One of the easiest ways is one of the easiest ways to perform work in exchange for money online is to offer your services at Upwork.com. You would create a profile for yourself that tells what you do and then bid on jobs.

In the beginning you may have to take some rate cuts in order to get new clients, but once you have proven the quality of your work be sure to charge what you are worth.

For some people they don’t want to have to market themselves in this way and so they really are looking for a type of job where someone tells them what to do and they do it and they get paid. If this is what you’re looking for there really are some options for you.

You could become a Google rater: Google, the monster search engine, hires people to work from home evaluating websites. They get paid weekly from $10-$20 an hour. The work may become tedious but it’s real work from home.

Google does not hire these people directly. Three companies do the hiring for Google instead. They are Lionbridge, Leapforce, and WorkForce Logic. In order to get hired, you’ll need to apply with one of these companies.

You could also become an online psychic. This may sound ridiculous but it is not. If you don’t have any psychic skills, then you probably shouldn’t apply for this one. But if you are already psychic then Certified Psychics Network may be interested in hiring you.

You could also work online as a virtual assistant. Many people create a virtual assistant job for themselves and market themselves with a website and are in charge of their own hiring and payment collection. If this is not for you then you can get involved with a company like virtualassistantjobs.com.

The one thing I must stress is that if you have to pay an application fee or hiring fee or if you have to pay the company money in any way then there is a good chance you are falling for a scam instead of getting a job. Be sure you are not paying for your virtual assistant job.

Some people wonder about taking online surveys and mystery shopping. These are both very valid ways of making a paycheck online, but the problem is that there is not a lot of money involved.

You can sign up to be a mystery shopper but unless you live in a very busy city there is a chance that you won’t get more than one mystery shop a month, if that. Since you usually don’t make more than $10 a shop, that’s not a lot of money.

With taking surveys online, you can take a survey every few days but many times each survey only amounts to $.50 or so – so again, this does not add up to very much money.

Legitimate Online Surveys – pays in cash or gift certs: https://www.globalopinionpanels.com/home

Legitimate mystery shopping – pays via paypal
http://www.shopperscritique.com/

Two more places where you can sign up to make a paycheck online are iWriter.com and Demand Studios.

For iWriter, You sign up and say what kinds of articles you are willing to write and then iWriter will provide you with article orders. You write the articles and you get paid. The amount that you get paid can be quite small, or it could be not too bad. It’s up to you if the rates will work for you or not.
http://www.iwriter.com/

For Demand Studios, you have to submit a resume and if you are accepted you can pick out of available articles.  They pay $15 an article every 2 weeks via paypal.
http://www.demandstudios.com/

So I hope this is very helpful to you in your quest to find an online paycheck!  Just get started, you never know what your jobs will evolve into.

Some companies will run their own affiliate programs so your checks will come directly from the company and all of your reporting will also be seen at the company website.

Other companies will run their affiliate programs through an affiliate network, which means that you will go to the affiliate network to get your links and to check your stats. Some companies will do both – they will have an in house program and the program through an affiliate network.

Probably the most famous in-house affiliate network is the Amazon Associates program. Amazon does all their own reporting and linking so if you want to be an Amazon affiliate you’ll have to go to Amazon.com and sign up to be an associate.

Now I will list the top five affiliate marketing networks – you may want to go to them and look around and see if they have any programs that you are interested in promoting.

Commission Junction http://www.cj.com/
Commission Junction is a very large affiliate network that has been around forever.

Linkshare http://www.linkshare.com/
Linkshare has also been around for a long time. The Walmart.com affiliate program and the iTunes affiliate program are some notable programs at linkshare.

Google Afiliate Network http://www.google.com/intl/en/ads/affiliatenetwork/
The Google affiliate network is actually relatively new to the affiliate scene.  But that doesn’t mean that they don’t know what they’re doing.

ShareaSale http://www.shareasale.com/
Shareasale specializes in small and medium-size businesses and places a special emphasis on fair business practices.

Clickbank  http://www.clickbank.com/index.html
Clickbanks sole purpose is not to provide a medium to bring companies and affiliates together like the other networks, but clickbank deserves a special mention here because of the large amount of digital items that are easily promoted by any affiliate.

