Are online data entry jobs lucrative enough to check out? Is this a viable way to make extra money on the side? My opinion is that it is not, as there are other alternatives that will pay more than online data entry and be more sustainable in terms of future work.
What I would recommend for someone who is just starting out in trying to make some extra money on the internet would be to go sign up over at Textbroker first. This is the start of an online journey in terms of both making money and also in terms of learning about how search engine optimization works. Once you start writing articles for other people and doing that to make extra money, you will start to see how the game is played a bit and how you need to compose and construct articles in order to make money on the web.
You see, most people who are ordering articles to be written by freelance writers are going to then publish those articles and promote them so that they receive free search engine traffic. This is a long road to passive income that can be built up slowly in order to generate a solid online income. If you just start out by trying to build new websites with the idea of receiving free traffic and then turning that traffic into money, then you are going into the game without much of a knowledge base. Writing freelance for a while can help to give you a glimpse at what works and what does not.
For example, you will start to see how to compose articles in order to target a keyword term. You will get an idea of how to work the term into the article, how many times is appropriate, and how to work in related terms, and so on. You will also learn about what topics make for good money makers and what topics are not having articles requested to be written about them. For example, there is a huge market for financial articles about debt but not so much for articles about thrift stores. Why? Because there is no money to be made in driving traffic on the web to look at a thrift store article. But there is potential to make money when people are looking at debt consolidation or other related keywords, so you can get a better feel for what topics can do well.