How to Make Money Without Investing in the Stock Market

Make Money with Money

1. Ask your primary employer for a raise. If you're a valued employee and do your job well, you can actually boost your income without doing a thing--other than asking your boss for a raise.

2. Earn interest on your savings by purchasing high-yield CDs. It's only 3 to 5 percent interest, but this is guaranteed income, and every little bit helps.

3. Store your cash in a high-yield savings account. It's not ideal, because most savings-account interest rates only meet or slightly beat inflation, but if you do your homework, there are some savings accounts that yield 2 to 6 percent if you know where to find various rewards-card checking accounts. (See Resources.)

4. Loan money via peer-to-peer lending websites (also called P2P lending). You are essentially acting like a bank or credit-card company by lending money to finance consumer debt. These debt holders will repay your loan over time plus interest, where you can make a rate of return ranging from 5 percent to 35 percent depending on the borrower's credit score. Prosper.com and LendingClub.com are two excellent choices.

5. Try your hand as an amateur gambler. If you have the skills to count cards at the blackjack table or think you've got what it takes to win a Texas Hold 'em poker tournament, consider using some of your natural skills. It's risky, but if you start small and find you are good at it, you might have stumbled upon your calling.

6. Invest in the real-estate market. If the stock market seems like smoke and mirrors to you, try investing in something you can see and feel. If you don't own your own home, buy a home you can live in, then purchase other investment properties that suit your goals. You can buy residential or commercial properties where you bring in rental income every month to offset your mortgage payments.

Second Jobs--Monetize your Skills and Education During Downtime

7. Tutor the neighborhood kids in math, science or a foreign language. Use your education as a way to benefit your local community, while earning a few bucks doing it. If you are Internet-savvy, create a few YouTube videos to teach a larger audience; you do the work once and harvest the ad revenues as students find your work.

8. Start a babysitting or daycare service. If you love children and you're a trusted member of the community, childcare services could be a legitimate way to supplement your income without leaving home.

9. Perform the annual maintenance on your neighbors' vehicles or be a part-time mechanic. If you grew up working on cars and know how to change the oil in a vehicle or can replace a few spark plugs, ask around and find those neighbors who are afraid of being scammed by a shady auto garage.

10. Do some landscaping or mow a few lawns. There are many people who hate or can't do their own yard work, so identify those people who are willing to pay $10 to $20 for lawn maintenance.

11. Start a business in a field or concerning subject matter you are passionate about. If you have an entrepreneurial spirit or have a great idea or invention you feel strongly about, spend a few bucks, form your own company and get the ball rolling.

Make Money Online

12. Start your own blog. Blogger.com and Wordpress.com are great places to start a free blog where you can write about a subject you know well. Once you become a known voice in your niche market, you can sell advertising spots on your blog, install Google Adsense technology or create affiliate marketing partnerships with sites like Amazon.com. (This isn't a get-rich-quick idea: It takes substantial time to build an audience.)

13. Become a part-time freelance professional. There are thousands of people who do freelance work full time, and many more who do it on the side, performing work that parallels their career path or makes use of a particular skill set. Whether it's doing graphic design, computer programming or basic accounting, there is a wide range of freelance jobs available. Websites like Guru.com, GetAFreelancer.com or Elance.com are all great places to get started.

14. Become an online virtual assistant. There are many professional-level employers who outsource their work to their administrative assistants, and a growing number of these are moving to online communities. If you have the computer skills to use programs like Microsoft Office (MS Word, MS Excel, MS Access) or you can transcribe audio recordings, websites like Odesk.com or Virtualassistants.com are worth a look.

15. Sell the stuff you no longer use or need. Sites like Craigslist and eBay exist because the neighborhood garage sale just isn't a large enough market for people to make any substantial money. Simply write up a few paragraphs on the product(s) you wish to sell, and you're good to go.

16. Write a few articles online at established websites like eHow, Hubpages, Associated Content, Helium and BrightHub, and share in the advertising revenue generated from your content. A substantial amount of passive income can start to flow in once you have published several dozen articles.

