamblers, I'm talking the numerous ways of gambling online (search). And there are a million books and ebooks that claim to "teach you how to win".

84. HYIP, or High Yield Investment Programs are just what they say on the tin. They are also highly risky. You invests your money and you takes a chance, but some pay as much as 100% per day. How do they do it? A very few are putting your money into investments with even better rates of return. Others are simply going to keep paying out the first few customers with investments collected from later ones.... and then they go bust. Pyramid style. Maybe the ones who make the money are the ones who get in early... or actually start HYIP programs.

eBay/Amazon etc.

85. What's it with eBay? You just can't get away from them. Their bulk "dictionary purchase" of ad terms from the Google Adwords/Adsense system means you find ads for eBay no matter what you're looking for, even if it's for toenail clippings or dead pets. Whatever the reason for their success you can join the bandwagon and sell your rubbish on eBay and convert a garage of old junk to hard cash.

86. And when you've acquired a fair amount of experience with selling your own rubbish, start selling others' rubbish. How to get your hands on enough trash? Place an ad in your local paper to do house clearances, or just buy stock from wholesalers in - yes, you guessed it - eBay itself. You can get anything from unused toasters to umbilical cord containers. A lot of ebay sellers are actually shopkeepers; they buy stock new from wholesalers and sell them in eBay instead of a physical bricks and mortar shop... and make a healthy living doing so.

87. You've now got a lot of experience buying and selling in eBay. It's time to write a book or ebook on how to use ebay to generate millions. It doesn't matter that you haven't made millions yourself. People still buy these books even if it's just to learn their way about ebay which can be quite daunting for some. And you can sell it on ... you guessed!

88. Don't fancy writing? Then set yourself up as an eBay assistant. eBay itself will send you people who need help with their complicated system. And you can charge them a commission.

89. Alternatively, setup a shop to accept goods from those who can't list them themselves. Yes, a physical shop. There are lots of them springing up all in big cities. The operation is simple. You take something in from somebody, sell it on ebay and retain a percentage for all your efforts.

90. Think building an ebay business is too much like building a normal business? If you've got the capital you can take the easy route. A lot of ebay "shop" (businesses) come up for sale in site-for-sale forums and withbusiness brokers. The ebay username and feedback generally accompanies the business so you continue to benefit from accumulated goodwill (though the "transfer" is something that eBay may not approve of).

91. Opportunities to make money in eBay are limited only by your imagination. There's money in everything from making connections (putting people in touch with other people) to coming up with or commissioning software to make the average ebayer's life simpler or more productive (thousands of such programs already exist). There's even a business model involving just searching for and finding items that have been misspelt in the listings.

92. It's not just eBay. Any merchant big enough or third party affiliate manager program - from Commission Junction to Clickbank - has opportunities. For example, you can create an Amazon affiliate site.

Others

93. Set up a proxy (example). People seem to want to surf at work AND access sites their IT system blocks them from viewing. A proxy allows them to get around that restriction. Some proxy services get by just on the advertising (as it's easy to get enormous page views in the proxy business). A very good one will even have people paying a few dollars each. There are several ways to monetise a proxy.

94. Enjoy networking? Social networking Web 2.0 style? Make money with it. If you build up sufficient reputation in places like Digg people will start approaching you to start some buzz on their company or their new product. At one point Netscape offered  top "Diggers" a sweetener os $1,000 to move over to their competing service.

95. Selling databases of parts/directory listings/modified or value addedDMOZ data/ email lists. The DMOZ directory is a massive directory put together by volunteer editors. And they give away their content for free. Kind of. You can download their database and combine it with other information - like phone number and postcode from Yellow pages-  to add value / enhance those listings. You could then sell the enhanced product.

96. Find jobs for your friends. An easy way into the personal recruitment business. Know a friend who's just right for a particular job? Make the connection between friend and employer and you could get up to $5,000 for a few hours work.

97. Get paid for your unused computer cycles. Is your computer sometimes on while you aren't actually sitting at it? Then it's using electricity but not performing "work". Joining a distributed computing group likeSETI lets you use that computing power to help reach some worthy/unworthy goal. However, you can also use those cycles to earn money by selling them to companies who have large computing tasks then can't do completely in-house.

98. Take the cap around: Do something nice. Provide some information that helps someone, perhaps someone grieving for a lost partner. Or info on how to volunteer to help orphans in Africa, or find an internship. Make it useful. Or just make it very funny. Then stick a donation button on there for people to support your work. You'll be surprised at how well a donation button works on the right type of site. No, it won't work on this page - or any page promising to make you a millionaire.

