8 Great Ways to Make Millions From Home

As the normalization of remote work continues, you can take advantage of a range of ways to make money from home. From selling items online to starting a podcast to offering your services as a virtual assistant, there are lots of opportunities to earn an income without leaving the house.

If you’re seeking a more traditional job format but still want to work from home, you’re in luck. Remote job postings—which doubled for some online recruitment sites during the pandemic—continue to rise. Regarding the remote positions available, tech jobs are among the most prevalent, but work-from-home opportunities have also risen in therapy, finance, and law.1


Where to begin when searching for remote work? “I’d encourage the job seeker to start by reflecting on their interests and career goals,” Indeed Senior Career Coach Jamie Birt told The Balance in an email.


Next, Birt recommended taking into account the jobs that are commonly performed remotely, such as copywriting, graphic design, and software development. Adding the term “remote” in job search engines can give you an idea of what’s available.


Last, bridge your career goals with the remote jobs that are available, Birt advised. When you find remote positions you like, take note of your current skill set to identify translatable skills, as well as any gaps where you’d need additional training or upskilling.


We’ll discuss eight remote moneymaking opportunities that can help make working from home a reality.

Sell Your Used and Unwanted Items

Clearing out and tidying up your home will likely leave you with piles of things you no longer need or use. You can bring in some extra cash by selling items online that are in good condition.

There are lots of virtual marketplaces where shoppers can go to find a variety of things. eBay is a popular place to sell just about any used item online. Other sites may be more specialized, such as thredUP, which is clothes-specific, or Decluttr, which focuses on cellphones, tech, CDs, DVDs, games, and books.

If you prefer to keep your sales local, you could check out sites like Craigslist, or keep things offline by having a garage sale or taking your items to a consignment store.

When listing items for sale online, you’ll want to include good photos and an accurate, detailed description.

Start a Podcast

“Podcasting is replacing blogging as the moneymaker for a lot of people working from home,” Joseph Hogue, who runs the site My Work From Home Money, told The Balance in an email. He added that advertising dollars are shifting from text-based to podcast sponsorships.


While it can take some time to grow an audience for your podcast, there are several ways to make money podcasting, including selling advertising time, adding affiliate marketing links, offering subscriptions, throwing live events, crowdfunding, selling merchandise, doing speaking gigs, or coaching others on how to host a podcast.


Make Money on YouTube

Momentum has been picking up in video monetization, said Hogue from My Work From Home Money. He suspects that vlogging will take over from podcasting once high-speed internet is universal.


Popular ways to make money on YouTube are monetizing ad views, running paid promotions, and being part of the YouTube Partner Program, among other opportunities.

 

Affiliate Marketing

If you have an audience through a website, social media, or other platforms, you can generate some extra income by including affiliate links. Affiliate marketing is when you earn a commission on the sale of someone else’s products. A common way is to have a link to another company’s website or product in your own content—if a reader clicks on your link and buys the product, you get a cut of the sale.

The Amazon Associates Program is a well-known affiliate network; you can find other affiliate marketing opportunities on platforms like CJ Affiliate, Rakuten LinkShare, ShareASale, and many more.

Familiarize yourself with the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Endorsement Guides before starting with affiliate marketing. You’re required to disclose when you have a financial interest in a product or service mentioned on your site, along with other obligations.
Become a Virtual Assistant

As the workforce transitions to remote work, the demand for virtual assistants is expected to continue to increase. Virtual assistants, or VAs, work remotely to help with administrative tasks—they can work for individuals, teams, or companies. The workload of an administrative assistant usually involves tasks such as answering phone calls and taking messages, running social media accounts, scheduling appointments, and doing research, among other duties.

When starting a VA business, it can be challenging to land your first customer. VAs can find clients through social media channels like LinkedIn or Facebook groups, at virtual or in-person networking events, by word of mouth, or on freelancing platforms like Upwork.


Sell Your Photos Online

Make money online from home by selling your photography, video clips, vectors, and illustrations. Upload your content for individuals and companies to buy for use on their websites, platforms, or other needs. Try listing your work on sites like iStock, Dreamstime, and Adobe Stock.


Offer Your Expertise

If you’re an expert in something, consider creating resources to teach other people. Once you’ve made the initial effort of putting together the content, it can act as a passive income stream.


