Making Money Online

During the first Covid-19 wave, I started to be more active on YouTube, watching more video's and even learned how to create my own YouTube Channel. I also invested time in video's that guided people in making money online. This seemed so easy when listening to all those experience YouTubers that I told myself that I could give this a try and see how well I would perform.

What can actually bring you some income online?

Having A YouTube Channel

 A lot of people who I socialize with and talk about YouTube (YT)and having a channel, will look at me and say " Oh so you are making the big bucks!" Yes, you can make pretty good money as a YouTuber with the views and Adsense as well to top it off. 

However, what most people don't know is that it takes time to be monetized on YouTube. You need 4000 watch hour and 1000 subscribers in the last 12 months. Therefore, if you are a new YouTuber and think you will make money when uploading your first video, you are wrong, but if you did achieve the requirements for monetization, there is a good chance that you can make in the six figures and more with time.

 As for me I started my channel in June and currently have 92 subscribers and 392 watch hour, so I'm still far from the requirements but I enjoy making my video's and that is what matters to me.

Affiliate Programs / Marketing 

When you search YT on how to make money online, the one thing that will come up more than any other is affiliate marketing. This mean that you are affiliated with a brand and you promote items of that brand. Once people decide to purchase that item based on you promotion link, you then receive some money out of it. 

Now you have a lot of affiliate programs out there, but the ones that I personally use is Amazon Affiliate, ShareAsale and I started to use Pinterest to promote my links. 

Now this seems very nice, however, you need to put the effort into it. I'll start with the one that does not require special requirements. ShareAsale, all you need to to is register using the following link. Once you create your account you will then be able to select from a list of brands/merchants with amazing products that you wish to promote (see image below for example). Now when you select the brand you want to promote you will be ask to justify how you will promote. Some of the brand will accept you automatically others will review your application form before they accept you. After being accepted you will be able to use the links provided in order to promote the items. Depending on the product some of them will give you a 10% commission and more.

Let's move one to Amazon affiliate. This is a special one as you have certain rules to follow but I will talk about that later. All you need to do is apply and fill out a form that will ask you how you will promote the product, once it is filled out you are approved temporary and once you login you will need to fill out the tax form in order to have the money that you make deposit into your account. 

Now you must be wondering, Temporary! Yes, this means that you have a limited time to promote the items that you have selected (180 days) and once you make your first sale Amazon will review your application and see if you meet the criteria's in order to be a part of the affiliate program with them. Overall, you need to have 500 followers on your Youtube channel or a total of 500 with a web site, instagram, FB page and they all have to be public settings. 

What happens if you don't have all that? Well you can still apply and promote the products that you want and when Amazon will notify you that you cannot be part of the program they will cancel your affiliate account but will send you the money that you have earned. Now the fun part is that you can re-apply right affer :) The down side is that if you have added the links on your FB page or YT video's you have to re-do all of them in order to have the links associated to your new account.

Now that you are all setup with your affiliate programs and links, what is the best way to promote all this? I'm sure there are many ways that you can find to promote your links, I personally use my FB page, my Website and YT. The thing with YT is that when you finish your video you have to mention that the product in question is available using the link in the video description because if people don't know, they won't read the description tab and will not click on the links. One thing that you need to be aware is that you need to mention to people that when they click on the link and purchase you will receive a small commission. This is how I have set my disclaimer notice on my FB, YT and Instagram:

⭐️DISCLAIMER⭐️: Links included in this description might be affiliate links. If you purchase a product or service with the links that I provide I may receive a small commission. There is no additional charge to you! Thank you for supporting me (Philippe Gaspard) so I can continue to provide you with free content each week!

The same idea also applies for Pinterest, the only thing is that this platform requires more work as you need to use images when you promote for Pins. 

So as far as Affiliate Marketing and making money online, it is a great idea and yes you can make some good money out of it, the only thing, is that I find that it is time consuming as you have to make sure that you promote your linked items. If you don't…less money or no money at all.

Online Application That Will Make You Earn Money!

You might have heard of applications that you can download on your tablet, iPhone, iPad,etc. and earn money when playing the games. I have tried 2 and I was able to make some $ out of it.

Bubble Cash & Solitaire Cash

Bubble Cash, this game is all about the bubbles LOL! You need to pop the bubbles before you run out of time. You have different colours that you need to match up for the bubbles to pop and drop. 

Solitaire Cash, well I'm not going to explain how to play solitaire you can find the rules online. But this game is also based on time.

Those two game will provide daily bonus such as diamonds and some cash (about 0.03$) depending on the specific day during the week. What you must know; in order to play this game you need diamonds or money. Yes you heard me, money. You have the ability to purchase cash and play for cash or play for free with diamonds and earn cash with it.

For me it is not logical to buy money at 5$ and more because you want to make money and not spend money as it is easy to lose the $ in the game. Now this is my suggestion to you as this is how I play it. Use your daily bonus diamonds and play the game (for 2 diamonds each game) until you get about 200 diamonds. Once you reach that number, play the diamond game that will give you the Prize POOL of 7$, this game will cost you 120 diamonds. The same idea applies for Solitaire Cash.

Now it is important for you to understand that you cannot win all the time and it can become frustrating so don't play this game for hours, you need to take a break. So far, I have played this game for two weeks and won 14$.

All you need to cash out the money, is a Paypal account :)

Online Surveys and testing

Their are a lot of Online Survey that you can do and get recognition for it, either cash or gift cards. I use two online surveys, the first one is call Sawgbucks and Branded Surveys. Both use the same process, each survey that you do will earn you point and once you have reach a certain amount of points you can cash out the money. Branded Survey will let you cash out once you reach 1000 points for a total of 10$ or chose a gift card, Sawgbucks also provides you with gift cards and will let you cash out once you reach 500 points for 5$, 1000 points for 10$, 2500 points for 25 and so on and so forth.

I did reach 500 points yesterday and did my first cash out of 5$ that will go to my Paypal account.

Another application that I would like to share with you is Usertestingclub (found on Facebook).This is not a survey, it will ask you to use your browser on your phone and do a specific search on the web. All you have to do is follow the instructions provided to you and give out the answer and submit. You get a request for testing about once a day and it takes about 24–48 hours before the money is deposit in you Paypal account. Now how much does it pay? This testing will give you 1$ US, perhaps that you say that it's not much but this takes about 5 min to do and your receive 1$ US. So I think that this is pretty good. 

For those of you that think about creating 2 accounts and more to try to get more cash in, don't. If you do, your account will be block and they will not be able to unlock it. Just follow the rules and you will be fine. I started this a week ago and did make 7.73$ CA

Writing platforms

I'm not going to dive deep on this one, but if you want to write stories that can make you earn some money, you can try MEDIUM and find a publisher or just publish on you own or you can try Vocal.media where you can as well write and publish stories. 

All you have to do is follow the rules of the publisher based on where you want to publish and see if you get approved.

Personally, I posted a few stories without submitting to publication and did some money out if it but I believe that if you send you stories to a publication, you will be able to earn more. 

Conclusion

There is a lot of ways to make Money Online, some do require more work then others if you want to make good money, some take time but overall it is worth trying and you will see that it works and worth it, all you need to do is take some time and put the energy into it and you will see results.