99. Start an article directory. Giving away free articles (with embedded links) is one way for webmasters to build incoming links to their sites. For other webmasters these free articles are a great way to fill out their otherwise bare sites. Be the middleman. Popular article directories make a lot of money from the contextual ads they post on all the free articles they are displaying on their site.

100. Start a content site: The most common way webmasters earn money is probably contextual programs like Infolinks or the better known Google Adsense. It's simple, quick, doesn't involve any complicated new skills. You simply put up a website with useful/informative content and some Google provided code, get a few links to the page and wait. Traffic will start flowing to it. The volume would depend on the topic and quality of content. Visitors would see ads served by Google and related to the content of the page. Each time they click on an ad you get anywhere from a few cents to several dollars. I personally know at least 20 webmasters who earn in excess of $10,000 per month this way. There are thousands of others.

The 101st method is my personal favourite because I find it hilarious:

There was this bloke who bought an email list of one million email addresses. He sent half of them a stock tip that a certain stock was going up, the other half got the same message predicting that the stock would go down. 50% of them saw him proved right. He ignored the rest and split this 50% into two groups. Half got an email with another up prediction and the other half got the same email with a down prediction. He rinsed and repeated a few times till he was left with about 15,000 people who saw him get it right several times in a row. They were obviously very impressed. He then invited them to pay $5,000 each for a seminar with him on picking stocks! :)

Make Money Easily

Looking for a little extra cash until payday comes around? Want to make some money to save up for a shiny new thing, a vacation, or maybe just something to put away for a rainy day? Well, I did a quick survey of my friends, family, and some Wise Bread regulars and compiled this list of 25 ways to quickly make money. As in, today.

Some are obviously a little easier than others, some require skill, some are a bit silly, but all of them are within reach for most of us. It just takes a little guts, some pride-swallowing, and a lot of perseverance. Oh, and in some instances, a good sense of humor.

1. Sell Some Stuff

Whether it's Craigslist, eBay or a good old fashioned yard sale, there are plenty of avenues for you to explore when it comes to selling stuff. Most of us have a basement or garage filled with things that we just don't use or need anymore. Free up some space and grab some cash. It's quick and easy.

2. Mow Lawns

I'm no fan of mowing my lawn, and it's not exactly a large one either. But I do it because I'd rather not pay someone else to do such a simple task. However, there are plenty of people who will gladly pay someone else to mow. And as lawn mowers are collapsible, you can pop it in the trunk and drive around the neighborhoods, offering your services. I spoke to a guy at work who said he made $100 in a few hours by mowing lawns. He used the cash to buy concert tickets, and he said he got a nice tan and a workout!

3. Hit Up Goodwill

Goodwill, and charity shops just like it, are a treasure trove of hidden gems. If you know what you're looking for, you can pick up items for a few bucks and sell them for ten times that amount. Vintage clothing, CDs, jewelry, memorabilia, and a whole lot more is just sitting there waiting to be discovered. If you have a smartphone and see something that looks like it could be worth something, you can research it right there. It's not unheard of for people to find very rare and valuable items in charity shops.

4. Make Lemonade From Lemons

Literally. The kids may love a lemonade stall, but there's no reason you can't get in on the action when it's hot outside. Lemonade is cheap enough to make, and the profits are worth the time. In the winter, you can swap out lemonade for coffee or hot chocolate. When everyone is out shoveling snow, a hot cup of joe for a buck is a bargain.

5. Have a Bake Sale

Turn your cooking skills into hot profits. There's no doubt that people seem to be doing less home cooking these days. We eat out all the time, and we all miss good home-cooked food, like freshly-baked apple pies or bread. So, if you can cook and you have the ingredients, make something and sell it. (See also: Homemade Bread for Beginners)

6. Become a Street Performer

Can you play the guitar? Do you have mad saxophone skills? Squeeze yourself into a 2-ft. square box? If you have a talent, get paid for it. Street performers can bag some nice cash for doing what they love.

7. Beg

If you really hit the hard times, you can try begging. There are stories of people making a very good living from begging, including one woman who supplemented her income to save for a new kitchen. As the article states, people think beggars are destitute, but that's not always the case. (None of the 20 beggars questioned were actually homeless.)

There's not just street begging either. Cyber begging sites are popping up everywhere, with people asking for donations instantly via PayPal for surgeries, help with bills, and school tuition. If you don't ask, you don't get.

8. Rent Useful Space

If you have a garage that you're not using, or a basement that's doing nothing for you, why not rent out that space to someone else? A few people I know actually rent out the space in their basement as storage and collect money every month. Others have turned their spare bedrooms into rental rooms to help with the monthly mortgage payment.

