You don’t have to go out of your way to start making extra cash. While there are tons of side hustles that can net you some extra income that you can’t do from home, there are still many ways to make money from the comfort of your own home. It may take some effort at first, but these are things almost everyone can’t deny having at least the opportunity to try.
How much more do you want to make each month? $100? A few hundred? A thousand? Ten thousand dollars? Before you even start considering different ways to make money, think about how much time you’re willing to put in, how much money you want, and how long you’re willing to wait for a real payout. Those three things may drastically alter what you’re willing to do.
To be frank, at best you’ll probably only get two of those in the way you prefer (no single side hustle has absolutely everything), unless you’re investing a lot of money to get a head start.
Now, before you say you don’t have any time – that’s likely not true. I hear it constantly, yet with a little effort people can find tons of free time. It’s not like you need to do these things full-time as soon as you start. Although, if you enjoy it and make enough money you could certainly choose to. More likely than not, you’ll choose an option that fits easily into your schedule and that you can do in spurts when you have the chance during a typical week. It may be accurate to think of some of them as small personal projects you accomplish each week.
So, without further ado, here are five ways you can make money from home!
1. Sell Items On eBay, Craigslist, Etsy, Or Amazon
You can potentially make a lot of money by selling or reselling items on various online platforms. You can sell your own items and products, which you designed and developed, or even sell items that other people design and manufacture through dropshipping. For those of you who haven’t heard of dropshipping before, you sell a product to a consumer and the supplier manufactures, packages, and ships that product to the consumer on your behalf. Often the profit margins aren’t as high as in-house selling can be, but it removes a lot of headache for you and makes it immensely cheaper and easier to start.
I’m certainly no expert in this topic, but it seems that one of the most important aspects is excellent customer service and good reviews. In this type of market, unless you’re designing some truly innovative products, the only thing that will set you apart is generally your customer service and reputation.
2. Do Some Freelance Or Consulting Work
These days there are tons of platforms you can sell your skills and services on, it’s easier than ever to do freelance work. If you have any special skills or abilities, this is an easy way to monetize them. Alternatively, you can take the skills you’ve gained in your day job and use them to make extra money here. Do you work in information technology? Are you a writer? A designer? People are willing to pay an arm and a leg for all of these services – you just have to put yourself out there. If you decide to go this route, I recommend focusing on building a strong portfolio and reputation.
If you’re decent with the written word and know a foreign language, you can even do some translation like I discussed here. The barrier of entry can seem a bit high sometimes, but if you can prove your fluency it is a solid way to make some steady income on the side. It likely won’t make you rich alone, but it can certainly help. Also, considering how strong and consistent this income source is, you could even replace your day job with it.
Another example I see a lot is social media management. This is where you do all the heavy lifting for people on different social media platforms. You post, create content, and make a lot of money in the process. It can be incredibly hard to get your first client, but once you do it is scalable and has the potential to provide a substantial income. It doesn’t take many consistent customers (you usually have monthly renewals or something similar) to give you an income that can replace your job and it can potentially bring in a lot more than you would be able to with most standard careers.
3. Become An “Active” Investor
I’m going to start this off by saving I love index funds and almost always recommend take a more passive approach to investing by using something like M1 Finance or Vanguard. However, making active investments and trades does have its merits. Worst case scenario, you lose the money you invested and learn a lot about the market. Best case scenario, you make a lot of money and learn even more about the market.
What I mean by “active” investing is making trades daily or weekly by trying to buy an investment (like stocks) on a dip and sell it shortly after – once it has increased in value a bit. This is high risk and high reward. Most people do far worse than passive investments would do, but there are people who can make a lot of money doing this, even as a full-time gig. If you’re interested in trying it out, take it slow and try to learn from your mistakes. You’ll probably find out fast if it is for you or not.
You can even do this with real estate, but that usually requires a lot more cash up-front, and it probably isn’t a hustle you can do regularly from your own home.
4. Start A Blog Or Get Serious With A Social Media Platform (Like YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, Instagram, Etc.)
Blogs, in my opinion, have to be one of the best ways to earn an additional income in the modern era and a lot of what I’ll mention about them applies to other social media platforms too. It’s pretty simple to start, but it does require a lot of consistent effort on your part. It’s also something that may take a while to start seeing serious benefits from, even as much as a couple of years!
That being said, once it gets going it can spiral out of control (in the best possible way). Once you start receiving income, you’ll probably find it straightforward to keep growing at a rapid rate. If you have a hard time choosing a niche, focus on things you’re passionate about. An easy start for a lot of people is reviewing things – although I recommend writing about more than just reviews once you figure out what you want the focus of your blog to be.
One of the most common questions I get asked about blogging is how it makes any money, and people tend to find the answer a bit surprising (and perhaps unhelpful). The truth is there are tons of ways and you can choose any you want – as many or few as that may be. For example, do you have a valuable skill? Create an online course! The blog can serve as another platform to sell it on. People are constantly trying to learn new skills and better themselves, and they are far more likely to trust a blogger they frequent than other sources that don’t seem to produce results (i.e. sources that don’t teach anything worthwhile or that simple research won’t find).
Additionally, bloggers will frequently sell eBooks on their platform. While this could be learning material like a course, it could also just be more in-depth details and explanations about what the blogger normally discusses anyway.
One of my favorite ways to make money online (especially through a blog), and the primary way for many, is with affiliate marketing. Basically, when a company I like offers an affiliate program, it gives me the ability to put things called affiliate links on the blog. When a viewer clicks this link, and if they decide to purchase or use the product or service, I will get a portion of that sale. It may not seem like a lot at first, but it adds up fast and is incredibly scalable. No, not all links on my blog are affiliate links.
However, in order to keep a blog’s integrity, it is important to only link things that you trust and would use yourself. In my case, I only sign up to be an affiliate if I’ve used it (now or in the past) or I know a lot of people who use it and have a TON of second-hand experience. If you’re interested in my personal policies on it, check out the About Me page.
5. Become A Tutor
Yes, online tutoring is a thing and it’s more popular than ever. Like freelancing, there are tons of platforms to choose from, and people are willing to pay to learn tons of different skills or about many different topics. Not sure what you could teach? There are core subjects like math, reading/writing, history, and science.
If any of those sound up your alley then there you go – that was easy! If you want to teach something different, think about your specialized skills. Maybe it’s related to technology you’re familiar with, a niche subject matter, a foreign language, or playing an instrument. The options are limitless!
While credentials are nice for this, they often aren’t necessary. You’ll likely have to prove your competency, but that should be easy if you’re ready to teach people about a topic. Another example worth mentioning, a lot of people will pay just to have a native English speaker help them learn the language (and these sessions will often be online). Don’t worry – in that case you may not even need to know a foreign language, you can teach advanced students who just need more experience speaking and writing exclusively in English.
Conclusion
Bringing in an extra income on the side from the comfort of your own home is easier than ever before. If you want to do it, you don’t have a lot of obstacles in your path. All it takes is some hard work, consistency, and a little creativity. When deciding which route you’d like to go, remember to consider how much time you’re willing to put in, how much money you want, and how long you’re willing to wait for a real payout. Keeping those in mind while you brainstorm what you’re good at and enjoy doing will make figuring it out much easier.
If you have any suggestions for making money from home, please add them in the comments! For more content like this, and a free budgeting template and financial goals worksheet, be sure to sign up for the Bitter to Richer newsletter.