How to Start a Google AdWords Account

1. To start your AdWords account go to http://google.com, choose 'advertising programs' at the bottom, and follow the simple directions to set up your account. It is just as easy as setting up an email account. And if you already have an email or other account with Google, you can use that same account to access Google AdWords.

2. Once you have your account you will again select 'advertising programs' and input a credit card number for future billing.

3. You can design your own ad with Google AdWords, and your ad is what will do your selling for you. So make the effort to design something that will grab the attention of your customers. Put yourself in the shoes of your ideal client and write your copy from his or her point of view rather than advertising what you like about your own business. The bottom line is to remember most people are asking 'what can you (the business) do for me?'

4. Put some time into thinking about your budget and keep your investment low while you experiment and see how Google AdWords will work for you. You can easily run up high bills advertising on the internet. So start off small and do some trial and error experimenting with your best ad designs and keywords to see what works best for you before investing bigger money.

5. There are books and courses you can study to understand the subtleties involved in using Google AdWords. You can also find advertising agencies that can help you use the internet and design powerful, well targeted ads. But first you need start up your Google AdWords account and get familiar with all the advantages this kind of advertising has to offer to see if it is right for you.

Information on Marketing With Google AdWords and AdSense

Google AdWords 101

Google AdWords is an online advertising service for business owners. Your business' advertisement will appear on Google's search pages, and also on its content pages (such as blogs and sites that have signed up to use Google AdSense), every time a user searches Google for a keyword that you have specified. You can use text, images and video in your ads. You can also specify where on a page you would like your ad to appear, or let Google make that determination for you.Rather than paying a monthly fee, you pay for activation, and then set your budget according to how much you are willing to pay for ad placement per day. You can pay for the number of clicks on your ads, or for the number of impressions your ads get. Google also offers advertising reports that let you see how your ads are working and what you might need to change.

Google AdSense 101

Google AdSense is a service for website owners. It allows you to have ads on your site that are automatically targeted to your content, which makes it more likely that your readers or users will click on them. It eliminates the need for site owners to create and maintain their own relationships with advertisers. The advertisers participating in AdWords (the feeder service for AdSense) range from large corporations to small companies. Google lets cost-per-click and cost-per-thousand-impression ads battle it out in auctions for placement on your site's pages, and the ad that will generate the most revenue for that particular page's keywords will win the spot. The ads change as your site's content does, and they are targeted to the user's country, too, so that even an international site can contain ads that each user will find useful.

Safeguards in AdSense

Google AdSense has built in some safeguards that can help your site earn the maximum amount of money while offending the least people. First, you might want to stop competitive ads from appearing on your site--you can use URL blocking to do so. If you don't like a particular product or service whose ads are appearing on your site, you can block those too. AdSense also has a function that checks all submitted ads before posting them to make sure they are suitable for Internet users of all ages. As well as ensuring these ads don't contain inappropriate content, AdSense can also screen for potentially offensive ad page mismatches, such as boating equipment ads on a page about a boating disaster.

Keywords in AdWords

When you create an ad campaign in AdWords, you also must pick keywords to use in that ad. Google's AdWords Help suggests you choose those keywords with care. Make sure that they are specific to your product. Two- or three-word phrases are good to use. When you have picked your main keywords, include singulars, plurals, and synonyms of those words. If your product has a number associated with it, such as a serial or model number, you might want to add this number as a keyword.AdWords has some features that help you choose the best keywords for marketing your product. The Keyword Tool lets you enter a term, and then suggests related terms, along with how many times each word has been searched for on Google in the past month, both in your country and in all countries using Google. You can also see how much using each keyword in your ad would generally cost you per click. For example, the word 'lullaby' would cost an American advertiser 55 cents each time a user clicked on an ad that used that keyword. You then can make a bid for that particular keyword--the higher your bid, the higher your ad will generally be placed on a web page.It is also possible to let AdSense do the bidding for you. You can choose a general budget for a particular ad campaign, and then select automated keyword bidding. AdSense will work out the most clicks you can afford to buy within that budget.

