How to Make Money at Home: 14 Easy Ways to Start a Side Hustle Online

Launch Your Online Business in Just 7 Days

People want to work from home for various, and rather simple reasons:

  • They want to work in an environment of their liking
  • They want more freedom with their schedule
  • They want to cut commute hours and spend more time with their loved ones

But whatever your reason is, we want to help you achieve your goal and work from home!


Just to make it clear: We’re not going to pitch you ways that’ll make you sit in front of a screen all day for a few dollars — that’s right, no online surveys, no clicking on ads, and no “get-rich-quick” schemes to waste your time.


We’ll explore 14 proven ways, their requirements, how much money you can earn from them, and more. Let’s begin!

Dropshipping

How dropshipping works

Requirements:

  • Internet access
  • Marketing skills (you can learn this as you progress)
  • Some capital for investing in an e-commerce store(~$100)
  • Finding reliable vendors for products

How much money can you earn: $1,000 — $5,000/month on average. Profit margins are up to 30% of that figure range.


Have you ever wanted to open your own online store? Well, you can, and it’s way cheaper than you might think!


Dropshipping is an e-commerce business model that has very little startup and overhead costs because you aren’t producing, storing, or shipping the products yourself.


Here’s how it works:

  • You build an online store where you display and sell products
  • When you receive an order, you forward the details to your supplier/vendor
  • The supplier ships the product to the customer

You charge customers a retail price for the product, while your supplier charges you a wholesale price for the order.


For example: if your customer pays you $10 for a product and you forward their order to your supplier, who charges you $9 to fulfill the order, you’ll get a profit of $1.


Sounds easy, right?


Well, it is. And that has created a problem where the e-commerce market has been saturated by an influx of dropshipping stores that all follow the same style.


It has gotten to the point where certain stores just scream low effort because their products can be easily found on places like AliExpress or Alibaba for a fraction of the retail price.


But with a twist, you can avoid this issue and stand out from the crowd — just use white labeling.


Simply make a deal with suppliers/vendors to ship your orders with your own logo and packaging for the products.


After setting up all the logistics (there are plenty of YouTube videos on that) and your e-commerce store with a platform like systeme.io or Shopify, you’ll need to focus on a scale plan that ensures growth and stability; don’t get stuck selling the same things forever.

Pros and cons of dropshipping

Pros

  • Low startup and overhead costs
  • You can automate the process if you work with a platform like systeme.io
  • Relatively easy to scale
  • Possibility to turn into a brand with loyal customers

Cons

  • No control over the quality of products
  • It’s hard to find “winning products” that aren’t already saturated in the market
  • Managing inventory can be a pain as you need constant communication with vendors
  • You’ll need to keep moving with market trends and adapting to changes in marketing strategies

Question, did you know that you can open an e-commerce store for free with systeme.io? And when we say an e-commerce store, we mean:

  • Unlimited products, storage space, hosting, and bandwidth
  • No limits on sales, monthly traffic, or conversions
  • A custom domain
  • No transaction fees whatsoever, you keep all the profits!

What? All that for free?


You heard us, go get your forever-free account at systeme.io and build your e-commerce store today!

Publish an eBook

Financial Freedom Ebook

Requirements:

  • Internet access
  • Writing skills
  • Marketing skills
  • A platform where you can publish and sell eBooks

How much money can you earn per eBook: $10 — $1,000/month on average.


It costs nothing to write your own eBook, and there are plenty of options for online publishing.


A popular one is Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), which allows anyone to publish as many eBooks as they like for free.


The catch is that, as the author, you only get up to 70% royalties when you make a sale.


If you produce high-quality eBooks regularly, Amazon’s algorithms will make sure your eBooks get lots of hits, so 70% could be more than enough.


If you’re wondering what to write about, these are the best-selling eBook categories on Amazon:

  • Religion and spirituality
  • Biographies and memoirs
  • Business and money
  • Self-help
  • Cookbooks, food, and wine

We think it's best to write books that you actually want to read or have extensive knowledge about.


Then work will become play, and you’ll have your first eBook published in no time. You can share samples of your eBook as a PDF to gauge audience interest. Doing this is relatively straightforward. For example, you can create a QR code for a PDF that you share through offline reading groups.


