Recently, a good friend of mine had to resign from a dream job because of a chronic medical condition that renders him unable to stand or walk for long period. He finally decided to call it quits and leave his career which he loved and has built for the past 15 years after a long period of unpaid leave. I have heard of many young parents who had to leave their jobs due to childcare issues and many of them held professional positions previously.
This sets me thinking about side hustles and jobs that you can actually do from home and still make a decent income out of it.
1. Do Online Coaching
For my friend who was already in the training and coaching business for the past 15 years, it was not difficult for him to work from home as a career or life coach through Skype and a fast internet connection at home. He tells me that coaching is best conducted face to face, so he tries to meet his clients near his home if he can.
He is currently taking an online coaching certification with Kingstown College (Ireland) which is accredited by ICF to better his credentials and authority in this field.
2. Be a Virtual Assistant
Virtual assistant (VA) perform administrative tasks that are similar to those of an admin assistant or secretary and if you are a VA with certain expertise, you could charge more. People engaged VAs to help them perform online chores and tasks such as keeping tabs on bills, do online research on trending topics, managing a database for businesses, managing email accounts, writing and sending Thank You & Greeting cards, managing schedules and appointments of clients, social media accounts and the list goes on. On the flip side, clients would need to trust their VAs with their confidential information and passwords in order to eradicate these potential time-wasters and pass the administrative work to them.
3. Be an Online English Teacher
If you are a native English speaker with good grammar skills, you can teach English to international students in countries like Hong Kong and UAE. There are many websites and online tutoring agencies that hire tutors to teach students online. You will need to have a high speed Internet connection, a Skype account for free video or audio conversations with your students and also to share a view of your screen. You can also use Google Hangouts to create a virtual classroom.
4. Be a Travel Consultant or Advisor
Do you love to plan travel itineraries and browse websites for the best hotel and airfare promotions? Do your friends always look to you to plan their travel activities and itineraries? Then you can use your travel knowledge and be a private travel consultant or advisor where people will pay you for advice or plan their itineraries to achieve their travel goals. Try signing up with a site like Plansify which connects you with travelers and as a Plansify Travel advisor, you can start earning when travelers submit questions on the site or through a 1-hour Skype session.
5. Instagram Marketing
I was thrilled to make some good money through Instagram marketing recently and you do not even need to own a blog to make money through Instagram. What you do need is a real and sizable Instagram following which will get you noticed by brands and companies to promote their products/services that your audience might be interested in.
I recommend Narratrs for Instagram marketing campaigns and you can sign up using my referral link (note: both of us will earn US$18 in credits if you sign up using my referral link and after completion of the first 3 campaigns).
I wish to mention that you need to keep the posts on your feed to maintain credibility with the brands you have worked with, even after you have received payment.
6. Be a Blogging Consultant
I know of bloggers who are willing to make an investment on their blogs and do not mind paying a Blogging Consultant to have them review and critique their blogs, to make it even more awesome.
As a blogging consultant, you’ll help to rebrand the blog and help your client find purpose and direction for his/her blog to achieve their blogging goals. Generally, you dissect a blog in these areas to take it to the next level:
- Blog design
- Navigation & user experience
- Content
7. Provide Web Design Solutions & Sell Stock Photography on Etsy
If you are in the creative business, it is so much easier for you to promote and sell your web design, stock photography, branding and logo design services online without the need to keep tabs on physical stocks.
For my own blogging needs, I do visit Etsy to purchase marble and wooden digital images, stock photography and had also engaged a website designer to do my blog header twice through a friend’s recommendation.
If you are good in creating stock photography and have experience running an e-commerce store, you could even write and sell e-books or short courses to teach others how to be a successful creative business owner. How about making podcasts and doing live webinars (sounds scary I know) from home to teach something to your audience?
8. Freelance Writing
I am not a designer and personally, I think freelance writing would suit me better as the perfect side hustle for people who possess good writing, grammar and research skills. Through blogging, I have also clinched a few freelance writing jobs for web content and press release writing. You could use an online grammar checker called Grammarly to proofread your content first before sending it to your client.
Many content based sites recruit freelance writers to write quality content for them and pays upfront for articles submitted to them. You can also easily contact website and blog owners to find out if you could write for them.
9. Do Professional PowerPoint Presentation or Video Editing for Businesses
Do you have a knack for creating beautiful, branded PowerPoint and sleek videos? Surprisingly, there is a large market of business people and students who are more than willing to outsource the design of their PowerPoint presentations or video editing work to a professional as these are time-consuming to do.
Businesses also outsource their transcription and translation work. To transcribe is to listen to a recording and type the contents into a document for the client whereas translation work involve conversion of text from one language to another. Fiverr is the ideal marketplace to get creative digital and professional services if the job is not too complex.
10. Be a Freelance Research Writer
Are you good at Excel, pivot tables, VLOOKUP and doing bars, graphs and charts? You could be paid a decent amount of money per project to help businesses analysed research findings and surveys for their clients and present it in a proper report.
Generally, research writers have a specialized set of technical skills and are adept at researching, organizing, analyzing and explaining complex data in layman form.
So I have cracked my brains to think of these 10 side hustles you could do to make some money from home (just kidding). Most importantly, think of the unique skills you possess and your passion in life to determine what job would really work for you in the long run. 🙂
Do you have a side hustle or work from home job to recommend? 🙂