Keeping an AdSense Account in Good Standing

There are some things you cannot do if you have an AdSense account. If you break these rules, your account will be deactivated and you'll no longer have Google ads on your website. Firstly, you can't up your revenue by clicking on your own ads. This is referred to as click fraud. Nor can you encourage your site's users to click on your ads. Next, you can't include content on your site that prompts users to download and install software, or that automatically changes their homepages. Unrequested pop-up windows are always a no-go: AdSense ads should never load in these types of browser windows. Nor should your site have excessive pop-ups that might confuse users into clicking on ads. You should never change AdSense's code to customize the ads that appear on your site: use only the provided features to make customizations, or your account will be frozen. Finally, you are not allowed to feature ads with adult content, ads that promote gambling, or ads that promote drugs.

How to Create Custom Ad Sizes in Adsense

1. Open your Internet browser and go to the Adsense page. Enter your Google username and password in the login fields and click 'Sign In' to access your account.

2. Click on the 'My Ads' tab at the top of your Adsense account page. Click the'New Ad Unit' button in the top left of the 'My Ads' section.

3. Enter the new ad's name in the first text field. Click on the drop-down menu labeled 'Size' to view the custom size dimensions. To view examples of the custom ad sizes, click the 'View examples of ad types and sizes' link below the drop-down menu. Click on the custom ad size that you want to use to select it.

4. Finish setting up the custom sized ad by using the following drop-down menus to select your prefered ad type and ad color styles. Click 'Save and Get Code' to save the add and obtain the embed code to add it to your site.

How to Calculate Ecpm

1. Determine the number of impressions, or number of times the ad was shown. For example, over the past year the advertisement may have been viewed 10,000 times.

2. Determine the amount of earnings the ad made. For example, over the past year, an ad may have brought in $50 of revenue.

3. Divide the number of total earnings by the number of impressions and multiply it by 1,000. The sum is the effective cost per thousand. In this example, divide 50 by 10,000 and then multiple by 1,000 to get $5. Five dollars is your effective cost per million.

How to Eliminate Google Ads

1. Open the Windows HOSTS file in 'Notepad.' The file is located in different places depending on which Windows operating system is installed on the computer. Here are the most common file locations:Windows 9x, ME: C:\WINDOWSWindows NT (and some 2000): C:\WINNT\system32\drivers\etcWindows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 7: C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etcThe HOSTS file has no extension.

2. Copy and paste these two lines into the HOSTS file:127.0.0.1 pagead.googlesyndication.com127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.comDo not leave a blank space before pasted text.

3. Click on 'File' from the top bar menu. Select 'Save' from the drop-down menu. This will save the HOSTS file in the same location as you found it. Close Notepad.

How to Make Money With Free Content Websites

1. Establish a niche target market you plan to serve (selling business e-books, for example). The websites must offer a professional look with easy navigation; making significant money with free content websites is not easy with a poorly designed site. Also, use keywords Internet surfers will likely type to find your website; these keywords may help determine the kinds of ads that will appear.

2. Obtain the quality content required for the selected niche. Each website with free content must have a focus (education or money matters, for example). Purchase articles online that relate to your topics, or create the content materials yourself. Keep the text free of spelling errors and easy to read. If necessary, have an SEO copywriter review the articles for keyword phrases to attract more strategic traffic from search engines to make money with free content.

3. Incorporate advertising options that can gain residual income over time, such as contextual ads. For example, contextual ads offer links that pop up based on hovering above certain keyword phrases. Free to set up, these options generate payouts once you reach a certain threshold. To get started, register for an account online and provide some details about your website.

4. Try pay-per-click ads to gain a share of the money from each time a user clicks on an advertisement---a popular option for many websites due to the ease of setting up the ads and placing them between free content on websites. You can establish an account for free within minutes of registering. Google, a popular option, provides analytics reports.

5. Register for commission-based affiliate programs to earn more money with free-content websites. Affiliate programs come from companies or individuals that sell a product or service and will give you a fee for a referral lead. Sometimes, the registered account holder receives payment for views or per click. Typically, these programs are e-books or programs that complement the content on your website. For example, if you focus on college students, your site can provide a book that covers how to get an internship. Look for these affiliate opportunities with large companies, such as Best Buy or Amazon. Though free to open, these accounts but may require approval before inclusion to see how well your website fits the parent company's target market.