We’re big fans of finding ways to earn extra income. And when you side hustle from home, you have the flexibility to earn extra cash while managing the rest of your life.
There are lots of reasons you might be looking at working a side hustle from home, but two of the biggest are…
Staying at home with your kids
Side hustling from home is awesome for parents of small children or those wanting to be available for their school-age kids. Side note: There are 10+ kids in the Laptop Empires family, and most of us are side hustlers and freelancers – we get it.
Earning money outside of your “normal” job
With the bonus of setting your own hours, you can easily work a side hustle in addition to your 9-5. This makes it an ideal option for anyone who is trying to work towards bigger financial goals, like paying off debt or saving for retirement.
But here’s the thing… not all side hustles are created equal. So, we put together a list of standards for what we consider to be the best side hustles from home.
- Must be something you can work from home at least 75% of the time
- Must have real flexibility
- Must pay well for the work done
Why is this important? Well… if you’re a stay-at-home parent and you search “work from home side hustles,” you’re expecting to find jobs that will actually let you work from home.
However, there are a lot of articles that pop up claiming you can work from home as an Uber or Lyft driver or delivering food for Postmates. We’ve read those articles and know you can’t do that with three babies in the backseat.
With that being said…
Here are 15 of the best side hustles from home:
1. Work as a freelancer
Freelancer is a broad term describing people who offer a variety of different services for a number of clients. What you earn depends on the type of freelancer you are, what services you offer, and your level of experience.
Here are just a few of the freelance services you can offer from home:
- Writing
- Editing
- Graphic designer
- Video editor
- Sound designer
- Marketer
- Web developer
- Photo editing
- Accounting
- Grant writing
- Consultant
Successful freelancers work their way up the pay scale gaining a reputation of providing valuable services for their clients. More and more businesses are actually turning to freelancers for things they used to hire in-house. And many freelancers use these new opportunities to turn their side hustles into a full-time work-from-home jobs.
If you have already worked in one of these fields, you can start by reaching out to your contacts to see about potential jobs. Freelancer.com and Upwork are also good places to list your skills and find jobs.
2. Sell things online
The cool thing about this work-from-home side hustle is that you can approach it in a few different ways…
- You can sell gently used clothes and shoes on sites like Poshmark or Depop.
- You can sell things from around your house on marketplaces like Facebook Marketplace, Letgo, or OfferUp.
- Or, you can grow this into something much larger with Amazon FBA.
The first two are pretty self-explanatory, but let’s talk a little more about Amazon FBA. The FBA part stands for Fulfillment By Amazon, and it’s when you find things to sell on Amazon, ship them to Amazon, and let Amazon handle the selling/shipping/customer service.
There are a few tools that can make your life easier, but for the most part, your only cost going in is your inventory, which can be literally anything. There are people who specialize in used books, retail arbitrage, wholesale goods, etc.
3. Run Facebook ads for small businesses
This is one of the best side hustles from home because it really hits all of the marks we set at the beginning of this article.
- Besides finding and meeting with clients, which in some cases does happen online, you can run FB ads from your dining room table, in bed with a cup of coffee, or wherever you have internet access.
- After you find your first client, you’ll spend just a few hours a week setting up and checking the ads.
- Clients are worth around $1,000/month.
If this sounds too good to be true, let us explain…
With huge marketing teams, large companies have been running successful ad campaigns on Facebook for years. Small businesses don’t have teams like that, and they often lack the time it takes to learn how to run an effective ad strategy on Facebook.
So, the need for digital marketers is there. But first, you need the training to get started.
That’s what we’re doing with the Facebook Side Hustle Course. Created by two awesome Facebook marketers (LE’s own Mike Yanda and Bobby Hoyt), this is a comprehensive course that teaches you:
- How to set up an effective ad system
- How to find clients that need your services
- How to get those clients to say “yes”
4. List your space on Airbnb
If this isn’t a home-based side hustle, well… you get it. This is a unique option because it falls under the scope of passive income, meaning you’re not trading time for money.
On the other hand, most people aren’t going to get rich from renting out rooms on Airbnb. Really, it’s just a nice little chunk of cash for minimal work.
5. Start a blog
These days, when you search online for things, from recipes to the best places to visit in [insert name of town here], blogs pop up in the top search results. This is cool because it’s real people providing real advice – often work-at-home parents or people who blog on the side of their day job.
And, those bloggers that pop up on page 1 of Google searches are also banking some cash for their expertise and knowledge.
But how do you get there?
Yes, you have to start a blog, but that’s often the easiest part (besides the technical aspects you can get help with). After you launch your blog, you need to have an immense amount of willpower and patience as you work on growing your blog and waiting for those first few dollars to roll in.
That’s because blogging is not a get-rich-quick scheme.
