Net Hustlin'

There are companies now looking for in-home customer service representatives. Customer service reps are hired to take orders on the phone, offer tech support, and/or sell products. To be a customer service rep you are required to have a dedicated phone line, a computer, and high-speed internet access.

Alpine Access connects companies with work-at-home employees. The service they offer is completely free. When you sign up you will see the employment opportunities available to you. I have signed up and at this time they have 4 positions available. Two positions are for part-time customer service representatives, one position is for a full time representative, and the other is for a full time payment specialist of a company.

After you find the job you want you can upload your resume to apply. For the positions that are open the only requirements they have for representatives is that they have a high-school diploma or GED. They don't specify how much you can make but according to an article MSN the pay usually starts around $8 an hour for this type of work, although the pay may vary between each employer.

LiveOps Inc. is a call-center whose agents work from home. New agents are usually paid $6.50-$8.50 per hour in addition to commission and incentives. Over time agents can make between $9.00-$11.00, and some exceptional agents make up to $20.00/hour.

If you like to write essays and term papers, you can make good money online. There are sites that sell custom term papers to students. If you can write well-written term papers you can earn up to $25 per term paper.

To become a writer on academia-research you have to first fill out a registration form. After you fill out the form they will send you a test essay that you will be asked to complete in a couple of days. If they like the essay your account will be activated and you will begin to receive essays to write.

They pay between $6-$20 per essay. Payment is made with E-Gold, PayPal, Wire Transfer, or Western Union. Payment is made twice a month.


Submitting an essay to Gradesaver is very easy. You simply create an account and you can automatically submit your essay. If they accept your essays they will pay $25 per essay.

Works that you submit through gradesaver become property of the site. You cannot reproduce the essays for other sites. The great thing about this site is that they pay a flat fee so that you don't have to do any guess work about how much you will make.


Shvoong is a lot different than the other essay sites. Since the essays are free you don't receive money for submitting your essays. Instead you get a revenue share of the ads that are clicked on your essay page. You probably won't make as much money this way as you would on other sites. One good thing about the revenue-share program is that you will continually make money as long as your essays stay on the website. Even if it's only pennies a day you can still be making money in years.

With an affiliate program you earn a percentage of the commission every time you link to an advertiser's product and they make money through your site.

Affiliate networks connect publishers with advertisers. They act as the middleman so you can find the affiliate program that is right for you.

Here some of the biggest affiliate networks online:

Affiliate Fuel One of the largest online affiliate networks.

Avangate Sell computer software for up to 75% commission.

Amazon Affiliate Program You earn 10% commission by linking to products of choice on your website.

Clix Galore Affiliate program with over 8,000 products to choose from. Each product has a different commission rate, ranging anywhere from 2%-70% of each sale.

Rocket Profit Affiliate Network with over 1,000 advertisers.

You might think i'm crazy, but with online enrollment at an all-time high, this is a perfect time to start your own University. There are many people with degrees such as stay-at-home parents who are willing to work as part-time adjuncts for a lower salary, if it means working online. This is one of many reasons online Universities are profitable. And without the costs of a traditional school - such as a campus and full-time staff, its not as far-reaching a goal as you might imagine.

Although there are many successful online schools, the competition is still low, as most people don't even consider getting into this line of work. It's an entrepreneurs dream - a market that is growing rapidly with little competition.

Right now the University of Phoenix has over 200,000 adult students enrolled in campus and online degrees. This is an astronomical number compared to traditional schools: even the largest rarely have over 40,000 students.

University of Phoenix charges an average of $500 per credit, which is around $1500 per class. If every Phoenix student was enrolled full time they would be making $9,000,000,000 a year.

What it takes to start your own University

The first thing you need is money. You will need money for advertising, website startup costs, an office, and to pay faculty and staff salaries.

If you have affluent connections you may be able to find an investor for your school. An investor takes an ownership position and assumes all losses the school might incur. Most for-profit schools are founded through investors.

If you have connections in the academic world it can also lessen your financial burden. Friends with graduate degrees may be willing to be part-time adjuncts for a lower price than a traditional salaried professor.

Obtaining Degree-Granting Privileges

Before you can legally grant degrees your university must be licensed under the state where its located. Different states have different requirements. Virginia, Wyoming, and Colorado are notoriously relaxed about their requirements for university licenses. These states barely require more than a visit to the school. In tougher states such as Maine and New Jersey there is a rigorous review of the school's curriculum, staff, and faculty.

Another important step, although not necessary, is to have your college accredited by a recognized accrediting agency under the Department of Education. Having your school accredited assures that you are providing a quality education that meets specific quality standards. You can only begin the accreditation process after your first student has graduated.

