this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2025
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Just wondering, as i am bored an curious because I'm in a position in life where i can get a job/cant travel to work. I remeber before I switched to lemmy and back when I used reddit, most people would promote their affiliate stuff or something, which really bothered me as it was quite common.

What legitimate ways are there to make money on the side from online without having a job? If you have questions, please leave a comment.

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[–] Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 21 points 10 hours ago

Feet pics on only fans.

[–] Peter_Arbeitslos@feddit.org 18 points 11 hours ago

There are ways, so many ways. I myself make 100,000€/week with the methods which you find in my book named "Rich, rich, rich - Easy, easy, easy". For you it costs just just 40€ (last 11 chapters not included). PM me for becoming rich!

[–] FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.io 12 points 8 hours ago

If you do stuff for money, you got yourself a job. It might not be a full time job, but it's still a job.

A lot of that scammy shit or doing stuff like surveys usually amounts to a pittance if not an outright loss and/or serious legal problems.

It sounds like you are looking to be hired into or create for yourself, a job of some kind: Find something you are good at already or go to school for whatever it is you want to learn/get certified for, work on making connections that'll help you get a job, and put in the work.

[–] planish@sh.itjust.works 7 points 9 hours ago

You have methods that amount to making yourself an online job, or an offline job with a lot of online communication (independent software contractor, commission artist, author, sex worker, online course teacher, Etsy knit hat manufacturer, etc.).

You also have various flavors of capitalism, which may not count, as you did say "legitimate". But if you already have ten million dollars, you can spend lots of time researching stocks and evaluating pitches for businesses and maybe get a better return than you would otherwise, all online.

And then you have merchanting, wholesaling, or furniture-flipping type approaches: buy stuff online, refurbish it or repackage it in smaller quantities, translate all its documentation correctly, vouch for its quality and fitness for purpose, take nice photos of it, market it, sell it, deliver it, and support it.

[–] pixeltree@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

How unethical are you ok with being? Dropshipping is an easy way to make money with low effort but it's a pretty shitty thing to do

[–] titanicx@lemmy.zip 0 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

What exactly is that a shitty thing to do? It's simply running a business. It's no different than going down to Walmart and purchasing anything.

[–] pixeltree@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Unless you have a sign saying "You're paying me to buy this for you from alibaba", I consider it very dishonest. Perfectly legal, but borderline scammy ethically imo.

[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 minutes ago

I don't want to make accounts on lots of sites and search all of them every time I buy something, so I think of it like a convenience fee if the way an ebay package is wrapped implies the seller arbitraged it from elsewhere.

[–] whaleross@lemmy.world 7 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

The only way to make money without work is to be part of the owner class that lets others do all the work.

[–] andrewta@lemmy.world 0 points 7 hours ago (3 children)

Technically, I’m sorry, but that’s incorrect. Even if you own a company, you are still doing work. You may not be doing the physical manual labor, but you’re still doing work.

[–] whaleross@lemmy.world 11 points 7 hours ago

Not if you are rich enough you don't. Most people still do because everybody needs something worthwhile. But you don't strictly need to work when you have reached some arbitrary level of wealth and ownership.

[–] Bustedknuckles@lemmy.world 5 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

If you parked a million dollars in QYLD, you'd get about $120k per year (pretax) in exchange for your contribution to society of "having a spare million dollars"

[–] andrewta@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

And how did you get that million?

[–] Xtallll@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 points 51 minutes ago

Usually, rich parents.

[–] scarabic@lemmy.world 1 points 46 minutes ago

Inheritance. Your move.

[–] scarabic@lemmy.world 1 points 48 minutes ago* (last edited 46 minutes ago)

“be part of the owner class” they said - not “be a business owner”

It’s completely possible to own a piece of this and a piece of that and just sit and watch the checks come in. You just need to enter the picture with enough liquid cash. You’re not sorry they’re technically incorrect - you just don’t know anyone actually in this class.

[–] False@lemmy.world 6 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

Mostly gig job type things. If you're in a very low income country something like mturk might not be awful. Lots of demand for AI training data labeling these days - this is work like drawing a box around a dog in a picture so a model can be trained on what dogs are. The pay is very low though because anyone can do it so it attracts lots of people from poor countries.

If you're not in a low income country then you need to be highly skilled so you can get things like programming or art gigs - I've heard of people doing those but I don't know the websites offhand.

The other option is stuff like stock market trading or crypto (ie gambling).

But yes, I'd assume the things people promote are all scams.

