How to Make Money Online

Looking for scam-free simple ways to make money online in India? Understand the basics of money-making and effective ways of earning money online in this detailed article. It covers questions like – how to earn money without investment, ideas on how to make money in India for students and stay at home moms, and also how you can earn money via website or blog or via Instagram or Facebook. This article is perfect whether you are a beginner or if you want to start earning money via affiliate marketing

Have you been hearing a lot about earning money online in recent years? Especially with the pandemic on strike, the already growing online earning community has thrived drastically.

As far as the Indian market is concerned, the awareness about ways to make money online has been quite less until the pandemic that has forced many people to find alternate ways to earn from home.

With the onset of digitization and the recurring problems of social distancing, earning online can, practically, be the best way for certain people to make money in India. You can earn full-time income at the comfort of your homes. There are unlimited opportunities available.

Ever felt the urge to try your hands on making money online but confused about what to do and where to start? Read on for more detailed information on various legit ways of how to make money online in India.

HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE INDIA FOR FREE

As a beginner who is desperately searching for ways to make money online in India without investment, this article will give you a brief idea of where to look for such works and how to start.

First off: whatever may be the way you choose to earn online, be clear on What you know and Where your expertise lies. Also, be open to learning new things that interest you and upskill yourself regularly.

Here are a few ways on how to make money online in India for FREE.

#3 VIRTUAL ASSISTANT

A virtual assistant is someone who offers a handful of services to their employers remotely. Unlike a real-time assistant who answers phone calls, manages meetings, and so on, a virtual assistant can offer any type of service from the comfort of their home. 

You can either be a freelance virtual assistant or associate yourself with a company and work as a full-time virtual assistant for them.

Before getting into how to find a job as a virtual assistant in India, it is important to understand why would someone hire a virtual assistant.

Why should someone hire a VA?

Any business or a solopreneur will definitely need to make time for more pressing works to build their business by delegating some tasks to others.

Many small business owners, bloggers, and entrepreneurs prefer to hire a virtual assistant with whom they can work one on one to complete their tasks efficiently. 

Who can become a Virtual Assistant?

Anyone! Yes, literally anyone can become a virtual assistant provided they have the right skills to serve the right employee.

The most common skills a VA would be expected to have included (but not limited to)

• Social media management
• Email management
• Bookkeeping
• Photo/Video editing
• Content writing
• Pinterest management
• Graphic designing
• Data entry
• Market research
• SEO & Keyword research

And so on…

Overwhelmed by seeing so many services on the place? Fret not.

You don’t necessarily have to be an expert in all these skills to become a VA. Skilling up in 2 or 3 of these services itself would be a very good start. 

How to get started as a professional virtual assistant? 

If you are a beginner with no experience trying to get into the career of being a virtual assistant, here are a few steps that you can follow to get it started the right way.

1. Decide what services you are going to offer. Be it email marketing, social media management, or anything. Start with something that you know or love to learn.
2. Learn more about the service you chose. Upskill yourself to have a detailed knowledge of the subject.
3. Apart from the service you chose, try narrowing down your works to a specific niche. For example, you can choose to do social media management services only for educational institutions. So, here the niche you choose is ‘education’.
4. Create a website and demonstrate your skills over there. You can also advertise your services here.
5. Practice, gain experience, create samples, and build a portfolio for your services. You can even start by doing it for your own website or social media sites and show its growth as a portfolio. If needed, work for free for friends or people you know for a limited period to let the world know what you are capable of.
6. Decide how to price your work. Be it monthly payments, project-based, per word, or hourly charges, decide on the method and try to stick to it.
7. Find your first client. Hunt for clients through various ways like
   1. Through friends and peers
   2. Facebook groups
   3. Virtual assistant agencies
   4. Job boards
   5. Linkedin
   6. Direct pitching
8. Do an extraordinary job, be consistent, and keep growing!

#4 TRANSCRIPTIONIST

What a transcriptionist does is simple – Listening to an audio file and typing out what you hear.

A transcription job can easily be a flexible online job in India because it can be done part-time to fit your schedule with almost no experience needed. All you need is a good language and listening skills along with satisfactory typing speed.

The most common categories of transcription jobs include

• Legal transcription – where you would be needed to transcribe legal proceedings, which are either spoken live or recorded, into text files.
• Medical transcription – where audio recorded medical reports or notes taken during medical classes are to be transcribed to written format.
• Podcast/video transcription – requires you to provide a written version of videos or podcasts. This is currently a growing type of transcription where many bloggers, entrepreneurs, and businesses use these to provide various formats of information to their customers.

