As I’ve browsed around various discussion forums, I’ve seen people asking how much money can games make (check out games sales stats for answers to that question), how easy it is to earn money online, how good incomes can people generate from ads and so on. I’ve written this practical guide on how to make $100 online. As you can see, there are various ways to make income - and some require more effort than others. And some are much more fun than others.

#1 - Develop a game and sell 5 copies online

Assuming you’ve priced your game around $20, you can make $100 online. Naturally developing the game might take awful lot of time, so for only $100 this might not be the most optimal way - if you are just motivated by the money (and not the journey you take to develop your game).

#2 - Don’t develop a game and sell about 15 copies of a game by somebody else

Game portals such as Reflexive and Big Fish Games (I’m using the latter) provide solutions where basically anybody can start selling games. For example, I can put here a link to a recently published Forgotten Riddles - The Mayan Princess video game, and if somebody gets that game through this site - I make a few bucks.

As you can see pretty easily, developing a game and then selling it requires a bit more effort (at least before the game is out) than selling somebody’s games…

#3 - Write stuff that comes to your mind until you have a good site and then let people buy reviews

Writing one review can actually make you more than $100 (the reviews I’m giving cost $300 currently), but it might take couple of years to establish your site (unless of course you don’t happen to be John Carmack - or other famous person - when starting your blog. But then you probably wouldn’t care about reviews anyway…). Establishing the site might take awhile, so earning $100 doesn’t come overnight if built from scratch.

#3 - Google AdSense ads

Google AdSense is a program that can make you $100 in many ways. The most common way to use it is to display ads. The ads can pay anything from $0.01 to $1.00 (and more) clicks. If your site clicks pay you $0.30 each, then you would need 333 clicks to earn $100. (And to get 333 clicks you’d need to several thousands of visits depending on your site). If you happen to have a site with audience that could be interested in AdSense, it can help you make that $100.

#4 - Google AdSense referrals

You may use Google AdSense also for referrals. If you get 100 people to download Firefox, you can earn $100 (Google pays you $1 for every person who downloads the Firefox with Google Toolbar). Google also has a referral program: if you refer a person who joins the AdSense program (and that person makes at least $100 within about half a year) - you earn $100. First you need to have a site that gets decent amount of traffic before you’ll see that $100.

#5 - Refer people to become TLA

TLA is a system that let’s you sell links from your site, but also to refer people to become publishers or their clients. After you’ve signed up, you can refer people to become publishers or clients. TLA pays you $25 per referred publisher/client, so you need to get 4 people to sign-up to make $100. Depending on your site audience it can be anything from “pretty easy” to “freaking hard” to get people interested.

#6 - Put your skills in use and make paid work

You can find paid work from different discussion forums (Indiegamer, Digitalpoint and of course from the Game Producer Forums). At Indiegamer for example you can find programming or modeling jobs. From Digitalpoint you can get anything from paid posting, article writing to PHP programming and more. Making $100 shouldn’t be a problem if you have skills and focus on making a good deal for parties involved.

You might also want to check out sites such as Rentacoder and GetaFreelancer for paid work.

#7 - Ask your contacts if they could offer paid work

Email everybody you know (yes… everybody, even aunts and grannies, business clients and partners) and ask if they know somebody who could offer work for you. Tell them briefly what you can do (like “Java programming” or “Website design”) and email them. If you ask 30 contacts and 1 of them offers you some hours of paid work you should be doing $100 in no time.

#8 - Create an art content pack and sell some copies online

Frogames is a great example about a guy who makes bucks selling art content packs online. Recently he launched a content pack that costs $150. Sure, it must have taken a lot of time to create the pack - but after he finished the pack, he doesn’t need to work on it anymore.

#9 - Create a programming framework and sell a few copies

Gray Alien Games Framework is a perfect example of this. Jake has created a nice tool (for Blitz programmers) and sells it for a price of around $60. He just needs to sell two copies to make hundred bucks. Again of course there’s time involved in creating the tool - and updating it.

#10 - Create a game engine and sell one copy online

The net is filled with game engines (check out devmaster.net for a big list) and many of them sell for $100. Anybody with good programming skills could create a gaming engine and sell it for profit. If somebody would make a proper DX10 engine in a year or two, I’m pretty sure he will make $100 (and more) online. Naturally making the engine takes time, so this isn’t exactly the fastest way to make $100 online.

#11 - Create an ebook and sell it for $25

If you have special knowledge about something - which I’m sure you have since you even bothered to read this far - then you could make a short ebook and sell it for $25. Naturally you need to find out who could buy your ebook, but announcing at relevant forums (where you’ve participated for long!) for example can be a fine way to promote it. If you already have 1000 posts at some discussion forum, then creating a book and sticking a link to your signature shouldn’t be much of a problem. With price $25 you would only need to sell 4 copies to make $100.

#12 - Sell your signature

There are places where you can sell your signature (like 4 slots) for anything like $5 to $15 per month depending your forums activity. If you sell 4 signature links ($10 each), then it would take 2 and a half months to make $100. Have you posted and been active on some forums? Then simply go to Digitalpoint (Buy/Sell/Trade sections) and tell that you are interested in selling your signature links on the site where you are active. Anybody can do this if they want.

A word of warning though: make sure to read the forum rules before proceeding with sales - some forums don’t allow paid signature links.

#13 - Write a list of 13 ways to make $100 online and promote it

Writing lists are great way to get people’s attention. Everybody and all of his friends love lists. If you create a list like this, you can put referral links and generate ad revenue from the post. Whether you use ads or referrals, it’s possible to generate $100 (if things go right). When creating a list, you can come up with different topics. You might want to use such headlines as “101 top ways to [insert something here]“, “7 great ideas for [something witty here]“, “21 secrets about [making something mysterious]“.