With everyone self-quarantining and staying at home during the lockdown, people are taking on new hobbies—cooking, painting, drawing, learning a musical instrument, and many more. The point is, everyone has a lot of time on their hands right now. The question is: what do you want to do with that time? While some may be trying out some of the hobbies mentioned above, others are looking for new money-making opportunities.
Luckily, wherever you are, there are always opportunities for just that—you just have to know where to look. So without further ado, here are some of the best ways on how to earn money online in Russia!
How to make money online quickly in Russia
Did you know that you can become profitable without always having to complete complicated tasks? There are tons of activities online that allow you to do so— even passively. These include writing comments and reviews about specific products and services, putting some of your old stuff on sale, revisiting your online hobbies, among so many others. Check out the list below to discover more!
1. Perform micro-tasks
Micro-tasks are some of the most straightforward ways people can earn extra income. They’re kind of like bitcoin faucets, allowing people to earn a small amount of money for performing simple tasks online. Mostly, micro-tasks are tasks that need a human touch to be completed. Even with advanced AI technology, these tasks need the sprinkle of human intelligence to be completed.
These tasks include participating in surveys, moderating different types of content, watching and commenting on YouTube videos (or other forms of content), and many more. In most cases, these tasks are generic and simple, meaning they don’t require a lot of technical skills—making them perfect for people just looking to make a few bucks during their free time.
Amazon Mechanical Turk is one of the best places to sign up for these micro-tasks— it’s easy to get started, and as soon as you create an account, you can begin and earn full payments for completing tasks.
Another example is Yandex Toloka, which is just as easy to get started on— create an account, choose from the available tasks (be sure to read the instructions), complete the tasks, and earn money for your account!
Difficulty: Easy; Speed: Fast
2. Answer online surveys and polls
Just like completing micro-tasks, online polls and surveys require a human touch—mostly for marketing, advertising, and research purposes. When research projects are started, sometimes the researchers need a sample size more significant than just their friends and family. As a result, they turn to online services and users to complete their surveys. People are then rewarded for completing these surveys.
Services such as Anketka.ru and LifePoints are perfect for these types of tasks, as they are well-credited services that have been operational for a while now. Join either of these (or both) and make money online for answering online surveys!
Difficulty: Easy; Speed: Medium
3. Cryptocurrency trading
Over the years, bitcoin and cryptocurrency trading have seen a spike in users. Not only are they a viable means of profit, but they also provide many real-use cases to people that need them.
Platforms such as Paxful aim to provide financial inclusion to those that are in dire need of it. On the platform, there are over 300 payment methods, making it extremely easy to buy and sell bitcoin. And with security protocols such as the built-in escrow system and 24/7 customer support team, it’s also incredibly safe.
Buyers can choose among the hundreds of payment methods. In turn, sellers can sell their bitcoin along with a profit percentage. Additionally, vendors that sell their bitcoin using less popular payment methods have the chance to earn more. If you’re interested in peer-to-peer trading on Paxful, it’s incredibly easy to get started—create an account (and receive a free bitcoin wallet upon registration), and you’re immediately ready to trade!
Edit: Users can now buy Ethereum (ETH) or exchange their fiat money to Tether (USDT) and vice versa on Paxful.
Difficulty: Easy; Speed: Medium
4. Join affiliate programs
If you’re already an avid cryptocurrency trader, there’s potential for you to earn more by referring your friends and family. On whatever platform you decide to use for trading, make sure to check the referral/affiliate program that it offers.
If you network your affiliate link to enough people, you can potentially earn a significant amount of passive income online.
Difficulty: Medium; Speed; Medium
5. Become a freelancer
If you aren’t too keen on doing small tasks and answering online surveys, there is a wide array of other jobs you can find on freelancing sites. These jobs include web/mobile development, photography, graphic designing, voice acting, and many more. If you thoroughly search through the available jobs, there’s no doubt that you’d find something you’d be willing to do and start earning money online without investments.
