Don't waste your time. Get a loan online.
I prefer to work from home. My morning commute is 15 feet, food is nearby, and when I’ve been productive enough, I reward myself with a game or two of online chess.
You, too, probably like the idea of making money at home, whether it’s from a remote job, a home-based business or investments you can manage from anywhere. If so, and even if you already have a home-based income but want to learn more, this list is for you.
As you might suspect, many of these creative ways to make money at home involve the internet — but not all of them. And although some are one-off ways to pocket some cash, and others are decent-paying jobs, a few have the potential to generate huge profits.
Finally, while working from home is fine, this list is about making money at home. If a job, business or investment requires you to leave the house, you won’t find it here. This list consists only of ways you can make money without leaving your house at all.
Don't waste your time. Get a loan online.
Online Jobs
Have an internet connection? You’re all set to try these jobs.
1. Work for a Call Center
Customer service jobs are common with companies that hire at-home workers. You spend your days on the phone in front of your computer, talking to customers.
2. Be a Transcriptionist
To make $25 per hour as a transcriptionist, you need to listen well and type fast. You’ll listen to audio files of varying quality, and you have to type out what you hear perfectly.
Not sure you want to do the typing yourself? Consider being a transcript proofreader.
3. Be a Virtual Assistant
As a virtual assistant you might answer calls, send emails, prepare reports or do any number of other tasks for busy executives and business owners. You can freelance or get a job with a VA company like Zirtual.
Online Businesses
If you’d rather run your own show, you’ve got a lot of options.
4. Be a Social Media Manager
My wife does freelance social media work for an organization of poets, posting on Facebook and Twitter about the latest news from members and updates on events. For a more regular paycheck, apply for one of the many social media management jobs on websites like Monster.com.
5. Design Websites
Payscale says a web designer can expect to take home roughly $48,000 per year. It’s tough to get to that point if you’re freelancing, but this is definitely an at-home income.
My wife and I once did a package deal for a client for $430, which included the site, logo, contact form andseveral pages of content. Designing the website and letting the owner arrange for content is more common.
6. Host Websites
The website design package I mentioned above included hosting the website for a year for $80. We have to deal with any technical issues as they come up, but we rarely have a site down for more than a few minutes.
We can put unlimited websites on our reseller plan with HostGator (if you use the code PENNY READERS, you’ll get 25% off), so adding one more costs us nothing.
7. Create Podcasts
When you create podcasts, audio files for downloading, you can sell them or use them as an advertising platform. Either way, try to provide an interesting and/or useful series of podcasts. The profit potential? Consider John Lee Dumas’ story; he made $60,000 per month from sponsorships.
8. Create and Sell Courses
I’ve created a few online courses, selling some and giving away others to promote websites. I never made more than $100 in a month from any of them, but course creators Danny Iny and Nick Loper say you can do much better than that.
9. Start a Fiverr Business
How do you make much money with a $5 product or service when the website where you make the sales takes a dollar of your revenue from each sale?
People who make thousands of dollars on Fiverr.com suggest you create a simple product or service and have several “upsells” available for buyers interested in higher-priced options.
Other Ways to Make Money Online
We’ve only scratched the surface of ways to make money online.
- Be an Online Mock Juror
A mock or surrogate juror reviews evidence and renders a decision to help lawyers prepare for real cases. I wrote about how I made $150 as a mock juror, which involved eight hours in a hotel conference room. Fortunately, there are online versions; I listed several in that post. Those opportunities pay only $10 to $60, but they can take less than an hour.
11. Sell Links
If you have a website or blog, you can sell links. Sites that find buyers for you are mostly helping clients manipulate search engine results, which you might not want to participate in. But you can sell “nofollow” links without violating Google’s terms of use. I’ve sold links on my backpacking website for $90 per year, per link.
12. Tweet for Cash
Tweeting for money isn’t just for celebrities anymore. If you have a Twitter account and enough followers, you can get paid to tweet about products you like using websites like MyLikes.com.
13. Answer Questions
A number of websites will pay you to answer people’s questions. If you’re a lawyer, tryJustAnswer.com.
14. Flip Domain Names
A friend registered a domain name for $12, and a few weeks later, sold it for $2,000. He just got lucky (it wasn’t his plan), but if you have a good sense of which names have value, you can try buying and selling a few domain names. Marketplaces like Flippa can help you find buyers.
15. Get Paid to Listen to Music
MusicXRay.com is one of the better-known websites where you listen to songs (typically for at least 30 seconds) in exchange for cash or points that are redeemable for gift cards. The bands hope you’ll become a fan, so it’s a form of advertising you’re paid to listen to. You won’t make much with this scheme, but it’s not a bad way to make a few bucks.
16. Get Paid to Watch TV
Download the HitBliss app or software for your computer, and you’ll get paid to watch commercials. The big drawback, in my opinion, is that you’re paid with points you have to spend on movies, shows and music in their store.
17. Take Surveys
You really can make money doing online surveys. I’ve done it a few times. While I once received a $30 payment from InboxDollars, that’s not the norm. I worked fast and typically made about $3 per hour for my efforts.
18. Work on Mechanical Turk
Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform lets you complete small tasks online for a fee. In the past, I made $2 for an hour checking out websites, so I wasn’t impressed. But since then, Nicole Dieker posted about how to use Reddit to maximize your income on Mechanical Turk. Maybe I’ll try again using her strategy.
