Trying to figure out how to make money from home isn’t easy. If it were, hardly anyone would choose to wake up to an alarm and commute two hours to and from work every day. Offices would be a thing of the past and the laptop lifestyle would be the norm.
Even though more and more people are figuring out how to make money on the side from home, the trend hasn’t yet completely taken over.
This is partially because people who want to do this inevitably have to navigate the cyber minefield of get-rich-quick schemes and fake money-making scams.
We’ve personally tried dozens of side hustles, and when we were writing our book of 101 Best Travel Jobs, we interviewed countless people who have figured out how to earn money from home by picking up a side job.
We’ve already written about online jobs that can earn thousands per month and how to get paid to write online as a freelance writer, but those posts were more focused on working while on the road and getting paid to travel.
But what about those who are at home right now, trying to save money for travel?
This article is all about real ways to make money from home and how to make money online so you can work in your pyjamas (when possible) and make some extra cash on the side of your day job.
In this post, I’m going to share some of the best side hustles from home. Whether you just want to earn an extra few hundred dollars a month, or if you want to completely quit your job and work remotely, this post is for you.
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Why Make Money From Home?
Before we learned how we could earn money from home, we were working long shifts at jobs we didn’t enjoy.
Dariece worked at a law firm and I spent time both working on oil rigs and working in a plastic packaging plant. The shifts were long, we hated the commute and despite earning a good living by Canadian standards, we had a hard time getting ahead.
Fast forward 10 years and we’ve quit our jobs and are earning more than double what we were, but now we only make money from home, we travel all year round and we only work around 20 hours per week, maximum.
We take holidays when we want, we wake up when we want and we aren’t stuck in traffic every day. Our home office is now wherever we choose to be. Currently, I’m writing this post from a beach house in the Caribbean, looking out over our pool and onto the sea.
I want to show that it’s possible to earn money from home and actually turn the lucrative side hustles that I list in this post into a full-time income!
If we can do it, anyone can. We don’t have university degrees, we aren’t trust fund babies and we didn’t know the first thing about working for ourselves before we started down this path.
The fact is that we researched how to make money from home by doing Google searches and found many different websites with many different jobs (some real and some fake) and eventually figured it out.
In this post, I’m going to list only the jobs that I know are legitimate, and that I know can earn real money.
1. Become a Proofreader/Editor
This is one of the best ways to make an income from home.
Proofreaders and editors are similar. Proofreading is when you thoroughly look over written text for errors in spelling, punctuation, grammar, consistency, or formatting. Editors look at the whole picture and make major changes to the flow, structure, clarity and tone of the writing.
On average, you can make between $25 – $45 per hour with this at-home side hustle!
Now, there are a few factors that come into play regarding your wage. The more experience or qualifications you have, the higher your pay will be.
Steps to Take:
I suggest taking a proofreading or editing course (or a bundle that includes both), in order to advance your skills, receive professional tutoring, and have the confidence you need to become a proofreader. This course with Knowadays even includes guaranteed work with Proofed. Click here to learn more and receive 15% off.
2. Start a Website (The Best Way To Make Money From Home)
Probably the most lucrative way to earn money from home (and on the road), blogging can open up countless doors to money-making potential and is a fun way to practice writing, marketing and photography.
We started this blog in 2012, without the slightest knowledge of blogging and today we earn money online through advertising, affiliate marketing, product sales, and sponsorships.
Of course, in order to be successful, we’ve had to work around 20 hours per week on our blog, making it more than a side hustle, but it is possible to earn a few hundred dollars from a new blog in less than a year.
If you can build your audience to 50,000 sessions per month, you can place Mediavine ads on your website, just like the ones you see in this post.
With 50,000 sessions you’d earn around $1,500 per month from those ads alone, and that’s not even taking into consideration other ways you can earn money through your blog.
This is definitely not a way to get rich quick. You’ll have to publish a couple of articles every week and market your blog so that you can boost your blog traffic. But it is possible to earn money after just a few months.
Click Here to start a blog and get our 4-Part Video Beginner Blogger Course and 200-Page Beginner Blogger ebook for free. These in-depth tools will show you how to grow a blog and monetize it so that you can earn money from home as a blogger!
The best part about blogging is that you can blog about pretty much every topic.
If you love to travel (like me), you can blog about travel. Or you can earn money by blogging about parenting, DIY, cooking, fashion, dogs, or pretty much anything else you can think of.
