Top 20 Ways to Earn Free Money Online

The internet has provided people with more opportunities to create additional income. While some choose to invest in potentially lucrative online businesses, others have taken a more passive approach that earns them an income of $3 to more than $100. Try it with these legitimate ways on how to make money online for free.

Here are 20 tips that will show you how to earn free money online.

1. Take Paid Surveys

Potential earnings: $50 per survey

Getting paid for your opinion is not a bad way to make extra money in your spare time. Many platforms play host to marketing firms that do customer research. All you have to do is sign up and fill in the requested details. Note that the more information you provide, the better your chances of qualifying for more surveys.

Survey Junkie is one of the most popular paid survey sites and pays members through PayPal

2. Get Rebates With Cashback Credit Cards

Potential earnings: 3% for every purchase

You can get more out of your credit card spending if you sign up with companies that offer rebates or cash rewards. This means you can earn back some of the money you spend by using your credit card. The key is to choose one with no annual fees and a rewards program that aligns with your spending habits. For example, if you spend a lot on your groceries, use a credit card that offers more rewards when used in supermarkets.

Bank of America offers some of the best cash back programs and gives 3% cash back in the category of your choice

3. Get Paid to Have Apps on Your Phone

Potential earnings: $5 a month

Some companies are willing to pay you to download an app and keep it on your smartphone. This helps them gather data to develop a more effective business strategy. All you need to do is answer their questionnaire to see if you’re qualified for the program, download their app, update your settings to allow the app to collect your data, and use your phone as you usually would.

Smart Panel pays people $5 for downloading their app plus a loyalty bonus every quarter on top of the $5 monthly earnings

4. Get Paid for Selfies

Potential earnings: $20 per payout

Everyone who owns a smartphone takes selfies regularly, and marketers have found a way to use this data for their research. They are now beginning to offer money in exchange for selfies. Just look for their mobile app and install it on your smartphone. Once you’ve signed up, you will find a list of tasks such as taking a selfie with specific products inside of a store.

Pay Your Selfie is a marketing company that specializes in customized visual surveys

5. Start an Affiliate Blog

Potential earnings: $200

With affiliate blogging, you earn money by writing reviews and recommending affiliate products to your readers. Having more readers means you become more attractive to affiliate brands, so it’s important that your blog looks and feels professional. Create a blog, sign up with an affiliate marketing company, then start creating content with affiliate links for your readers. Every time your reader clicks on your affiliate link and makes a purchase on their website, you are credited a portion of the sales.

WP Engine’s affiliate hosting program offers one of the highest payouts with bonuses if you reach a certain number of sales

Part-time affiliate marketers will need a professional blog, but this doesn’t mean they need to spend a lot of money setting it up. DreamHost is a very low-cost web hosting service that offers just the right features to run your affiliate blog efficiently. It provides users with unlimited bandwidth, a domain name, and a one-click web apps installer to help you start your blog in no time for as little as $4.95 a month. Visit DreamHost today, and take advantage of their discounts.

6. Earn Through Referrals

Potential earnings: $25 per referral

Referral programs are nothing new, and they are fairly easy to do online. If you like joining online platforms or downloading online store apps, getting referrals is as easy as sharing your referral link on your social media account. Review the apps and websites you’re subscribed to for their referral programs and follow their instructions on how to successfully refer your friends, family, and acquaintances.

Ebates gives you $25 for each successful referral when they complete a $25 purchase

7. Sell Your Designs on Etsy

Potential earnings: Unlimited

Etsy is a website host for creative designs that are available for sale, so if you’re an artist with a stash of designs in your drawer, you can start making money from them. You can sell them as posters, greeting cards, or other goods that the buyer can print on their own, either at home or using a local print shop.

All you need to do is sign up for an Etsy account, review its policies, and fill out the information. Once you’ve uploaded your designs, share a link to your products on your social media page so that people can view them.

Etsy has a collection of amazing artwork and designs from artists, both digital and print

8. Invest Your Retirement Savings

Potential earnings: $5,500

If you’re looking for a more long-term financial solution, think about getting the most out of your retirement money. Choose an online investment program that will help you maximize your savings potential through investing money you’ve set aside for retirement. This means you not only save on taxes―investment income is taxed at a lower rate than regular income―but also earn from the money you’re not using.

Look for online financial advisors and learn about their retirement plans. Sign up with Betterment once you’ve decided on a program that matches your needs.

Betterment offers its clients ways to save and invest up to $5,500 of income-tax-free

9. Allow Ads on Your Uploaded Videos

Potential earnings: $100 per payout

You don’t need to have your video go viral before earning money from it. Some platforms let you earn money simply by uploading and sharing videos for the platform’s clients on your blog. Dailymotion, in particular, has a monetization program that allows you to upload your videos to their platform to embed on your blog. Your videos will then get in-stream advertising, and you get paid when your audience watches the ad that appears in it. Sign up, enable the monetization function, and set up a payment method.

Videos on Dailymotion are free to use and embed on your blog, so you get paid every time your audience watches the ads

10. Start a Dropshipping Business

Potential earnings: Unlimited

Dropshipping is a process in which merchandise sold from your online store can be delivered directly to your customers from the manufacturers’ warehouse; this means you earn money without having to incur expenses for holding inventory. Look for a supplier and work out a dropshipping arrangement. Then, set up an ecommerce platform that supports dropshipping features to display your products. This makes it possible for you to earn money from an online shop, even while you sleep.

