It’s amazing, we are already in 2020 and there’s never been a better time to learn how to make money online for free, i.e. without a big upfront investment.
This is a topic that is very near and dear to me because one of the main stumbling blocks people face when it comes to starting an online business or simply a side hustle, is the money barrier. You need money to make money right?
Well, not necessarily, in fact, you may have plenty of time on your hands, if you do not have disposable income or money to invest upfront, and that’s more than enough to get going strongly.
This is why I have put together 3 solid strategies to start making money online for free in a relatively short amount of time once you decide to take action. Most of these won’t require any special or advanced skill, certainly, they do not require a credit card to get started and you could even get away with not having a bank account.
Are you excited about it? Let’s get started then.
Create a print-on-demand store on Redbubble
Upfront investment required = 0$
Time to set up = 2 – 4 days (depending on your ability and time)
Credit card required to start = no
Potential to grow over time = high
Upkeep time = virtually nil
Payment = PayPal or bank account (US, Australia, UK)
The first strategy I am going to be talking about is leveraging the marketing power of a print on demand store such as REDBUBBLE.
What is RedBubble
If you have never heard of it, here it is in a flash. Redbubble.com is an online retailer of apparel and accessories with print-on-demand design. In the next few paragraphs, I am going to tell you how to start a legitimate shop on redbubble.com at zero cost, with no design expertise and with a very good chance of making money if you play your cards correctly.
If used effectively, this technique can generate a handsome passive income or, if you are serious about it, even a full-time income!
The choice of using redbubble.com instead of other online print-on-demand- retailers comes down to a few simple facts. They invest heavily in marketing (so you do not have to worry about it), the quality of their final products (not just the print) and they have a very stable platform, fast, intuitive and easy to use.
However, if you have time, nothing stops you from applying the same strategy to multiple print-on-demand retailers such as zazzle.com or teespring.com, it’s up to you.
The secret to starting making money online for free on redbubble.com with no design skills boils down to using a very specific type of design, doing your research thoroughly and choosing the right niche.
Let me explain to you how.
Firstly and foremost, we are going to be working with simple text. Yes, you heard me right! No fancy design or illustrations, just good old text.
Let’s go on the t-shirt section of redbubble.com and do a search filtering by best-selling designs. Amongst the top-selling tees, several designs pop up with just text on them! Let’s have a look:
See? These are humorous t-shirts with witty, funny, trendy quotes on them that are selling for 20$, 30$, sometimes even 40$ each!
This simply shows that text is perfectly fine as long as it resonates strongly with an audience. So, you need to be smart about it during your research.
Choose carefully your text
In my opinion, there is almost no point in replicating an existing design. Instead, look for best-selling ideas and build your original take on them. Alternatively, you can search for the low hanging fruits, such us unsaturated niches and come up with text-based ideas that can work well for them.
Another option is to go online and research trendy topics or memes and create tees around those making sure, again, you are serving an existing audience such as dog lovers or doctors or engineers.
This is going to be the most important part of your preparatory work, so do it diligently. Once you have selected your first or multiple niches, start adding designs to your newly created shop and voila, you are in business! This is your first idea to make money online for free!
The beauty of this system is that you can keep researching and adding more unique designs to your collection at your own pace, deciding your margins and keep growing from there without virtually using any money for marketing.
Create a how-to video lesson on Skillshare
Upfront investment required = 0$
Time to set up = 7 days to several weeks (depending on your skill level and time available)
Credit card required to start = no
Potential to grow over time = high
Upkeep time = virtually nil (unless creating content that needs to be updated over time)
Payment = Paypal
The second strategy to make money online for free I am going to talk about today is using Skillshare, a very popular platform to share knowledge and expertise. The potential profitability of this strategy is excellent and it requires no initial monetary investment, as all the tools you need can be easily obtained for free.
How do you make money online for free with Skillshare
Skillshare is an online learning community where anyone can discover, take, or even teach a class. Anyone can join Skillshare and become a teacher. Skillshare teachers earn revenue based on a royalty system and teachers are paid out based on their share of the minutes watched by Premium students across the platform each month.
How much can you earn?
Becoming a teacher is completely free whilst to access the growing library of classes you need to become a Premium user and pay a monthly fee.
