Make money online or who needs a day job?

I was reading some random article on a couponing site, whither I had strayed from Pinterest, and another link told me how I could make money doing everything from surveys to driving for Uber.  Living where I live, some of the options were non-viable, mostly those involving doing things for other people (like Uber) where you actually need a population base to serve.  There was an interesting option of reselling books, which when I typed in a few choice examples of academic type works we had lying around the house, we were making a whopping $3.50 on a book that would retail for $15 on the used book market.  Then there was the 'make $5 every time someone buys your photo' app which seemed really exciting for this photographer-wanna-be, but apparently that's a pipe dream as well, since no one actually buys photos from the site, or if they do, you have 2 million other people to compete with, hmmm...  They also suggested publishing an ebook, I should have stopped reading the article then and there.  Yes, you can theoretically make money self-publishing, but it is sort of like that photo app: way too many competitors to really do much more than earn enough annually to buy a soda or two.  It kind of reminds me of those 1990s infomercials that urged you to give up your career and breed alpacas, and since the only thing you can do with an alpaca is breed more of them (yes, there is a small market for the fiber but most of the critters were 'breeding stock,' resulting in a vast oversupply of alpaca hair) and when you run out of more people who want to buy them that they too might be alpaca breeders, the whole thing falls apart.  Apparently you can have a pyramid scheme in any industry: ebooks, photos, alpacas.  Better keep the day job!