Everyone has a camera at their fingertips thanks to smartphones. You might also have a webcam that you use to video chat with people. Have you ever considered how to make money using your webcam? It will require some real effort, but it's definitely possible.

That said, it's very difficult to make a true living with a webcam job, so consider the approach of "making money with your webcam" as a source of bonus income.

Without further ado, here are some great ways that you can use to earn money with your webcam or smartphone camera.

1. Tutorial Videos

If you're an expert in a field, creating tutorials and how-to videos can be a great way to build an audience. These can be in different formats, like lengthy lectures that take a deep dive on educational subjects, or more casual and fun videos for hobbies like card tricks and origami.

The best subject for these types of videos is a field that's visual in nature---like pottery, fashion, instruments---so viewers don't get bored. If you want to talk at them, you'll need to have a captivating voice or personality.

How to make money: You can always upload to YouTube and hope to achieve a large enough following to make money with the YouTube Partner Program. If you're feeling entrepreneurial, you could set up a website and sell your videos yourself. Or combine the two ideas: set up a website with ads and keep the videos free.

2. Review Videos

If you have access to a steady source of new products, you could try your hand at product reviews. Video reviews are great for prospective buyers because they can see much more compared to reading reviews or seeing static images. These reviews can be serious, humorous, or some blend of the two.

Before you go ahead with this idea, you need to know what you're talking about. You need to be critical and analyze what makes a product good or bad and different from its competitors. Be thorough; missing key aspects of a product can destroy your credibility and enrage viewers. Finally, be engaging, because there's nothing worse than a boring reviewer.

How to make money: If you gather a large enough audience, the YouTube Partner program is always a choice. Setting up a review website (start with our Best Web Hosting Services page) that supplements your videos with text reviews can turn into a hit, but make sure you avoid saturated markets (like most electronics). Reviews are a wonderful platform for jump-starting an affiliate marketing campaign, too.

3. Personality Videos

Since we've been talking about the YouTube Partner Program, we should consider one of the most popular video types that you'll see on YouTube: the personality video. These are video series that revolve around the personality rather than the content.

For these videos, you can give advice, provide a running commentary, do comedy, news for a community, or any number of other ideas. Content is important here, but personality is just as important. Your audience will be coming back time and time again to hear what you've created.

How to make money: By this point, the YouTube Partner Program should be a no-brainer. However, there are alternative video sites that will pay you for successful content, like Dailymotion and Vimeo. Once you've built up a large community, you can create a website and make more money with ad revenue and merchandise sales.

4. Live Online Tutoring

Live tutoring is similar in concept to making tutorial videos, except instead of recording a video and uploading it to YouTube, you connect directly to one or more students and teach them in real-time. There are sites that facilitate all of this for you using their in-house software (typically a web-based platform) like Tutor.com, Chegg, and Club Z. You can also try finding your own students using Craigslist or something similar.

In order to do well with tutoring, you need to be intelligent, articulate, and knowledgeable on whichever subjects you teach. Basically, if you'd make a good offline tutor and you have a decent webcam and microphone, online tutoring could be worth it. If you're doing this on your own, a program like Skype or an alternative could be helpful.

How to make money: If you're employed by an online tutoring service, they'll typically pay hourly. If you run it as a private venture, you can set your own rates.

5. Live Stream Games

If you have a propensity towards video games, one of the many ways you could make money playing video games is to stream yourself playing those games. There are free screen streaming programs and many of them include webcam picture-in-picture functionality, which is useful for connecting with your audience and talking with them. If video games aren't your thing and you'd prefer live Dungeons and Dragons or board game sessions, that's a possibility too.

One thing to note is that video streaming can be intensive on your computer, particularly the CPU. If you don't have a powerful computer, you'll need to sacrifice frames-per-second or video quality or both, which can result in a video stream that no one wants to watch.

How to make money: If you can build up a sizeable audience, Twitch has a Partner program where you can earn some ad revenue on your stream and you can enable a subscription feature for your fans. In addition, there's always the option of putting up a donation link and having your fans donate, which can prove quite lucrative for engaging streamers with large audiences.

Make Money With Surveys Too

Don't expect to become rich overnight. There's very little barrier to entry, so lots of people are trying to make their mark alongside you. Consider these methods as a hobby and be passionate about them, or you will lose steam.

If you want other ways to make money online, check out these legit survey websites to earn extra cash.

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