So once you have found a product or two to promote on one or more of these affiliate networks that question now becomes how to effectively promote the product in a way that will ensure that you get the commission that you deserve.

Each of these affiliate networks will give you a specific link to put on your website or wherever you’re putting your links. You want to copy these links and paste them directly into your website exactly how they were given to you.

The links will normally include a one by one pixel image that will tell the network how many times your link has been viewed. The link will also include special code that will tell the network this is your link.

Especially as a beginner, you do not want to mess around with these links at all.  Copy and paste these links exactly so you can be sure that you are getting credit for any and all sales you send to the company.

One more thing, what if you can’t find the company that you want to promote at any of the top affiliate networks? This is when you go to Google and you type “company name or product name affiliate” without the quotes.  You also can go to the company’s website and look for a link called affiliates. Not everyone has an affiliate program but if this particular company does these two strategies should help you find it.

Chances are anyone looking to learn about affiliate marketing would actually be okay with any of these ways to make money online.

10. Coaching

There are many coaches online charging for their services. There are many life coaches and business coaches and then there are other professional performance coaches in other fields. What do you do now? What are you successful at? What could you successfully coach someone else to do by e-mail or by Skype or by phone?

These are the questions to ask yourself to determine if you can offer coaching online. Even if no one else is doing it, that doesn’t mean you can’t be the first. The way he would offer coaching is he would create a website that tells what you offer, and pick out a payment processor like PayPal, and then advertise or market your services.

9. Selling Services

Many people get their online start by selling services. There are lots of things that people who market online need done. Website owners need links to be created and content to be written and articles to be distributed.

Head over to Elance.com and check out some of the services that people are offering. Is there anything that you can do? You may also want to look at fiverr.com and see what people are offering there. People are doing things as simple as making small stuffed animals and selling them for the five dollars.

If you are a good writer you are almost guaranteed to be able to make very quick money by writing articles for people. Everybody on the Internet needs content created in some way.

8. Creating Membership Sites

There are membership sites for everything that you can imagine. People will pay five dollars a month to $37 a month to hundreds of dollars a month to be able to get recurring, great information on the subject of their choice.
Are you an expert at a popular game like World of Warcraft? A membership site can be as simple as people paying you for tips tricks and help on something like this.

Membership sites can be a lot like coaching, except you would coach many people at a time by e-mail or forums instead of just one person a time. These people would pay less money but have less access to you also.

7. Selling on ebay or amazon

There are people making many full-time incomes selling on eBay or Amazon.  Some buy from wholesalers or drop shippers, and some buy from thrift stores and yard sales. Some start with thrift stores and yard sales and move up to wholesalers or drop shippers. Some people buy full pallets of merchandise and then sell them off piece by piece. Some people even buy a LOT of something on eBay and then resell it in smaller pieces on eBay.

6. Creating Software or Addons or Plugins for Webmasters

If this is a talent that you have, you can create software or plug-ins for websites and then market them to webmasters.  Or, if you think of a good idea that will help webmasters you could pay to have the software or plug-in created and then market it.

5. Creating Videos

Videos are a very popular way to share content. There are ways to create videos and use them in your affiliate marketing efforts. Some people create viral videos that everyone links to and then there is a affiliate link underneath the video.

Other people use videos as a way to create a following and then market their product to their following, or put Google AdSense ads on their videos.

4. Creating Content / Revenue Share Websites

There are many revenue share websites where you go to the website and create content or write articles or promote products and the website lets you use their platform and splits any AdSense revenue with you.

Some examples of these are squidoo, hubpages, redgage, shetoldme, and webnuggetz.

3. Blogging

Blogging is very popular although a lot less people actually make a living at it and think they are going to make a living at it when they start. Blogging takes a lot of consistent action and writing and marketing and not everybody is up for the task.

Bloggers that really make it big normally post new blog posts on a very consistent schedule like one each day. These bloggers also write on a subject that appeals to a wide variety of people, like mothers, or people looking to save money, or people looking to improve their lives.

So how do bloggers make money? Many do it with affiliate marketing – they recommend products that they use and like. Others do it with direct advertising. Companies want to advertise on their website and will pay for the privilege. Others do it with Google AdSense. Others write their own books, print books and e-books. And many bloggers use all of the above.