When accepting jobs such as these, make sure that you can prove your qualifications. This means building a robust portfolio and showing off your quality of work. By doing so, you’ll be able to get jobs easier (and thus get paid more), and as you go along, people will know that you’re good for the money—allowing you to charge more over time.
Some of the best freelancing sites include Upwork, Fiverr, Work-Zilla, and Fl.ru. Register on one of those sites now and try your hand at some awesome freelancing jobs!
Difficulty: Medium; Speed: Medium
6. Copywriting
For a lot of writers, this self-quarantine and lockdown period can be very productive. It means being able to set up an ideal workstation for maximum productivity. If you’re that type of writer, there are great money-making opportunities for you out there.
Services such as etxt.biz can pay you to write articles during your free time. The writing services offered include copywriting, rewriting articles, and translations. If you’ve got a knack for any of these services, why not try your hand at getting paid for it?
Difficulty: Medium; Speed: Medium
7. Offer expert advice
Got expert-level knowledge but stuck at home? On platforms like Clarity.fm and Coach.me, people ask for information—and are willing to pay for it! Not only will you be able to make money for your knowledge, but you’ll also be able to help someone in need.
With platforms such as these, you can do your part for the other people stuck at home.
Difficulty: Medium; Speed: Fast
8. Translate text to Russian/other languages
If you’ve got mastery over more than one language, now is your time to shine! Freelance websites such as Freelancer.com will present opportunities for you to get paid for translating!
You’ll need to be proficient in these languages—so make sure you know how to read, write, speak, and understand multiple languages correctly. If you’ve got that under your belt, these jobs will allow you to earn a quick buck for your skills.
Difficulty: Easy; Speed: Fast
9. Transcribe audio and video formats
Other than translation, some services will offer money-making opportunities for transcription as well. Transcription is often a tedious and time-consuming task, so people will often outsource freelancers to do it for them.
One example of transcription service is GoTranscript. They offer high-quality transcriptions at reasonable rates from professionally-trained transcribers. You can try applying for a job at GoTranscript, but you can also check out popular freelance websites for similar opportunities.
Difficulty: Easy; Speed: Slow
10. Write comments and reviews
People with online businesses will understand how important it is for their company to have a positive online reputation. A negative online status can crumble an entire company—which is why comments, constructive criticism, and reviews are how businesses can improve their services.
If you’ve got a keen eye for what companies can further improve, as well as the ability to articulate it well, there are businesses out there that will pay for your opinion. By writing comments and reviews, they can appropriately improve their business. In turn, you get paid, and they get better—a win-win situation.
Websites such as gcomment.ru will offer these services, and if you search thoroughly enough on freelancing sites, you’ll be able to find opportunities to provide your input (and earn income for it).
Difficulty: Medium; Speed: Fast
11. Sell old belongings
If you have things that have been sitting in your home for years collecting dust, but could still be useful for someone else, try selling them online!
Think about this: You already have the product ready for sale, and there’s a marketplace in front of you, willing to do the advertising for you. All you need to do is post a couple of photos and set a price! If your item is in good condition and you’re a good photographer, you can probably make some quick and easy money.
Avito is one of the most popular marketplaces for second-hand items in Russia. Our tip? Provide clear and detailed information about your item and take quality photos!
Difficulty: Easy; Speed: Fast
12. Earn on pay-per-click sites
Small steps can go a long way. If you’re going to spend hours clicking your mouse here or there on the Internet anyways, why not click to earn money online—and help companies that need you?
Sites like Seosprint and Socpublic are not only the best friends of advertisers, they are also extremely popular for those who are up for making a few quick bucks online. On these sites, companies want to know what real humans think about their campaigns and websites, which is why you are needed to browse their sites, like and comment on their product features, subscribe to their services, and view their ads.
And getting started is easy! Once you create an account, you can begin selecting tasks you’d like to take part in. Sometimes, you can choose from a pool of hundreds—or even thousands—of tasks! Payment is fast and can be done in a variety of popular methods.
Want to make even more? Refer your friends and get some extra cash together 😉
Speed: Fast; Difficulty: Easy
13. Participate in social networks
When we say “participate,” we really mean getting paid to like, subscribe, and share content you see on popular social media channels such as YouTube, Twitter, Vk.com, and Ok.ru.
