21 Legit Ways to Make Money Online Fast (& Slow) in 2023

A bit of extra cash never goes astray.

When your income isn’t enough, you need to find ways to earn extra money. Here are 19 ways you can make quick cash — and also methods that you can build into a money-making machine over time.

Yes, internet money is a real thing. We’ve done the research for you and curated two lists of legitimate ways to make money online, depending on whether you want to:

There are a lot of scams out there, so be wary. You should never have to provide your credit card details, and a good rule of thumb is: you should never have to pay to work. 

Need money now? Want to make some extra cash online tide you through a tough time?
Here’s a curated list of legitimate ways to make money at home. You can also compare them based on how much you can make and how fast you’ll get paid.

For most people, the easiest way to make money online quickly is doing user testing for websites, combined with participating in market research. It’s one of the best earners without having to start your own business. That’s because it’s:

If you want to make a lot of money over a longer timeframe, build a passive income stream, or transition into a full-time gig, then getting a side hustle or starting your own business online is going to be a better choice for you. Read on for more easy ways to make money and longer-term online business ideas.

With this handy table, you can compare rates — and how fast you’ll get your money — in one glance.

These range from sites where you complete random online tasks, to focus groups where you can earn upwards of $150 for a single one-hour session.

Some of the better-earning options, like freelancing or being a virtual assistant, could even evolve into a quality part-time job or side-hustle, or even a full-time job.

User testing is a service that tech and product companies use to collect data on how people use their websites, apps, or products. Once you sign up, you’ll receive alerts for new testing jobs that you’re eligible for.

All you need to have is an internet connection and a microphone (most laptops and phones will have one built-in). In a typical job, you will be asked to complete a task on someone’s website or app while speaking your thoughts aloud, explaining why you are making certain decisions and what catches your attention.

Doing a test can take anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes, depending on the site, and you can earn anywhere from $10 to $60 (or more if you get lucky).

If you’re going to take this approach, it’s a good idea to sign up with multiple sites, as the availability of testing jobs is the main bottleneck to earning here.

Here are a few to try:

• UserTesting
• Userbrain
• TestingTime
• Userfeel
• TryMyUI
• Userlytics
• IntelliZoom Panel
• Validately
• Intuit
• PingPong
• Ferpection
• Checkealos

Learn all you need to know to get started in this creative, fulfilling, and well-paid field. Compare study options from Australia’s top educators.

Market research and focus groups can be more lucrative than user testing, but they’re also harder gigs to get, as you must match a certain set of criteria. They can also go for longer, anywhere from 30 minutes to a couple of hours – and are paid accordingly.

You’ll answer questions and give your opinion on various matters, usually related to your behaviour or buying patterns. Companies will then use this data to develop products and services.

The same deal applies here. Sign up for multiple websites and you’ll get emails alerting you when a job comes up.

You could start with these:

• Respondent
• Research Connections
• Paid Focus Groups
• Farron Research

Get a step up into the varied world of marketing and learn how to influence behaviour. Compare study options from Australia’s top educators.

Data entry from home can be a great way to make extra money, but in order to be successful at it you will need some decent computer skills.

Data entry jobs are not difficult to find online. You can search for data entry jobs on a site like Upwork or Indeed.com and apply for them through the website.

The requirements for data entry jobs vary depending on the company, but usually, you will need to be fluent in English and have a computer with internet access.

Some companies may also require you to have basic computer skills like being able to type quickly or use Microsoft Office programs such as Word or Excel.

Try these sites:

• Upwork
• Indeed
• Jora
• Freelancer

Become a certified data analyst or data scientist, learn from Australia’s leading educators and enjoy a career that has high earning potential.

Airtasker is an online platform where people post odd jobs, and you can offer to do them. These jobs range from small writing jobs for websites, to admin, design, marketing and more. It’s not an online-only platform, but there are plenty of digital-only tasks that you can complete online.

