Making Money for Free: Is It Ever Possible?

Look, we all want to make money for free – but is this feasible? 

Most of the best money-making schemes and ideas revolve around some form of prior investment. As the old saying goes, you’ve got to spend money to make money…right? Is it possible to start with nothing and gradually earn money? The answer is a little bit more complicated than you might think, so let’s get into it. 

How Do You Define “Free” In This Context?

Making money “for free” might be possible depending on your definition of “free”. If you’re trying to say that you want to make money without investing any money or time into something, then you’re delusional. 

That’s not what we’re talking about when we look at making money for free! 

Instead, it’s focused purely on the financial side of things – the goal is to invest or spend no money and see if you can make some. In that regard, it is somewhat possible to make money. You just have to be aware that it will take a lot of time and effort; you can make money with minimal effort if you invest some cash into an idea or you can make money without spending money if you put the effort in, but you can’t have both. 

More often than not, ideas revolving around making money for free will be related to earning money online. The internet has given us the gift of being able to explore all sorts of channels and avenues to monetize different things and make some cash without needing to spend a penny. 

The Best 4 Ways to Make Money for Free

Taking our definition of “free”, we can mainly identify four ways to actually make money without spending anything. Some of these ideas might be a lot better than others; it depends on what you’re interested in and the goals you have when looking to make money (more on that later in this guide). 

For now, let’s start with the four ways to earn money for free: 

• Freelancing
• Blogging
• Claiming Casino Bonuses
• Taking Surveys

Freelancing

You could’ve predicted this one! Freelancing is the ultimate way to not only make money for free but to earn a proper living with almost zero investment. The only caveat here is that we’re assuming you already have the tools to be a freelancer – in other words, you’ve got a computer or a laptop! 

This is something everyone should already have so you’ve not gone out of your way to spend money on it. 

As far as how lucrative freelancing can be, Upwork hints that you can earn an average salary of $99,000 per year. That’s pre-tax (of course) and the range is anywhere between $31,000 and $275,000. The beauty of this approach is that your earnings are largely dependent on how much work you’re willing to do. If you grind and work extremely hard, you’ll hit the upper echelons in no time. 

So, how do you become a freelancer and make money without any investment? 

• Step 1: Figure Out Your Service – Decide what you will sell people. It should be a service you’re genuinely good at. If you’re an IT expert, offer IT support services. If you’re a whizz with finance and numbers, offer accounting services and so on. The average person could probably become a freelance writer. That’s not meant to be shady against writers, it’s just that this is an easy skill to learn and get better at. 

• Step 2: Join A Freelance Platform – You’ve figured out what you’re offering, and now you need people to find your services. Setting up a free website is a smart move, though the best option is to join free freelance platforms. That link will show you 29 great ones like Fiverr, Freelancer and many others. They let you advertise your services and look for jobs without paying anything. 

• Step 3: Try To Find Work – This is the hardest part. Everyone wants to be a freelancer, so finding work will be a struggle. It’s all about getting your foot on the ladder and climbing up. Once you establish yourself and get lots of good reviews for your work, more people will trust you. One tactic to consider is offering free work in the beginning. This is just to get started; you do a few free jobs, earn a positive reputation and people are more likely to pick you for future work. 

• Step 4: Form Long-Term Partnerships – When you find people or companies willing to work with you, try your best to form long-term contracts with them. You want them to keep coming back to you, ensuring you get consistent work and keep getting paid. Think about offering loyalty discounts for your clients so they’re more inclined to return. 

Typing it out like that makes it all seem so easy. Truthfully, this will be a struggle. Freelancing is hard and requires a lot of perseverance in the beginning. If you’re not willing to invest money in advertising or marketing, you have to swap it for lots of effort. This is something you could spend hours doing every day just to get your first paid job – but, it is also something you can do for free! 

Blogging

In many ways, blogging and freelancing go hand in hand. Lots of professional freelancers will encourage you to start a blog to support your freelance career. It’s a way of showcasing your talents – particularly if you want to be a freelance writer. 

At the same time, blogging can be a money-making pathway on its own. You can create and cultivate an amazing blog that earns enough money every month to avoid doing any other type of work. That’s the goal, and it will take a long time to get there for sure – especially if you’re not spending any money. 

