My brother recently became unemployed and was looking for a way to make some money while he was at home job searching. He never really paid too much attention to my IM projects but strangely enough, after he became unemployed he started to listen to what I had to say about making money online.

He doesn’t have many IT skills and is not very computer literate so I couldn’t just say to him – “go build a site about something you are interested in, build links to it, advertise it and start making money”. This was completely alien to him.

So I had to trace back my own steps to when I first started looking at ways to make money while I was travelling in Asia. I told him to sign up to a few sites and start selling his free time as a service. After one week of doing this he had made $15. Not much to cover your living expenses here in the UK but hey, it pays for a weeks worth of fruit and veg at the supermarket and in these tight economic times every penny counts.

So it got me thinking, if my brother, who does not have a clue about pretty much anything to do with computers (apart from using twitter and facebook) can make a few dollars here and there then there is no reason anyone else who is reading this article cannot do the same. I must point out that being native English speaker is a huge advantage, as our writing skills are usually slightly better, and therefore higher paid, than non native English speakers.

And so I am going to recommend of few of the websites that you can sign up to and start making money immediately. These websites are legit AND DO PAY. I know this because my brother is currently using them to make money online.

Microworkers

Microworkers is great for getting those little tasks completed quickly and is also a great way of making a few dollars here and there. People post tasks for you to complete and you get paid a small amount for each task you complete. These tasks can be anything from retweeting a message on twitter, to signing up to a forum and saying hello. Most jobs can be completed in 5-10 minutes so its quite easy to make $1-2 every 2 hours

Approx Earnings Per Hour – $1

Pro’s

• Quick and simple tasks that anyone can complete and start earning money.

Con’s

Most of the higher paid tasks require you to have a website (with PR) or twitter account with xx followers. Most of the jobs anyone will be able to complete will only pay $0.10 – $0.20.

Sometimes jobs that you complete do not get recorded (usually fixed after talking to support), which can be frustrating, support seems to take ages to reply too which adds to the frustration.

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Visit Microworkers

Postloop

I recently discovered this website while trying find ways to kick start my new forum. Postloop is a paid to post service where users get paid to post on forums and blogs. All you need to do is sign up, post 10 quality comments on their postloop portal (this is to ensure your posts meet the quality guidelines) and once approved you can pick from 100’s of forum and blogs to post on.

Now you get paid approximately $0.05 per post, but the higher rating you get from posting the more you will get per post. My brother is currently earning approx $0.08 per post. This is a really great way to earn a few dollars per day. We all use forums, it’s pretty easy to sign up to one and start catting to fellow members. Its really not that hard to do.

Approx Earnings Per Hour – $1

Pro’s

Can earn good, consistent money if you put in the hours as there are hundreds of blogs and forums to comment on. Some allow unlimited posts per day!

Con’s

Depending on how many forums you sign up to, you could run out of forums to post on and therefore you will hit a maximum earning cap per day.

Example – My brother only likes to subscribe to fitness and politics forums, so he limits his daily earning because there are only 10-20 forums he can post on. If you do not limit your topics and join every forum you will unlikely hit a cap.

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Visit Postloop

Fiverr

I’m sure you have all heard of this site. Basically you can sell services for $5 (of which fiverr will take $1 fee when you withdraw your earnings). The beauty of this site is that you can sell just about any service. Forum posting, blog commenting, directory submissions, social bookmarking, any IM service you can think of, you can sell it on fiverr.

Now it is quite hard to become established on the site now, as so many people use it, but if you keep an eye out on the right side of the page you will see ‘Request Gigs’. here you can nab potential clients who are looking for a service. Once you get a few jobs completed and a few reviews you will start to attract more and more attention and sales.

Approx Earnings Per Hour – Too hard too estimate, I was making approx 1 sale per day when I was using it. The task took 30 mins to complete. But that was when things were less busy on the site and it was easier to make sales.

Pro’s

If you have a unique service that you can offer then you will likely make sales.

Con’s

Fiverr take 20% commission (which takes the piss), hard to make sales if you are offering something generic.

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Visit Fiverr

Digital Point Marketplace

An excellent place to sell cheap services such as forum posting, social bookmarking, website submissions etc. Also keep an eye out for people looking to buy services too (they usually start the thread title with [WTB]), many people post on DP forum looking for people to complete easy tasks. If you undercut the competition (as there can be a lot) then you will make sales (offer 500-700 word articles for $3 for example).

Approx Earnings Per Hour – $2-4

Pro’s

Easy to sign up and start finding people who are looking for jobs to be completed. Can sell services free of charge, once you gain itrader people will trust you more and therefore likely to buy from you.

Con’s

Could be hard to kick start sales as it is a very popular forum, you will have to undercut a lot of the competition which means you may not make a lot of money at the start, but once you have reviews and itrader under your belt you can raise your prices.

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Visit Digital Point Forum