How to Earn Money from Home Without Any Investment

Are you trying to learn how to make money online for free?

You’re in for a treat! I have listed the best ways to make money without money – and some of these could be new and interesting to you.

Before that, check out my 4-Hour Agency course, where you can learn how to start, grow, and scale an agency.

Whether you’re a stay-at-home mom, or you just want to make money on the side, these methods of making money with no money are perfect and practically risk-free.

As long as you have an internet connection and computer (even if you don’t, you can head to a public library that has!), you can make money online without any investment at all.

The saying, you need to have money to make money isn’t true at all. This article will show you all the creative ways to make money from home (or the library) without forking out a single cent! This is great for working adults, stay-at-home moms, and students too!

Some of these methods may require certain knowledge or experience. But do go through the entire list on how to earn money from home without any investment. Hopefully, you can find something that works for you.

 

1. Make money with online surveys

You can make money by completing small surveys which take 5-20 minutes depending on the needs of the company.

You just need to give your feedback on certain topics. Most surveys have multi-choice questions and are pretty straightforward.

You can make $1 to $20 per survey. The amount varies according to the length of the survey, your profile & the country you’re living in.

This may not be the most exciting job, but it’s one of the quickest and easiest ways to make money online from home. To make more, simply join more survey sites.

I highly recommend creating a new Gmail account to sign up for these surveys because you’ll be inundated with daily survey emails.

Survey websites include:

• Survey Junkie
• Swagbucks
• PrizeRebel

2. Earn money by blogging

I have been making passive income from blogging for the last 7 years.

When I first started blogging, I had no idea what I was doing. Because of that, I hardly made any money for the first few years.

Things started to change after I started an agency. I started to write with more focus and for a specific target audience.

My blog now complements my agency business, brings me new clients, and results in a 6-figure income.

Here are some of how you can monetize your blog:

• Affiliate marketing – selling other people’s products
• E-commerce – selling your products
• Agency/freelancing – selling your services
• Coaching – helping other people in your niche by coaching them
• Sponsored posts – charging a fee in return for writing a post about a product
• Display ads – placing pay-per-click ads (e.g. Adsense) on your blog
• Etc.

Blogging can make you money, but it takes some time to build authority and traffic. So you need to be patient, but there’s no better time to start than now.

Want a quick and dirty to get started blogging without all the technicalities? Try this: How to Start Blogging on Facebook for Free & Making Money

3. Earn money with affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is about making money selling other people’s products or services.

Typically the affiliate company gives you a unique URL, which you place either on your blog, social media profiles, emails, etc. When someone clicks through your unique URL and makes a purchase, you earn a commission.

Affiliate marketing is proliferating online due to the insane growth of online shopping.

There are many online merchants like Amazon, Flipkart, eBay, Clickbank, Commission Junction, etc. where you can sign up as an affiliate and promote their products.

4. Become a freelancer

Freelancing is another popular way to make money from home. As a freelancer, you are selling your time and providing a service that other businesses need.

Hence, no upfront investment is typically required. Freelancers can make anywhere from a couple of hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars per month, depending on the demand for your skills, and how well you can find clients.

Examples of freelance work include:

• Content writer
• Web designer
• Graphics designer
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Data entry
• Video editor
• Facebook advertiser
• etc.

Learn more about freelancing, consulting and agency businesses:

• How to start freelancing work
• How to start a consulting business
• How to start a digital marketing agency
• Complete list of the best freelance websites for beginners
• Programming jobs from home

5. Become a virtual assistant

A virtual assistant (VA) is a personal assistant who works online.

VA’s usually take on a variety of general tasks like website maintenance, writing, content publishing, social media marketing, research, etc.

There are dozens of companies like Upwork, HireMyMom, MyTasker, Zirtual, uAssistMe, 123Employee where you can sign up for virtual assistant work.

Being a VA can be a quick way to make some spare cash online from home.