Oberlo is Shopify’s dropshipping app that allows you to manage inventory without the overhead cost

Use Shopify for a quick and easy way to create an online store with beautiful, responsive themes for your dropshipping business. Choose from the many Shopify dropshipping apps, like Oberlo, to help you curate and add products automatically to your store. Try Shopify for free.

11. Get Rebates From Your Monthly Bills

Potential earnings: Unlimited

Saving on your monthly bill is equivalent to earning free money. Luckily, some online providers have made it their mission to help consumers minimize their bills. All you need to do is sign up for their service, send a copy of your purchase receipt, and wait for their update.

Bill Shark offers to help negotiate monthly bills on your behalf with trained experts who find hidden costs and process them for you while you wait

12. Earn Points for Redeemable Gift Cards

Potential earnings: Unlimited

The best thing about making free money online is earning it while doing the usual things you like to do online. You can earn points and stack them up to exchange for redeemable gift cards you can use to make purchases in your favorite stores or restaurants. It’s as simple as signing up for and using their app to do your normal online activities.

MyPoints offers reward points for everything from online surveys to online purchases that you can exchange for gift cards

13. Earn Rebates From Local Retailers

Potential earnings: $10 per payout

There are mobile apps that allow you to select coupons for things you are already buying. You earn rebates by uploading a photo of your receipts for these products on their platform. These apps have features that compare the purchase price for each item on your receipt to competitor prices and will give you a rebate if it finds the same product sold for a lesser price at another store.

The Savings Catcher on Walmart’s app offers price matching by awarding gift cards when they find a better deal of the same product in competitor stores

14. Get Refunds for Your Online Purchases

Potential earnings: Unlimited

Some companies offer refunds for merchandise you purchase from online stores. Sign up to their app, provide the information as requested, and start uploading copies of your receipts to be processed. The app will then check the current price for the same item and send you a refund if it finds one that costs less than what you paid for. In three to seven days, the payment will be credited to your linked bank account.

Paribus offers cash refunds for your purchases by comparing your receipt to current prices

15. Play on Trivia Apps for Money

Potential earnings: $3 per payout

If you’re a trivia wiz, you can easily earn money by joining live trivia contests online. Download the app, sign up with your details, and you can begin answering trivia questions to rack up your score. Remember that you are competing against other users online, so you have to answer quickly to get the points.

Swag IQ or Swagbucks live is like a real-time trivia game show where you compete with other users to earn points that can be exchanged for cash

16. Get Paid for Browsing the Web

Potential earnings: $30 per payout

Many platforms offer to pay money for anything you do online. These companies collect data to use for market research that their clients need to improve their marketing and advertising strategies. So, if you spend most of your downtime on the internet, you might be interested in earning extra income simply by performing online searches.

Sign up with an online rewards program and provide all of the information it asks. This will help it determine which of your regular activities qualify you to earn money so it can send you tasks that make the most sense.

Inbox Dollars is a popular rewards program that pays you to perform web searches and other activities online

17. Earn From Scanning Bar Codes

Potential earnings: Unlimited

Some rewards programs offer money in exchange for tasks such as scanning bar codes. All you have to do is download their app and sign up for their program. You should find a list of stores that require bar codes to be scanned. After you find and scan the required item, you’ll get a notification stating whether the scan is successful, and you will be credited points that can be exchanged for actual cash.

Shopkick lets its users earn points they can exchange for gift cards by scanning bar codes, viewing products, or just visiting even online stores―giving you more opportunities to earn free money online while at home.

18. Get Paid to Watch Videos

Potential earnings: $10

There are many ways to get paid for watching videos. Some companies require you to watch ads while others will ask you to watch videos to help promote their clients. You’ll need to sign up for their program and stay active by watching videos, leaving reactions, and writing comments.

Paid2YouTube hires individuals to watch and leave reactions on a list of the videos they are trying to promote for their clients

19. Sell Your Old Electronics

Potential earnings: Unlimited

If you’ve been wondering how to get rid of your old or defective mobile phones, digital cameras, or tablets, you might be surprised to know that there are companies that pay to take these things off your hands. Online platforms connect sellers to buyers who usually use these old electronics for parts. All you need to do is sign up for the website and start uploading photos and information of your old gadgets on the platform.

Gazelle is an online store for used electronics and helps manage shipping and payment for their users

20. Earn Rewards From Your Junk Email

Potential earnings: $20

Until now, there’s not much purpose for anyone to check on their junk mail except to have them deleted. Anyone looking for ways on how to make money online for free should look into their collection of junk mail, whether it’s paper mail or online. For online junk mail, you can sign up to platforms of marketing research firms that analyze junk mail data. They will provide you with a designated email address where you can forward your list of qualified junk mail, and you will get confirmation of the points credited to your account.

Small Business Knowledge Center is looking for “consumer panelists” who would like to forward their junk mail in exchange for cash

Bottom Line

Quick money-making strategies might not yield as much money compared to full-time online businesses that generate a lot of income. However, over time, these small efforts that earn you anywhere from $1 to $100 at a time can easily grow into a significant amount of savings for your future. Try our list of ways to make money online and make sure you’re prepared for a rainy day.

Want to add more to our list of tips to make free money online? Share them with us in the comments.