And if you’ve already got an audience, you can sell your eBook on your own website (for free if you use systeme.io) and keep 100% of the profits!


Something to consider: You can also look into private label rights (PLR) when publishing eBooks — which basically means selling licenses for people to use and sell your eBooks.


(You could also be at the other end of the spectrum, and buy PLR for certain eBooks that you think can sell well.)

Pros and cons of selling eBooks

Pros

  • Writing an eBook is free, you can start with 0 expenses
  • Easy when you’re writing about something you’re skilled at or have a passion for
  • Has room for innovation and creativity — which will allow you to charge higher down the road

Cons

  • You only get up to 70% royalties if you use Amazon KDP
  • Competitive market, and you’ll need to price accordingly
  • Without a marketing plan, your profit will be low

Start affiliate marketing

How Affilaite marketing works

Requirements:

How much money can you earn: Around 80% of affiliates make $0 — $80,000/year.


In a nutshell, affiliate marketing is when businesses market their offers through affiliates using trackable links that people can click on to take them to the products that are offered.


For example, anyone can sign-up for free and head to our affiliate marketplace:

systeme.io's marketplace
  • View all the offers they can promote
  • Get a trackable link for any available offer
  • And start promoting it right away

Each time someone buys the offer through the link, you get a commission!


This is a good option for someone who already has a big social media following, a blog, or a large and engaged email list.


To be a good affiliate marketer, it’s important that you actually believe in the products you’re pushing or your link will be left untouched by your audience.


If you really want to start off your affiliate marketing career with a bang, check out our affiliate marketing for beginners guide.


Or simply sign up for a free account with systeme.io, and start promoting our platform to earn 60% lifetime commissions!

Affiliate testimonials
Affiliate testimonials
Affiliate testimonials

And we’ve got powerful email marketing tools that you can automate to get your affiliate link out there, making this method more passive.

Pros and cons of affiliate marketing

Pros

  • Minimal costs, you can start for free most of the time
  • It’s a billion-dollar industry, and if you’re consistent enough, you’ll get a piece of the pie
  • Grows over time and could replace your full-time income

Cons

  • You’ll need to find good offers to advertise with good commissions — easier said than done
  • You don’t really have clients of you’re own, you’re building someone else’s business
  • A lot of competition

Start Blogging

Blog template

Requirements:

  • Internet access
  • Writing skills
  • Research skills
  • A website to publish your blog posts on
  • Consistent traffic for said website

How much money can you earn: You can earn $500 — $2000/month in your first year. (Multiple sources, this range is totally reachable for most people)


With blogging, you can make no money, you can make some extra money, or you can make big money.


Blogging is a great way to make money online in 2023, and there are plenty of great (free) blogging platforms for you to try.


You can blog about almost anything, but the most popular types of blogs in 2023 are:

  • Food blogs
  • Travel blogs
  • Health and fitness blogs
  • Lifestyle blogs
  • Fashion and beauty blogs

Building your audience will take time and dedication (and knowledge of SEO best practices), but once you’ve done that, you can start using your blog to make money from home.


When you’ve got tons of traffic coming to your blog, you can start selling ads and backlinks or doing some affiliate marketing.


Eventually, your audience might start wanting more, so you can come up with a product or service to sell from your blog.


For example: if your blog is about fitness, you can sell a fitness guide or a consultation to kickstart a client’s fitness journey.

Pros and cons of blogging

Pros

  • Minimal costs — you can start for free with a platform like systeme.io
  • Write the content you want, and leave your mark on the internet
  • You can have multiple sources of income fueling your blog

Cons

  • Tons of work to do, and your work quality is crucial to rank on Google
  • You’ll have to adapt to constant changes to Google’s algorithm when it comes to SEO
  • You need an audience or it wouldn’t help you make money

Sell digital products

Digital Drwaing

Requirements:

  • Creative skills
  • Tools and platforms to make and/or host the digital products
  • Competitive pricing model

How much money can you earn: Technically speaking, we’re in e-commerce territory again, so here you could be making anywhere from $500 — $10,000/month ($10k+ is like a unicorn).


Digital products take money-making ideas from regular e-commerce models whilst taking out the pain of handling the logistics of shipping offers.


