What Are the Best Ways to Make Money From Home?

If you have a way with the written word, you can earn money by writing. Opportunities for writing income abound ― from content writing to e-books to paid blogging jobs. Competition can be fierce, and without a strong command of language and a willingness to learn formatting styles, you’re not likely to go far. If you have what it takes, however, it can be a great way to make money not just at home, but anywhere in the world.

You can also earn money proofreading or editing the work of other writers. You can even bring speeches and videos to the page as a transcriber. As with writing, these positions do require strong language skills — not any random person can make it work, and you won’t make real money without above-average skills — but the convenience alone can make the job worth it.

If you have the talent to create items that crafts or works of art that people would pay to display in their home or clothes that people would want to wear, you can turn those skills into income. Online marketplaces like Etsy allow designers and craftspeople to sell items with minimal fees, and the market audience you can reach is potentially huge.

The ability to budget money — you want to make more in profits than you pay in supply costs, after all — and promote yourself online are both necessary for this position. The nice thing is, however, that you can make work like this a side job or your main source of income depending on how much time you’re willing to commit to it.

You can take your knack for organization or willingness to help others and turn it into a work as a virtual assistant. Corporations are willing to pay remote workers to serve as executive assistants without having to pay for the overhead of office space.

Virtual assistant work encompasses traditional clerical work, such as setting up meetings and answering emails, but it also can include putting presentations together for meetings, creating reports and maintaining a social media presence. The best thing about all of these tasks is that you can do them from the comfort of your home.

There’s a growing market for online tutors and teachers, and you can take advantage of such opportunities to add money to your bank account. With a college degree in any field, you can sign up with companies like VIPKid that pair English language students with native speakers, or you can supplement the education of home-schooled students in the United States and elsewhere. If you have an advanced degree, you can even teach online courses.

Tutoring often has lower degree requirements than teaching and can be great if you prefer working one-on-one with students. Online teaching and tutoring give you the flexibility to set your own schedule and work as much or as little as you like.

If you’re in need of extra cash but don’t want to commit to another job, micro-tasking can provide the extra padding for your wallet that you need. Websites like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk allow you to complete a range of short, easy tasks for small amounts of money. From transcribing text to performing data entry to even participating in university studies remotely, micro-tasking is quick, easy to do and rarely comes with any special requirements.

The downside of this sort of work is that it usually doesn’t pay well, so you’ll need a keen eye for worthwhile tasks and the ability to manage your own time. With no supervisors and no schedule, however, that could be a fair tradeoff based on your needs.