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Explore Your Skill and Find the Best Way to Make Money From Home

Lauren Hamer

Professional Resume Writer, Career Writer and Career Coach


When you just can’t stomach another drive-thru coffee on your morning commute, close your navigation app on your phone and search for easy ways to make money from home instead. With a computer and some niche skills, there are countless opportunities for you to earn a living from your couch. (Okay, fine, your home office.) Below, we’ll explore 30 different ways to make money from home, as well as a few “too-good-too-be-true” warning signs to know to keep you from booking the wrong remote gig. 

What to Consider Before Choosing Any Money-Making Option from Home

Your work-from-home criteria shouldn’t stop at the word “remote.” But pinpointing company culture can be tough when interviewing with a dispersed workforce. To figure out whether a remote job is right for you, consider a few things. 

First, define what you’re looking for in a new gig. Compile a list of must-haves (three non-negotiables are a good place to start). This can include things like pay and benefits, as well as the values and cultural aspects you prefer. If you know you want to prioritize work-life balance and team collaboration, then you’ll be more apt to pick up on good and bad signs during the interview process.

The hiring process can also be a good indicator of what working for a company or with a client will be like. Think about what the communication and hiring was like for you from start to finish. Consider the job advertisement, hiring manager email communications, and details of the role. For example, if interviewers seemed uncomfortable, rushed, or flustered with virtual interview methods, it could suggest they’re not really ready to hire.

If the company has hired other remote employees—successfully, mind you—this can indicate they have established policies and communication strategies to connect with virtual teammates. 

To gauge communication and policy further, ask the company these questions:

  • Do other teammates work remotely? What makes them successful in that environment?
  • What tools do you use to keep communication alive between your in-office and remote teams?
  • What type of conversations happen on Slack versus email?

30 Appealing Ways to Make Money from Home

work from home on notepad in front of a computer to introduce 30 ways to make money from home

Making money from home sounds like the perfect pipedream. But you can only realistically make the switch if you can earn a decent and consistent income to support yourself and your loved ones. Here are 30 ways to make money from home, no matter your skill level.

1. Start A Blog and Monetize

Blogging is not a get-rich-quick strategy. But if you take the time to build out and monetize a blog, it can be a great way to make money from home. Blog sites make building and scaling your business easy. The more content you produce, the more success you’ll have selling products or making money via affiliate links (more on this later).  

2. Become a Virtual Assistant

Entrepreneurs and business executives love a loyal office administrator, whether at home or in the office. With just a small amount of clients, you can perform administrative tasks for other businesses or develop workflows that make a client’s business more efficient—especially if those clients run e-commerce businesses. 

Become familiar with project management, invoicing, and marketing platforms and offer to own those tasks. Many are willing to pay someone else to pay employees, post to social media, or manage calendars so they can focus on growing and maintaining their businesses. 

3. Become a Freelancer

As more companies go completely remote, the opportunities to earn money freelancing will only grow. Almost any service can become a lucrative freelance business you can build gradually. Some of the most common freelancers offer their services in:

4. Sell Product on Marketplaces

Selling on a marketplace is different from selling via e-commerce (we’ll cover e-commerce a little later). A marketplace is a website that sells products from multiple sellers, such as Amazon or Etsy, while an eCommerce is a website that sells products from a single vendor (you) to multiple customers. With a marketplace, the hosting platform might take a portion of your sales, but many deem the fees worthwhile because they don’t have to build a website, maintain a good user experience, or drive traffic to a new website Google hasn’t crawled yet.

5. Become a Reseller

If you like to bargain shop, you can make money from home by reselling your purchases. Resellers buy from manufacturers, liquidators, and other retailers, then sell them elsewhere. With a reseller permit, you can purchase some products free of sales tax, such as wholesale products for components to manufacture products. 

Cash in on a niche sector, like vintage clothing or appliances, and then create an online store to reach an even bigger audience. 

6. Become a Tutor

If you consider yourself a math wiz or science nerd (in the best way), you can make money tutoring online. You’ll need at least a bachelor’s degree for this, but you can find clients via Job Searcher, countless learning websites, and even various freelancer platforms. Just make sure you only teach what you know so you can share expert knowledge and learning experiences with your students. 

7. Sell Your Stock Photos Online

What good is filling up a memory card if you never share, post, or print your photos? Money-minded photographers can establish multiple income streams by selling photos online, either via stock photography websites, creator marketplaces, or as a print-on-demand service.

Licensing helps you “sell” your photos online to brands, publishers, or anyone who wants to use your photos for their own purposes. (Hint: Thanks to the digital creator economy, there are a lot of “purposes” you can monetize.)

8. Make Money Off SkillShare

With video conferencing and recording tools, you can earn extra cash quickly with some niche knowledge and a computer. Teach others your ways on a platform known for learning. Teachers usually make $0.05 and $0.10 per minute watched on Skillshare. When considering how many students could watch your course and for how long, it’s easy to see how creating content on Skillshare could be lucrative. Teach just one course or build a channel of several courses and series. 