There are two types of accreditation: regional and national. Regional is often considered the more prestigious of the two. There are six agencies which can grant regional accreditation. Credits from regionally accredited schools are more transferable between schools. Regionally accredited schools also receive more government funding and are more prestigious in the eyes of employers, but both accreditations are respectable.

While a school is under evaluation for accreditation it can still legally offer degrees as long as its licensed. While being unaccredited may deter some students from enrolling, there are students who are still willing to attend unaccredited schools as long as they provide a quality education.

For more information on accreditation, visit ed.gov.

Can it really be done?

While its absolutely possible to start your own university, it will only work if you have the drive, patience, and a good deal of money. Its obviously not a get-rich-quick scheme, although it could make you filthy rich over time.

This is the money I've made so far since I started trying to make money online:

Adsense $59.03

Vume $1.97

Gather $20 Borders gift card

Me $.10

InboxDollars $22.52

Associated Content $2.05

Moola $.90

Adept Web Forum $.60

Total: 107.17

Not too bad for the internet :)

Mahalo Greenhouse is a human-powered search engine that is looking for part-time guides to make search result pages. They pay between $10-$15 for each search result that is accepted.

They are looking for guides who have experience blogging and participate in projects such as Wikipedia and DMOZ.

You can apply here or check out the FAQ page to learn more.

I wrote a post last month about forums that pay you to post. After writing it I was intrigued to find more forums that pay. So far I have found two more forums that are noteworthy which I have been spending a lot of time on.

CraZoo pays .02 for a new thread and .015 per post. They also pay you .002 every time your referrals post. They have 2,945 active members and over 8,000 threads. The forum topics are general: sports, movies, technology, etc. The minimum payout is $10.00.

Adept Web Community is new but its one of my favorite forums to post on. They only started last month but they already have 178 members. The amount you get paid per post isn't clear, but it seems to average around .03. So far I have made 16 posts and I have .54. Their minimum payout is only $3.00, via pay pal.

After signing up on Adept Web Community you have to go to your user control panel, click "group memberships" and add the group "paid users" to get paid for your posts.

Don't expect to make a fortune doing this. It can be more time consuming than it seems, but it's still a fun way to earn a few extra bucks.

You can embed videos and earn extra money on your blog and social networking sites.

The News Room has news videos that you can embed into your site. They pay $4 per thousand impressions (CPM). They also pay an extra $.15 CPM if someone embeds the video from your site onto their site. You can search The News Room for relevant content for your site. You can also embed pictures from their site for $1 CPM.

One thing I like about The News Room is that the codes also work for sites such as Myspace, Facebook, and Me.com. This is a great way to monetize every site you spend time on. You can put the code in your profile and in comments.

Revver pays 60% of the total profit if you upload your own video and share it. This is great for people who already have videos on sites like Youtube. You can transfer your videos to Revver and get paid every time someone views your video.

Even if you don't have your own videos you can make 20% of the total profit just by sharing a video.

Right now I average about 3,000 page views on Myspace a month, which is an extra $12 a month or $144 a year just for embedding a video from The News Room on my page. This is a pretty easy way to make some extra money. I'm not sure if this is against Myspace's terms or not, so be careful if you try to do this.

You can answer simple questions online for money at just answer. People who are looking for answers will place a bid of the amount of money they are willing to pay. You make 50-70% of the bid if you answer the question correctly.

Most of the bids are around $9+, so from what I can see this is a quick way to earn some extra cash.

Here is a list of the most recent questions and answers.

They are looking for people who are knowledgeable in specific fields. If you have one specific area of knowledge you can apply here and become an expert on the site.

If you are looking for a new way to make money on your site you may want to consider selling t-shirts and other merchandise. Many people have made a good income selling t-shirts on their sites, including collegehumor.com, which pulls in $200,000 a month from t-shirts alone.

Of course you shouldn't expect to make that much money by designing a t-shirt, but it's clear that there is a big market for it. There are a lot of free sites that will print and ship your shirts so you won't have to do any work.

Cafepress is by far the most popular print-on-demand service online. They print shirts, books, bumper stickers, and more. The base price for a value t-shirt is 8.99. By marking the price up to 15.99, you can make a profit of $7 every time you sell a shirt. You can mark up a shirt to whatever price you want. Owning a basic shop is free but they put a limit on the number of designs you can have. They have an option to have a premium shop for $5 a month with no limit to what you can sell.

Spreadshirt is similar to cafepress except they specialize in t-shirts. Like cafepress they have a base price for each product which you can mark-up. A unique thing they offer is the ability to create your own designs right on their site. They also have a gallery of t-shirt designs that you can use on your own products in your shop, which is great for people like me who don't know much about graphic design.