Steps To Take Now:
- Purchase a domain name and start a blog now for just $59 (Click Here)
- Use our course to learn how to design and build a professional blog
- Write posts, market and grow using the tips in our course
In my opinion, if you want to figure out how to make money from home, starting a blog is the single best way to turn online work into a full-time income.
I think everyone should have a blog as an outlet for their creativity, a way to share their knowledge and a way to create viable and reliable income streams from home.
3. Teach English Online
This is probably my second favourite side hustle that you can utilize if you want to learn how to make money from home.
Teaching English online can actually be quite lucrative. To start, you should get TEFL certified, which is quite easy and doesn’t take too long.
MyTefl has a great 120-hour course that you can do from home, as does Uniprep. Once certified (and if you qualify) we recommend teaching with either Preply, Cambly, BookNook, Italki, or EF Educations First.
Want to learn about more ways to teach English online and earn money from home? Click the link.
Note, if you don’t have a university degree there are still some teaching jobs you can get! Click here to learn more.
Steps To Take Now:
- Get TEFL certified so you have a leg up on your competitors
- Apply for Preply or Cambly
- Fill out the application and complete the interview
- Set your hourly rate and schedule and wait until jobs come in
4. Rent a Room
As a traveller, I’ve used the platform many times to find a well-priced apartment while on the road, but I also have quite a few friends who are earning a nice living from renting out their room or a second property as Airbnb hosts.
A few of our friends in the UK, USA and New Zealand earn a lot of money by doing this and it’s a great way to make money from home.
Depending on where you live (and your financial situation), you could even purchase a second apartment just to rent out on a nightly rate on Airbnb.
Because the nightly rate is so much more than long-term rentals, most often you can pay off the mortgage and end up with as much as $1000 / month in your pocket.
Steps To Take Now:
- Sign-up for Airbnb as a host
- List your home at a lower rate at first
- Accept as many guests as possible on short stays to get your review score up
5. Uber & Lyft
These two companies have taken over the rideshare world and have changed local transportation as we know it.
But they’re not just convenient for those who want to get from point A to point B in a car, they’re also great ways to earn money from home… well, from the road.
According to the Uber website, you’ll need the following:
- Be at least 21 years of age
- Have at least one year of driving experience (3 years if you are under 23 years old)
- Have a valid driver’s license
- Use an eligible 4-door vehicle
Steps To Take Now:
- Register as an Uber or Lyft driver (meeting the requirements above and uploading required documents)
- Get an UBER inspection at your local Green Light Location (Click Here and “select city” in the top right of the screen to see locations)
- Download and Sign-in to the Uber or Lyft Driver app and pick up your first customer(s)
These days, you don’t just have to transport people using these platforms. If you don’t want to be a taxi driver, you might be able to make some cash on the platform as a delivery driver. Less responsibility for you and still a great job.
6. Delivery
There are plenty of delivery services available these days that make it easy for pretty much anyone to earn money from home.
With services like Door Dash and UberEATS you can earn money from home (or from your motorbike) on your own schedule by delivering take-out orders in your town.
Some people have earned as much as $4,000 / month ($24 / hour) by working a delivery, but if you’re doing it on the side of your full-time job, you can probably expect a few hundred extra bucks in your pocket each month.
Requirements for DoorDash & UberEATS:
- You must be 18 years or older
- Have access to a vehicle or bicycle (any car, truck, motorcycle, or scooter)
- Own an iPhone or Android smartphone
- Have a valid Driver’s license
- Valid insurance — name on the policy
- Provide a social security number (for a background check)
- Pass a background and driving record check
- Complete an orientation online or in-person
Steps To Take Now:
- Register as a delivery person for DoorDash or UberEATS
- Meet all requirements above and pass background & driving check
- Download the Dasher or UberEATS app and start delivering for money
7. Online Surveys
Many companies will pay internet users to complete their surveys. Internet surveys offer businesses and advertisers useful data to help them understand their potential clientele.
If you Google: “get paid to complete surveys”, you’ll probably get a thousand results. Unfortunately, many of these results are complete scams, so you do have to be careful when taking paid online surveys.
Some of the main sites to check out:
As surveys take a bit more time than watching ads, it’s more difficult to make a lot of money from this strategy, at it may not be the most lucrative side hustle, but there are reports of people earning over $1,000 per month by completing surveys.
Steps To Take Now:
- Head to one of the sites above and create an account
- Complete different tasks in order to earn money
- Learn which tasks yield the most reward for the least amount of work and do those frequently
8. Yard Work & Landscaping
Okay so mowing a lawn doesn’t sound like a very luxurious job, but if you have a bit of experience in lawn care and yard work, you can actually earn a pretty good living in your local neighbourhood.