How do you make money from blogging? It’s broken down into the following revenue streams: 

• Advertising – Blogs earn money from advertisers paying to place their ads on the blog. This is usually done via AdSense, and anyone can create an account to start earning. Money is typically paid depending on how many views your blog gets as this translates to impressions for the ads. In other words, the more visitors you have, the more money you’ll make. 

• Sponsorships – Bloggers will get paid to write posts or advertise specific things by other companies. This happens when you reach a certain size and brands begin reaching out to you. Sponsorships can be very lucrative and represent an amazing way of making money from a blog. 

• Affiliate Marketing – Affiliate marketing is when you post links to products in your content and get paid if someone clicks on your link and completes a pre-defined action. The best example of this is using Amazon Affiliates. Anyone can use this, and you get affiliate links to post in your content. If someone clicks your link and buys something from Amazon, you get a cut of the money. It doesn’t sound that impressive, but successful affiliate marketing blogs can earn thousands a month. 

Some blogs earn money by selling merchandise to readers but that involves spending money so we haven’t included it here! 

The big issue with this approach is how difficult it will be to set up and grow a blog for free. It is possible – you can find free website builders to get everything up and running – but you’re climbing a very steep mountain if you want to do all of this without spending a penny. 

Claiming Casino Bonuses

This is a remarkable option you might want to look into if you want to earn a bit of extra money in your spare time. You will not be earning a living by claiming casino bonuses as there’s no guarantee that this idea will work. 

What are we even talking about? 

Well, many online casinos will dish out bonuses to welcome you to their platforms. Even better, a host of these bonuses won’t require any financial investment. You get something for free as a way of saying “thanks for choosing us!” and can use the bonus to play different games. NonGamStopOdds.com shows non-GamStop casinos no deposit bonus deals that are ideal for this particular situation. You sign up for these sites and receive free spins or a small monetary bonus to use on slots or table games. 

Cool, you’re getting bonuses for free…now what? 

This tactic involves taking your bonus and betting it to try and win back some money. The goal is to win enough money that you can eventually withdraw it to your bank account. Theoretically, it’s a foolproof plan to always make money. 

Realistically, it’s way way way harder than it sounds. 

You can claim lots of these bonuses from different websites – and you might even win with a few of them. The problem comes when sites have wagering requirements for bonuses. Some will say you have to wager your bonus 60x before withdrawing any money. This effectively means turning a $5 bonus into $300. 

Much like starting a blog and making money from it without spending anything, this is technically possible. Whether it’ll be successful or not remains to be seen. 

Taking Surveys

Our fourth way of making money for free is by taking surveys. 

Everyone whose ever looked into making money online will know about this by now. It’s the easiest concept to understand: 

• Find websites offering free surveys
• Take the free survey
• Get paid for taking the survey

Of all the options on this list, survey-taking is the only one where you’ll have zero problems doing it for free and will be guaranteed to make a bit of money. It’s also probably the one that requires the most amount of time put into it to make even a semi-decent amount of cash. 

How Hard Is It to Make Money for Free?

In a nutshell: very very hard. 

We’ve got no problems saying you can make cash without spending any – but it will be one of the hardest tasks you embark on. It’s always easier to make money when you put a little bit of investment forward first. 

Look at blogging, for example, you could make money from a free blog, but you’ll have a greater chance of driving traffic to your site if you invest in a good marketing strategy or the best SEO tools. You have to approach this with the mindset of why you want to make money for free in the first place. 

Do you want to do this to earn a proper living? If so, you are going to struggle. Hardly anyone makes a living without putting some of their own cash into their endeavours. The only way you might do this is by freelancing – but you’ll need to get lucky and put in loads of effort. 

On the other hand, what if your goal is to earn some spare income? You’re not overly fussed about how much, you just want a bit of additional money coming in alongside your normal job. If that’s the case, then making money for free is a fantastic approach. There’s nothing wrong with having a blog going in the background or doing a few surveys now and then when it’s not your primary source of income. 

Final Thoughts

You’ve stayed with us this whole way and we applaud you for that! All things considered, is it possible to make money for free? Yes – but it won’t be easy. You’ll find it challenging to earn enough to live on without investing your own money. But, if you’re after some extra pocket money, then maybe some of the ideas spoken about earlier will be right up your street.