There are even more specific areas of transcription which are gaining popularity in recent days. You can choose one which seems to fit or works well for you.

How to become a transcriptionist?

To shine as a transcriptionist, one should have the right skills and expertise in the areas like language, listening, typing, etc. It is definitely not a very difficult job to upskill for, but you must put in your effort and dedication to learn if you are just starting off. 

As a transcriptionist one is expected to have

• Good listening skills
• Adequate typing speed and accuracy
• Excellent language knowledge be it English or whatever transcription work you opt-in for.
• Basic understanding of typing applications like MS Word or so.
• Strong vocabulary
• Better grammatical understanding
• Proofreading ability
• Time management skills
• Technical requirements like headphones, laptop or desktop, reliable internet connection, writing or other software depending on the company you work for, etc.

Not all skills are needed right from the start. You can start with a basic understanding of these and learn as you work and get experience.

How to get a job as a transcriptionist?

Finding a transcription job is not that difficult, but the only tricky part is to find the right transcription job without getting cheated.

Here are a few legit companies for transcription jobs.

Rev Transcription – Rev is one of the trustworthy firms where you can apply for a transcriptionist job and get selected through a testing process. Once selected you can choose among various works listed on the website by previewing the audio files beforehand and selecting those you feel like doing.

GoTranscript – GoTranscript offers similar jobs for transcriptionists after a testing and selection process. Even here you can choose the works from the listed ones with an option to preview before committing.

Speechpad – Speechpad is one other legitimate transcription company that hires freelancers and independent contractors to transcribe audios and videos for clients worldwide.

Daily transcription – Daily transcription is one of the long-standing transcription companies that has been hiring and paying transcriptionists well and good for more than a decade. They also offer transcription services for more than 30 languages.

If you are wondering if your job as a transcriber is limited to such companies and pay per minute works, then here is good news.

You can independently work with bloggers, businesses, and firms to help them transcribe their videos or audios into blog posts or other text files depending on their requirements. This can be a high-paying opportunity than other agency based ones.

#5 INFLUENCER

Online influencing has become the trend of the day that connects brands with their target audience. Every business, from micro to macro, generates an appreciable number of customers from influencer marketing.

An influencer is someone who influences people in taking some decision, most probably, to consider buying something.

Influencers usually associate with brands and promote their products. In turn, they will be paid for the review or promotion.

In India, social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook, blogs, vlogs, podcasts have become a very good way to do influencer marketing.

You don’t need to be a celebrity or a popular personality to become an influencer. Anyone can become an influencer provided you know where to start and how to build trust and authenticity among people who follow you. 

How to Become an Online Influencer in India?

To become an online influencer, you need to build a community that will believe in what you say. And needless to say, you must take so much effort to create such trust through the information and content you provide.

This is one of the best ways to earn money online in India without investment but with lots of effort and time.

You cannot just open a social media account and start promoting products saying you are an influencer and expect people to follow your recommendations or brand to collaborate with you.

It doesn’t work that way – it takes time.

Confused where and how to start? Here are a few steps that can give you a brief idea of the process of becoming an online influencer if that is your ultimate aim.

1. Decide what you offer and who are your audience. Select your niche and focus on it. Say if you choose to be a mom influencer, your target audience is moms. Here you talk about parenting and kids related things and eventually, you promote such products.
2. Find the platform where your audience is present. Say, to target moms, you cannot use LinkedIn as your primary platform for influencing. LinkedIn is a professional space where you can target the professional community. A tech influencer can take that path. In this case, Facebook and Instagram can be ideal places for connecting with mothers.
3. Create content and share information that provides value and entertainment to your audience. It may take time but have the patience to be consistent in content creation so that you reach a stage where people point you as a go-to person for the subject matter you chose.
4. Forget numbers. Focus on engagement. All you need to do is focus on connecting and engaging with your exact target audience and provide value to them.
5. The value you provide will automatically drag people to trust your recommendation and ideas.
6. Collaborate with brands demonstrating your influencing ability and engagement and get paid to promote and review products.
7. Join hands with other influencers and multiply your reach.

As a beginner influencer, it is tough to approach brands for collaborations.

But, there are some influencer platforms in India like Brandbassador.com, InfluGlue.com, AspireIQ.com that collaborate with influencers who meet certain criteria. They partner with brands and connect them with influencers to promote products and services. 