Offer to mow lawns and do the jobs that the young kids in the area can’t safely do themselves, like trimming hedges and using power landscaping tools.
Many people will be happy to pay $20+ for someone to come and work on their yard for an hour. Get a few of these jobs and the income can quickly add up.
If you love landscaping and gardening, but you still want to learn how to make money from home, then landscaping may be perfect for you.
Steps To Take Now:
- Purchase the appropriate lawn care tools (or request to use homeowners’)
- Put up flyers or place your ads in local Facebook communities and groups
- Do landscaping work in your neighbourhood and get paid
9. Vehicle Ads
According to Wrapify and Carvertise, you can earn up to $450 a month by wrapping your entire car in advertising. They offer a pretty unique service, but it can be a really simple way to earn money.
Earnings depend on the amount of advertising you place as well as the routes you drive and how many people are likely to see the ads, but an extra $450 per month for looking like a 4-wheel billboard is a pretty good deal!
To get started you’ll have to download the app, then meet the minimum driving requirements in a month. Once you pass, you’ll see your earnings tick up every time you have the app running while you’re behind the wheel.
Want to learn how to make money from home and love to drive? Why not get paid to drive around your city?
Steps To Take Now:
- Visit Wrapify.com or Carvertise and download the app
- Fill out the application which asks questions about where you drive and how long
- Get your car wrapped in ads and get paid as you drive with the app
10. Rent Out Your Car
With services like HyreCar, Drivy (UK) and GetAround allowing people to list their cars on a rideshare-type platform, there’s no reason why you can’t earn a bit of extra money from your vehicle.
Even if you don’t have an extra car parked in your driveway, you can simply rent out your car for the hours you’re at work.
Your car will be automatically covered by insurance, the drivers are screened to have a good driving record and top earners make thousands of dollars per year.
If you don’t mind letting someone borrow your car for a while, then this is a great way to make money from home.
Steps To Take Now:
- Go to the HyreCar, Drivy or GetAround website and download the app
- Add photos of your car and registration (and Uber / Lyft documents for HyreCar)
- Complete in-person vehicle inspection with the respective company
- Get paid within 5 business days of your car being hired
Because most of these companies are only currently available in major US cities, I don’t think this is the best income stream for those new to learning how to make money from home, but if you fit the bill, it can be quite lucrative.
11. Child Care
You can make a good living by offering child care services on the side, either at your home, or in someone else’s.
According to Care.com’s study, the average hourly babysitting rate in San Francisco, for example, is $16.65, compared to the national average of $13.44 an hour.
In practice though, there are many childcare jobs available that pay $18 / hour or more, and if the parents are okay with bringing their children to your house, you can care for multiple children at once, bringing up the hourly pay considerably.
To find work, you can post up flyers in schools explaining your services, speak to friends to spread the word, and advertise on Facebook in your community.
Steps To Take Now:
- Childproof your home (or plan to care for children in their own homes)
- Get Child Care Certificate (or CDA) where applicable
- Talk to your friends, put up flyers at schools, and place ads in local Facebook groups
- Build your clientele and start earning money from home
12. Sell on Amazon
We personally make a few hundred dollars per month selling products on Amazon and it’s a great way to make money from home.
If you’re not into creating physical products, consider creating a virtual product like an eBook or an online course. Click Here to set up an account on Amazon and start selling your products and services.
Once you have a few products available on your Amazon store, you may want to consider starting a basic website and advertising it on Facebook to see if you can get some more traffic to your pages and earn more money.
Steps To Take Now:
- Sign up for an Amazon Services account
- Create a digital product (I use Canva.com to create ebooks & PDF downloads)
- Upload your product to Amazon and make it live
- Promote your product on social media, using advertising or on your own website
13. Become a VA (Virtual Assistant)
We’ve paid VAs as much as $1,500 per month for their work on this website, so we know that it can be a lucrative side hustle.
Depending on your skill set, you may earn up to $15 / hour for your work and in most cases, the jobs are quick and easy to learn. Pretty much every website owner and blogger has a VA these days, so there is plenty of work available.
Try finding work on FlexJobs, SolidGigs, Fiverr, and Upwork, or joining a blogging community on Facebook and posting your services there.
When we were first figuring out how to make money online, we started with some VA Pinterest work and it became so lucrative that we still manage some accounts today.
Learn about becoming a virtual assistant and how to find jobs in our article here.
Steps To Take Now:
14. Sell on Etsy
Etsy is the world’s top online platform for selling arts, crafts and handmade items.