Although eBooks were stated as an example of a digital product before, there are many more types of digital products available. These include:

1. Games

2. Software

3. Podcasts

4. Graphic design products

5. Printables

6. NFTs (they have functionality beyond monkey images)

There are so many platforms where digital creators can sell their digital products online like Etsy and OpenSea — and there’s always the option of creating your own e-commerce store.


And as a tangent for this method, you can try print-on-demand websites such as Redbubble that allow your customers to purchase your design printed on t-shirts, mugs, or phone cases!


Because the design you’re making is digital, there are no costs to this money-making idea, besides your chosen design software.

Pros and cons of selling digital products

Pros

  • You’ll be forced to be creative, leaving you with an impressive portfolio
  • Next to no costs involved
  • You don’t have to package and ship products — plus, you have infinite inventory (copies)

Cons

  • Lower overall profit compared to regular e-commerce
  • Digital products can be stolen and copied easily
  • There’s a lot of competition

Become an online tutor

online tutor

Requirements:

  • Internet access
  • Particular skill set or knowledge about a niche people want to join
  • Some capital to invest in your teaching credentials if needed

How much money can you earn: Anywhere between $15 — $60/hour in your first few years.


Depending on your education and experience, tutoring can be a seriously lucrative way to make money from home.


If you’re good at maths or science (or any other academic subject), show off your grades to attract struggling students.


If you’re fluent in English, you can find some non-English speakers looking for online classes.


It may be useful to list yourself on a tutoring platform such as Tutor.com or Superprof.


Or, if you prefer to work independently and keep all of your earnings to yourself, post adverts to your local social media groups.


Tutoring for the TEFL academy is also a great option, but you have to complete some courses before you can join their team.

Pros and cons of becoming an online tutor

Pros

  • You’ll get to interact and help people
  • Parents are often willing to pay high prices when it comes to their children’s education — lucky you!

Cons

  • Tutoring platforms take a cut of your money
  • If you go without a platform, you’ll have to put effort into marketing your offers
  • Online tutoring takes a lot of effort if you’re not already in the business of teaching

Sell online courses

Online course

Requirements:

  • Knowledge in a certain niche
  • Marketing skills
  • Teaching skills
  • A sustainable business model

How much money can you earn: $100 — $10,000/month when starting out. This depends on your niche, the value you’re giving out, and the number of courses that you have.


Did we mention that it’s predicted for the eLearning market to reach a value of $375 billion by 2026?


Well, it is — selling online courses is a super hot niche right now. In a way, it’s similar to online tutoring, but it’s way easier than sitting around all day and trying to find online tutoring jobs.


To sell your own online course, you’ll first need to create a recorded course on a certain topic and deliver a thorough explanation that would take students from point A to point B in their lives.


Then you want to figure out how you’re going to host your course online.


As a pro tip: Your course content should deliver great value for your students so they leave great reviews and keep coming back.

Pros and cons of selling online courses

Pros

  • You can start with minimal costs
  • You can create courses on anything you have expertise in
  • Easily scalable
  • You’ll help people do better in their lives

Cons

  • It takes time and effort to create the content for your course
  • Many course creation platforms take a share of your earnings or require you to pay monthly fees
  • Depending on your country, you may have to pay taxes for selling online courses
  • Takes time to build a list of students and you’ll be criticized for every mistake you make

(We know that online courses are also defined as digital products but they’re such a huge topic and revenue generators for creators — they honestly deserve their own section)

Become a social media influencer

social media influencer

Requirements:

  • Internet access
  • A charismatic or unique approach to your social media accounts
  • Integrity
  • Quality content

How much money can you earn: $1,000 — $10,000/month on average.


Depends highly on the number and type of followers, and methods of monetization (affiliate marketing, merch, sponsors, etc).


Over 80% of internet users are on social media, and big brands need influencers to help them reach this massive market.


If you’re able to create quality content for social media and you’re willing to put time into engaging with your community, you’d be a perfect influencer!


And don’t think you need millions of followers there’s a growing demand for micro-influencers (influencers with 3,000 to 100,000 followers).


Companies want to work with micro-influencers because their smaller audiences trust them and are more easily influenced by them.


To become an influencer your social media accounts need to convey a clear personal brand.


If you want to learn from professionals, YouTube is loaded with “How to Become an Influencer” tutorials.


Investing in courses at Udemy is also an option if you’re really serious about this.

