We are so lucky to live in these days when we have access to the Internet – an endless source of ideas about how to make money from home and for the opportunities to find jobs for everyone!
Life is so diverse, and situations, when you need to make money from home, are from being a stay-at-home parent to being a physically challenged person. Some people just can’t work in any other way, for others to make money from home is a matter of choice. Today so many of us deny the 9 to 5 way of living and want to have more flexibility and freedom to move, to choose working hours, etc.
Working from home has a lot of benefits, I don’t have to explain to you how comfortable it is to work on your favorite sofa or desk while your child is growing or your pet is happy having a company at home.
One thing that you should be aware of when searching for ways to earn money from home is that a lot of offers online are scams. If they ask for upfront fees and give you promises of work from home later, close those pages immediately because it’s a typical scam.
MAKE MONEY FROM HOME BLOGGING
Blogging or managing your own website in a profitable niche can become not only a side-hustle but with time even grow into a full-time job with sustainable income. Blogging is not only a way to make money online, but it’s also your way to express your thoughts, communicate with the world, and only you decide what to write about, how often to blog, how to find the balance between monetization and blogger integrity.
If you start a blog with Bluehost and follow my instructions, it will take you 10-20 minutes to see your new WordPress blog online. With an investment of about $100 per year, you host your site on the leading hosting provider for WordPress sites.
You can monetize your blog with ads, through affiliate marketing, you can sell your own products or services on your blog, etc. Making money with blogging deserves another long post, as soon as it’s ready, I’ll share it with you.
HOW TO MAKE MONEY FAST
First of all, let’s look how to make money fast and without any initial investment except your time. Yes, I mean can start working almost immediately and get regular payments!
These jobs are opposed to other things like starting a blog, which can make you a fortune in the long run, but at first, you’ll have to make some investment and wait about 2-3 months to see your first cash.
Get yourself registered on paid online survey sites
A lot of companies out there want to know your opinion about their products or services. Through specialized paid online survey sites they reach out consumers like you and me to ask us simple questions.
For this easy job, you can receive about $250- 600 per month – and this doesn’t require any particular education or technical skills!
Again, like with anything offered online, you should sign up only to legitimate and trusted online survey platforms if you want to stay away from scams or waste your time. Remember, never pay to a survey site to sign up – it’s most probably a scam!
I listed below some of the websites which offer you to earn extra cash or get rewards, such as prize drawings, free products, gift vouchers, etc.
When you click on the links to see each online survey sites, please pay attention to the country notes because if you click on USA links while you don’t reside or are not currently in the US, most probably you will not be able to see the correct site and sign up for it.
- Swagbucks (Sign up here) – join one of the largest online rewards sites and receive free gift cards for your online activities, such as Taking Surveys, Shopping, Searching the Web, Watching Videos, and Playing Games.
- VIP Voice (for the US and for Canada – for Canada only if you are 18+). Sign up today and earn triple reward points for taking your first survey!
- PineCone Research (Sing up here) – evaluate products before they hit the shelf and earn $3 per survey!
- PrizeRebel (Sign up here) – is a website where you get rewarded for performing various online activities. They can range from surveys, watching videos, signing up for trials (products or services). You can redeem the points in cash via PayPal.
- SurveyJunkey (US and Canada) – take surveys and get paid! The most popular spot online to earn cash and rewards for sharing your thoughts.
- iSay Survey Panel (for the US, forCanada) – this is one of the largest market research panels in the world, with decades of experience! Join today to start earning rewards for surveys.
- Angus Reid Forum (Canada only) This platform allows Canadians to share their opinions on subjects from politics to products. In return for their participation in surveys, users receive points to redeem for gift cards to their favorite retailers.
- SpringBoard America – when you join one of the leading online market research communities in the US, you will receive points for completed surveys to redeem for gift cards to your favorite retailers. Join this platform here.
- ShopTracker (for the US) – Share your insights with The Harris Poll and get $3 Bonus Virtual Visa Reward within 48 hours from participation. Join here.
- WebPerspectives (for Canada only) – Once your account is credited with $20 worth of rewards you can exchange them for gift cards with some of America’s leading brands.
- Swagbucks.com (Sign up here) – join one of the largest online rewards site and receive free gift cards for your online activities, such as Taking Surveys, Shopping, Searching the Web, Watching Videos, and Playing Games.
- InboxPounds (for the UK) – Earn CASH when you read emails, take surveys, watch videos and more
Get paid for watching YouTube or movie previews
I guess, everyone likes watching videos on YouTube or movies. Even if you don’t really, would you watch them if someone paid you for this? Well, we live in times when you can get paid for watching any kind of videos from news, movie previews to celebrity videos.
If you register on Swagbucks, you'll be asked to open certain videos, watch them for a few minutes and like them. Earning depend on how many tasks you perform, but can easily $150- $200 a month (earnings vary). The payments can be sent via PayPal.
Test websites and earn $30 per hour!
Web site tests are done with your computer screen, and your voice recorded. Which means you need to have a fast Internet connection and a USB microphone (usually built-in microphones in a laptop monitor is not the best choice because they can catch too many sounds that will make the audio quality poor).
Going back to the website test job, on average these services pay $10 per test, which is not bad at all taking into consideration that each test takes only about 10-20 minutes. But you have to be able to speak out loud about everything you see or do during the test.