The top earners on the platform make as much as $70,000 per month, so yes… it’s a lucrative side hustle. But you really have to know how to grow a store and market it in order to make money on Etsy.
You’ll have to research your competition so that you can properly price out your products, then you’ll have to market them by setting up a Facebook page and rocking social media.
Once your shop is online, check out Etsy’s seller handbook and consider joining a team to help you learn the basics from other shop owners.
You’ll need to learn how to take appealing photos of your items and how to write your shop description so that people will be inclined to buy from you.
For those who are creative and want to learn how to make money from home, this is a great option.
Steps To Take Now:
- Sign up for Etsy and open a shop
- Price out materials for your creations and choose a price that is worth your time (be sure to compare with your competitor’s price)
- Upload beautiful photos to your shop and wait until people purchase
- Take the next step by starting a blog on the topic, writing good content and driving more traffic to your shop through Google
15. Coaching & Online Courses
If you are an expert in a field, then you can take advantage of enormous online learning platforms like Teachable.com to expand your brand and get more work.
Some of the top coaches and online course creators are earning over a million dollars per year, so this is another highly lucrative option. But your courses aren’t going to sell themselves.
While Teachable does a great job of displaying your courses to a relevant audience, you’ll still need to market your services in order to earn money. The best way to do this is by starting your own website and growing it so that you can sell your courses directly on your own site.
I have a Beginner Blogger Course for sale on our site, and while we don’t earn much money for the course directly because we give it away for free when people start a blog through this site, we earn income per month indirectly from the course through affiliate sales.
I’ve also created an informative and actionable SEO Made Simple course, which includes 25 video tutorials, email training, VIP Facebook group and much more. Learn how to boost your traffic, legitimately. Click here for a free one-hour training session.
Steps To Take Now:
- Sign Up for Teachable
- Use their tools to record and create a useful course
- Sell your course on their platform
16. Drop-Shipping
Dropshipping is another great way to make money from home. Basically, dropshipping is a very low-risk way to start up a business selling products online.
Traditionally if you wanted to do this, you would have to create a product, market it, store it in a warehouse and ship it out yourself, while having to deal with refunds, returns, etc.
This was a lot of work and the investments involved would make it unattainable for the average Joe or Joanne trying to earn money from home with a side hustle.
Finding a manufacturer will be one of the hardest things to do. Simply typing “drop shippers” into Google won’t give you very good results because only big drop shipping manufacturers that do business with big drop shippers will have the money to invest in SEO (search engine optimization), which allows their website to be seen first in Google.
Click Here to check out a great list of dropshipping suppliers that can help you get started.
Steps To Take Now:
- Pick a lucrative product to sell
- Search for a shipping supplier
- Create a website and sell your products online
When figuring out how to make money from home, one of your main concerns should be the ease of starting the new venture.
Because dropshipping requires a bit of planning and research, it may be a bit harder to first get into if you don’t have previous experience with manufacturers and eCommerce.
17. Freelance Writing
This is definitely one of my best ways to make money from home. Dariece and I were regular contributors to numerous publications such as Travel Pulse, WiseBread, and World Nomads.
At the peak of our freelancing careers, Dariece and I were earning around $3,000 / month from writing for other sites.
We’ve since slowed down our freelancing, not because the jobs weren’t available, but because we’ve found better ways how to make from home (ie: this travel blog). If you’re looking for a job as a freelance writer, check out this list of 99 websites that pay freelance writers.
Steps To Take Now:
18. House Sitting & Pet Sitting
I guess by the very nature of house sitting, you’re not going to “make money from home” because you’ll have to stay in someone else’s home. But this is actually a great way to not only make money, but save on accommodation costs.
While we were figuring out how to make money from home, we saw pet sitting as the ultimate job.
It gave us the opportunity to lower our cost of living by getting a free car and free accommodation, and it allowed us to work on our online business (this blog).
We’ve usually just used house sitting as a way to get free accommodation, but there have been times that we were paid.
In Canada, we know a person who earns $1,000 per month for house sitting, meaning she gets free accommodation PLUS a thousand bucks a month! That’s a pretty great deal.
If you don’t mind spending your time in someone else’s home, this is a great way to make some extra money on the side.
Another option is to be more of a pet sitter than a house sitter, through the same platform. Since you most likely don’t work on weekends, consider taking weekend pet-sitting jobs where you stay in someone’s home and care for their dog, cat, bird, fish, etc. while they are away.
