We all are affected by the pandemic, and it wouldn't hurt to make some extra cash online. A lot of these make money online/passive income articles repeat the same points — YouTube, Freelancing, Medium. Let’s take a step further.

Just remember that you will have to put in the work in these methods, and it does not guarantee success. These methods require a unique set of skill sets, so choose a few of them based on what you are comfortable with.

There are no ‘get rich quick’ schemes

If you put in the work, remain patient, and try 5–10 times, you can make a lot of money. There is no exact figure, but to keep you excited, let’s say between $10k — $200k.

I know the range is too vague, but you will see why.

Sell Themes/Templates

You can create themes/templates for websites, broachers, social media posts, ebooks, and the list goes on.

It is one of the best ways to make passive money online. You can create a few themes and tweak them to make even more themes. You just need to be creative on how you can reuse your work.

You can sell your themes on websites such as Creative Market, Theme Forest, and Template Monster.

You can literally make over $1,000,000 from one theme — yup, that’s a million. People have done it, and it is rare, but there is no reason you can’t too.

Of course, you will have to market it, and at first, you will earn $0.00. But with enough patience and consistency, you can make a considerable amount of money. It is one of the best ways to make passive income.

Keep in mind, there is a learning curve to it. You can’t expect anything if you don’t deliver what customers want. You need to know about design, designing software, and HTML/CSS if you want to build websites.

3D Printing

3D printing is revolutionizing the manufacturing industry and now anyone can be a manufacturer. You just need a 3D printer, some technical knowledge, and you are good to go.

I believe everyone should own a 3D printer and this is because you can create products that not available in the market, you can make replacement parts the manufacturer of some products may not sell, and you can sell all of them without much hassle. Now Anyone Can Be a Manufacturer Manufacture products at the convenience of your homemedium.com

Once you have an idea, you can print-on-demand and sell it on Amazon, sell 3D designs online, sell these designs to a manufacturer, or provide 3D printing services to others.

To make the process streamlined and effortless, with some programming knowledge, you can program the printer to print automatically on a new order and arrange for delivery. This can be a very good source of passive income.

With good marketing, and a useful product you can expect to make over $10,000 from a single product. And if it is something essential, there is no limit on much you can earn.

You can get started without even owning a 3D printer. You can use services such as 3Dhubs, here you just need to upload your design, choose the material, pay the cost, and the printed product will get delivered to the address.

What if I don’t have a product idea?

You can list your printer in 3Dhubs or similar sites, and people will pay you to print their designs. With this method, earning will vary a lot depending on a lot of variables such as the number of orders, print material, quality of your printer, size, volume. But if you can automate these tasks, you are making money out of thin air.

Online Contests

This one might sound childish, but this is by far the easiest way to make a lot of money online. You can literally make up to $100,000 from some contests, and here you need not market or grow your social media presence. So anyone can take part.

I took part in a contest where you need to make a 2 min long video and if you win you get $4000. It took me around 20 hours to script, record, and edit the video. If you calculate the hourly rate, it's $200/hr if I get the first prize.

Here is my video- Step Out Of The Race | 2020 Travel Video Contest During hard times, we often lose our purpose in life. The plan we had laid out so well doesn't seem to work…internationalstudent.com

I took part in this contest because the competition was low, there are only 117 participants so my chance of winning is higher.

There are contests available for all kinds of skill sets. You just need to find time to take part in them. There are design contests by Adobe, photography contests by Canon%20and%20a%20Canon,New%20Cosmos%20of%20Photography%202021.), for data science Kaggle is the best place.

Kaggle contests can have prize money up to $100,000.

If you win these contests, you will not only make money but gain recognition in the community and open a lot more opportunities for yourself.

You don’t have to start with a $100,000 contest, if the prize money is high there will be cut-throat competition and you will have less chance of winning. Find the optimum contest for you, which resonates with your skillset, and which you can win.

Bug Bounty Programs

I have never tried this one before because I am not a very good programmer/hacker. But if you are one or want to be one, bug bounty programs can be a good way to earn and learn.

The bounty varies a lot from time to time and depends on the vulnerability, the company, and a lot of other factors.

Google bug bounty program usually ranges from $100 to $200,000; Facebook’s minimum bounty is $500, they don’t specify an upper limit.

You can find the latest bounties on sites such as HackerOne and Bugcrowd.

If you are a programmer/hacker or want to be one, bug bounty programs are a good way to test your skills.

Arbitrage Opportunities

If you missed out on the bitcoin rush of 2017 (like me), don’t worry, you can still make money without risks. That’s right with zero risks.

I know it sounds fishy, but hear me out.

Flash Loans allow you to take a vast amount of loans for one ‘single transaction’. For example, you can borrow $1M without collateral, and use this money to buy crypto. You can then sell this crypto on another platform or in a short time and pocket the difference.

But you need to know how to program, and about cryptocurrencies to pull all this off.

To nullify the risk, you can write a simple if statement which checks if arbitrage is profitable and only then take the loan and perform all the operations. It is risk-free because if the transaction fails at some point, it would be the same as you took no loan.

Flash Loans are the first uncollateralized loan option in DeFi! Designed for developers, Flash Loans enable you to borrow instantly and easily, no collateral needed provided that the liquidity is returned to the pool within one transaction block.

So what’s the catch?

It is hard to make a lot of money this way, and it’s not healthy to rely on this kind of method to earn money. Flash loans are still a new concept and there are a lot of scam websites out there, so be careful.

Flash Loans are a good way to try out crypto and learn about it without risks. If you are lucky, you can make a lot of money this way.

I would recommend you try at least one of these methods. Even if you don’t earn initially, it can be a good opportunity to learn a new skill with at least a chance to make money in the process.

Any creative output can be monetized, and your skills will only get better with time. So you will make money in the long run if you keep learning and remain consistent.

Best of luck :)