This is a guest post contributed by Sarah Harvey on how she make money online off her free time. Follow her here on twitter to know more about her.

Selling Handcrafts Online

Have you ever thought of working with handmade crafts or creating your own? Why not make money from your handmade crafts that you so lovingly create?

Well to my surprise I found there was an easy way to make money with handmade crafts. Here are the basic steps you need to follow:

1. Sign up with www.etsy.com

Yes, you heard me right. I discovered a great social community called Etsy where you can buy and sell all things handmade. Some categories where you can sell your handmade crafts in could be art, bags and purses, ceramics and pottery, dolls and miniatures etc. There are many other categories you can choose from. It is worthwhile to have a look.

So once you have signed up, now what?

2. Sell your hand made crafts.

3. You could create digital collage pieces that you can sell for $3-$5 a time. This is the only time where you can collect public domain art and make your own to sell on this site. One thing you need to keep in mind is that you need to mention the fact that it is digital and that people can print it out. Of course you have to work on your pieces to make it creative and interesting or else it will not sell.

Here is a link where someone is selling their digital collage:

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php…_desc&includes[]=tags&includes[]=title

Now that is one way of making easy money on the internet.

So besides handmade crafts, how else can you make a bit of money?

Offering Freelance Writing Services

My personal favorite is to do some freelance writing.

Now some people may not enjoy the idea of writing, but for those that have a bit of creativity, you can easily make a bit of money part-time. If an extra $100-$500 sounds like it can help your family financially then consider freelance writing.

The catch is most people do not know where to start looking for these opportunities.

Here are some sites where you sell your services on:

http://www.guru.com

http://www.freelancewritinggigs.com/

Both the mentioned sites you can scour for potential jobs, but if you are more adventurous and love to attract visitors to your own sites then I would have to say that you need to sign up to http://www.ezinearticles.com and write informational content. The more interesting your content, the better it will rank and if you are selling a product or service on your website, you will make money from this. But like everything else it takes dedication and perseverance.

As for advertising your services, start with the basics. Create some business cards once you are confident of yourself, and start to think as a professional. If you don’t have a domain name yet, it is worthwhile to get one. Get a clean design and have the url imprinted on business card and stationary. Approach your local convenience shops and see if they will allow a free advert on the community boards. On the internet you can gather a reputation by participating in discussion forums, social sites and blogs of interest. In the end the more effort you make, the better the rewards will be in the long run.

I have been investing hundred of dollars in buying ebooks since the past 2 years. Like anyone else, i am inspired by how those authors claimed, “you can make $50/day or even $100 /day by using my method!” But obviously, i am not making $50 or more per day. For example, there’s an ebook that i bought which is about website flipping last time. The title is “Earn $500 per day by flipping websites! Guarranteed!” The title seems kind of addicting right? Wow, if i can make $500 per day, i am earning $15000 per month.

Well, i bought it and LOL, basically it just teach you the basics of what is site flipping? how he create his site, where to sell it. This may be good to newbies but i doubted the results would be same for everyone. The information given in the book are just common sense. Since then, i stopped buying ebooks that claims to be able to make you money online. If people are really making $500 per day, why would they bother to sell their ebook for just $5 instead of using the time to duplicate their “proven” method? Making more money?

My research on money making ebooks

Most of the money making ebooks are written by “kids” and of low quality. Methods might works now, but after a while, it won’t. Reasons may due to saturated market. Mostly, this ebooks are being sold in webmaster forums like digitalpoint. However, there are exceptions good books such as Holly Mann internet marketing book etc.

Many people buy books to learn something new or want to make money online. But common mistakes that we make are that we have not change our mindset to learn the new things. Among 100 people that bought the book, 85 people just read it, 10 people practice the method, and only 5 people with the correct mindset and attitude master it. If you ask me, Derek, are those making money ebook for real? I could have say to some extent. Though there are some black sheeps ( scammers) of the trade, there are others that really works. So, see the reviews before buying.

But for me, after wasting so much money in those money making ebooks ( which none of them works after a couple of weeks or months), i’m not wasting my bloody money on them anymore. Someone told me this sentence that kind of given me some insights.

“Don’t rely your success on others, rely on yourself”

So, despite on just buying ebooks that contain methods on making money from others, why not invest in yourself, buying inspiration books, designing / programming books or any other books that teaches you a skill? I think those help more and i am 100% sure that you are learning things that “really works”. This is a more worthwhile investment.

Do you join forums? Do you know that you can actually monetize that little section to earn you some cash monthly? Selling signature links is a good start for people who are interested in making money online, but do not have a fair amount of money to invest into webhosting expenses and domain names.