Steps To Take Now:
19. Translation Work
Want to learn how to make money from home? Do you know multiple languages? There are plenty of websites and apps that will help you turn your skills as a polyglot into an excellent way to make money from home.
Websites like Gengo, Tranlate.com and Unabel are great places to look for jobs and start earning money. According to Gengo, the average English translator earns $417 / month and you can choose your own hours making it a great side hustle.
Steps To Take Now:
- Sign up for one or all of the sites listed above
- Fill out an application and profile with your languages/credentials
- Pass the interview and begin translating to make money from home
20. Be a Local Tour Guide
Are you passionate about your home town and know lots of cool places to take people? Why not run your own tours?
With plenty of online tour sites like GetYourGuide Tours, Vayable.com, ToursByLocals.com, Shiroube and Rent a Local Friend, and Airbnb, it’s never been easier to earn money as a local tour guide.
Typically you’ll have to sign up for the platform and create a tour itinerary and you may not get a lot of work at first, but as you get more and more people leaving you 5-star reviews, you may find that you become very busy.
The pay schedule depends on what site you go with, but typically the website will take a percentage of your overall tour price.
For example, Rent a Local Friend charges a $100 annual subscription, which allows you to be featured on their site and helps you with getting the word out about your tour. Travelers pay 30% of the tour price on the site and 70% to you upon completion of your tour.
So, if you charge $300 for the day, the client will have paid $90 on the Rent a Local Friend website, and your payment is the $210 you collect at the conclusion of your tour.
Many tours on the website are going for around $300 for a full-day tour, so if you’re profiting $210 by the end of each tour and your day is 8 hours long, you’ll be earning over $26 / hour.
If you’re tour guiding as a side hustle, then you’ll probably only do it on weekends, but if you can manage a tour on both Saturday and Sunday, that will be an extra $1,680 in your pocket by the end of the month.
Tours are becoming very popular. And, with so many people already on the platform utilizing the accommodation options, you have a large database to tap into. Start a tour with GetYourGuide here.
Steps To Take Now:
- Sign up for one of the sites above
- Upload your proposed itinerary
- Once it’s accepted, you can begin leading tours to make money from home (well, it’s not really a way “how to make money from home” because you’re actually not at home, but you get the picture)
21. Teach Yoga
Teaching proper classroom yoga will require you to become certified as a yoga instructor, but you can sell your services on Teachable.com even if you’re not certified.
I do recommend first getting certified, to help get more jobs, but if you’re a great teacher, knowledgable about yoga, and people like you, you’ll still be able to earn money from teaching yoga.
The best way to go about it is to first get certified and then create your online yoga course on Teachable.
You may also want to create your own freelance website for your yoga school and post the videos there, only available for premium purchase. Yoga websites can be very profitable and you’ll be earning money from home while helping people to live healthier and happier lives.
If you don’t want to use the Teachable platform, you can also create your own YouTube channel and request that people sign-up for Patreon in order to access your premium classes. This way you can earn more money for your classes, directly from your students.
Alternatively, you can start your own yoga website and then embed private YouTube videos there, only accessible for your paying students. See Also: How to Make Money as a Yoga Instructor
Steps To Take Now:
22. Bonus! Start a Lucrative Side Hustle
Pretty much anything you’re passionate about can be turned into a side business, you just have to be creative and learn a bit about marketing.
If you enjoy baking, sell your cupcakes. Love crafts? Sell them. Enjoy writing? It’s never been easier to sell books as it is today with sites like Amazon. Love animals? Start a dog-walking service.
You can easily create your own website in any niche using our free course and 5-minute set-up guide and within a few weeks, you could have your own cyber storefront.
Even if you don’t want to start a website, you can utilize social platforms like Facebook and Instagram to take photos and share your products with millions of potential customers.
Spend a little bit of money on advertising on Facebook and you may find that you can be profit positive, meaning the more you money you spend on ads, the more you make through sales.
I believe that the key to being truly happy is to never work for a living but to live for a living. If what you’re doing for work, truly makes you happy, inspires and fulfills you, then you won’t be spending 40 hours per week wishing the clock would move faster.
Take what you’re passionate about and turn it into profits. For Dariece and I, it was travel, but these days you can make anything into a side hustle.
Thanks to the popularity of blogs and the availability of sponsorships and advertising, pretty much anything you love can be turned into a profitable website, or a lucrative side business.
If you want to learn how to make money from home, start taking the steps now.
You don’t have to quit your job now, or ever, but you can begin building something on the side to help you earn some extra pocket cash and who knows, one day that pocket money could turn into a full-time income.
