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You know all those “…side gigs from home…” articles?
They’re all over the internet.
Heck, I even wrote a few of them, like these:
- Driving jobs for retirees
- Ways to make money without working
- Easy ways for stay at home moms to make money
But let’s get honest here.
A really good side gig is hard to find.
Most of them suck because they don’t pay much and are a big waste of your time!
So today I’m going to share some real, legitimate side gigs from home that pay well. Not only that, I’ll go over where you can get one of them and how much you can earn.
Best Side Gigs From Home
If you’re looking for a side gig that pays well, you can do it from home, and is flexible, these easy-to-do gigs are what you need.
And what’s cooler than that ?
They aren’t only for when you need financial help while unemployed and in debt; they’re easy ways to make extra money under any circumstance.
Side Gig #1: Create A List
ListVerse is all about publishing lists, no matter what the topic is about. Unlike the many other places that pay you to write on a specific topic, this one pays you up to $100.00 to make a list of just about anything as long as the length of the article is at least 1500 words, is well written, and is composed in a list style.
You can write something like “10 things single women wish their married friends knew about dating” or “10 best hamburger joints in every state”. The possibilities are endless…as long as the idea is original. If ListVerse likes your writing, they’ll pay you.
How’s that for a cool way to make extra money ?
Side Gig #2: Be An ECommerce Pro (without inventory)
I’m NOT talking about ‘selling your stuff’. That topic has be written about to death.
What I AM talking about is selling just about anything online without needing to stock inventory or going to the post office to mail things.
And, you DON’T need to go to garage sales and flea markets to scout stuff…”cough…ebay…cough”.
To become an e-commerce pro, you have a few options:
First: If you can come up with catchy slogans and snappy designs, put them on a t-shirt and “sell” them on Teespring, Zazzle, SellMyTees and Spreadshop Or you can design hats, stickers, stationary, even baby bibs on CafePress.
All it takes to sell cool stuff on these sites is a little creativity. And to simplify the whole process for you, the places I mentioned will set you up with an online marketplace and do all the marketing for you.
Or…
Second: There’s the little thing called Amazon FBA. This is not your average side hustle because it’s where the big money can roll in. FBA stands for Fulfillment By Amazon and that’s exactly what it means: Amazon fills customer orders for you. They also store the inventory, do the customer service, ship the orders, handle returns…all things you don’t have to worry about. You just have to come up with the items to sell.
Which, I’m happy to say, I wrote a post on how you can make money on Amazon. Just be sure to read the third option in that post 🙂
In the meantime, here’s Amazon’s guide to FBA
And here’s an awesome free 7-day email primer to Amazon FBA that packs A LOT of info. And I do mean a lot. When you finish this freebie, you’ll continue to receive emails jam-packer with very valuable information.
So, once you go through the free primer, you can either just go for it and become an FBA seller, or check out the Amazon Boot Camp video course. That’s what I recommend doing because it goes through step-by-step how to be a successful Amazon FBA seller. But, if you’re looking for something less expensive, although not quite as thorough, this is a great Amazon selling course. And so is this one.
Side Gig #3: Teach Conversational English To Foreigners
This is one of the most flexible side gigs from home because – not only can you make anywhere from $18.00 – $24.00 an hour – you can work just a few hours a week.
And this isn’t like teaching English to High School students; it’s teaching people in other countries how to speak conversational English. Basically, teaching English as a second language so they can carry on a conversation with ease. It’s a popular work from home job because there always seems to be plenty of students, most of them being children living in China.
Places like DaDaABC, Magic Ears, and Qkids want you to have Bachelor’s degree and a youthful teaching personality but even if you don’t have a Bachelor’s degree you can still work with Italki.
Here are some of the best companies that pay to teach English to foreigners
Side Gig #4: Pinterest Guru
Pinterest is the hottest search engine trend among bloggers these days. But because so many bloggers are too busy managing their blog, they find it hard to keep up with promoting it on Pinterest.
So they happily pay to have their Pinterest account managed for them.
What does a Pinterest Manager do? They create, update, and pin content to Pinterest boards. This also may include setting up Pinterest accounts, creating and organizing boards, joining group boards, and creating graphics.
The nice thing about this kind of work is you don’t need any prior experience.
Here’s where you can learn how to make money managing Pinterest for bloggers
Side Gig #5: Create Your Own Online Course
E-courses are popular right now, with just about every topic at our fingertips ripe for the learning. People will pay to take an e-course (AKA online course) and learn whatever interests them on their schedule…which makes online courses so nice for you as a money earner. You create the course once and let it work for you.
You know a lot about something, right ? I know you do. Even if you don’t have a formal teaching certification, your personal experience is a treasure trove of knowledge. Know all about using Pinterest? WordPress is your thing? You’re a self-proclaimed pro at chocolate chip cookies? Check out places like TakeLessons, Udemy, and Skillshare where you can get an online course up and running.