What is the thing that makes signature link worth money? Have you got any idea yet? Yes, i assume you already got that answer, but nevertheless, let me explain it. I guess most of you have heard of this term called Search Engine Optimization. It’s all about making your websites rank higher in big search engines like google, yahoo, msn. And, with higher and better ranking, your websites get better exposure and of course more traffic. For your information, This traffic that you got from these search engines is called “Organic Traffic”. So, if you heard people saying organic traffic, organic traffic, now you know what they are talking about.

Ok, back to the topic. So, there actually marketers or webmaster out there that buy signature links to boost their ranking in search engines and that how’s it makes signature link valuable. Whether you joined health related forums, anime related forums, idol related forums, webmaster forums, you can make money off it. So, if you have already joined a couple of forums, maybe you already have that potential signature section that are waiting just for you to earn money via it.

To successfully sell your signature, you need to know at the criterias that those webmaster / marketers look at when buying signature links. As one of them, if you asked me, i would look at the two factors below.

Reputation
By having a high profile or reputation in forums. Your post are more being recognized by others. Of course, it bring exposure to the signature links.

Number of posts
The more you post, the more the signature link is exposed. Thus, this is a really important criteria.

Thes are the two important factors will affect the worth of your signature link. I hope this post can help new webmaster or people get started in making money online. Recently, i just sold 2 signature links for $6/month and get myself a free big mac monthly. I only have 1k+ post and no reputation. See the below screens.

Signature Links Payment From Paypal

There are case studies of reputable members selling signature link worth around $40 to $50 per month per link. That’s all about selling signature links. If you have any comments, feel free to post it here.

Website flipping is like playing property real estate. Below are the similarities between both of them.

Process of Real estate

• Buying a house, and reselling it for a profit when the land prices increased.

Process of Website Flippings

• Example 1. Buying a domain for $7, develop a website, and resell it for $50.
• Example 2. Buying a established website, build value to it and resell it at a higher price.

Of course, flipping a website is far more easy then playing property real estate. You don’t need to have a large sum of money. It’s really that easy and don’t really require any knowlege of expertise. By just a small investment of maybe $10usd and some hours, you could have earn $50usd in profit. Even a 9 years old kid can do it. Is there a market for flipping websites? Definitely yes. Just browse through some popular webmaster forums like sitepoint, digitalpoint, webmastertalk, there are people selling and buying sites every hour.

I mentioned that flipping a website requires no knowledge of expertise at all. Below is one example of how you can flip a website requiring little knowledge. Also, you should thank open source softwares like wordpress, phpbb, because they make it possible.

Step 1 : Register a $7.15usd domain at godaddy.
Step 2 : Buy a hosting package. Just visit digitalpoint forum. They are people selling packages at such low cost of $1 per month. If you want, just email me, i can provide you free hosting.
Step 3 : Go and download wordpress and install it in your webhost. Alternatively, you could just login to cpanel, go to fantastico and click on install wordress. It’s just a few clicks
Step 4 : After your wordpress blog is created, spent a some time to research which type of blog you should start. Cycling, tennis, swimming etc. Then start posting around 7 to 8 articles regarding that niche. People are looking for unique content, so make sure that your articles passed through copyscape.
Step 5: Build some link exchanges to your blog and get some traffic to your blog.
Step 6: After a few days, when your blog received some traffic, post it up for sale.

That’s how you can earn $50 usd with just an investment of $10usd and some hours of work. However, that requires some hardwork. If you are hardworking, i am sure you could make some petty cash out of website flippings.

Many of you might be wondering, “Can i start a website without investing any money?” The answer is yes, you can! i try that myself before. So here is another question, “Can i start a website without investing any effort and money? I can say, either you invest money or you invest effort You cannot start a website without investing any effort and money. So back to the main topic of this post, how do i start a website without investing any money? That is by investing efforts. So what do you need in order to start a website? You need to have:

1. Domain Name
2. Web Hosting

Total cost will be around 20 USD for (Domain name -> 1 Year Registration) + (Web Hosting -> 1 Year) You can research for cheaper ones. For me, i started by posting in Namepros.com (That is a webmaster forum why u earn credits that can be exchanged for real cash) Also, there are also alot of other ways where you can earn the start up cost, you can

• write articles and sell them
• design websites
• design logo
• help to offer services to submit links to link directories
• forum posting etc etc
• there are many many others ways, this is just to give a brief idea of what you can do to earn start up cost for your first website if you do not wish to invest any money.