There is a lot to learn about blogging, but when you “make it” there is really nothing like it. You can find out more about the process here in these articles:
- How to Start a Blog: Everything You Need to Know to be Successful
- 4 Epic Lessons We Learned About Blogging From The Blog Millionaire Brandon Gaille
- Make Money Blogging: Pros and Cons of The Top 5 Strategies
- Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Course Review
6. Flip furniture
People love one-of-a-kind furniture, but handmade/bespoke/artisanal pieces can easily cost as much as a few new iPhones. Flipping furniture falls a little below that level, making it an accessible way to sell some really unique pieces for a decent chunk of cash.
You will have to source your inventory, but that can literally be driving around town on big trash days and collecting pieces headed for the dump. Most of that furniture only needs sanding, a fresh finish or coat of paint, and new hardware. Once your pieces are finished, you can sell them through an app like Trove, which focuses solely on furniture, or Facebook Marketplace.
If you want something that isn’t just sitting in front of a computer, flipping furniture is much more of a hands-on side hustle than some of these others.
7. Work as a virtual assistant
Speaking from experience, virtual assistants are often the glue that holds online businesses together. VAs are responsible for all “behind the scenes stuff” that doesn’t need to be done by the business owner, like:
- Setting up and managing social media accounts
- Setting up email autoresponders
- Managing online files
- Scheduling meetings
- Following up with clients/customers
- Managing email accounts
- For bloggers, publishing posts and managing other basic blog tasks
- Preparing reports
You need excellent organizational skills to side hustle from home as a virtual assistant – it’s definitely a job that can keep you on your toes.
The other great thing about virtual assistant jobs is that there are a number of tasks that can be done out of your pocket (on your phone) if you do need to be away from home. This only adds to the flexibility.
8. Specialize as a Pinterest virtual assistant
The virtual assistant jobs mentioned above are more general-type tasks. If you want to get more specific (or really love Pinterest), then becoming a Pinterest VA can potentially be more appealing.
Pinterest VAs do way more than just pinning to boards, they help business owners increase traffic via Pinterest, which includes:
- Designing eye-catching pins
- Doing keyword research
- Creating a pinning schedule
Having personal experience with Pinterest is definitely helpful, but there is way more to learn before you start this great side hustle from home. The Pinterest VA course from Gina Horkey and Kristen Larsen covers all of the essential knowledge and skills, and they can even help you find clients (worth around $500/month).
You can learn more about the course on our Pinterest Virtual Assistant Course Review.
9. Side hustle from home as a customer service rep
Customer service positions are just one more job that many large companies are outsourcing. Even big, big companies like Apple are finding work-from-home employees for customer service jobs.
You will have to be available to answer phone calls when you’re scheduled to work, and the pay is around $10-$20/hour depending on the company.
10. Write an ebook
This isn’t one of the sides hustles from home that you can start earning from immediately, potentially a downside here. But, you are in complete control of the content you create, which is a liberating feeling for creative types.
Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing is the go-to place for self-publishing ebooks. You’ll want to learn some tricks of the trade to write and publish profitable ebooks, so read up!
11. Work as a transcriptionist
There are a few different types of transcriptionist jobs, medical and legal require training, but becoming a general transcriptionist is a good place for beginners looking to break into the market.
What you’re doing is basically listening to audio files and typing out what you hear. It can be repetitive work, and at times you’re transcribing files with poor audio quality, but the job is incredibly flexible and pays around $25/hour (possibly more!).
Here are a few of the most popular sites for finding jobs:
12. Become a bookkeeper
In his popular course Bookkeeper Business Launch, Ben Robinson teaches you how to start a virtual bookkeeping business, and you don’t even need to be a CPA. Robinson teaches his students how to use the right software and how to demand upwards of $60/hour.
13. One-of odd jobs
If you want something a little more exciting than picking one type of work-from-home side hustle, why not try a whole bunch of them? That’s exactly what one 38-year-old is doing, and he even broke the six-figure income mark.
Using Fiverr, he leveraged the skills he already had, then found jobs that sounded more interesting and lucrative.
14. Teach English online
There is an increasingly high demand for online English teachers for Chinese and Korean students. There are a number of companies you can work for, teaching one-on-one lessons from home in your spare time.
VIPKid is one of the most popular platforms, and VIPKid teachers don’t need a degree in English or teaching. You will need at least a bachelor’s degree in something and experience working with kids – tutoring, camp counselor, babysitting, substitute teacher, or even being a parent counts as experience.
With VIPKid, you:
- Earn $14-$22/hour
- Set your own hours
- Don’t need to do any lesson planning
15. Take online surveys
We want you to really make money when you side hustle from home, so seeing this one might surprise you, but hear us out…
Yes, online surveys don’t pay well. But, it’s the most mindless of mindless work. It’s something that could replace your midday zone-out fest when you sit on your phone playing Candy Crush or whatever (we all have these moments). Instead of playing games, why not take some surveys and earn a few extra bucks.
Here are a few of the most popular and 100% legit survey companies out there:
The final word on the best side hustles from home
The internet has made it increasingly easier to work from home. That opens doors for people who want to make some extra cash on the side, stay at home with their kids, or maybe find something to one day leave your day job.
Not all of these side hustles will hit that last mark, but they all offer some amount of time and financial flexibility.
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