If you’re a teacher, you can hit a goldmine by selling your original lesson plans and other course material to other teachers and homeschooling parents. Teachers Pay Teachers is a well-known website that gives you this opportunity.
The nice thing about these places, you don’t have to do a ton of marketing. The platforms are designed to do that for you. Plus, they’re well-known in the world of online training courses.
Side Gig #6: Etsy Merchant
Etsy lets you make money selling handcrafted products, vintage items, craft supplies and just about any kind of artistic goods that you won’t find in traditional stores.
In fact, Etsy is probably the best place to sell those kinds of things because the marketplace reached over 45 million buyers in 2019 and the trend of people using the service to buy handmade items continues to rise (source).
The most popular categories for buyers – and therefore sellers – include home & living, arts & collectables, and jewelry.
It’s pretty easy to start selling on Etsy, as long as you have something people are interested in buying. And to help you out, I wrote a post going into detail on the best things to sell on Etsy and how to get started with your own shop.
Side Gig #7: Deliver While You Commute
This is one of the easiest part time, side hustle jobs out there because it’s perfect for retirees as well as stay at home moms (or dads 🙂 ).
For example, the other day I received a package from Amazon but it wasn’t delivered by FedEx, UPS or my mailman. It was delivered by a guy working for Amazon Flex, who told me he makes $18.00 to $25.00 an hour delivering Amazon orders.
Here’s another example: A non-traditional delivery service, Roadie, lets you earn $8.00 to $50.00 with local deliveries. Heck, you’re out running errands anyway, why not turn your commute into a delivery and make some money.
And while I’m at it, you can get paid to make food deliveries with Door Dash and GrubHub.
If this kind of side hustle interests you, here are more delivery / driving jobs.
Side Gig #8: Write Poems
You’re a poet. Did you know it ? See what I did there ? I wrote my first poem. Maybe I could make money writing poems ? Nah…not me. But you can. The Sun Magazine will pay you $100-200 for a poem, Crazy Horse pays up to $20.00, Poetry Foundation will pay $10.00 per line of poetry.
Side Gig #9: Swap Gift Cards
While cleaning out the console of her car, my mother-in-law unearthed 14 gift cards ! 14 ! And most of them were still for their full face value. “Where the hell did they all came from ???” I asked, surprised at the opportunity I saw. “Oh, I don’t know. People gave them to me, I guess.” Lucky for her, I know of a few places where she can sell all those unused gift cards:
- Card Pool
- Gift Card Granny
- Raise
Side Gig #10: Professional Grocery Shopper
Grocery shopping. One of those necessary chores that a lot of people hate to do.
But if you don’t mind doing it, why not make some cash at it ?
Shipt is one of the most commonly used grocery shopping services out there, which will pay you to grocery shop for others. It looks like this type of side gig is more common in the bigger cities but my local Meijer grocery store – in a little Michigan town – has Shipt shoppers. I see those familiar green-shirt Shipt shoppers in my grocery store every week.
Here are the requirements to be a Shipt shopper:
- 18 y/o minimum
- Reliable vehicle, 15 years old or newer
- iPhone (iOS 10 or newer) or Android (5.1 or newer)
- Valid U.S. driver’s license and auto insurance
- Thorough background check required
- Insulated cooler bag
- Knowledge of produce selection
- Ability to lift 25+ pounds
As far as the pay is concerned, they say you can make up to $25.00 an hour but the reality is you are paid $5.00 an hour and then 7.5% of the entire order. So, depending on the size of the order, you can make barely over $5.00 an hour or up to $25.00 an order.
Other companies like Shipt, are Peapod, Postmates, and Instacart
Side Gig #11: Live Event Ambassador
This is a new one on my side gig radar and an interesting one to boot. Victory Marketing Agency hires people, on the behalf of other companies, to work live events as event and promotional staff. From doing promotion, trade shows, and even go-go dancing, use the app and apply for gigs in your area.
Side Gig #12: Be An MTurker
if making money FAST is your number one priority, then I would suggest getting on MTurk, Amazon’s division of “crowd sourcing”. You can make a bit of money by picking and choosing little jobs through their “marketplace”.
Here’s an example of how it works: A business might need people to do data entry, they post their “job” on the Mechanical Turk marketplace, you select to do the data entry, you get paid once your work is approved by the business who posted the job.
I have done a lot of super-quick data entry gigs on Mturk which consisted of typing in names, address and emails and was paid up to .10 cents per task. I have also done some “find the zip code for this address” kind of jobs that took a few minutes to complete and paid around .20 cents per task. Granted, the pay per job is pretty low, but they are quick and easy to do and you are paid, via Paypal, as quickly as it takes for the person who created the job to approve your work. I have never waited longer than a day.
Sign up with MTurk here.
