Into the Deep End

Is it possible to actually make money using the Internet?

That was the question I started asking in February of this year. My family and I were just barely making it, living paycheck to paycheck, and I wanted to break out of that cycle. We have two small children and if my wife worked full time it would cost us the equivalent of her entire paycheck to work out a babysitter or day care. I needed to pull in some extra cash but also needed to be home with my family; a second job was not an option.

A friend gave me a book which contained a couple good nuggets of information that I've held on to:

Your true assets are the things that have immediate value or that you can put to work to make money. A car isn't an asset; it's a liability, a money pit...unless you join a ride sharing service and make money driving people around. A house, while commonly considered an asset, is non-liquid equity, and you only get value out of it when you sell or reverse mortgage (the latter sending you years back in payments and possibly costing thousands in interest). But if you rent out your space, even just a single room using a service like AirBNB, then you have put your asset to work and suddenly you have an extra income stream. People are tempted to call their cars and their houses "assets," and while they technically are on paper, they aren't making you money unless you sell them or put them to work.
 
You don't have to have money to make money. This is a big one for me. I think the people who say "it takes money to make money" just aren't good at anything. Take a talent you have and monetize it; you're turning time directly into profit - just like a "real job," but on your own schedule.

The second point I already did to a degree. I do some computer repair and network maintenance on the side, so hooray! What I learned through this resource affirmed that I was on the right track.

So I started to think about potential income streams. I wasn't able to get into my preferred ride sharing service because of where I live, and I had already started the process of renting out some space, but there were still more resources I had on hand...my computers and Internet connection.

It's no secret that online moneymaking is more often than not a scam. My challenge was not in finding opportunities, but in sifting and sorting through the plethora of nonsense to find the golden nuggets: legitimate methods of turning my time online into cash. I started my search for what wasn't too good to be true.

The 'net is HUGE. The World Wide Web is just that - a tangled web of dusty corners that even Google can have a hard time navigating. I needed help. I needed HUMANS. Enter social media.

It was a little less challenging to find a group of people with the same goals as me. I read posts...a LOT of posts...asked questions, did my own research, and started reviewing money-making services. The basic categories I researched were:

• Survey/market research sites
• Pay Per Click (PPC, also known as "Get Paid To", or GPT) sites
• Passive or semi-passive earning smartphone apps
• Video sites / Ad revenue harvesting
• Secret shopping
• Rebates

I'll do a writeup on each category with a comparison of the different services I tried and my tracked earnings data.