By Ogunleye George; george.ogunleye@thisdaylive.com

The wake of Internet era has led to immerse advancement in information communication technology, which results in the virtualisation of information sharing, research and libraries. With the electronic mail device (e-mail), the postal service has been sent into a shadow of itself and people would rather go online than visit the library.

Writing letters to friend has been replaced by online social network platforms such as facebook, twitter and other instant messaging means, gaming has also become an online phenomenon.

It is estimated that most time spent online are basically wasted on idling on social network site and gaming site, it’s also reported that the world has spent a total of 200,000 years playing the Angry bird game.

However, if you are the type that has unprecedented access to the Internet, there are few things you can do online to turn your idling time to a productive one while taking advantage of the virtual global marketplace offered by the wake of the Internet.

• Buy and resell Virtual Plots for profit: Virtual plots are URL addresses that you can buy and resell for profit, just like any real estate. You can do this by buying good domains, which would be in .com, .org, .net, .biz, etc. You can buy a site or a blog and develop it by putting relevant content, and then sell it once it gets going. Sites like Flippa.com offers lots of sites for sale, while sites like GoDaddy.com sells unused domain names for under $10 (about N1, 600) each. Choose domain names that are short and specific, so that it is easy to remember and then sells faster.

• Get paid to Blog: Web blog are website or part of a website that is updated with new content from time to time with news and entertainment trends from the society. Many websites like google.com offer free blogging platforms; this has made blogging more popular. You can as well seize this as an opportunity to air your creative ideas and also make money from it by showing ads on your blogs and using advertising programmes like Google AdSense or by selling affiliate products, or video tutorials.

• Get paid as an Online Tutor: Online tutoring entails teaching people across the web portal. It is becoming more and more in demand due to it convenience, especially for non-English speaking countries. If you have the passion for teaching, this can be one way to earn money. You can actually do this at home, setting aside some hours per week to teach online. Online teaching does not necessarily mean you have to teach a subject from a school syllabus. It will amaze you to know that you could actually teach people how to use Facbook, how to twit as well as get paid to tell African tales to history loving and curious non-Africans. 

• Earn Money while Playing Games: Playing games like Farm Gold and Second Life offer virtual money, which can be exchange for real cash.

• Make Money doing Gigs: Gigs are live musical performance or drama streamed online. Sites like Fiverr.com allow you to make money by doing almost anything. Gain a free sign up on the site and create gigs by offering fascinating services such as singing a song, teaching a phrase of your local dialect, teaching how to use Facebook, etc. Each gig can earn you $5 and you will be amazed how easy it is to make money with things that you never imagine anyone could pay for.

• Write and Sell E-books: Tablet computers and e-book reader like Amazon's Kindle has people to rely more on e-books than turning to books as reference. If you are a talented writer with flairs for writing fiction and non-fiction books, you can earn more by selling your literary pieces online this even saves you the cost and tedious task of publishing hard cover books.

• Be a Virtual Assistant: This is a very lucrative way of making money from corporate executives who hires virtual assistants to help them out with necessary things that they are too occupied to do. These may include research, making reservations as well as other time-consuming tasks and even making phone calls.  You can do this by setting up a free blog or a website where you can offer your services.

However, to claim your proceed from the online transactions you will need a domiciliary account, which is a bank account that admits both cheque and cash deposit/withdrawal in a foreign currency such as Euro or US Dollar. A Dom account is simple and cheap to open in any bank.