We always need money in South Africa. Due to unemployment and low wages, making more money or extra money aside the normal nine to five routine is always welcome.
Making extra income is very easy lately due to the advancement of technology.
There are several passive income schemes online for almost everybody. Some of these schemes are good while others are just scam.
In this article, we will point out some of the real ways of making extra income and if you are unemployed, you can use these methods as a full time job because they are very rewarding.
1 Build a website/Blog
By blogging, it’s possible to make money through advertising, sponsored posts, brand collaborations, affiliate links, product and service reviews, giveaways, and sponsored social media posts.
Meg Peta Sproat, founder of the Boring Cape Town Chick blog, says: “Taking a product and creating an original piece of content that entertains, informs or educates is key to being paid. Use your unique voice to make something interesting and creative to set yourself apart and entice brands to work with you.”
Writer, editor and brand consultant Mandy Lee Miller, who is the founder of parenting blog Pregnant in Cape Town & Ever After, warns that you need to find the right balance: “The temptation to take any money offered regardless of the brand can be very strong. Almost every blogger I know has slipped off the slippery slope of overconfidence once or twice.
“If your content shifts from sharing your story to writing purely sponsored posts about the things you are given or paid to talk about, your audience picks up on it very quickly. And because there are so many other bloggers out there, once your readers move on, they are very hard to get back.”
2. Create Youtube Videos
Video-streaming site YouTube is a valuable advertising platform for its parent company Google, with hundreds of millions of hours of videos uploaded generating billions of views.
You can start making money from youtube by uploading great videos, the more you get views on a video, the higher your revenue. The Youtube network recently added some requirements; before you can monitize a video, you need not less than 1000 subscribers and 4000 public watch hours
3. Drive For Uber/Lyft or Any Ride-Sharing Company.
Have you considered offering your services as an Uber driver? It’s a great way to meet new people and get to know the city or town you live in while you earn extra money.
You decide when you are available to drive, whether it is only to earn an income on weekends or for certain hours of the day or in the week.
4. Freelance
There are plenty of freelance marketplace websites that offer a platform for employers and employees to negotiate a deal on work that could fetch a flat fee or pay by the hour. The websites include Fiverr, Upwork and We Work Remotely.
Sonia van der Westhuizen, the operations director of KrengJai, a micro work-sourcing business that hires people to do work it has secured through Upwork, says her experience of the platform has been fantastic
“We managed to land R60 000 worth of work in the first month and had a hectic time trying to deliver it. When looking for jobs on the likes of Upwork, it’s best to invest in your profile – fill in as much as possible about yourself.
“You can also do free tests via the site. It ranks you on how you did compared with others on Upwork,” she says.
5. Rent Out Your Spare Room
If you have a spare room or granny flat that you rarely make use of, you could earn extra money by renting it out to holiday-makers and business travellers. A popular way to go about this is to list it on the online hospitality website Airbnb, which has been around since 2008.
It’s free to list your home or room, however, Airbnb says: “We charge hosts a service fee (including taxes, if applicable) every time a booking is completed. The amount of the host service fee is generally 3%, but may range from between 3% to 5% depending on the cancellation policy selected by the host.”
6. Affiliate Marketing
This type of marketing is increasingly becoming popular and a solution to people seeking instant cash. After signing up with an affiliate marketing agency, you will select a product for which you will generate leads.
This option will pay off quickly for highly aggressive people and go-getters. Affiliate marketing ranks top among other ways earning extra money on a computer South Africa.
7. Forex Trading
To start with, you will need an internet connection. And a reliable one at that. Forex trading is not only done online but most of the tools you will need are also hosted online. There are offline tools but they are not the same as they don’t automatically update stats and news, and are therefore not exactly the best quality.
You will then need to set up a Trading account or get in contact with a Forex broker support team, that can assist you to open your account.
If you are going to spend your downtime learning everything you need to know to understand Forex, you should start by reading up as much as you can about the industry or by taking on an online course, of which there are many.
It doesn’t take long to grasp the basics, and while it is an ever-changing industry, the basic principles of Forex stay the same.