Having a huge base of followers is, needless to say, imperative to a business. After all, who would you rather trust, someone with 10 followers or someone with 100K followers? This is why you’re needed. Businesses need real human beings from a variety of demographics to support them. Who knows, perhaps you’ll run into a new company that you really like as you check them out and reshare their posts!
Create an account today and start liking content. Sites like vktarget.ru and vkserfing have low payout limits so you can withdraw payments fast. Again, if you refer friends to these platforms, you’ll earn a portion of your friends’ earnings.
One last thing: subscribe to Vktarget’s Youtube Channel and you’ll receive 0.36 RU instantly!
Speed: Fast; Difficulty: Easy
How to earn money online with a website in Russia
If you are among the techy folks who share the same love for computers and the magic of technology, you can consider using the Internet to make earnings online. Here are some of the ways on how you can make money with your website or jumpstart a lucrative career by engaging in other ventures online.
14. Monetize your blog
We know that those of you who like to write probably keep a blog. But why run your blog for free when you can do all sorts of money tricks on it (that is, if you keep writing regularly)?
The thing is, you can post more than just what you write on your blog. Opening it up by allowing companies to post sponsored content on your blog can help drive traffic, acquire new audiences, and increase engagement on your blog. Taboola is one of the top advertising websites that will do that for you!
Another way on how to make money online with your blog is to post affiliate links on it. What better way to advertise your links than educating your audience about a topic you’re mega interested in, then have them become your referral? Your followers will thank you for introducing something great to them, and you’ll see money rolling into your pocket! Win-win situation.
Speed: Fast; Difficulty: Easy
15. Sell ad space
Selling ad space is like leasing your apartment. If you have extra space, why not rent it out and make some money passively?
To start earning money with ads, you can sign up for an account with Adcash to let them post ads that are relevant to your content on your blog. These ads can be push notifications, banner ads, full-screen interstitial ads, or native ads that blend seamlessly within the text of your blog.
All these different types of ads come with different advantages. For example, native ads have higher conversion rates, as they’re in the middle of the text and appear less intrusive; interstitial ads often result in huge revenues, as they take up all the space of a screen and readers can’t look at something else.
But you won’t have to worry about anything—just sell your ad space and you’re good!
Speed: Fast; Difficulty: Easy
16. Create a site with paid access
Now, the above tips are for those of you who keep a free website. But if you have some deep insight into a certain topic, or have compiled a series of exclusive content you’d rather sell, make people pay to access your site.
You can do so in many forms: eBooks, downloadable/printable info, exclusive content on Patreon, and exclusive email newsletters—to name a few. Before you even start putting out paid content, however, conduct plenty of market research so you know how much other sites in your niche are charging. This goes without saying, but make your site pretty! Nothing puts audiences off more than an unclear and disorganized site.
Remember, your audiences need to feel that your content is worth their money. Post regularly, and with quality. That’s the best tip we can give you.
Speed: Slow; Difficulty: Medium
17. Selling links
Looks like you can sell anything on your website to make money. One of these novel things you can sell is links.
When businesses run into your blog on a particular niche, they may want you to help direct traffic to their company pages. They can do so in many ways described above, such as putting ads and sponsored content on your blog. But a much less obvious way is to have you include a link that will direct to their sites. Doing so will not only drive higher sales for these businesses but also boost their SEO rankings on search engines as they show up more on searches.
In order to be trusted to sell backlinks, your blog needs to have lots of traffic, and be highly ranked. Also, don’t ever tell your audiences that your links are for sale!
Speed: Slow; Difficulty: Medium
18. Website flipping
If you can sell parts of your website, of course, you can sell the entirety of your website as well on platforms like EmpireFlippers and Flippa.
Buying and selling websites is called “website flipping.” Usually, people buy sites that aren’t really doing well or driving much traffic, fix them up, and sell them for profits. How can you fix these websites, you ask? By ramping up niche content, selling backlinks, and selling ad space! Everything we’ve talked about above seems to be coming together now, right?
