19 Legitimate Ways to Work From Home
The “work from home” field has many scams and fake promises. But there are ways to make money from home that are legitimate. The key is to use your strengths and find companies with a good reputation.
If you don’t get a response to your first invoice, avoid doing too much work until the company pays for it. This will give you an idea of whether or not their offer is legitimate before investing more time into this opportunity.
Stay at home, pay your bills and make some good food for yourself too.
The first question may be, how can I achieve this?
There are several work at home opportunities that can pay your bills and still offer some flexibility. Not sure which work at home options are available? See my list below. Got some skills?
1. Be a consultant.
Many small businesses don’t need a full-time person to do whatever you do. But they might need someone with your knowledge and skills for a short amount of time. Reach out to businesses that align with your skills and offer your services to them.
2. Teach English online with iTalki, Preply and/or Busuu
If you have a teaching degree and some experience in education (or want to gain it!) then online teaching can be a healthy source of income. With iTalki, Preply and Busuu acting as recruiters, there are many opportunities for native English speakers all over the world to teach on their platforms and receive payment via PayPal or bank transfer.
3. Create a blog or website to earn advertising and affiliate fees.
If you are good at writing, start a blog and build an audience of repeat readers by posting new content regularly. While this may not offer instant cash,if you put in the work, with time it will start paying. You can monetize your blog through display ads or affiliate marketing.
4. Become a virtual assistant using Fiverr, Upwork or People per Hour.
How organized are you? If you are a people person and well organized consider taking on virtual assistant roles. Your role will be to perform administrative tasks such as calendar management, email management, travel booking among others.
5. Create courses
Are you good in a certain subject? It doesn’t matter whether you are good at Excel, marketing, or even how to be a successful freelancer. If you have tried and tested methods on how to accomplish something, creating online courses could be a good work from home option for you. Sign up on platforms such as Udemy or Lynda to teach people the skills you already have, that way you can earn passive income from both students and the platform itself.
6. Take paid surveys online
One way you can make money online while being able to do it in the comfort of your own home is by taking paid surveys. There are lots of survey providers, but we recommend Ipsos i-Say because they use a great mix between shorter and longer tasks.
Swagbucks and Survey Junkie are also worth checking out. Remember surveys don’t pay lots of money. However the rewards points when accumulated can be worth something big.
While you are not a professional teacher by any means, there is no reason why you can’t teach your skills and earn some extra money. People always need help with the basics of things like Excel, PowerPoint or even Photoshop. You’ll be surprised how much people will be willing to pay for something that costs them next to nothing.
8. Transcriptionist
If you have good listening skills and are a fast typist, transcription gigs from Averbach, Rev.com, TranscribeMe will offer you work from home positions.
The pay varies but most transcription companies pay per audio minute or audio hour.
9. Sell your stuff
Get an online shop like Etsy and sell whatever you have to offer. Time, advice, cookies, VHS video tapes (okay, maybe not that last one). There’s some good money in being a reseller for sites like eBay or Craigslist.
10. Work for a call center.
Most small businesses would like to have 24/7 customer support services. However, they do not have the office space or capacity to handle this. Luckily there are agencies which set up call centers and hire workers to work on a part-time basis. You can find job listings in websites like Indeed and Monster.
11. Apply for government grants and loans.
Government agencies often need people to review applications, offer advice and manage programs. These positions will require some work experience but can help you get your foot in the door. With the experience gained, you can offer your services as a freelance grant writer to small businesses looking for grants.
12. Rent a room in your home.
If you have an extra room in your home, list it up online and earn from it.
A good place to start is on craigslist and wait for a month or two before listing it on Airbnb. I’ve made money with this option, and it can be a great way to visit new cities around the world too!
13. Be an online juror.
You may not have the right personality to be a lawyer, but you could sharpen your skills by helping others with their cases. Ejury is one such company that will pay for your jurist services and all opinions are welcome!
14. Test and review websites.
For the techies, you could take on paid gigs as a website tester. Two sites that pay are UserTesting and TryMyUI . Just sign up for the account, create an avatar, take on gigs from a list of website areas to review. The best part is you can totally work offsite if you’re coding at home or in Starbucks. These could be quick gigs to do when you have some spare time!
15. Sell vegetables from your garden.
A kitchen garden can be therapeutic and also a great way to earn money from home. Grow vegetables and herbs that you can sell at a local farmers market or grocery store. The book, “The $64 Tomato” by William Alexander gives step-by-step directions on how to harvest your own tomatoes for profit.
16. Make jewelry from old necklaces, beads, etc.
Did you know that you can recycle your old jewelry into something new and exciting?
Tired of looking at your old necklaces that you no longer wear? Make them into new ones!
Create new pieces from beads bought on Amazon and sell them off at a profit.
17. Mechanical Turk.
Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is an Amazon.com platform that lets you perform small tasks for money.
There are thousands of tasks that you can do, including extracting text from images, watching videos and giving your opinion on them, listening to audio recordings and answering questions about them, transcribing data from forms into a text file or Excel spreadsheet, reviewing content for legal or grammatical errors, moderation (e.g., reporting YouTube comments), writing articles.
While the pay is low per task, you can complete multiple tasks per hour.
18. Affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is a strategy in which an online merchant rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought to their site through the affiliate’s own efforts. The affiliate typically receives a commission on products sold or services provided.
There are many ways of doing this, but the most prevalent examples is the Amazon.com affiliate program. There are many more you can try depending on your niche.
19. Pet sitting.
Pet sitting is one of the most in-demand side jobs, and you’ll be surprised how much people are willing to pay for it. You can earn $25 an hour sitting for a friend’s dog, while also taking care of your own dogs and working on other projects.
You could start your own pet sitting business or get started with Rover a popular platform for connecting with pet owners.
Working from home is a great way to stay connected with the people that matter most and earn an extra income. The key to success, however, lies in finding work-at-home opportunities worth your time and energy.
Many people are looking for creative careers that allow them to work from home. If you’re in need of a new job, start by browsing through the many available options!
There is an overwhelming amount of companies out there who offer jobs where their employees can work remotely and choose when they want to log into the company’s network – all while getting paid. Depending on what kind of position you are seeking, this could be a good option for someone like yourself wanting more flexibility with your time commitments at home or even as part-time employment during school breaks (or summers). Consider it before jumping right back into traditional 9-5 office hours because these positions often pay well too!
