earn cash online fast

 "I'm a single mom and I earn $1,000,000 a year while bringing up my family..."

Ever been tempted by one of these?  All you have to do to find out more is send in $1 or £1 and... well, you can bet your life that someone at the top of the tree is earning a million, but it won't be you.

BUT, there are a few great, legitimate ways to earn cash online fast, that actually do pay up and aren't scams.  This article focuses on earning cash online from writing, as that's my particular interest, but there are other online businesses out there and there are some great hubpages writers writing about them, so look around.  If earning cash from writing is your thing, then read on.

 There are several online survey companies out there, who will pay you for completing surveys on their site; all you need to do is sign up, fill in the survey and then wait for the cash.  However, there are a few pitfalls to avoid:

Not all surveys pay cash, some pay you with vouchers or special offers, some won't pay if you live outside their country, for example if you are based in Spain and are completing a survey for a US company you may not be paid and some unscrupulous companies let you fill in the survey then tell you it wasn't what their client needed.  Thus they have the information for free. 

Surveyhawk is a good site to investigate.  They run comparisons of popular survey companies, and rate them, telling you whether they pay cash or not and where to (I don't earn anything by promoting Surveyhawk, I just hink the site is useful - go take a look)

 I know plenty of people who make money by signing up to trial offers.  Sites such as Cashcrate.com, and FusionCash.com pay you to sign up to free trials that you then have to cancel.  I havn't tried this method, as I enjoy writing, but I'd certainly consider it if I needed some quick money.

This is one of the easiest ways to earn cash online fast. There are lots of freelance copywriting sites out there, all you have to do is sign up and bid for writing work that takes your fancy. If you win the bid (and you will if you are literate and can work to deadlines), the online company will take a fee, usually around $5 or 5%, you write the article to the stated brief, then a week later the money is in your account. Simple!

I write for Freelancer.com and have found the site very straightforward and the payments prompt. If you want to sign up click here, or if you want to read more about it click here.

 Hubpages is a great way to earn cash online, but I wouldn't call it fast.  It is one of several online article writing sites which invites authors to write articles on subjects that interest them.  The article is then surrounded by Google ads, and when a reader clicks on an ad they are interested in, the author receives a share of the revenue from that ad.

There is no fee, and there's loads of help, support and advice on the Hubpages site.  Also, you don't have to be technologically minded to make the site work for you.  However, it's best to treat Hubpages like any other business.  It takes time to build a reputation and hence some decent revenue, but it will happen over the months if an author writes good quality, original articles.

Sites such as Helium and Associated Content invite authors to self publish with them, and then pay an up-front fee for the articles, based on various rating systems. Helium also has a copywriting market place where publishers post work they require completing. The payments for these articles are often comparatively high.

Like Hubpages, the author is able to choose subjects they enjoy writing about, but has the reassurance of seeing an up front fee as well as a share in advertising revenue. Again, the longer you are with the site the higher your potential earnings. If you would like to learn more click here.