TestingTime – for website testers from outside the USA
If you don’t reside in the United States, there is a site specializing on international testers. TestingTime is located in Zurich, Switzerland, so they pay out in Euros within 5 – 10 days directly to your bank or PayPal account. They pay up to 50 Euros per test (depends on the duration; usually, sessions take from 30 to 60 minutes). You will need a webcam, a microphone, and a Skype account to work with TestingTime and check your inbox often to take part in their UI tests as soon as the opportunity comes.
UserTesting – the biggest user testing site
This service works with giants like Apple, Facebook, Airbnb, Walmart, Home Depot, etc.
You will be asked to pass the first session as a test, and if you qualify, you could make on average several hundred USD per month just with this site. Payments via your PayPal account.
With these jobs, you have to be quick and get the tasks as soon as you receive email notifications because there is always a limited number of testers required and lots of people who want to browse a site for $10!
Userlytics – another site with similar website testing tasks, but for this one you’ll need to add a high-quality webcam attached to your computer because this platform wants to record both your audio and video reactions during the user sessions.
JOIN SWAGBUCKS AND EARN UP TO $35 PER SURVEY
TryMyUI also offers website tests, but they differ from the previous two platforms because they offer some written tests too. With written tests, you don’t have to worry about how you look or sound and just express your thought freely. The payments from this site are sent via PayPal on Fridays.
Online Data Entry
Data entry jobs are usually offered with contracts. Unfortunately, in this category you can also frequently encounter scam websites, so be aware of this and don’t sign up if they ask you to pay for software or anything else.
The following sites are legitimate, and you can trust them:
- Axion Data Services – pays for data entry work to independent contractors on a per-piece basis.
- Amazon’s Mechanical Turk – online tasks, micro jobs, not typical data entry but very similar to it.
- Capital Typing is an outsourcing company that offers not only data entry, but also transcription, translation, and call center types of work. Moreover, they have online customer support and secretarial services.
- Clickworker – a global crowdsourcing company that hires independent contractors for data entry, writing, translating and researching. They require candidates to pass an assessment before they can start working.
- DataPlus + is a data entry and document scanning company, which hires independent contractors for online data entry work from home.
- Quicktate or iDictate offers transcription jobs with a payment of about $5-7/hr at 50 wpm. They make transcriptions of voicemails and other audio content and often need bilingual transcribers, particularly with the Spanish language.
- Scribie – offers data entry and transcriptions jobs to freelancers, the payment is $10 per audio hour, and most of the files are about 5 minutes long.
- Working Solutions hires independent contractors for work from home jobs in customer support call center and data entry jobs.
- GorgeWarehouse. com pays $10.50 per hour for data entry, database management work. The minimum requirement is 30 words per minute, excellent knowledge of Excel, Word, Access and Outlook.
Do freelance jobs
If you have some particular skills – whether you are good at writing texts, translations, at making web-design or video editing – there are thousands of people looking for you!
Some of the most popular freelance sites worldwide are:
Become a virtual assistant
You probably have heard about this job before but don’t quite understand what is it exactly required from a virtual assistant (VA) to do. Vas work from home for someone who needs help in checking their emails, making appointments, travel plans or online research for them. The specific tasks always depend on the employer and the type of his business
The average payments for VA’s help can reach $50-$100 an hour. To find a VA job, you can check sites like
These platforms can take about 10% of your first profits when you are getting hired as a VA to make money from home. And you will need to make initial efforts to build up your portfolio with positive reviews of your clients because there is no other way a potential new customer could trust you with his daily business and tasks.
work as a search engine evaluator (assessor)
Search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing use algorithms to define which sites are best to show for each search query. But algorithms can be wrong or manipulated by site owners, to fix and prevent bad search results, Google and other search companies hire search assessors. To get a job there, you need to be an experienced search user and usually, have a college education. The evaluators are recruited in every country where Google is popular, and it’s most of the globe, except some countries like China or Northern Korea. Anyway, usually, they offer a job for 4 hours a day (20 hours per week) and pay about $12 per hour. Google doesn’t hire for this job directly, you need to check the opening on one of these three recruiting companies:
- Leapforce
- LionBridge
- Appen
Be prepared to wait at least 1 month after you apply for a job like this, the hiring process is not fast at all.
Virtual Call Center jobs to make money from home
A virtual call center is quite a common practice for many companies nowadays, and in the US and Canada, you can find at least 50 companies hiring specifically remote call center employees. I don’t think a list of these companies makes sense in this general post about all the ways to make money from home, but probably I’ll make later a post dedicated just to call center jobs.
Tutoring and Online Teaching
With everything going online in our times, online classes, courses, and even getting a university degree is not just possible but becomes normal. After 2 Bachelor diplomas in different areas, I also managed to get an MSc in Global Marketing from the University of Liverpool. The entire teaching process was based on an online platform. This degree was not a fast and easy, nor a cheap adventure. It took me 3 years in total (with summer vacations, 1.5 years was just studying, 9 months for the dissertation and the last 4 months the University takes to evaluate the theses).
Our professors were from the UK, the US, Australia and other countries, all of them were working from home, just like students were learning and having classes online.
To make money from home as an online tutor, you can check sites like Chegg Tutors (on average you can get about $20 per hour).
VIPKid
If you have any “formal” or “informal” teaching experience such as mentoring, tutoring, coaching, or alternative education plus a bachelor’s degree in the US or Canada under your belt, you may qualify to tutor Chinese children in the English language with VIPKid.
This company claims there is potential to earn up to $22 hourly working for them. However, it is independent contractor work so your exact rate will depend on the time you put into it.