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I'm Steph, mum of three! 👋
Here, I share practical insights on making (and saving!) money. With a knack for budgeting and a passion for financial freedom, I've picked up lots of tips & tricks along the way. And I can't wait to share them with you here!
Knowing how to make money from home is dream many of us have and it’s a dream you can 100% make come true. No one knows just how far they can go with this until they try, me included, and if working from home is something you’d like to try, please give it a go.
I think most of us who earn an income from their homes didn’t believe it could really take over our day jobs. We’d all heard the stories about people making millions from home for doing next to nothing and we doubted it too. And I can tell you for me at least, I certainly don’t make millions but I make more than I did in my day job, and you can too!
It might take a while to find your thing: The work from home job that you love, suits your family and gets you up in the morning but once you do I can tell you, you’re going to wonder why you didn’t start doing it sooner!
Why might you want to work from home?
- Freedom to work when it suits you
- To spend more time with your family
- Being able to travel as and when you like: No more asking for holiday time (and getting turned down!)
- Control of your own income: Work more when you need to and less when you don’t.
All that said, working for yourself and taking control of the money you bring in each month isn’t something that just happens. From my own experience, you need to be serious about it and treat it like you would any other business. You need to be organised, good at planning ahead and willing to put the work in. If you know how you’re going to get started, what the plan is and where you want to be in 2 years time, you’ve got a far better chance of making this work.
But what if you want to work from home, are willing to out the work in but don’t quite know where to start? We’re here to help! These are some of the ways we know that make money and are reasonably easy to get started with.
19 Ways To Make Money From Home
Most (all?!) work from home jobs need a laptop and a way for you to connect yourself to the outside global world. Some of them need specific equipment (like headphones for transcription work). Have a look down the list and pick out the ones you feel you might be able to get started on sooner rather than later. You can always come back later on and start more once you’ve got some money rolling in.
1) Start Selling Clothes Online
Selling clothes online has to be one of the best known ways to make some extra money, I guess because we all have so many clothes these days and at some point we need to get rid of them.
Throwing old clothes away is so wasteful, especially kids clothes that are often hardly worn by the time they’ve grown out of them and so selling them online not only gives them more life but also brings in some cash. And there is no shortage of places to start selling them.
How To Get Started
You’re going to need a device that connects you to the internet, although this doesn’t need to be a laptop, I’ve used my phone almost exclusively when I’m selling clothes online. A decent camera on your phone is a must (and most phones cameras are amazing now anyway) and being on hand to answer peoples questions in a speedy manner is also going to help you succeed in this.
Read the full post on selling clothes below.
2) Earn Money From Transcription
Transcription work is a great work from home job if you’re nimble on a keyboard as you’re going to be typing a lot and you need to be quick. This is a job where the quicker you are the better you’ll be paid, lots of transcription work is paid by the job, not by the hour, so the faster you can get the work done the better the pay.
There are a number of different transcription areas (legal, medical etc..) and so having experience on one of these areas will help get your foot in the door.
How To Get Started
You can register with one of the many agencies that offer work from home transcription jobs. Once you’re offered work, the more accurate and faster you get the work done the more work you’ll be offered.
There are a few things you’ll need to be able to do this work, such as a headset and a foot control. Read the full post on getting started in transcription here:
See: Transcription jobs working from home
3) Get Paid To Search The Web
We all search the web more than we’d probably like to admit! How many hours have been whiled away searching, surfing, mindlessly wandering around this vast virtual space…well you may as well get paid for it :)
Seriously though, if you know your way around Google and are able to follow some simple instruction tasks, there are companies that will pay you to get your thoughts on their websites. This is known as user testing and companies like to get peoples thoughts and views on their sites before they go live. And they pay quite well.
Sometimes you’ll be asked to complete the work at home, other times they may hold a testing session locally to you and you may be asked to go along.
Getting Started
You can register with agencies that offer user testing – they’re often companies that offer user testing to bigger corporates looking for testing, and they also recruit their own testers that can call on when there’s testing that needs to be done.
Read the full post here:
4) Make Money Writing Fiction
Loads of people love to write, but very few realise they can get paid for it. You don’t have to be a well known published author to get paid for writing fiction, in this age of the internet there are loads of other ways to make money from your writing and the days of being accepted by a huge publishing house as the single route to getting your writing out there are over.