9. Scoop Up Your Change

It's amazing what you can find down the side of the sofa, under the car seat, and in the back of the junk drawer. Collect it all up and cash it in.

10. Return Unopened, Unwanted, or Broken Items

I looked in my basement recently and found a tool I'd bought two months ago for a job I was doing in the house. It turns out I didn't need that tool. I still had the receipt, the store had a 90-day return policy, and I ended up getting a nice chunk of money back. Even if you don't have the receipt, you can get store credit. And if something broke, don't just throw it away. It's possible that you can return the item for being defective and get a full refund.

11. Recycle

We recycle our card, plastic, paper, cans, and bottles in one large recycling bin every few weeks. We don't get a cent for the recyclables, and we had to pay $80 for the bin. But you can actually get money for cans, bottles, and other recyclable items. You just have to put some effort into it.

12. Donate Your Sperm (Umm, Guys)

If you're a man with a clean bill of health, you can go to a sperm bank and make a donation. The process is fairly straightforward and you will be paid upwards of $40 for each donation you make. This bank in California gives you $65 per donation. And let's face it, guys, it's not the worst way to earn some quick cash.

13. Sell Event Tickets

So you bought tickets to a big concert and are having second thoughts. Or, you just can't go. Well, don't dump them, sell them. As long as you obey the law (scalping is illegal in many areas) and sell the tickets at or below face value, you are within your rights.

14. Gamble

OK, so it's not guaranteed money, but if you know the odds and can play a few card games, there are ways to make money quickly and easily. For instance, you can start playing poker online and quickly rack up a nice amount of money, if you know what you're doing.

15. Sign Up for Medical Tests

Take caution with this one; there are plenty of horror stories out there about people who are still suffering side effects from medical tests. But many people have signed up for clinical trials and came out not only unscathed, but flush with cash. In fact, earning up to $250 a day is not unheard of.

16. Walk Dogs

How about doing something that keeps you healthy and earns you instant cash? A lot of people these days don't seem to have the time to walk their dog twice a day (at least) and it's the dog who suffers. For a few bucks, maybe $3, you can take their dog on 20-minute walk. Do it every day, you've got $90 a month and you're probably going to feel better. Do two or three dogs at a time, twice a day, and you can see how it adds up.

17. Dumpster Dive

If you've seen shows like American Pickers, Storage Wars, or even Cash In The Attic, you know that there are gems out there, hidden in the trash. Most of the time, it really is just garbage. But sometimes, people throw out valuables that they believe are worthless. Dumpster diving can really pay off, if you know what you're looking for.

18. Become a Delivery Service

I was inspired to add this one after I talked to the guy who delivered our fridge. We bought a used one from Craigslist, well under the price it was worth, and found someone on Craigslist who hauls large items. As it turns out, he uses his truck on the weekend for delivery services. At $30-$50 a delivery, he's making more than enough to pay for his gas and truck payment for the month.

19. Donate Plasma

Even your own body contains saleable items. A recent check online found that one person made $260 per month donating plasma!

20. Monetize Your Blog or Website

If you blog regularly or have your own website, you should think about placing ads for extra cash, or finding other ways to make your online presence into a money-spinner.

21. Become an Online Juror

I only recently found out about this one. It turns out that lawyers want to practice, and online juries are a good way for them to put some theories to the test. You can earn $5-$10 per online appearance, with each one lasting no more than 35 minutes. Find out more at ejury.com.

22. Take Paid Surveys

There are several places online to take genuine, paid surveys. Most don't offer very big cash rewards, but it all ads up. Some, like erewards.com, offer points that you can trade for goods and services.

23. Wash Cars

At least one a week in the summer months, I see high-school kids with signs offering car washes. If they can wash cars for a few bucks, so can you. Grab a few friends, turn the radio on, and if you get good you can make $50-$60/hour between you.

24. Go Fishing

Know how to fish? Or hunt? Well, if your hobby can put food on the table, that's as good as cash. If you hunt for food, you can also sell it to friends and family for a profit. Obviously, this isn't for everyone, but if you've already got the skills and the equipment, why not put it to good use?

Editor's Note: Check with your local game and fish department before selling meat or fish to ensure that it is legal in your state.

25. Become a Tutor

If you have knowledge that can be shared, why not do so for extra money? I know several people who tutor children privately for extra money. Others get paid to speak at local colleges or universities. Hey, you paid a lot for your education; your day job doesn't have to be the only reward.

That's my top 25 list. I'm sure you know of others, so chime in. What's a great way to make money today (that's legal, of course) and what are your experiences in making a quick buck?