When you start out, focus on one type of job, and tackle smaller tasks first to garner some reviews. Price bidding can be fierce, but true to your worth, and don’t go too low on prices, as Airtasker takes a 20% cut of your earnings. 

Earnings on Airtasker can range from a couple of hundred a month for the occasional odd job, to $1500 a month if you spend a large amount of time completing jobs.

Filling out online surveys may not make you lots of money at once, but if you stick with it, you can make a bit extra that could help you treat yourself with something nice and non-essential.

You’ll most often get paid with gift cards, but some sites will pay you in to your PayPal account directly. Again, hedging your bets is a good tactic here. Sign up for lots of websites and apps.

All you need to do is fill out quick surveys, many of which can be done on your phone.

You could try:

• Octopus Group
• Clickworker
• Rewardia
• Survey Junkie
• OpinionWorld
• Swagbucks

These random assortments of tasks can be pretty fun but pay less than the other options. That being said, the small amounts do add up over time so persistence can pay off.

Tasks can range from searching the web, playing games, watching videos, reading emails, and getting money back when you shop online. These sites often pay you in gift cards, which you can redeem at many major retailers.

• Swagbucks
• Neilsen Mobile Data
• IRi Shopper Panel
• Snooper

Do you have a burning passion or hobby that you like to share with others? Starting a blog is a fantastic way to celebrate your love for it, learn transferable skills, and build a passive income earner along the way.

Adelaide-based couple Sarah and Laura run a food blog, Wandercooks, that attracts over six million views each year.

“It also meant the ceiling for income was removed and we could earn more without committing to more work time.

Our food blog is still service-based, but accessible 24/7 without the need for us to be as well. We also really enjoy cooking! So it was a way for us to utilise this passion, with our skills from our previous business and turn it into a profitable online blog.”

“Consistency helped us to hone our skills and quickly work on improvements based on the feedback we received on our weekly recipes. There will always be weeks where you don’t feel like doing the work, but sticking to a schedule to put out new content, really helped us to grow.”

“Running an online blog means wearing many hats. We’re recipe developers, writers, photographers, videographers, social media managers, project managers, book keepers – the list goes on. So educating yourself and keeping up to date with technology, SEO and trends has also helped us to create better content, help more people and build an online business that supports both of us full time.”

“We now have more time to spend with family and friends, personal projects and offline activities such as gardening, cooking and hiking.

By earning money online, we’ve also been able to save more money. This is from being able to work from home and reducing our commuting or transport costs.”

A flexible online course in small business management can get you up, running, and profitable in half the time and avoid the growing pains.

If you have experience in marketing and running projects, setting up your own agency can be done fully online and, if successful, can quickly turn into your full-time career.

“I had a promising career and ran a department when my son got sick and spent a week in the Pediatric ICU.

I pivoted to find a job that afforded me the flexibility to support him in his subsequent therapies.”

Mezzo Creative LLC was born, and through networking and the “hustle”, I built a strong team and a roster of clients. We manage a variety of accounts from real estate to beauty, helping them grow their online presence to bolster their business.”

Do you have a marketable skillset — for example, graphic design, writing, bookkeeping, digital marketing, or coding? Then freelancing online could be your best bet. It does take a little longer to start earning than the first two, but you can earn a lot of money, and it can even be a springboard to going full-time freelance.

If you’re able to work fast and effectively you might start out with online platforms such as Upwork, Freelancer, Fiverr, and sometimes Airtasker.

However, if you use these platforms your earnings will probably be less than you can make as an independent freelancer. Pricing competition is fierce on international online marketplaces, which often results in a race to the bottom. So, you may want to reach out to your network through LinkedIn and let them know you’re open to freelance work.

If you have a chunk of capital available to you, and you don’t mind a bit of risk, investing in stock markets can be a good way to earn extra money. For an easy option, you can use an online share trading platform such as:

• IG Share Trading
• eToro
• Bell Direct
• CMC Markets

The outlook is only getting better for virtual assistants, and you can expect to make around $27/hr. Prices are often fixed for a certain amount of work, so it’s up to you to figure out how much you can get done and whether it will be worth it. Being a virtual assistant can be a great side hustle at any time, if you want to work from home or make some extra cash.