Online courses, webinars, and ebooks are all common ways to share information. You can build and promote the resources on your own or use educational platforms that already have established communities, such as Udemy or Skillshare.


Pick Up Freelance Work

Platforms such as Fiverr, Freelancer, and Upwork are popular online marketplaces that connect freelancers and clients. You can list your services on these sites and check out the opportunities available. You can do freelance work in several different fields—for example, writing and editing, marketing, graphics and design, programming, and translation.

Many remote moneymaking ventures can be started with little or no money, said Hogue from My Work From Home Money. You don’t have to spend hundreds for an online course or mentorship; you can find the information you need for free online or at a low cost through an ebook.

The Bottom Line

Growing your venture takes time, and you’ll likely need to put several different income streams together. Find ways to incorporate different moneymaking aspects into one business model. For example, you may be focused primarily on making money through blogging, but you also bring in funds with affiliate marketing and an online course you created that teaches others how to build their own YouTube channel.

There are lots of opportunities to make money from home; don’t be afraid to try out different options to determine the best fit for you.

7 Ways to Up Your Income Online

More and more people are looking for ways to earn money online. Some are turning to side hustles to make a little extra money, while others are creating internet businesses that become their full-time job.

Let's take a look at seven ways to make money online that can take up a little or a lot of your time. Think of these options as supplemental sources of income, most of which have the potential to be a whole lot more.

Affiliate Marketing


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Affiliate marketing can be a low-cost and relatively easy way to make money online. You don't need to have any of your own products or services to sell; affiliate marketing gives you a chance to earn commissions from large companies.

You promote the products or services of a company on your website/blog or social media account, providing links to the company's offerings. These affiliate tracking links ensure you get the credit for having delivered a paying customer to the company's website, and you get a percentage of the sale as your reward.

The main work involved in affiliate marketing is giving people a reason to visit your website/blog—or Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or other social media account—and building up a large group of visitors and followers. To do that, you should provide content that is likely to attract people who are interested in purchasing the thing you're trying to get people to buy. For example, you might write and make videos about consumer electronics products—how to use them and/or which ones are the best—in a way that's optimized for search engines.


Start Your Own E-Commerce Website


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A related way to make money online—but that perhaps requires a bit more work on your part—is with an e-commerce website. You would sell products from your website, either your own that you create or commercially available ones.

If you choose the latter route, the most common and hassle-free way to fulfill orders is via dropshipping. You get the customers and take their orders, but a third-party company warehouses and ships the products for you.

It's better to focus on one product category that you can create your own niche in and devote your website to.

If you make your own products, you might want to start out selling them on both an established platform, like Etsy, and your own site. After you build up a base of customers, you could ultimately cut out that middleman.

You can further monetize your e-commerce website by hosting ads, such as with Google AdSense.


Online Publishing


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Regardless of your current occupation, publishing nonfiction e-books is a good way to help establish yourself as an authority in your field while making passive income. Once you've written and published the book, you don't have to actively do anything to take in revenue from it.

Alternatively, if you've written a novel that needs to be read—especially in a popular genre like romance, science fiction, fantasy, or mystery—publishing it as an e-book has the potential to get thousands of eyes on it.


The two biggest companies that enable you to self-publish e-books are IngramSpark and Kindle Direct Publishing.

You can sell e-books on platforms like Amazon.com. If you can make a name for yourself as an author, you can begin selling e-books directly from your own website and increase your profits.


If you've been blogging for a long time about a certain topic, you should be able to edit and package your existing posts into a book without too much additional work.

Consumers of self-published e-books expect a quality experience that's on par with the offerings of a traditional publisher. If you don't have all the skills to ensure a polished final product, you might consider hiring a copy editor to fine-tune your writing and a designer to create an enticing cover. And if you're having trouble transforming your ideas into paragraphs and chapters of prose, you could hire a developmental editor to help you with that beginning part of the process.


Take Online Surveys


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Taking online surveys is an easy way to earn a little extra cash or prizes such as gift cards. Market research firms (MRFs) are behind many online survey sites, including American Consumer Opinion, which is owned by Decision Analyst. You can also sign up to take surveys using aggregators like IdeaShifters or Swagbucks, which partner with many different corporations and MRFs.

You shouldn't expect to make more than a dollar or so per survey. And you will most likely have to provide a good deal of information about yourself before you can take the first one.