9. Start a Podcast

If you’ve got something to say, there are many ways to monetize a podcast. More relevant than radio, you can go the traditional route and secure sponsors and advertisements or dive into affiliate marketing and drive customers to other businesses. Combine your podcasting efforts with other digital money-makers discussed in this article, such as blogging, making online courses, or freelancing. You’ll need microphones and speakers to begin. Then, choose a topic and start recording. 

10. Become a Customer Service Representative

A quick scroll through any active job board will show you countless remote customer service representative jobs. Full-time or part-time, all you need is a computer and a headset to perform this role successfully. Most client interactions happen over the phone or via an internet chat, making it an ideal industry to go online. Plus, nearly every industry has a service sector, so nabbing a role from the comfort of your couch should be a breeze. 

11. Buy and Sell Domains

Trading domains won’t provide a consistent income, but it will help supplement your earnings. Entrepreneurs with a dream need to buy and register a domain to create a website, but end up using very few of them. Many sell their unused domains for a higher price than what they paid, thus becoming a domain seller. Start with a small budget and secure a few domains you think would interest others. 

Just know that domain “flipping” is not a passive process. In fact, you’ll need to invest time and energy to buy the right names and actively seek out prospective buyers. 

12. Become a Resume Writer

Everyone needs a resume. With massive shifts happening throughout the workforce, many job seekers want help writing and building their resumes. You’ll need specific writing skills and certifications to make this a lucrative side-gig, but if you have recruiting, HR, or career coaching experience, you can charge a premium to help people create “hire-me-right-now” resumes.

13. Be an Affiliate Marketer

If you’ve already got an audience you can sell to, then don’t hesitate to dip your toes into the “selling products online” pool with affiliate marketing. Integrate this strategy into your existing blog or social channels. Every click equals money, so you can make cash driving traffic to specific businesses and products. To do this effectively, create content that lends itself to affiliate links—like cookware on a recipe blog, for example. You can search for affiliate marketing opportunities on sites like ShareASale, ClickBank, or Amazon Associates

14. Be a Social Media Manager

If you know how to leverage social media for exposure, companies will want to talk to you about managing their platforms to help expand their reach and define their brand. This is something you can easily do from home. Take some time to build a portfolio to show how you manage and improve social standing for businesses. The more success you’ve had, the more you can charge clients each month. Most social media managers track engagement numbers, follower count, and their ability to generate leads through posts.

15. Start Dropshipping

Dropshippers sell products but don’t hold any inventory. Rather, they work with the customer and the merchant to fulfill orders for cheap. Because you can start a dropshipping business for free, it’s a pretty low-risk business model to launch, but the industry is competitive. You’ll need to choose a dropshipping supplier, and launch an e-commerce site to start. Choosing to sell niche products can help you find more customers faster, such as yoga accessories for cellphone electronics.

16. Start a Youtube Channel

If you can find a way to interest the millions (literally, millions) of YouTube watchers globally, you can earn a sizeable income that keeps multiplying. To make money, your channel must have at least a thousand subscribers and four thousand hours of watch time in the last twelve months. YouTube pays per view. So, the more people who watch, the more money you make. How-to’s, lifestyle, product reviews, and tutorials are all popular content that people have monetized. 

You’ll need to upload videos consistently to make any decent money and then optimize your titles so they show up in search. Plus, most YouTubers invest in video cameras and studio equipment to improve the film quality.

17. Become a Web Developer

Web developers create and maintain websites, but they also oversee technical aspects like performance and capacity. If you find the intricacies of building websites fun, then there’s a bustling market waiting for you. Offer to take the burden of building an online presence from a solopreneur or online seller—they’ll pay a sizable fee for your web application services. Most companies have full-time remote web developers on their payroll, too.

18. Learn Graphics Design

Almost everywhere you look, you’ll find graphic design. Online, on billboards, in stores, and more, it’s a skill and a career that’s almost always in demand. Get yourself on one of the online platforms we discuss in this article (Etsy, Skillshare, Fiverr) and market your artistry to businesses in need. You can make money designing logos, slide decks, fonts, stickers, book covers, printables…need I go on?

19. Become a Freelance Writer

Perhaps one of the most popular freelance industries, freelance writers can work from anywhere in the world. Companies and businesses will hire writers to write blog articles, case studies, website pages, or email newsletters—and they’ll pay a premium for the best writers. Marketing teams love to leverage writers to build their content strategy—AKA, their methods for driving sales, profit, and overall visibility and market share.  

Pick a niche you know well and target companies that may need help, such as personal finance, tech, food, lifestyle, or healthcare. The more bylines you earn, the more you can charge per project.

20. Become a Social Media Influencer

With any hobby or passion, you can monetize an audience. From plants to homesteading to travel, you don’t have to be an A-list celebrity to make money off your social platforms. (Shoppable Instagram posts, anyone?) Doing this successfully requires regular posting and a unique branding stance. I mean, who says your pandemic hobbies can’t morph into a large, loyal TikTok following?

21. Become a Translator

Believe it or not, translators are in high demand—so much so that you can register as a translator on platforms created solely for generating these kinds of leads. Think Upwork, but for translation jobs. Just create a profile and source transcription and translation jobs fast. The more languages you speak fluently, the better. 