People are looking for all sorts of writing in all sorts of places now, Medium pays for popular pieces of writing and Amazon allows you to self publish and promote your work, among many others.
Getting Started
Get a plan together, know where to publish your work and build up an online audience. Some self published works have gone on to become huge best sellers despite having been turned down by publishing houses. If you love to write, have a read of the full post below for more inspiration!
See: Making money from fiction
5) Remote Proof Reading Jobs
Proof reading other peoples work is big business and if you have an eye for detail you can turn this into a lucrative side hustle. Whether it’s unpublished manuscripts, dissertations or any other piece of writing, people need their work to be proofread before they publish it sand they’r willing to pay for it.
Getting Started
You need to have a good eye for spelling, grammar and language syntaxes. The more work you do the more work you’ll be offered and you’ll be able to build up an online portfolio to get more incoming work.
Read the full post below for information on how to get started proof reading from home.
See: Proofreading jobs from home
6) Become A Dog Walker
Walking dogs is a dream job for lots of us. If you enjoy spending time with our furry friends and being in the great outdoors, there are over 12 million dog owners in the UK and many of them are looking for people to walk them whilst they’re at work.
You need to have a love for dogs, or this job will become something you do not like very much! Plus, and more importantly, you’ll be entrusted with peoples precious pooches and I know first hand how important it is to have someone you trust looking after your beloved dog!
There are a some laws you need to abide by before you get started though…
How To Get Started
Looking at your local authorities website and learning the laws surrounding dog walking must always be your first port of call.
See: Becoming a dog walker in the UK
7) Sell Books Online
How many of us have books coming out of our ears in our homes? I know we do. They collect dust once they’ve been read, and if like me you’re a big reader, you’ll understand the temptation to keep adding to the collection without ever making sure to do something with the old books we’ve already read and clear some space (and make some extra money!).
In have good intentions with old books, I’d take them to the charity shop from time to time but did you know you can also turn your old book collection into an extra income stream? Some people scour car boot sales and secondhand shops once they know what will sell. And it can bring you in a little extra cash!
Getting Started
Have a look online and see what’s selling. There are certain types of books (textbooks for example) that are always in demand as people don’t want to spend full price on new ones. Have a read of this post for the full guide on how to get started.
8) Make Money With PayPal
There are so many ways to get paid into Paypal. Loads of companies use PayPal to pay their financial incentives, whether that’s completing surveys, testing websites online or working freelance on Fiverr. There’s many many ways to boost your PayPal balance.
Get Started
We have a huge post here on boosting your Paypal balance, have a look through the list and see what you might be able to do. Several at once gives the best return of course!
See: How To Make Money With PayPal
9) Gaming For Money
Do you love gaming? There are vast numbers of us that spend hours gaming. Literally hours. And if you enjoy it and are going to do it anyway, why not get paid for it!
Being paid to game can seem like a dream to many people and we tend to focus on the gamers we hear about, the better known ones who make mega bucks – but there are a lot who you’ll have never heard of who also make a decent income, particularly if you’re looking to bring in some extra money rather than replace a full time income, which is much harder.
How To Get Started
No idea where to start? Read this full post and find out the different platforms you might want to consider using and how to go about turning them into an income stream.
10) Sell Furniture Online
This is one side hustle I love. If you’re someone who likes to up-cycle, improve and reuse, this could be a great second income (and first if it all goes really well!).
In this throw away society we all live in there is furniture everywhere that with a little love and attention can go on for years and years: It’s often well made and no where near the end of it’s life. And luckily there are numerous places to sell second hand furniture and some of it goes for a fortune. People often like older furniture as it’s made better than a lot of the modern day stuff. Once it’s had a makeover, you could be looking at a pretty good profit.
How To Get Started
Have a look online and see what people seem to be buying. Painted kids bedroom furniture is usually a good seller, as are stripped back to basics and waxed chests of drawers.
It’s easy to get hold of second hand furniture, read through out post here to find out how to go about turning this hobby into a profitable second income.
11) Make Money From Recycling
It might look like rubbish to us, but to lots of people your recycling is their profit.
You might be surprised to know that old empty printer cartridges, tin cans and even cardboard boxes can all be worth money. Yep, surprised us too!
How To Get Started
There are specific places and people who are able to help you make money from your recycling. Read about them here.