Zazzle is a print-on-demand service that has some interesting merchandise you can sell, such as (real) postage stamps with your design, calendars, postcards, even aprons. They are community-based with message boards, journals, and more to help you spread the word about your merchandise. It's also 100% free with no premium membership. You receive 10% of everything you sell.

Selling custom t-shirts is the perfect way to make a little money and promote your site or business. Any promotional items usually make a good impression on potential customers, especially something useful like t-shirts or beer koozies!

Newsvine is a user-generated-content site with news stories and product reviews. As a writer on Newsvine you are given your own "column" with a domain (i.e. yourname.newsvine.com). You can write about anything you consider newsworthy.

Writers get 90% of the ad revenue from ads displayed on their pages. The ads displayed are banner ads, therefore the more traffic you generate to your articles the more money you will make.

Newsvine is a great site to be a part of because it's one of the most personalized news sites on the internet.

Users can vote and comment on each article. An article that receives the most votes is shown on the "featured articles" section for that day. This is a great way to be rewarded for writing a good article because the more votes you receive the more exposure your article will get.

There are even more ways to receive exposure for your writing. Newsvine has a friends list option that can help you network with other writers. When you add a friend they will have the option to add you back. If they do, they will be notified every time you post new articles. There is also an option to put a chat room on your article instead of a comment option. This can be a creative way to drive more readers to your articles.

You can become an online juror and get paid for each case that you review. Some lawyers will pay money to have an online mock trial so they can prepare for a case. All you have to do is read a script with the facts and perspectives of each party. Then you answer a few questions about the trial and your done. It's somewhat similar to an online survey.

You have to be over 18 and have never been convicted of a felony to apply for these sites.

Ejury pays $5-$10 depending on the length of the case. There is no minimum payout and the payments are made via paypal. According to their FAQ the average time spent on each case is 35 minutes.

Here is a sample case you will see on Ejury.


Online Verdict pays $20-$60 per case. The cases take anywhere from 20-60 minutes. You can choose which cases you want to review and you get notified via e-mail when new cases arrive.


This is an interesting way to make money. Although I compared it to filling out online surveys it seems like a much funner way to make money, and it pays better.

You can get paid to try out new Google products. Google has a research program that pays you to participate in studies if you qualify. According to their FAQ, they pay $75 for each hour that you spend with a researcher, in person or on the phone. For online surveys the pay varies. The studies usually take about an hour and a half.

They don't accept everyone who signs up - it depends upon what they're looking for at the time. The only thing they ask is that you are over 18.

Sign up for User Experience Research

Amazon's Mechanical Turk is a place where web developers list odd-jobs that they need done, along with the price they are willing to pay. Most of the tasks are really easy, such as finding a title for an article or finding the best picture for a product. You can sign up for free and do the tasks immediately. The pay is pretty low, but the work is easy. Most of the tasks (called "HITS") range from 2.00-.01. Here are a few examples of what a HIT would look like:


Transcribe a 15-minute podcast ($1.50 + bonus)

Answer a single demographic question (.02)

Give a 100-word review of the movie 300 (.20)


If you see a HIT you would like to take, you can accept the HIT immediately. You complete it on the site without having to log-on to a third-party site, unless that's part of the task.

I signed up with Amazon Mechanical Turk a few months ago. I have taken 90 HITS and made 3.10 so far. Most of the HITS were worth .01 but only took me about five seconds to do. I usually log-on while I am waiting for class to start.

Obviously this isn't a get-rich-quick scheme. It would be pretty hard to make above minimum wage by working on this site. There are good things about working on MTurk which make the site noteworthy, though. Here are a few:

• It's run by a trustworthy company (Amazon)
• There are always HITS available
• You only take the HITS that you want to do
• The tasks are generally easy
• The minimum pay-out is low ($10)
• Most of the HITS don't have any special requirements
  

Forumshock.com is looking for new forum writers for their site. They sell posts in bulk to forums looking for a traffic boost. If you become a hired writer, you will be contacted when they have a forum looking for posts. They will ask you to write between 20-70 posts on the forum at .15-.20 a post depending on the quality.

You can apply on their job opportunities page. Not everyone who applies will be contacted for a job. They have a quality standard and they only want people who show good writing skills.

One good thing about Forum Shock is that the packages they sell have a small amount of writers (i.e. 1000 posts, 20 members). That means that instead of signing up to dozens of sites, posting one or two comments on each, you can spend an hour or two on a single site. It's like being paid for being part of a community. It also cuts down significantly on time spent.

Another plus to working for Forum Shock is that they don't hire hundreds of writers. That means you won't have to compete for writing opportunities or wait weeks to finally get an opportunity.

This seems like a great way to make money online. Who doesn't want to be paid to chat online?

If you are interested in more ways to make money posting on forums, please check out my article about getting paid to post on forums.