[–] cathray@feddit.org 6 points 11 hours ago

In order to make money you need to sell something for more than its production costs you. You can either sell something at a small margin to a lot of people or something at a big margin to a few. Selling at a small margin to few people doesn't make you a living and selling at a big margin to a lot of people just isn't possible. Selling at a big margin to a few people means you need to find a specific community, become a part of this community and sell something to them they want enough to justify the price. Furry porn would e.g. fall in this category. Alternatively you can sell at a small margin to a lot of people. In this case you need to find a bland and generic product so it appeals to a lot of people, and find a method to produce it so cheaply that other people can't easily undercut your price, and finally find a spin to advertise it to a majority. In this category are all "livestyle products" that sell to underclass white people the idea they'd belong to the middle class. Also selling mainstream books and music would fall under this category.

[–] turbowafflz@lemmy.world 4 points 11 hours ago

I mean I think anything you do that makes enough money to be worth it is just a job at that point right? Like you could start streaming on twitch or something, but once you start making money from it, it becomes a job.

[–] RBWells@lemmy.world 4 points 4 hours ago

Little bits of money, sure. Surveys, selling stuff on eBay or Etsy or whatever. I never found it worthwhile, can make so much more money working at a job. Most I ever made was $200, twice. Once for designing logic for a quiz to determine hair porosity, once for an interview when some medical product I got failed.

That is over the entire history of the Internet. Otherwise it's just been a dollar or two once in a while.

[–] IronBird@lemmy.world 4 points 2 hours ago

just learn how the stock market works, and none of this gig shit will ever feel like it's worth the time.

read reminiscences of a stock operator, the stock market is where all these other greed ratfucks put the $ they're yoinking from uncle sam...you can make a shitton of $ off their moves if you have modicum of common sense and self-control

[–] titanicx@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 hours ago

Yes there are legitimate ways to make money. Everything from producing videos on YouTube and the other platforms that pay you to things like only fans and porn to learning how to make things with your hands and selling it online. Sometimes they're successful sometimes they're not sometimes you hit a niche product sometimes you show a niche video that makes you go viral. Those types of things can get you known. But for you can do is if you're in any sort of position to be able to do anything like 3D printing printing stickers doing woodworking even going in cutting out foam and building decorations for people. You can make a decent amount of money doing all those types of things but you have to be willing to actually do something. Very few people get paid money to do absolutely nothing.

[–] andrewta@lemmy.world 2 points 9 hours ago

No.

If you count having a job as even working for yourself and doing the work. Then if you want the money then you are doing a job. Only thing that changes is who you work for

[–] Hello_there@fedia.io 2 points 4 hours ago

Aren't there gig type jobs online? Like I pay you $5 and you create a very shitty website?
Learn how to do something that requires special knowledge then start advertising your expertise. Something involving skill or knowledge or that doesn't have a lot of competition. Otherwise you're competing with labor in poor countries, and that's a race to the bottom.

[–] flamiera@kbin.melroy.org 2 points 38 minutes ago (1 children)

I advise against Amazon Machine Turk.

It's basically a digital sweatshop. Doing all of these menial, logically mundane and borderline crazy tasks. Just to earn a literal nickel.

[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 16 minutes ago* (last edited 15 minutes ago)

I don't know how much has changed since I was doing it, but the main trick was to get the tasks associated with academic studies that were typically higher paid, by using a sniping bot to grab it before others could. So that way you get paid around minimum wage instead of a small fraction of that (if you also cheat by doing multiple tasks simultaneously and hiding it). Though tbh the situation is probably worse now since there have been all those funding cuts to academia.

[–] randombullet@programming.dev 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

The boring answer is something like a bond or CD ladder, or treasury bill focused ETF that'll give you 3% a year before taxes.

2 million dollars can safely net you 50,000 a year without working.

And since it's mostly federal bonds, you could be tax exempt up to a certain amount.

Of course this is the US POV.

And there are riskier investments that can hit 8ish% with only $600,000, but you'll be at the whim of high risk high reward.

If you're wanting to hit the tax free limit of $15,750 a year (total income) then 3% APY is $525k.

Or go super risky run options.

[–] IronBird@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

never settle for 5-10 point gain in a bull market, if your not pulling in atleast 100% yoy when republicans are in power you likely have a major gap in knowledge on how the markets actually function

[–] bklyn@piefed.social 1 points 10 hours ago
[–] SuiXi3D@fedia.io 1 points 7 hours ago

Only if you already have a ton of money, and it won’t be what you think.

[–] Angelevo@feddit.nl 1 points 11 hours ago

Not really. You can either gamble (which is a terrible idea) or be a criminal (even worse). I have read about some apps/sites where you can do minor tasks for tiny amounts of money, cannot imagine those are worth your time.

Learn to create something meaningful, something people value, and sell it. That is sort of a job, or a hobby turned into a source of income. Depends on how you choose to frame it.

[–] Proprietary_Blend@lemmy.world -2 points 6 hours ago

Vote blue no matter who!