#6 RESELLER

Reselling has been a popular way of earning without investment in India for a very long time. With the internet becoming reachable to everyone, online reselling has become more popular than ever. 

Everyone from small businesses, local vendors to premium brands, appoint resellers for their products or services to reach more audience.

As a reseller, you would act as a middle man between the brand and the audience. You play the role of a marketer and market the products to people. In return, you usually get a percentage commission.

You can either market the products without actually buying them and get orders for the company or buy the product and sell it independently by adding a profit margin to the price. 

You can become a reseller by directly contacting the sellers which can be beneficial compared to some reselling websites and apps that offer you a reseller position for various brands.

If you are interested in becoming a reseller for educational products you can contact Brand SOE Store Kids on soestore2018@gmail.com. You can get started with minimum investment. You can check out their products here.

#7 AFFILIATE MARKETING

Affiliate marketing is the way of promoting the products or services of other businesses in your blog or other places. You get a commission when people buy through your recommendation. 

Unlike reselling, where you may need to actually act as a seller to market the product, an affiliate just promotes the products they use or they believe is good.

Precisely, affiliate marketing is not sales. It’s a kind of product or service recommendation you make to people to solve some of their problems.

How does affiliate marketing work?

You join an affiliate program of a brand or a group of companies through a network. They provide you with unique links.

You would need to promote these products with these links through your website or social media or directly.

When people buy through your link, you get a commission. Simple!

To start with you need to apply to affiliate programs depending on your niche and get selected.

Best Affiliate Programs in India

Some of the best paying legit affiliate programs in India include-

1. Amazon Associates

E-commerce biggie Amazon is one of the leading companies that offer affiliate marketing gateway to people. Though it’s not the highest paying affiliate program in place, it is still the best one in India to start with. Because they have something for everyone. Whatever your niche is, they will have something for you to promote.

Read in detail about Amazon Affiliate Marketing in India here.

2. Cuelinks

Cuelinks offers a platform for affiliate marketers and bloggers to monetize their content by partnering with 400+ brands and companies. This gives you a wide range of products and offers to promote and earn.

3. VCommission

VCommission works on multiple marketing objectives where monetization can happen through app installs, lead generation, e-commerce sales, and so on.

There are also other international affiliate networks that offer good payouts for their affiliates. Some of them include Digit, ShareASale, Awin.

Already have a blog but confused on how to monetize it? Know how to monetize your blog in 2 minutes and make easy money here.

Apart from e-commerce sites and other product affiliate networks, affiliate marketing is popular even for digital products and services. Most businesses, bloggers, and service providers accept affiliates to promote their ebooks, courses, digital products, and so on to a wider audience. 

In fact, affiliate marketing is one of the best lead generation strategies for digital product sellers.

#8 ONLINE TUTOR

Online tutoring has been becoming popular in India in recent years and has seen drastic growth because of pandemic lockdown. 

If you are someone passionate about teaching and imparting knowledge, then this is a golden opportunity for you.

There are various platforms that offer online tutor jobs for teachers and educators. All you would need is a good internet connection, a laptop or a desktop, a headset, and a mike if needed.

A few legit firms that offer online tutor jobs in India include whitehatjr.com and cuemath.com

To become an online tutor you would be required to pass multiple levels of the testing process. Once appointed, just like any other teaching job, it’s in your hands to show your expertise and get more students and grow.

HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE IN INDIA WITH INVESTMENT

#9 BLOGGER

Blogging is one of the most trending online businesses that can get you a good income if done correctly and consistently. 

It can be the best way to escape a 9-5 job, take care of your family at home while still earning a full-time income.

But, that doesn’t mean it is a very easy thing to do.

As a blogger, your primary work is to create useful content for your audience and generate traffic to your website.

To earn money online through your blog, you may need to do a few or all of the following.

• Third-party ads
• Affiliate marketing
• Sell your product or service

Know in detail how to earn money in India as a blogger here.  If you do not know how to start a blog – Check this Ultimate guide on starting a blog in India

#10 BECOME A COACH

From family life to business, coaches are needed everywhere. If you feel you are good at something and your expertise may help in solving someone’s problems, go on and start coaching people about it.

Life coach, mindfulness coach, business coach, freelancing coach, parenting coach – there is ‘n’ number of coaching available.

Choose what you like. Learn more about it. It is even advisable to invest in getting certified to become recognized coaching professionally in your chosen niche.