2. Writing and or Promoting e-books

If you have writing skills and knowledge or the ability to research or hire someone with knowledge to write an e-book then this can be a very lucrative path. Once the book is written though, or if you are just planning on promoting someone else’s e-book, you will have to figure out how to market the book.

Many people like to create a whole website about a topic and create an e-mail list too that people sign up for to get more information on the topic. They then recommend the book on the website and the e-mail list.

1. Content Websites

And the number one way to make money online is definitely content websites. Is a content website different than a blog? Yes, it is. A blog is more of an ongoing commentary, where a person shares bits of life and knowledge on a very regular posting schedule.

A content website is a website where the pages are more static, meaning they all could be put up at once and then the site may not ever get any bigger. It can get bigger, but the main purpose of the website is to give static information about something – not to be constantly updating.

A content website on a particular topic that has lots of buying opportunities related to it is a great way to get started in affiliate marketing. For example, let’s say you were to create a content website about a certain place that lots of people travel to.

You could create pages that give tips on how to travel to this place and what to do once someone gets there and you could recommend that they buy certain products like guidebooks or coupon books or even use a specific airline or booking service so that you can get a commission.

There you have it – the top 10 ways to make money online. Don’t worry about picking the wrong one, just pick one and get started. Most of these can evolve into any of the others and many of them can be combined.

Let me give some examples:

Amazon.com has one of the biggest and longest-running affiliate programs.  They will pay you a commission based on what people buy when they come in through your links.  So, let’s say you make a website to promote a product. 

You get traffic to your website and send it to Amazon using your affiliate links.  Let’s say these people buy something.  You will make a commission on anything they buy that falls within Amazon’s rules.

Amazon’s commissions are low compared to many other affiliate programs, but some affiliates have found that the ease of selling physical goods at amazon (versus selling digital goods somewhere less well known) makes up for the low commission rates.

Let’s talk about selling digital goods somewhere less well known – there is a platform called clickbank.com where people sell digital e-books. An individual or company writes an e-book and puts it up for sale and for promotion in the clickbank marketplace. The individual or company is known as a vendor at clickbank. Each vendor can set their own commission rates and some set them as high as 75%.

On a $37 or $97 e-book, 75% is a lot. Commission is much higher, but conversion rates – meaning how many people click through your link and buy – can be much lower.

Besides Amazon goods and e-books, there are many other affiliate marketing options. Almost any topic you can imagine will have a related affiliate program of some sort.

Besides receiving a commission on physical goods and digital e-books, you can also promote CPA offers. CPA stands for cost per action.
The action can often be something simple like filling out a form, applying for something, giving out their e-mail address, or sometimes signing up for an offer.

So, the way this works is you would somehow get people to the offer and if they complete the offer you would get a set amount of money. Normally this money is low, like a dollar or two dollars, but with some offers it can be quite high.
There are medical offers where people sign up to receive a medical item in the mail and only pay shipping and handling, but then if they don’t cancel or send back the item their credit card will get charged for the full amount of the item. These offers often pay substantially better than one where the person would only give out their e-mail address. These offers may also have higher return and refund rates though.

Another method of affiliate marketing that many people participate in is Google AdSense. Google AdSense. If you create a website that gets a lot of traffic but you can’t really figure out what kind of ads or affiliate links you should put on it then AdSense may work for you.

You sign up for an AdSense account, and AdSense gives you a block of code. You paste this code into your website and where the code is AdSense will send ads.  AdSense will read the words on your page and decide what the page is about and send ads related to that.  When someone clicks on the ads you will make money. Some topics are worth more than others.  For example, travel can be worth more than recipes.

There is one more type of affiliate program that I would like to explain, although this one is not as common. It is pay per click. Let’s say you had a website, and you put a link on that website and the vendor would be willing to pay you a certain amount of money for every click that came through the link.  Vendors can pay as little as a penny to as much as $.15 or $.20 a click.

I hope this helps explain what affiliate marketing is and how it works. It’s not free money, but sometimes it can feel like it. You have no product and no customer service worries, and yet you can still get paid.