From their Blog: ‘As a teacher, you get paid for the number of minutes watched by Premium students in their classes each month. Teachers can earn $0.05 and $0.10 per minute-watched. This means that if your students watched 10K minutes of your class in the first month, you’d earn between $500 and $1,000. That would be just 10 minutes of watch time per student if you have 1,000 students watching your class.’
This is incredible and I can not overstate its potential. Now let’s get to the strategy part.
For this strategy to work we are not going to reinvent the wheel and we are going to look for categories or specific videos that are already popular and have a proven earning potential.
What are the skills required
Now, there are two possible scenarios here.
Either you already have the skills to create or recreate a popular class. In this case, you are set to go. You just have to create one or more videos and upload them on the platform.
Or, maybe you do not have yet the skills necessary to create a class. In this case, do not worry, you can still make it work, in fact, in this case, you will have to select the appropriate subject, something popular and proven to attract students and also something that it’s relatively easy to master. In this case, your job will be to acquire the skills and then create the class.
This course, for example, is relatively simple, is recorded, probably, with a mobile phone and I can assure you you can easily learn how to solve a Rubik’s cube in less than a week and pass on your experience to the paying customers on the platform.
This little course also has a very healthy number of students and like this, there are so many other opportunities. You can also look at youtube for very popular videos and recreate those on Skillshare with a bit of effort. It really depends on you and the skills you are starting with.
The Free tools you need to create a basic class
If you wanted to create a lesson with yourself talking in the video you can easily use your mobile phone which includes a camera and a microphone. Couple it with a solid free editing software such as FilmoraGo and you are all set.
If instead, you want to create a screen capture lesson all you need is the software to record your screen and a microphone to record your voice. Most headphones nowadays come with an included microphone, alternatively, you can use the mic on your mobile to record your voice.
To record the screen you don’t need to buy anything and can use instead, an open-source software, OpenShot which is a great screen capturing software and video editor. It works on windows, mac, and android and it is completely free. On Udemy there is even a course on how to use it!
Shutterstock
Upfront investment required = 0$
Time to set up = 7 days to several weeks (depending on your skill level and time available)
Credit card required to start = no
Potential to grow over time = high
Upkeep time = nil
Payment = Paypal; bank account
“Shutterstock is a global provider of high-quality licensed images, videos, and music. Content creators contribute their work to Shutterstock, where end-users buy and use it in a diverse array of creative personal and business projects”
For the third strategy to make money online for free I am going to be introducing a website called Shutterstock. In a nutshell, you can upload pictures, videos, and music to the platform and earn a royalty every time a user purchases one of your material.
This business model has been around for a few years now and the golden age for photographers and hobbyists flooding the site with pictures has all but gone now. However, a new field of opportunities has been slowly maturing, I am talking about video footage and the strategy that I am going to present in the next few paragraphs, is going to focus on producing and uploading HD and 4k videos on the platform.
Now, I understand that not everyone has a 4k capable device however 4k capable mobile phones are becoming more and more common and the potential of this technique is such that I had to add it as an option. However do not fret, even if you can only shoot regular HD video with your phone right now, the strategy I am going to outline is going to be working fine with regular HD videos as well.
The strategy is as simple as it gets. While pictures might earn you a few dollars each, videos are way more lucrative with 4k videos being the most financially viable opportunity. In fact, one single download can earn you hundreds of dollars!
In this breakdown, you can see that footage clips are not subjected to the ‘lifetime earning cap’ of images and net you a 30% royalty on the price paid to by the end-user. HD and in particular 4k clips sell for hundreds of dollars, you do the math.
For example, the 4k version of these relatively simple yet very popular stock videos on the platform sell for 250$ netting 70$ to the creator each time they are downloaded. However, there are more expensive video clips on the platform so the potential is there.
What is so appealing regarding this strategy is its potential to grow over time, as you can keep growing your portfolio of videos at your own pace and the very minimal upkeep required once the clips are uploaded and tagged. Not to mention that if you already have a passion for filming, the whole process of researching and shooting the footage can be very rewarding.
Conclusions
Wow! We have covered a lot of ground on this article, I am confident you have learned something new and actionable about the subject but the last step is completely up to you. I can’t wait to see what you think about these ideas and if you have experimented whit them yourself.
Don’t forget to share, if you enjoyed this article and to subscribe to be kept in the loop and be notified as soon as something new pops on the site. Till the next one!
Like!! Really appreciate you sharing this blog post.Really thank you! Keep writing.
excellent post