First decide on what is your focus, who is your target audience and start coaching accordingly.

Find your voice and get your presence known to everyone. Let people know you are an expert in your subject matter so that your reach increases and more people become your clients.

#11 SELL DIGITAL PRODUCTS

Digital products are items that can be sold online as digital files, membership sites, or online courses. These will not be physical products but provide prominent value or knowledge to the customers.

Digital products can be anything like –

• Ebooks
• Photos
• Videos
• Graphic designs
• Online courses
• Printables
• Fonts

Digital products can be beneficial and easy to start for you because of a multitude of benefits it offers like

• A physical brick and mortar store is not required.
• No need for physical shipping
• Logistics or a manufacturing plant is not required reducing your capital investment
• Income and growth are measurable
• Easy to partner with others without many legal requirements

How to sell digital products online?

One of the most common benefits of digital products is you can start your business transactions almost immediately. The key is to have the right strategy and implement it the right way.

• Find the right audience. Focus on creating products for them and selling to them.
• Make your product unique. Show how different it is from other sellers.
• Focus on quality. Ensure your digital product gives value to the consumers.
• Choose the right price. Price your products optimally – not less, not more.
• Interact with your customers. Let them know the human behind your brand and connect with them through email, social media, or some platform.

Overall, digital products can be the best way to share your knowledge or your ideas with ease – less risk & no debt! All you would need to do is put your time and effort to create quality products.

#12 YOUTUBER

Youtube is one other platform where you can make good money online once you establish your place in it. 

A few years ago, it used to be quite easy to make money with youtube – upload valuable video content, drive traffic and earn money through advertising. But now, it’s different, there are more people who use the platform to create good content and the audience also has widened who are extremely intelligent in scrutinizing only valuable content among the crowd.

How to earn money online in India as a Youtuber?

As a YouTuber, you start with opening a youtube channel on the platform, create high-quality content preferably focusing on a specific group of people and drive traffic to the content.

Initially, the ways to make money on youtube are quite narrow. You would need to have at least 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours of viewing time for your videos on YouTube over a given period of time to access various monetization features.

Here are a few ways for making money online in India as a youtuber.

Google Ads – 

If you have the required minimum of 1000 subscribers and given hours of viewing time, you would be able to apply for YouTube partnership programs using Google Adsense. Your content will be monetized by incorporating video ads, display ads, and a few other types of ads.

The payment may be based on the number of clicks or impressions for the particular ad.

Also, it is extremely important to adhere to the guidelines and rules of the advertising partner.

Sponsored posts-

You can collaborate with brands for a paid partnership or a barter one, and create content incorporating that particular product within your video. This way of promoting or reviewing a brand is termed as influencer marketing.

Fan funding –

An established content creator on youtube can use this way of fan funding as a monetization channel by creating membership programs. You can monetize your fan base by charging monthly subscriptions in exchange for offering special content that is extremely valuable for them.

If you are good at creating and editing quality videos, incorporate proper marketing strategies, and adhere to YouTube best practices, earning money online with Youtube can become your cup of coffee.

HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE INDIA AS A STUDENT

As a student who is still pursuing a full-time education, what if I say working part-time or on weekends can be more than enough to make some money online.

All or most of the above said works can handily be adapted to fit in the schedule of a student and help them earn money online with ease.

Here are a few tips that can help you to earn money online in India as a student. 

• Choose the work that fits your schedule. Freelancing, content writing, blogging, and such gigs can be suitable for students.
• There is also other money earning online tasks like survey taking that can give you some quick cash in less time.
• Always beware of any work you take. Be careful with what you choose. Never reveal too much personal information even if the job demands, without prior analysis.

QUICK TIPS FOR EARNING MONEY ONLINE IN INDIA

Before you go, here are some brief tips you must keep in mind while making money online in India.

1. Have a good internet connection and necessary gadgets like mobile, laptop, headset, or whatever your job requires.
2. Choose the job that you love to do and that suits your schedule
3. Check the authenticity of the work you commit to because online space is more prone to scams.
4. No matter how much potential money-earning online platform has, your effort and consistency matter.
5. Invest in courses or books to regularly upskill to be up-to-date.
6. Be careful about how you work online and make sure to adhere to government laws and policies.

To sum it up…

There are endless ways to make money online in India, but the key lies in how to choose what fits you and your interests and keep on learning to improve your skills.

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