So now i assume you have worked hard and you had earned the at least 20 dollars in your paypal. The next step that you should do, is to go to www.godadddy.com to register your own domain name. ( you can choose other domain registrars if you want) That will probably cost around $7.17, if you apply the coupon (hash3) ; i am not sure whether this coupon still works, but i bought one domain at $7.17 using this coupon for my first niche site just a few days back. Hurry before it expires!!!! Okay, after buying the domain, you have to find a web hosting company, there are tons of web hosting companies out that and prices are competitive, you can go research yourself. For me, currently i am using bluehost.com. I find their support to be good, fast and reliable, so if you asked me, i would recommend them.

After your web hosting account has been set up, i am sure under the account details, you will be given the nameservers. E.g. something like NS1.bluehost.com, NS2.bluehost.com. So now, if you registered your domain with godaddy, you just have to log in to your account and point the nameservers to your web host. Then, wait for some time for the DNS to propagate, and you can now upload files to your web host. Simple Right?

For the ftp program, i would recommend using Filezilla. You can download it at www.filezilla.com. After you installed filezilla, just key in your details such as the domain name, username, password and port number, for ftp, its either port 20 or 21 (all this will be given when you purchased a web hosting package). I will not explain on how to use filezilla as its real easy, just drag and drop.

Okay, thats all! You just need to create your website and upload all the files ! Always note that, its easy to create and upload a website, but its hard to maintain it, The next step, which i won’t probably be covering in this post, is to market or seo your website. And, i think here is where the hard part begins.

As for $500 challenge, i think i am seriously facing a real problem. Yesterday, when i went back to work, i was SO DAMN tired that i slept all the way till this morning. That means.. LOL, i have not start creating my niche site. Seriously, I think i needed to change my plan. That is to create and sell those niche sites only at weekends, as i was beat tired on weekdays after work. So heres my plan, i am left with 3 weekends, which mean 6 days. So 450/6 = 75 dollars for each day.

When i am in secondary school, one of my friend changed my mentality totally on making money. At that point of time, my mentality of making money is the traditional way. People always said, “You must study hard, then you can get into a good school, then you can find a good job, and your job will pay you well”. Yes! I agreed that is true to an extent. Nowadays, to get employed, people always look at your educational level. BUT, does that mean that if you are not good in studies, you cannot earn lots of money? I can still remember vividly, that friend of mine always used the book, “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” to prove that to us. Theres also another case study. Have you guys heard of “The Rich Jerk”? He earns tons of money online and he is a dropout. Tons of money as in millions.(Not to mention that there are rumors that he is bankrupt now, LOL). What does this prove?

For me, i prefered my future job to be slack, not too much physical requirements as i am weak (LOL), and most important, to have flexible hours. So, i started researching online for “Slack” jobs and my research came to light that we can actually earn money online. Thats when i am been introduced to online money making.

Infact, during my researching process, i have been taken in (scammed), a couple of times. I joined some scammers program that claim you can earn thousands by doing survey, but you need to pay a certain amount of registration fees. I joined typist programs where they claim to pay you for doing data entry work online. I joined autosurf programs, HYIPS. There may be some programs out there that may be really paying, but i guess i am unlucky, all the programs that i had joined are SCAMS.

So… what i am trying to say is, do not join those programs…LOL. i found out we can actually earn money from internet by selling services, such as webdesign, web development, logo design, marketing etc. So, it will be better to spend your time learning those skills then to waste your time on those programs. If you guys are interested in making money online, selling services, i would recommend joining http://www.namepros.com for a start and then http://forums.digitalpoint.com.

Why i recommend joining namepros first is because, in namepros you earn points called “namebucks” by posting in the forum and those points can be used to exchange for real money or use to register a domain for free.(around 0.02 cents for one post) For me, i spent 3 months posting in namepros, and then registered my first domain name for free, www.worldwinners.info. After that i sold the domain to another guy in the forum for only 10 bucks. (The good thing about these 2 forums is theres a very active buy/sell/trade section that you can sell your products or services.)

Then i bought another domain called www.submit-news.com and developed it into an article directory. And after months of building up the value of the website, i sold the site for 3k. That was my very first sale of website.

I was glad that i enrolled in multimedia and infocomm course in nyp because we get to learn flash, photoshop, programming that relates to what i am interested in. So, if anyone is wondering, am i wasting 3 years in my poly life? You are NOT!. We have now acquired the basic skills, so i think its now a matter of how are we going to use the skills to benefit us. When you think back, why do we study? That is to acquire skills so to get a job and earn money. So, you realised, it is all back to making money. It will be wasting your parents money($6k), if you do not apply what you have learn in school into practical.

If you are interested, join those webmaster forums now! Lets learn together.