5 Ways to Make Money Online Instead of Wasting Time on Facebook

Facebook is the undisputed king of social media with more than a billion monthly active users, surpassing other popular social networking sites, such as Twitter and Google+. It’s a great place on the Internet to keep in touch with our friends and loved ones. For business owners, entrepreneurs and marketers, it can also be a great place to promote their products and services to reach more customers online. But for many people, especially the teenagers and young ones who are enjoying abundant time to spend on the Internet, Facebook could be addictive. This addiction leads them to waste time, lurking on the popular social network without having any productive or profitable activity.

What if there are ways you can do to make money online instead of wasting your precious time on Facebook? What if you can do them at home and do them part-time? What if you can do some of them regardless of your age or occupation in life?

The following are 5 ways to make money on the Internet instead of wasting time on Facebook:

1. Make money online from blogging.

You’ve probably heard about blogs, bloggers and blogging. A blog is a type of website that publishes regular blog posts, which may be organized according to the date of publishing and their categories. Popular blogging platforms include WordPress.org (self-hosted), WordPress.com, Blogger.com (Blogspot.com) and Tumblr.com. This website you are reading now is actually a blog powered by a self-hosted WordPress platform. Bloggers are what is called to people who blog while blogging is the process of maintaining a blog.

As a blogger, you can do many ways to earn from your blog. Once your blog has already attracted loyal readers, you can get relevant web traffic or visitors that you can convert to profit. The most common ways to make money from your blog include placing Google AdSense Ads, leasing your blog spaces (ad slots) to direct advertisers, selling your own products and services (see #2 and #3), promoting affiliate products (see #4), and many more.

You can start a blog for free using a subdomain from Blogspot.com (ex. www.MyAmazingBlog.Blogspot.com) through Blogger.com. But if you are serious and want to make your blog look more professional, you can buy your own domain name and use a self-hosted WordPress platform (ex. www.MyAmazingBlog.com). You can also buy a domain name for your Blogger.com blog, and host it with Google. The only advantage that I like when using a self-hosted WordPress blog is that you gain full control of your blog since you host it in your own or purchased web host rather than hosting it on Google’s server.

Earning real and consistent income online from blogging is not an easy task. It requires hard work, patience, passion, persistence and excellence in creating or writing blog posts that will satisfy and help your target audience. Most bloggers really make money online after blogging for six months. It’s not that long right? It’s better than wasting your time on Facebook doing nothing for months or even years.

To show proof that we can really make money online from blogging, here is the Gross AdSense Earnings of BusinessTips.Ph for the year 2012.

That earning is not that big compared with other prominent bloggers in the world, who are earning hundred thousands or even millions of dollars monthly. But isn’t it wonderful that you are making dollars instead of just wasting time on Facebook and other social media? Besides, AdSense is not the only way to earn money from your blog as I said previously.

To learn more about blogging, you can like our Facebook Page. By liking it, you will always get updated with out recent articles about blogging, business, online marketing and other related matters right at your Facebook News Feed. You can also ask any question about blogging in our Page.

You can also read our previous articles and tips about blogging to learn more. Check out some of them below:

– 8 Benefits of Being a Blogger
– 20 Ways to Make Money Online from Your Blog
– How to Earn Extra $500 a Month from Blogging Online

2. Make money online by providing services.

If you think blogging is not for you, you can try selling your skills or services to certain clients or companies online. For example, if you are good at writing, you can offer writing services to people or businesses who need content for their websites. Check out below some of the services you can offer online:

a. Website design
b. Mobile app development
c. Writing and editing
d. Virtual assistance
e. Graphic design
f. Social media marketing
g. Search engine optimization
h. Software programming
i. Video production
j. Foreign language translation
k. Tutorial
l. Data encoder
m. Accounting and bookkeeping
n. and many more (check out our list of online jobs in the Philippines)…

What you have to do to find clients is to join online job marketplaces, such as oDesk.com, Freelancer.com, Fiverr.com, Sulit.com.ph and 199jobs.com. There, you can create a free account and list your skills or services that you want to provide to certain clients. You can check out their websites to see the list of jobs that are usually offered.

Nowadays, you can sell almost any service that could be helpful to a business. If you have many followers on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and other social network, you can offer a service to some businesses to promote their products in your social media network. Check out Fiverr.com for some unusual services that are offered by its members.

To make sure that you will find clients and they will be satisfied with your work, always maintain a work ethic. Deliver what you have promised and consistently train yourself to become a better service provider.

3. Make money online from selling your own merchandise.

Aside from selling services, you can also opt to sell goods online. If you are familiar with Sulit.com.ph, AyosDito.Ph, eBay, and Amazon, you can create an account there so that you can list the goods you want to sell online. You can sell brand-new and secondhand items, such as gadgets, apparels, consumer products, cars, motorcycles, and even houses and land.

You can also produce and manufacture your own products. For example, you can try the following:

a. If you’re a web developer, you can develop websites and sell them for profit at Flippa.com (this process is called website flipping).

b. If you’re a photographer, you can sell some rights of your photos online.

c. If you’re an expert in a certain industry and you’re good at writing, you can write an eBook and sell them at Amazon.com.

d. If you’re a craftsman, you can also sell your creations, such as jewelries and other decorative items.

e. You can also sell t-shirts with your own design if you love doing it.

There are many other stuff that you can sell online. You just need to choose the products that you really love and that will satisfy your customers. Moreover, if you’re always on Facebook, you can create a Facebook Page, where you can showcase all your products to increase your sales.

4. Make money online from promoting others’ products.

If you are not yet ready to provide professional services to clients or to sell your own merchandise to customers, you can try promoting the products of other people or companies. You can be an affiliate marketer or a network marketer.

An affiliate marketer is someone who joins an affiliate program and promote affiliate products to target customers. Affiliate marketers earn money through commissions. They earn a commission on every lead (sale) the affiliate company made through their marketing efforts. If you have a relevant blog, you can promote an affiliate product to your audience. If you don’t have a blog, you can also promote an affiliate product on your social media pages. To check some of the top affiliate networks on the Internet, you may visit Amazon.com, CJ.com (Commision Junction) and Clickbank.com.

A network marketer or multi-level marketer is someone who sells products from an MLM company. In the Philippines, we see them everywhere, online and offline. They are also on Facebook most of the time, making efforts to expand their network and increase their downlines. But successful network marketing is not just the process of promoting products to anyone. To be successful, network marketers have to actually use the products they are promoting and prove to people that they are actually working and highly useful to consumers. They also have to build good relationships and should avoid marketing tactics that irritate people, like promoting an irrelevant product, lying to people, claiming something without a proof, and spamming.

For more guidance, you may read our article about the 10 Powerful Tips to Succeed in MLM or Network Marketing.

5. Make money online from joining contests

Do you know that you can also make money online from joining legitimate contests or competitions? Instead of staking people on Facebook or keeping yourself busy in taking your next selfies, you can join online competitions to showcase your talents and abilities. You can join contests, such as writing contest, photography competition, video animation competition, and other competition that you think you could win with your best talent. This way, you will not only have the chance of winning a prize, but you could also gain honor and show your talent to the world.

So… would you want to use your precious time to make some bucks rather than wasting it on Facebook? Feel free to make a comment below. Don’t forget to catch us on our Facebook Page for your further questions. We would also be happy if you will share this post to your Facebook and other social friends.