People are always looking for legit ways to make money from home. Too often working from home or an online side hustle has been lumped into the murky waters of MLMs.
However, there are more ways to make extra money from home than ever before. So, what are they? We’ve got you covered.
If you’re looking for a side hustle to supplement your existing income or become completely freelance, this guide will teach you how to make money from home.
1. Find Freelance Work Online
There are many different companies and people who are after a variety of skill sets to carry out one off projects or for ongoing freelance work. Sites like Upwork, Freelancer.com, and Fiverr are good places to start for these kinds of freelance opportunities.
This might vary from content writing, programming, technical SEO, data entry, social media, being a virtual assistant - the list goes on! Moreover, if you’re fluent in a second language, sites like Gengo or One Hour Translation are a great resource for freelance work.
Before setting up an account on these, do your research to determine your own online rate. This will protect yourself against earning less than your skillset or pricing yourself out of freelance work.
2. List Your Spare Bedroom on Airbnb
Why not start making money from your home? If you’re in the unique position of having a spare room within your property, why not consider renting it out via Airbnb?
While Airbnb can be quite lucrative for a good host, be prepared to spend some money and effort on your property’s cleanliness, replacing home goods and paying towards service fees. Moreover, if you’re renting, make sure you’re not breaching any terms and conditions of your rental agreement.
3. List Your Spare Space For Storage
If you’re not too keen with letting strangers into your home, you can still use your spare space or bedroom to make money from home.
Here at Stache we connect homeowners with spare space, to people looking for storage. Unlike Airbnb, this requires very little leg work. You simply have to clean out the room, garage, or attic space, and then list your space on our website.
4. Take Surveys For Money
Taking surveys online for money is a good way to supplement your income. However, don’t expect to be rolling in it. Furthermore, a large majority of these sites pay in gift cards as opposed to cash.
While gift cards can be sold online to generate money from home, it’s fair to say that surveys are not a big cash cow. That being said, it’s one of the easiest methods of making a bit of money on this list.
5. Online Tutoring or Teaching Online
Online tutoring or teaching online is all the rage right now. As aforementioned, there are many sites for teaching people a second language. However, if you have the experience and are savvy, you can easily set up your own TESL business via apps like Zoom or Skype.
That being said, online tutoring doesn’t have to be limited to languages. Like freelancing, there’s demand for online teaching for a variety of disciplines, for both adults and children.
6. Create a Dropshipping Business
In a drop ship business you effectively act as the middleman between the manufacturer and the customer.
The great thing about this is you don’t have to touch anything! No products and no shipping, you merely facilitate the sale through your own website and the manufacturer does the rest. The profit you make comes from the difference between your selling price and the manufacturer's wholesale price in which you purchased the goods at.
Dropshipping is a little bit of a gamble, though, You have to select the right product, be able to target the right people through social media ads, and make sure you work alongside a manufacturer that can deliver on time and in good condition. Therefore, make sure you approach dropshipping with caution.
7. Pick Up Work Through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk
Even in an age of internet automation, sometimes the most monotonous work still requires a human touch. Companies sometimes outsource these kinds of jobs via different platforms (some of which we’ve listed earlier on). However, a lot of these kinds of jobs end up on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.
The work on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk usually requires a lower skill set than other freelance sites. However, the rates are frequently lower and the work can be slightly tedious. Some examples include tagging images, classifying receipts, and data entry. These projects or tasks vary from a few minutes to a few hours.
Temporary employers or ‘requesters’ set the tasks and the rate of pay, and get the final sign off on your tasks. Unfortunately, this can leave the door open for scams. As a result, make sure you do your research before and join some subreddits or online communities that can answer questions regarding tasks on the website.
8. Speak to Your Company About Going Remote
It may be the case that you really like your office job but believe you would benefit from working from home. In the past, approaching an employer about going remote would have been out of the question.
However, with COVID-19 forcing employers and employees to embrace remote work, this has become more normalized. In fact, working from home is shown to actually increase productivity.
Therefore, if you think you’d be better off working from home, discuss the benefits of going fully remote or doing half a week remote with your employer.
Making Money From Home is No Longer a Fantasy
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Dolly Parton’s gripes with the 9 to 5 lifestyle are no longer as relevant as they were in 1980. The changing attitude towards working from home and the move towards an increasingly online workforce means there has never been a better time to make money from home.
Whether you want to move your worklife to your own home or use your own home to make money through offering local self storage, there are more options than ever before.