Two Realistic Internet Income Opportunities
Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Holy Adams. If you would like to contribute too, please contact me.
Whether they want to make and save more money for special vacations or need extra income to pay their bills, more people look to the Internet for opportunities before they search their local newspaper’s Want ads.
Unfortunately, too many of them fall victim to unscrupulous scams and “get rich quick” schemes. While ample opportunity to make money online exists, it often doesn’t come via a spam email.
Freelance Work
If you know how to put words together coherently and learn a few different punctuation schemes, you might be able to earn extra money by becoming a freelance writer.
There are three overall types of freelance writing sites—pay-per-word sites, revenue sharing sites and pay-per-article sites.
The first type of site acts primarily as a brokerage that links client needing content with freelancers who write to client specifications. Communication between clients and writers are either closely monitored or prohibited altogether.
The second type, revenue sharing, requires you to choose your keywords carefully and write for a target audience, hoping to get traffic that will click the paid advertising that someone else places on the article page. Payment for these entries is generally low, erratic and unreliable.
The last type of site is either a bid site where an order is placed publicly, and writers bid on it or an article is posted to the site archives and is paid if a website owner uses it. You might eventually earn reasonable amounts of cash on this type of site, but it often takes a long time to build up your portfolio and your reputation.
Another areas of freelance work are in web development and transcription or typing services. Both can generate respectable incomes, although it may take longer than overnight to see progress.
Blogging
Blogging is the content rage, especially after Google’s Panda updates earlier this year. Original content rules ranking credit with search engines, and if you blog regularly to an avid target market, you can envelope paid advertising on your blog, affiliate marketing and site sponsorships, all of which can generate increasing income for the blog owner.
Blogging is one of the most reliable methods to build an income independent from an employer’s paycheck, although no one recommends you quit your “day job” and risk your financial future on this endeavor which can admittedly take time to come to fruition.
However, when the money starts arriving, it can build quite quickly with persistence and dedication, especially with effective affiliate links within your blog text.
General Recommendations
Remember to report your income to your tax authorities. You may qualify for legitimate tax deductions if you obtain a business license and operate as a business. The US Internal Revenue Service, for example, disallows any expenses as deductions if the income-earner does not have a business license, for they consider the endeavor a hobby otherwise.
Start on a part-time basis until you reach an income level that you find comfortable. If you can fully and consistently replace your employer-based income with your endeavor, it might be time to shake yourself free from the chains of a time clock.
It’s your financial future, though, and it’s your decision to make.
This article’s author is Holly Adams, who writes for Coupon Croc, the best source for savings and discounts on all of your online shopping and purchases.
Image credit: LiewCF – Flickr.com