Speed: Slow; Difficulty: Hard
19. Buy and sell domains
When you build a website, you want it to be unique and tailored to your audience—the domain name is super important.
Most websites end with “.com,” but your website doesn’t have to be conventional! For example, if you own a donut shop, you can try and get a more interesting domain name “www.yummy.donut” 😉
Once you buy a domain, you can use it for yourself, or you can sell it. Using the example above, other donut shop owners may be looking for the domain name “.donut,” so you know you’ve got something hot when people want to buy what you have!
That said, before you dive into this domain flipping gig and start earning money online, conduct extensive research and see what the market demands. Check out GoDaddy for domain flipping!
Speed: Medium; Difficulty: Medium
20. Create your e-commerce website
Of course, you don’t need to be a writer or programmer or marketing guru to sell well online.
Got something tangible, or something you made that you’d like to sell instead? Get into the e-commerce business! People sell all sorts of things online: CDs, books, garments, travel plans, trendy blog templates, and even essay writing services—you get the idea.
Once you identify what you’d like to sell, decide whether you want to create your own site, or sell on existing marketplaces like Amazon or eBay. If you decide to create your own e-commerce site, make sure you secure it by making it SSL-certified and work with trustworthy payment and shipping companies.
When you’re ready, go ahead and create your own site with this super intuitive website building tool Squarespace.
Speed: Medium; Difficulty: Medium
How to earn money online in Russia as an artist and a digitally-savvy marketer
For creators, designers, and artists, the Internet is today’s valuable space for not only showcasing works of art but also for making some online earnings. The same goes for marketers, as they can effectively make money solely through various online platforms, all without having to go outside their homes. If you’re among these creative and techy folks, here are some of the many ways you can profit from your passion and skills!
21. Sell your artwork and designs online
Showcasing artwork—both the traditional and modern—is no longer limited to the four corners of museums, galleries, and exhibits. Today, artists, designers, and other creative people can post and even sell their artwork and designs online.
If you are among those creative individuals who are thinking of making money online with traditional arts, there are some websites where you can have your pieces viewed and sold. These platforms are Artplode, OnlineGallery.art, ArtPal, Artfinder, Jose Gallery, Artsper, among others. For graphic designs, you can try out platforms such as Fiverr, DeviantArt, Creative Market, Design Cuts, and more. You can also check out Society6 for other interesting and creative stuff!
This approach might take some time to generate income, but this is among the good options you can try. Go over the list and explore each platform to know which ones you think will best suit your art style and target market.
Difficulty: Easy; Speed: Medium
22. Try dropshipping
Dropshipping is a business model where vendors sell products solely online—without physical stores—and get orders from a third party, which also ships the orders to the customer directly. Dropshippers usually earn profits from the price difference in the original cost of the product and the price at which they sell it.
This may seem easy to do, but the challenging part is that this type of business is gradually growing, meaning there are a lot of competitors in the market. Learn the pros and cons of this method and see how you can make money from it.
Difficulty: Easy; Speed: Fast
23. Start your own YouTube channel
If you’re looking for fun and exciting ways to earn money online, creating your own channel on YouTube can be one of your options! Creators have been experimenting with various types of content possible to cater to different sets of audiences in every part of the world.
Among the most popular content topics on YouTube are travel, food, gaming, entertainment, science and tech, beauty and fashion, music, sports, and a lot more. You can also check out how famous YouTubers create their content, as there are various video types on the platform. From unboxing to reactions and challenges—you will never run out of video types to explore and try out!
On the flip side, it is also important to note that YouTube has a growing community as it is among the many known websites for earning money. More and more folks are trying to enter the vloggers’ and influencers’ community, which means that the competition is also high. So be sure to explore and learn more about the platform and learn some tips and tricks from the pros!
Difficulty: Easy; Speed: Medium
24. Create online courses
Aside from taking courses online, did you know that you can also create your own? Platforms like Teachable, Thinkific, Udemy, Skillshare, and others allow you to create your online course where you can share your knowledge and experiences in various fields of expertise.
