But are there ways to make pocket change on the internet if your willing to put in a days work?
Yes.
If you're serious, then i recommend you look into Amazon Turk. It's miserable and slow, but $5/hr within the first several weeks is realistically attainable. It does however, take some time to build up your credentials on the site, and in the meantime you'll be making pennies. I have read claims from others that they've been able to earn as much as $15/hr with the more difficult credentials, but cannot confirm, as I gave up after a week or two.
If you do attempt this, check out the
reddit thread and spend a couple hours reading before you sign up. There are things you can do to vastly improve your experience, a third party plugin that will help you avoid bad tasks, and also mistakes you can make that can mess up your account so that you no longer qualify for the more well paid tasks. Turk is real, it does work, and people post earning all the time in the low hundreds of dollars per month. However, it does require some diligence, and there is a grueling ramp up period in the beginning where you'll be making like 30-50 cents per hour. I think I was up to $2/hr by the time I gave up on it.
If you're not as serious, then you might consider swagbucks. It's considerably easier and more laid back. It is something you can casually sign up for without doing any research, but the earning are paltry. Again, i cannot confirm as I didn't stick with it, but my impression was that you could probably realistically expect to get a $25 gift card every month if you religiously invested an hour every day. With swagbucks I advise skipping all the videos and games and things and going straight to the surveys, as they pay much better, though not nearly as well as mTurk.
If you want to try swagbucks,
here's a referral link. There might be a starting out bonus for you if you use that rather than simply signing up, I don't recall.