Get started with:

• Fiverr
• Flexjobs
• Upwork

Bit of a music buff? Slice the pie could be a fun, fast way to make some extra cash, which you can withdraw to your PayPal immediately.

You get paid to review anonymous songs, mostly, but also products and merch. The better your reviews, the better you get paid, and as you build up a good rating your prices will improve.

Affiliate marketing is the process of earning commissions by promoting someone else’s product or service. You can do this through blogs, social media posts, and other online content.

While affiliate marketing is one of the most profitable passive income games around, it can take a lot of time to start making proper money – think six months to a couple of years.

In order to start affiliate marketing, you need to take the following steps:

1. Purchase a domain name and hosting for your website.
2. Choose a WordPress theme that suits your website’s niche.
3. Create quality content for your website using Google Keyword Planner and SEO best practices.
4. Use Adsense or another advertising platform to earn from your affiliate links.
5. Find affiliate programs that suit you and use them as a way of making money online.
6. Monitor your progress and make changes when necessary.

Here are some platforms you can use to get started with affiliate partnerships.

• Impact
• Commission Factory
• Rakuten Linkshare
• ClixGalore
• Commission Junction
• Affiliate Window
• Click Bank

Again, if you don’t mind investing some capital, you can watch out for expiring domain names and buy them up, also known as ‘drop catching’. A company will then have to pay you for their negligence in letting the domain slip – sometimes to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Or, if it’s a generic domain name that gets lots of searches, then companies may bid on it for the amount of web traffic it will bring them.

A popular site for catching domains is drop.com.au.

You can set up an eBay, Etsy or Amazon shop fairly easily, identify items that may sell well or that are trending, buy or make these items, and put them up for sale. For instance, masks have been a notable new niche in the pandemic. 

Be aware that all these platforms charge fees, so you’ll need to get your sales up reasonably high or have a decent profit margin if you’re going to make any kind of decent money.

It’s not limited to these platforms, either.

If you can find a topic you’re passionate about, chances are there’s an audience for it. This can also be a fantastic avenue for younger people to make some extra money. The main challenge lies in creating content that will engage people. Often that means taking a new, unique angle, speaking with passion, and finding a fun format with frequent surprises or breaks so as to keep your audience’s attention.

If you start a podcast that people really love, you can then earn revenue from it — either through ads, or through creating a Patreon account and gaining subscribers.

This is a long-term strategy because it will take a while to create enough content, build a reputation, and attract a fanbase.

Do you have sway in the world of social media? Do you have more than 10,000 followers? Do you run a popular blog? Here are a few ideas for monetising your passion:

• Influencers can promote a product or service in a post 
• Bloggers can do sponsored posts, i.e. product reviews for brands.
• Bloggers can host ads on their sites.

Try signing up for a platform like:

• Grin
• Upfluence
• Klear
• Neoreach

Do you know a lot about a particular area? Are you a subject matter expert? Then you can create an online course. It’s an easy option now that there is a wide range of online platforms like:

• Udemy
• Teachable
• Podia
• Thinkific
• Kajabi

To make your online course successful, you will probably need to do quite a bit of marketing at the beginning. You may be able to automate this, later on, giving you the potential to earn a decent passive income.

Unlike online courses, tutoring focuses on teaching a particular skill or subject area one-on-one. This could also potentially include running webinars with small groups, which give you the opportunity to make money more quickly, rather than seeing several individual students.

This can be great if you have experience in teaching, or if you’re very skilled or knowledgeable in a particular area. For example, if you’ve been an accountant, you may be able to mentor people studying for a CPA exam online. If you’re fantastic at an instrument, you could do online lessons with students.

Whether you’re after something that will earn you cash straight away, or you’re playing the long game, this curated list of side hustles will help you choose the best one for you.