This approach is deemed one of the popular ways to make money online since almost every business today requires training and activities. If you are eyeing to try this, among the things to consider are what topics to discuss, how long will it take you to finish it, how much will it cost you, and how you can make the course interactive and engaging.
Check out the websites we’ve listed to know more about the ins and outs of the process.
Difficulty: Hard; Speed: Slow
25. Read audiobooks
Have you ever tried listening to some audiobooks before? Many think that it’s the author who reads and narrates the story. While sometimes that’s true, it’s not always the case. Some authors hire audiobook narrators who will do the reading for their books, and these narrators profit from it!
Websites like ACX allow narrators to jumpstart their audiobook career. It also allows narrators to choose their preferred way of getting paid for their narration work: a per-finished-hour rate and payment upon the successful completion of the audiobook.
If you want to try your hand at this, here’s a tip: almost every audiobook narrator has a clear and enthusiastic voice, and accent, along with some acting talents.
Difficulty: Medium; Speed: Medium
26. Write and publish eBooks
There are over 200,000 authors who sell and publish their eBooks online and make money from it. While this might sound overwhelming since writing and publishing involves a lot of creative juices and editing to be completed, there are some guidelines to follow most especially for beginners.
For those who already have their books and write-ups, platforms like Amazon Kindle Publishing, Payhip, Google Play Books, PayLoadz, and others make it possible for eBook authors and publishers to showcase their writing to every reader. Explore these platforms to know how to earn money through publishing effectively.
Difficulty: Hard; Speed: Slow
27. Sell photos and videos
Apart from doing event coverage and other creative gigs, photographers and videographers can earn additional income through selling their works on websites like Shutterstock, Getty Images, iStock, Pexels, Unsplash, Videohive, and others.
Some of these platforms offer no product limits, meaning you can sell an item or thousands more! Stock images and videos can range from footage, editorials, portraits, and more. Visit these sites to know how to turn your passion into profit!
Difficulty: Easy; Speed: Medium
28. Try trading on forex and stock exchanges
A lot of people look at forex and stock exchanges as complex platforms that are hard to understand. While that fact could not be denied, there are some helpful tools and tutorials that can help you gain a further understanding of what these platforms are and how they work.
Traders and investors earn money from foreign exchanges and stock markets through buying shares at lower prices and selling them at much higher prices. The price discrepancies will then be their profit.
Before starting your trading journey, be sure to learn the basic strategies and do your research!
Difficulty: Medium; Speed: Medium
29. Start a podcast
Did you know that you can make money from podcasts? Aside from having profit through having an increasing number of listeners, there are a lot of other ways to try if you want to learn how to make money through it.
Some podcasters earn income through sponsorships, paid advertising, product promotions, events announcements, affiliate marketing, and a lot more. Check out and explore podcast hosting platforms like Buzzsprout, Transistor, Podbean, Captivate, Simplecast, Castos, and others to learn more!
Difficulty: Medium; Speed: Medium
30. Become a social media influencer
There are a lot of social media platforms available today, and you can probably see some influencers on each. For some, influencing full time on social media can be daunting as it requires a lot of skill. From creating content and design to taking photos and doing community engagement—it needs more than just creativity to monetize a platform.
Among the other ways social media influencers earn income is through co-creating content and even products with various brands, distributing content through podcasts and webinars, and becoming brand ambassadors. Acquiring sponsorships for social media and blog posts, engaging in affiliate marketing, and other creative strategies are also included.
Difficulty: Medium; Speed: Medium
What are you waiting for? Start earning today!
These are just some of the many things you can do to make money online. In fact, you can even earn money as a student! After having a quick read on each of these, try to assess yourself about the skills and capabilities you can use on the various tasks or income-generating activities listed above.
Some of the listed ways might not give you profits in an instant, but once you get that hang of the process, you will surely achieve remarkable and satisfying results! Remember that the more familiar you are with what you’re doing, the better. Do further research on how to do each of these effectively and efficiently so you can make the best of it!