When looking for survey-taking opportunities, stick with companies that have a proven track record of paying for survey responses and that are not scams designed to get your personal info. You should also keep in mind that you may not be eligible to take certain surveys because you don't match the demographics the company is looking for. You may be too old or too young, for example.


Online Freelancing


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If you have a specific skill-based service you can carry out remotely, such as IT services, copyediting, or graphic design, you can offer it as an online freelancer. If you can find and accept enough gigs, you could become a full-time freelancer in your field. Or you could take on occasional assignments to supplement the income from your main job.

You can find gigs using freelance-specific websites such as Freelancer and Upwork, as well as big job sites like Indeed. You should also consider joining an organization specifically for freelancers in your area of specialty. Such groups often let you post online information about yourself and the specific skills you can provide, and they may send out email alerts or have a jobs board with contact information for those seeking freelance help.

A freelancer's organization can also provide a social outlet, connecting you with people who do the same work you do and are interested in the same things as you.

A site like Meetup may be a good place to begin finding others who share your interests and skillsets.

Coach Online


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Life coaching is another promising online career option, particularly if you have solid communication skills and a desire to help others succeed in their personal or professional life. Many people need a nudge to get them past a mental roadblock that's standing in the way of personal happiness or career confidence. As an online coach, you can offer advice to help them change their mindset and improve their lives.

Life coaches should not attempt to take the place of trained mental health professionals. Coaches deal with matters like personal growth and achieving goals, not overcoming mental illness.

One of the hardest things about becoming a life coach is finding a client base. When you're just starting out, you might try advertising online and offering to speak to community groups.

Having a professional certification can make you a more credible choice when someone is seeking a coach. And offering the testimonials of previous clients on your website also makes you a more attractive candidate.


Offer Online Courses


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Like e-books, online courses generate passive income after you've created them and made them available online. If you have a knack for teaching and a set of skills you would like to share with others, consider creating online courses as a way of making additional money.

The primary website where you could post your courses—and get paid for them—is Udemy. But as with the other online businesses, if you can establish a reputation, you might have success offering your courses through your own site.

In addition to knowledge in a particular subject area, you will need to have an engaging presence in your videos. If you can't retain potential students' attention, they won't come back for more classes.

The Bottom Line

There's a lot of competition online for many of these money-making opportunities—especially with more and more people unable or unwilling to work in a traditional setting. According to Stanford University economist Nicholas Bloom, 42% of U.S. employees were working from home full-time as of June 2020.1

To make a go of most of these possibilities, you will have to stand out from the crowd and convince prospective clients and customers that you're the right person to buy from or hire. Becoming successful at any online occupation requires exceptional online marketing skills. If you can learn how to successfully sell yourself and gain followers and search engine hits, your business's success should follow.

How You Can Make Millions By Podcasting

New podcasters always ask the same question before they take the plunge: “How much money can podcasters make?” They want to know what the reward will be before they invest their time and energy growing a podcast audience.

So how much money can podcasters make? To be frank, most make $0. In fact, many podcasts have negative cash flow because they spend money buying equipment and paying hosting fees before they earn a single dollar.

Creative work like podcasting doesn’t make any money until people choose to watch you. It takes time for listeners to decide you have value. So if you’re looking to start a podcast because you need a paycheck this week, you should find another way to earn income.

But if you put in the work to make amazing content, publish new episodes consistently, and engage your audience, you’ll eventually build a show that rakes in money each episode. There are lots of people who make very comfortable livings working just working on their podcasts a few hours each day.

In this article, we’ll explain how podcasts make money, we’ll review how the highest earning podcasters earn their incomes, and then we’ll talk about what the average podcaster makes.

Just want the highlights? Check out this quick video for the best takeaways.

How Do Podcasts Make Money? 

There are actually a lot of ways to monetize a podcast. The most successful podcasts use several monetization strategies so there’s money coming in from a lot of different places.

Why should you diversify your revenue? 

For safety. Imagine if all your revenue comes from publishing your podcast on YouTube, but then one day YouTube bans your channel. You would lose everything! So it’s best to create multiple revenue streams.

We dive into all the ways your podcast can make money in our article on podcast monetization, but here we’ll go over the top four methods: Sponsorships, direct support including premium content, affiliate sales, and complementary products.