See: Making money from recycling
12) Sell On Etsy
Etsy is one of the webs biggest, best known selling markets and hundreds of thousands of people buy and sell on there every year. And while this is good, it can also be a little overwhelming at first if you’re not sure what to start selling or even if it’s possible to make a profit at all from it.
The good news is that it’s very possible to make money if you know what to sell. Some things sell like hot cakes on Etsy, others not so much. If you’re looking to turn Etsy selling into a real money maker, you’ll need to know what sells and what doesn’t.
Getting Started
In our huge post on selling on Etsy, you can find out what’s selling and what will make you the best profits. Read about that below.
See: Selling on Etsy for profit
13) Sell On RedBubble
RedBubble is one of those platforms that’s newer than some of the better known ones and so lots of people haven’t heard of it. You can use this to your advantage though as the selling competitions lower :)
RedBubble as a platform is an arty one so if you’re an artist and looking for an online space to showcase your work and make sales, check this one out.
There’s loads already on here and more and more people are joining everyday. Get going!
Getting Started
It’s not just paintings and screen prints, RedBubble sell loads of arty things, read about them here and how to get started selling on RedBubble.
See: How to make money on Redbubble
14) Use Your Car To Advertise
This ones something most of us wouldn’t think of but it’s a side hustle and people are making money everyday doing this. If your car fits into one of the approved categories, it’s definitely something to think about!
Getting Started
There are a couple of companies in the UK offering you the chance to make money advertising on your car, get the full post on how to look into this here.
See: How to make money advertising on your car
15) Sell Domain Names For profit
Buying and selling domain names is big business. With the most expensive domain names going for over $10,000, there’s money to be made. While it’s unlikely you’re going to stumble across a domain name worth anywhere near this mark, the majority of domains sell for between $30-$200 and if you know what you’re doing, this can be a lucrative side line.
Getting Started
There are lots of places to. learn about selling and buying domain names to then sell on, if this is something you’re interested in starting, read the full post here.
See: How to sell domain names for profit
16) Listen To Music For Cash
Love music? Me too. So it’s a good thing you can now combine a love of music with making some money! If you’re wondering why anyone would pay you to listen to music, there’s a few reasons…
Music curators pair music with events, think adverts and party soundtracks. There are sites you can earn money to review new music, giving your thoughts and opinions. In fact, there are even apps that reward you for listening to their music, you may have to listen to a few ads in between tracks, but hey, it’s a small inconvenience for some extra cash :)
It’s important to know you’re not going to make millions doing this, but if it’s a few extra £’s you’re after, this could be for you.
Getting Started
If you think this is something you’d like to do in your spare time, we’ve got a whole post on how you can get started right here!
See: Making money listening to music
17) Get Paid To Sleep
Getting paid to sleep? Seriously? Yep, I kid you not. From mattress testing to clinical sleep trials, there are people who will pay you to sleep. Expect to have to write reviews and reports on the quality of your sleep as part of the deal, but you can quite literally get paid to sleep on the job!
Getting Started
While these sleep on the job jobs are highly in demand, you can register your interest and apply easily and wait for a place to come up. Interested? Read the full post here and learn how to get started!
18) Make Money Reading Manuscripts
Think of all those book submissions that get send to publishers. Now imagine how many people they need to read through them all. If you’ve an eye for a good story line and can see a diamond in the rough, this might be a good side hustle for you.
Some of the bigger publishing houses employ manuscript readers directly but there are loads of independent publishers and individuals who also need manuscript readers, and once you’ve started and prove yourself, you’re likely to be offered further work.
Getting Started
If reading manuscripts as a way to make money from home is appealing to you, learn where to start looking for these jobs and how to apply right here!
See: Make money reading manuscripts
19) Crochet For Cash
Crocheting is no longer the domain of our grandparents and hasn’t been for quite some time really. Crochet’s been back for a while and it’s big! Online selling markets like Etsy are great places to start offering your crocheted goods, and there are lots of other place besides.
You need to be talented at crochet and able to produce quality pieces of work. You could even look at creating a course and teaching other people how to crochet. If you can crochet it, you can sell it and make money from it.
Getting Started
Knowing what sells before you start crocheting the nights away is a good thing to learn. Like any markets, some crocheted items sell better than others. Learn how to get started selling your wares here!
See: Crocheting for cash