The internet is a wonderful place, full of things to see, learn and do, and yet a lot of people spend their time online partaking in passive pastimes like scrolling through social media. If you’re tired of being a passive consumer and you’re looking for new ways to spend your time online, there are a range of options for you.
Play Games for Money
Twenty years ago, if a teenager told their parents that they wanted to earn a living by playing video games, they may well have been given a time out or sent off to military school. However, thanks to advances in technology as well as a now thriving eSports industry, earning money from playing games is not only a reality, but also a potentially lucrative source of employment.
While not every person who can play videogames has the ability to become an eSports pro like Faker, who earns an estimated £3.4 million annually, thanks to the internet there are several ways that gamers can earn money either by playing games or by using the skills they have learned from their favourite hobby.
Popular games that allow players to make real money include Exodus 3000, an online multiplayer RPG game that tasks players with finding minerals and earning Mars Dollars which can be exchanged for real money once a player has accumulated enough in-game currency. The other favourite is SecondLife, an online virtual world that allows players to create and shape their in-game reality and earn real money while doing so.
Other popular games that allow people to earn money online include casino games from websites such as The Grand Ivy Casino, Dream Vegas Casino and more. Online casinos give players access to hundreds of different slot games, table games, and other casino games and the chance to walk away with life-changing money, should lady luck be on their side. Due to the popularity of casino games, there is a huge range of websites that claim to offer players the chance to win big, which can make it difficult to choose the right place to play. That is why players should become familiar with online resources such as www.onlinecasinos.co.uk, a review site that specialises in finding the best and most reputable online casino sites available to players. By choosing to play at online casinos that are recommended by sites such as www.onlinecasinos.co.uk, players can also be assured that the sites they are playing on are safe, reliable and reputable.
Learn a New Skill
One of the best things about the internet is that it has opened up a whole new way for people to learn new skills and upskill themselves. Whether it’s something internet-related, like how to code or the basics of SEO writing, or even something hands-on like how to do woodworking or learning how to tile, the world wide web offers people a host of ways to learn.
For the visually-minded people, YouTube is a great resource for learning with tutorials available for everything under the sun from creators ranging from desktop jockeys to learned professionals and everything in between.
For people looking for more structured learning options, several free and paid platforms give online students access to a range of different courses with many of the paid platforms offering certificates upon the completion of their courses. Some of the best free learning platforms include Coursera, who partner with universities, museums, and other organisations around the world to offer students a variety of courses in a huge range of fields; Open Culture Online Courses, a site that gives students access to thousands of lectures, videos, and other media from universities around the world in one catalogue; and Academic Earth, an online repository that features online courses, videos, and lectures from notable colleges such as Yale, Stanford and MIT so that students can have access top-notch education material for free.
Sell Items Online
Thanks to the popularity of websites like Amazon, Etsy, eBay, and other e-commerce sites, buying and selling items online has never been easier. However, just because you’ve put an item up for sale on one of these platforms, doesn’t mean there is any guarantee that someone will buy it. To increase your chances of making a bit of extra money, sellers need to do a bit of legwork to make these platforms work for them. So, the next time you are sitting at your PC and aren’t sure what you want to do, why not put your time into improving your ads so that they are more appealing? Or, why not do some extra research to find out who else is selling items similar to what you are selling to see if you can’t improve your offering?
Perhaps you’ve already done all these things and you are still having mediocre sales, or your profit margin isn’t what you expected after the platform you are using has taken its cut. Why not use that extra time online to build your online store so that all of your hard-earned money can go straight into your bank account?
While building a website used to require some skill in coding, thanks to the popularity of online shopping, there are now a host of online tools available that can help a person build a website without the need to write a single line of code. The good news for small-time sellers is that there are several different website builders that allow people to make stunning websites easily for free. Builders like Wix are perfect for individuals and small businesses looking to easily create their website and even give website creators the ability to sell their products online for no extra charge. Other reputable website builders like Weebly allow people the ability to build a basic website and charge for extra features such as the ability to sell products.
While many people choose to spend their time online browsing social media, the reality is that there are a host of other activities that they could be doing instead that can not only help broaden their minds, but also make a little bit of extra money. So, the next time you find yourself online with nothing to do, why not try one of the activities on this list and make that time more worthwhile?
