Top 10 ways to make money online with Paypal

A list of sites and methods to earn money online that have been tested, focusing on those that transfer money directly to your Paypal account after you do some job.
NO scam or bs sites, NO MLM/pyramid or marketing scams here just pure labor and exchange. This guide is for the most part about simpler ways to make money, for people who already have jobs and don't have time to do all sorts of online marketing.

1. Find Freelancing work online

If you have any of the marketable skills listed below you should definitely have a profile on Elance.
You could be building you career online.
Very popular for photoshop and Illustrator jobs, or design jobs in general, pick up a couple easy Photoshop jobs that pay around $50, some that you can finish in a short amount of time like removing the background from an object, quick money!!.
But there is also work for other fields, the way it works is that the provider (you) bid on the jobs, on a free account you can bid on jobs in one category (see categories below) the employer can choose to give the job to the cheapest bid or to the most qualifying provider, or a combination of both. That's why your online profile and portfolio counts, so in the beginning try not overbidding.
Basically anyone can find some kind of job on Elance (you could find something like typing, voice recording, telemarketing etc.).
But most of the jobs you will find are for freelancing in one of these categories:
Web & Programming, Design & Multimedia, Writing & Translation, Admin. Support, Sales and Marketing, Finance & Mgt., Legal, Engineering & Mfg.
(if you don't have any of these skills you can still freelance online. Scroll down to number 8 in this list to read about other types of "freelance" jobs and tasks you can get paid to complete online/from home, easy money for anyone!)

Make a free profile, list your skills and check it out. This is even the place to go if you're desperate for a job. But it's not just a job hunting place, its a network of possibilities and career opportunities, an online portfolio online of work you have done to show off, use as a resume to attract more jobs in the future.

2. Host a blog or two

I'll stand by my word that everyone should be a blogger.
Just blog about your interest, blog about the videos you watch on Youtube, music you listen to, the pictures or news you browse, anything.
There are many ways to make money with a blog, for example you can use it to advertise the other services in this list (write about your Zazzle products to generate extra traffic). Or you can use Google Adsense or any other banner advertising program that pays you for showing ads.
Then you just have to worry about getting visitors.
As long as you treat it as hobby, write fresh content often, then as your amount of content grows the amount of visitors will grow too. The more keywords that sink into the Google search engine the better.
Adsense is the most popular but currently doesn't support Paypal (will send you checks or transfer to your bank account).
One popular banner service that supports paypal is Widgetbux.
Check out my post on how to get visitors to your blog
But perhaps the greatest way to make money from blogs is to become an affiliate, keep reading:

3. Become an Affiliate

If you have a website or just a bunch of friends and/or email adresses, affiliate marketing should be part of your online cash flow.
Combine it with the articles you write in your blog or any other place online you have access to posting, write some useful reviews with your referral link. Again adsense is the most popular but doesn't accept paypal. There are many others that accept paypal, Ebay Partner Network for example offers Paypal as well as direct deposit payments.

Try sponsored tweets to make money on Twitter.



Link people to individual products they are looking for, or to the Ebay home page (or perhaps ebay autos). Convince your friends to buy something online and send them a link through email.
The Amazon affiliate program pays up to 8%, but no paypal or other forms of online payments other than amazon gift card or Bank transfer. Lots of great options for setting up referral links however, and myself and other users can report great earnings with this program.

4. Design and sell your own products

Zazzle lets you make your own product online and sell them from your Zazzle store, from your blog or website, or from search results like Google and Zazzle's own search, as well as other search engines (so remember to tag and describe your product well, its proven to make them sell).
Alternatively you can promote other people's products in your blog or website or on your Facebook profile etc. and earn 7% for the sales!
You can design your own shirts, shoes, mugs, postage stamps, mouse pads, skate boards and more, and the design process is intuitive and easy.
Upload your pictures and choose from many fonts etc. Use arrows to position or resize pictures or fonts.
You can also save pictures from products you are browsing in your online Zazzle folder for later ;).
Everyone should have a Zazzle account, whenever you have some funny idea or meme/saying, just make a mousepad or something out of it. Zazzle takes care of promoting it for you and trust me, even the dumbest ideas will sell every now and then so you have nothing to loose by making them ;)

5. Write articles or forum posts for money.

Having your own blog is probably the best bet as you control the advertising
But then you're responsible for generating traffic and setting up your income stream (displaying ads etc), writing on ehow or AC takes care of that problem as it pays writers through paypal on a monthly basis (or weekly with AC).
For ehow you Write "How To" guides about anything and get paid a writers compensation bonus.