6. Become a writer

Writing is another way to earn money online. You can write blog articles, website content, advertising copy, etc.

You can get paid anywhere from $5 to $100+ for every 500 words, depending on your specialty and competence.

To find writing jobs, check out platforms like UpWork, iWriter, WriterBay, FreelanceWriting, TextBroker, ExpressWriters.com, FreelanceWritingGigs.com, among others.

7. Become a YouTuber

Do you know that Ryan Kaji, an 8-year-old boy from Texas, made a whopping $26 million in 2019 from YouTube alone?

This is just money from advertisements appearing on his YouTube videos.

However, this is not the best method if you need money urgently. YouTube had recently changed its rules. To make money off advertising on YouTube, your channel needs to have 4,000 watched hours within the last 12 months and a minimum of 1,000 subscribers.

That said, you can also monetize your YouTube channel with affiliate marketing. You do this by placing affiliate links in your YouTube video captions.

If you don’t mind being in front of the camera and have some basic video editing skills, consider making videos on YouTube!

8. Create an online course

Turn your knowledge into gold by teaching others online what you know. Package your training into an online course and sell it.

Skillshare is an online learning community where anyone can discover and enroll in an online course. The courses are available through subscription and you can earn money as an instructor  (based on the number of minutes students watched your course videos).

Some other popular platforms for creating a course are:

• Udemy – probably the most popular online course marketplace where potential students can find your courses easily, but you need to pay a significant proportion of your earnings to Udemy
• Teachable – you retain 100% of your earnings minus a fixed subscription fee, but you are fully responsible for driving traffic to your course

Your skills and experiences are unique and valuable. If you have something that people could learn from, they will pay you for it. Online courses are highly profitable and one of the best products to sell online.

9. Sell photos online

If you have an eye for photography, you may want to consider selling your photographs online – on stock photography websites. Take high-quality and unique photographs of nature, places, people, things, and sell them online in such marketplaces:

• Shutterstock
• Fotolia
• iStockPhoto
• PhotoBucket

The commission rate differs for each platform. But typically you’ll only get paid when someone downloads your photograph.

To be truly successful in this endeavor, you need to take a lot of photographs. And especially photographs which are high in demand from businesses – to be used for websites, social media, etc.

10. Teach a language online

If English is your native language, or if you could speak a foreign language fluently, you may want to consider teaching a language online.

Generally, you will be paid an hourly rate.  Check out these websites where you can sign up to teach English or a foreign language:

• Cambling
• Italki
• Lingoda
• VIPKid
• Verbling
• VerbalPlanet

11. Get paid to use apps and websites

Companies often need feedback on the user experience for their apps or websites. They will pay you to use or test their apps or websites.

Tests usually take around 15-20 minutes and are a great way to make some side income.

Here are some companies that will offer you money for user testing:

• User Testing
• UserFeel

12. Start a dropshipping business

The dropshipping business model has been immensely popular in the e-commerce world and for good reason. It’s a legitimate online business model that requires little or no startup cost.

What is dropshipping?

Dropshipping is a way to sell products without storing the inventory yourself. Your products come from suppliers who ship products to your customers directly on your behalf.

If blogging isn’t your thing but you want to start an online business, starting an e-commerce store with no money could be something to think about. After all, e-commerce is a great industry to start a business in 2020.

However, you need to be good at driving traffic to your online store. Without any money down, that could only mean organic methods like SEO, social media marketing or marketing through affiliates.

Setting up the online store itself may require some money, especially if you’re using paid software like Shopify. You could also exercise some creativity by selling directly off social media platforms for free – like Facebook, Instagram or YouTube – but your legitimacy may suffer a little unless you already have a ready audience.

Final Thoughts

I hope this list gave you some insights on how to earn money online without paying anything.

Not sure what niche to start off with? See my comprehensive list of niche markets and why you should segment your market.

If you liked this article, do subscribe to my mailing list for more ideas on how to make money online for beginners.

Is there any method not listed? Let us know in the comment section!