Side Gig #13: Local Service Do’er
Back in the day, the kids in the neighborhood would mow lawns and shovel snow. I even hired my neighbor’s son to help me rake out my gardens. Best $20.00 I spent that year ! If you like a variety in your day and are up for helping others with miscellaneous tasks like cleaning, pulling weeds, moving, take a look at:
- Taskrabbit
- Gigwalk
- Thumbtack
- Amazon Home Services
Side Gig #14: Edit Or Proofread Content
From books, essays, ads, to websites and blogs, content is everywhere. And thanks to the internet, more content is being written every second of the day. Which makes editing and proofreading a popular side job choice.
But I have to be honest here: experience, or at the very least training, is needed. Even if you’re interested in proofreading blog posts, you should have some sort of proofreading or editing experience.
So, if you do have some editing or proofreading experience, Scribendi, Cactus Communications and American Journal Experts are worth looking into.
But, if you don’t have any experience, here’s what I suggest:
Get a little bit of training and start freelancing as an editor or proofreader on Upwork (a popular freelance platform). Here’s a top-rated online course that’ll get you started.
Not convinced proofreading is a high-paying side job you can do from home ? Take a look at these freelancers. The average earning is over $35.00 an hour !
Side Gig #15: Spruce Up Resumes
If editing or proofreading isn’t your thing, maybe a better work from home side gig for you is sprucing up resumes.
Do you have a knack for crafting career-getting resumes? Are you the one friends and family gravitate to when they want a free resume critique ?
If so, why not get paid for this talent ? You have a few options, after all:
#1 Start working for a resume writing company like Talent, Inc. and Rise Smart. They are two well-known companies that will pay you to write resumes from home.
#2 Be a freelance resume writer on Upwork. In fact, I recently paid $60.00 to have my ancient resume re-written. So worth it ! Want to go this route ? Then this online resume writing course is a winner.
Side Gig #16: Professional Phone Answerer
Answering phone calls when a business owner is unavailable is a nice side gig that can be done at home. You don’t need a whole lot of skills, but you do have to be extremely organized and have great customer support skills. Vicky Virtual is the #1 place that comes to mind in this line of side gigs.
If you want something more in the customer service realm, where you don’t mind answering phones all day long, places like ABC Financial, Taxjar, Transcom and Williams Sonoma are legitimate companies that hire custoemr service reps. In fact, I have a post on this topic, too.
Side Gig #17: Interpreter / Translator
This one’s for all you bi-linguists out there. You can get a work at home translation job with one of these companies: LanguageLine Solutions, Rev, and ProZ.
Just be sure English is you main language.
Side Gig #18: Personal Technology Expert
I seem to be the go-to person whenever my father is frustrated with his computer. Why me ? Because I can work my way around the program that’s ticking him off. Doing tech support might net you more than a side gig income, which isn’t a bad thing. Places like Apple, support.com and telenetwork look for people to do technical support for a variety of clients.
Toptal is an interesting place to get technology side gigs; they are a freelance platform that matches talent to clients – no bidding on gigs like other freelance sites.
Side Gig #19: App Tester
I think there’s an app for everything. And more added every day. App developers tend to have a bias towards their creation, which is why they seek people to test their apps for them.
ErliBird and Apperwall are two places where you can earn a nice little side income per app test you do.
Side Gig #20: Live Chat Agent
A perfect job for introverts, or just anyone who doesn’t want to have a phone job, making money as a live chat agent for The Chat Shop is a great way to earn an income. I say income because this is a 35-40 hours a week kind of job. Although the company is based in London, UK, they look for anyone who has a distraction-free work space.
Side Gig #21: Online Moderator
There are a lot of places online where people get to post their comments and opinions: forums, social media, blog comments. And with all this posting comes the need for companies to hire moderators to make sure things don’t get out of hand.
Being a moderator with Modsquad and The Social Element are great companies that pay people do user-generated content moderation for social media profiles.
Side Gig #22: Internet Research Expert
The internet is a big world, with oodles of information. And fortunately for us, information overload drives people to pay to have research done for them. So these info-seekers turn to knowledge delivery platforms, like Wonder.
A popular online Q&A platform, you can easily pick up an extra $50.00 a week doing some internet research. But before you start making money, you have to go through he application process and then do a few test questions.
Here’s how it works:
Log onto the Ask Wonder platform, look for submitted questions that appeal to you, do the necessary research, answer the questions, get paid.
Another option is Just Answer, where you’re paid for your expertise without having to do any research.
Start Making Money With Side Gigs
Finding the right side gig doesn’t have to be tough, and doing them shouldn’t waste your time. So if you feel one gig isn’t cutting it for you, then move on to the next.
There’s no shortage of ways to make money on the side, with the next hustle around the corner. Find one that interests you, dive in, and go ahead and start earning money…even if it’s just enough to pay that unexpected bill.
And as always, let me know if you try any of these.