Associated Content pays $1.50 per thousand views of you article, may also pay a flat fee for videos or they'll post certain "calls for content" where they pay extra for writing articles on a particular subject or submitting news footage.
Maybe not the best place to sell your footage if your job is a paparazzi, because the prices (last time I checked) they offer to pay you for videos were around $10-$15. Still worth it though if you just had some random footage of some recent news on your cellphone or something.
Or maybe even if you are a paparazzi, it could be the place to sell some leftover footage.


If you're into writing (and you're good at it too), the best choice would probably be to make a blog or at least post on ehow or Associated Content. But if you're not ready to host a blog or write "how to" articles and/or just want some money for participating in discussions, then MyLot is for you.
Make money per topic and reply you post.
Great for someone who likes to vent and you just don't want a blog to earn.
Or if you just love online forums and tend to use them a lot, this is easy money.
It's actually a very well coded forum where you can make a profile highlighting all your interests and posts and easily find the latest posts in categories of your interests, make friends, add your blog or comment on others.
Easily track all your discussions and find new friends online with similar interests.

6. Make money writing product reviews etc..

My first suggestion would be to have your own blog, and write about products you know/own, with amazon links. But if you run out of ideas for things to write about you ca

CREAMaid is a program where users get paid by other users (buyers/requesters), by blogging about other users blogs. So is Blovertise.com
You get paid to write a blog post about a subject (usually another website) and then post a widget linking to the site.
For this you'll be paid around $2 (based on the advertisers quota).
You can also get paid from the widget you place on your site, which says "participate in this discussion", and you'll earn a royalty from any other user that signs up through the widget and makes a post. Again, traffic is important here check out my post on how to get visitors to your blog

7. Make money selling or sharing pictures and files

There are plenty of options for selling your photography, digital pictures, art etc.
As a professional photographer, your could sell your pictures on istockphoto.com
If you just like to snap a few photos to share with your friends, on Myspace or Facebook etc. you should check out Shareapic.
Earn Money Sharing pictures

Get simple codes for your pictures online, on your blog or homepage and make money based on how many times they were viewed.

Earn money while using free storage service.

Upload files to Ziddu and earn money based on how many people download your file.
Unlimited storage (as long as the file has been accessed in the last 90 days) and up to 200mb size for each file.
You will earn $0.001 per unique download. (10 thousand Unique Downloads and you earn $10, so you'll need some popular files) Create video and audio libraries to share.
Uses Paypal and Moneybookers to pay you.

8. Get paid for simple "tasks" or GPT offers online

There are other forms of 'freelancing" on the web for those that don't have any of the marketable skills for elance.
There are really two categories I want to talk about here, or three maybe; "Get paid to do offers" and "get paid to do a task".
Specifically those that pay with Paypal.
Another one that really falls between those two categories is get paid to try out a product.

Do simple tasks on Amazon Mturk (doesn't use paypal).

Join to get a list of "hits" which are jobs available for you (you get better job once you complete hits and pass criterias).
The jobs range from posting comments on someones blog, or adding them to social bookmarking sites (stumbleupon.com, Digg.com) which pays around $0.10, to paraphrasing entire paragraphs or more for like $1.
Also has some "hits" that are basically survey questions, "get paid to answer questions" or write online reviews of products.

You've probably seen those ads that say you can get a free Xbox 360 or PS3 or other products, only to find out you have to buy a product or sign up for stuff.
Well there are thousands of offers like that and less than 5% of them are actually useful.
Complete offers online on Deal Barbie Pays

Free online offers with no purchase necessary as well as product offers where you only pay for the shipping to receive free products to try out.

9. Make Money from cash back when shopping online.

Ever wished you could get cashback on some of your online purchases like ebay purchases with paypal?
With BigCrumbs you can get cash back from ebay, babies R' us, Best Buy, Gap, Target, Office Depot and more.

10. Do surveys etc.

Making money with surveys has been popular for a while, and usually either doesn't work or the payment is too low.
Not to mention the surveys are usually quite boring.
Predictify however is a new twist to online surveys (because they're not "really" surveys) and one I've had a bit more luck with.

Every now and then they have some predictions with a pot of over $1000 which will be divided among the members based on their prediction history. So keep predicting the free ones and get a good history, then you'll start seeing some big earnings on the ones with a pot ;)
Or at least have an account and just log in every now and then and vote for the ones with a pot, doesn't take more than a few seconds of your online time, right.. ?
But remember that voting more often gives you a bigger share of the pot. Pays with paypal after a minimum of $5.