22. Make Sales Funnels

Companies will pay top dollar for sales funnel experts. Leverage your skills to help other businesses or your own grow! The more you can automate how to generate leads, nurture and convert them, the easier it will be to earn a profit. Learn how to create multiple lead magnets, and then use your sales funnel to offset your ad spend.

23. Be an App Builder

No, we’re not talking about a consumer app—that market is too competitive. A better option is to build problem-solving apps for businesses. Creating apps is easy with platforms like Shopify or Buildfire. Free apps earn more downloads, but you can create a subscription service upsell to make your efforts more profitable. 

24. Sell Services on Fiverr

If the freelancer niche interests you, consider joining Fiverr, a platform designed to connect freelancers to small virtual one-off gigs. Monetize just about any skill you have, from graphic design to voiceovers to coding. It’s free to join the platform, but they take a portion of your profits per gig, roughly 80%. 

25. Trade Cryptocurrency

Many believe the U.S. dollar will fall pretty to bitcoin and other blockchain platforms. Take advantage of the rising trend and trade cryptocurrency via staking and yield farming. Think of yourself as a day trader of sorts. But before you explore the crypto exchange options, know that this remote money-making option is risky and volatile—you know, typical wall street stuff. 

26. Become a Review Writer

We’d all like to categorize ourselves as informed buyers. Reviews play an important role in product and brand success. Write reviews for companies that give you bonus points or digital credits. You could also join a product review platform and get paid for your opinions on surveys and online reviews.

Want to monetize your leisurely reading? Become a freelance book reviewer. 

27. Publish a Kindle eBook

Digital eBooks are a great way to earn passive income. Spend time writing on a topic and then watch the cash flow in as it sells over and over again. You can reach international audiences on Amazon or self-publish on your own website. How-to’s, fiction, and personal development topics are all fair game. 

28. Play Online Games

Get paid every time you fire up your controller. If you have a gaming setup or smartphone, join platforms that pay per hour of playtime. Game developers spend significant time building games and often employ QA testers to give feedback during the development phase. Other ways to make money from home include signing up for tournaments and streaming your sessions via YouTube.

29. Create Online Courses

Easy-to-use platforms have simplified online course creation. Start by choosing a course topic you can teach—like a skill required for your job or a hobby you’ve mastered. Then, create the materials and find a platform to sell them, such as Udemy or Teachable or Podia. 

Online courses are a great way to generate passive income, too. Your only investment is the time it takes to create the course once before you can sell access to your materials to clients all over the world again and again. Do it right, and these courses can also become a source of affiliate income.

30. Launch an eCommerce Site

With so many customers buying online, you can sell almost anything on an e-commerce site. Build a website and sell whatever makes sense for you. Create a sales funnel and use free or low-cost items to turn visitors into repeat buyers (or subscribers). Sell exercise equipment, clothes, virtual training sessions, or household goods. The only downside is that setting up a website costs time and money. 

a toy person on blocks that spell risk across from blocks that spell safe

You Must Know Which Home Jobs to Avoid for Future

When it comes to making money from home, the general rule of thumb is: If it sounds too good to be true, then run. Fast. Just because a job is remote doesn’t mean it’s easy. So, we suggest avoiding jobs that seem effortless, as you’re less likely to earn any real income.

Other work-from-home jobs you should consider with caution are:

  • Jobs that require cold calling – I mean really. When was the last time you answered a call from an unrecognizable number?
  • Opportunities that operate in a pay-to-earn model – Yes, you need to spend money to make money, but don’t invest in any company that seems illegitimate. You also shouldn’t have to purchase products before joining.
  • Medical billing jobs – These jobs can be lucrative, which makes them a common job for scammers to advertise. Don’t fall for any advertisement that requires you to buy your own equipment or give money upfront.

As with any job search, do your research and ask questions to separate the good from the bad. 

Frequently Asked Questions on Ways to Make Money from Home

What are the real ways to make money from home for free?

Anyone with a computer can create a profile on a freelancer platform for free and offer their skills as a translator, product tester, online gamer, or call center representative. You don’t need a paid subscription to sell artwork and digital products on marketplaces, but those sites will likely take a portion of your profits. 

How to make money online for beginners?

If you’re just starting to test the waters in the e-commerce ocean, it’s best to stick to easy jobs you can do on the side. Become a drop-shipper or experiment with reselling clothes, furniture, or goods online. With little effort, you can participate in product reviews and surveys. If you can locate a few long-term clients, working as a virtual assistant can bring in consistent income.

What are the Best Jobs to Make Money Online?

Bloggers, dropshippers, and freelancers tend to make the most money online with very little upfront investment. That said, earning the big bucks doesn’t happen overnight; you must build it and nurture it. If you have web development skills and a niche product, you can earn a hefty income as an e-commerce store owner or consultant. 

Conclusion

It’s never been easier to work remotely. So, what skill are you going to monetize? Try your hand at one (or a few) of the ideas above, and then invest in a good coffee maker. You’re going to need one once you abandon the drive-thru shop on your morning commute.

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