Pros and cons of becoming a social media influencer

Pros

  • Flexible working hours and location (you can plan posts up ahead)
  • Loads of freebies from sponsors and fans
  • Inspire communities and genuinely help people in your own way
  • Can make quite a bit of money once you have built a semi-substantial following
  • Work with big brands that you love and build your own

Cons

  • Maintaining and growing a following is very tricky
  • You have to maintain your integrity (pretty hard these days)
  • You can easily fall into mistakes that ruin your career
  • Expect some level of toxicity (in whatever niche you’re in)
  • You can’t really put this endeavor on your résumé if you fail — won’t help with getting you a more “classic” job in the future

Write closed captions (transcribing)

Requirements:

  • Internet access
  • Fast typing (+60 words per minute)
  • Food language skills

How much money can you earn: $100 — $5,000/month on average. It depends on the frequency of the jobs you get.


When first starting, you can sign up for transcription companies like GMR Transcription or Rev.


You can also go the solo route and offer your services on freelancing websites like Upwork.


Usually, pay is determined by $X/minute of audio or $X/hour of work, and it starts for as low as $3/hour on certain platforms.


As you gain more experience, your pay will gradually increase up to $30 - $40/hour on the very high end.


So certainly don’t lock yourself to a platform like Rev where the pay just doesn’t match your value after a while of work.


Again, if you want to really brush up on your closed captioning skills, there are YouTube tutorials to assist you.

Pros and cons of transcribing

Pros

  • Super flexible schedule
  • You get to watch and listen to the content you caption (so choose stuff you enjoy)
  • You work at your own pace

Cons

  • Captioning 1 minute of audio takes more than 1 minute of work (and audio quality plays a huge role)
  • Very low earnings at the start
  • Your work needs to be flawless

Try freelancing

Freelancing

Requirements:

  • Internet access
  • Skills and knowledge about a certain niche
  • A good and clear portfolio about your services (could be a dedicated website or a profile on a freelance platform)

How much money can you earn: Depends on the niche you’re working in. So you could start making a few $100/month but the sky is really the limit when you go all in.


Freelancing is a type of self-employment where you work with clients as an independent contractor — which is similar to building your own business (you’ll need to market yourself, get leads, and sell your services).


In order to freelance from home, you’ll need to build a portfolio of your services and past social proof — naturally, starting can be rough when you don’t have the latter.


(You can check out how you can gain social proof for your offerings in our sales page structure guide)


For an “easy” start, sign up for freelance platforms like Fiverr and Upwork.


Plus, keep an eye out for growing ones like PeoplePerHour where you can rank in your niche faster.


This is where you monetize all kinds of different skills you possess like graphic design, writing sci-fi, or anything that comes to mind really.


Freelance platforms are generally very competitive, so look for niches that have moderate saturation compared to market demand and give excellent deals to your first few customers.


Furthermore, don’t look for “dead” niches where you can easily rank but can’t get any customers consistently.


As a last piece of advice, try to be specific about what you can do, don’t oversell your abilities, and never sell yourself short.

Pros and cons of freelancing

Pros

  • Get paid after completing tasks and contracts — the better and faster you are, the better you get paid
  • Can turn into a business if you build a big enough circle of recurring customers
  • Grow your skills way faster than usual (you’re always adapting to customers' needs)

Cons

  • Freelancing platforms take a big commission from each “gig” you take on them (usually around 20%)
  • It takes a few months of consistent work for things to start taking off and get regular work — and long term there are really no guarantees
  • You can get overwhelmed if you take on multiple projects at the same time

Sell used stuff you don’t need

Requirements:

  • An announcement that you’re having a yard sale (online and/or offline)
  • Second-hand items that you can sell

How much money can you earn: Aim for $500 — $1,000 per yard or garage sale.


You can sell anything online from gently-used clothes and furniture to arts and crafts.


In 2023 consumers are more concerned about the environment than ever before, so buying second-hand is becoming more and more popular.


Plus, all this can be virtual, it’s effortless to set up Instagram Shopping using this guide, or you can explore selling on peer-to-peer social shopping apps, like Depop.


Make sure to use captivating and clear product photos to entice buyers and give lots of information such as detailed measurements or how used an item is.


This makes your store professional and maximizes your sales!

Pros and cons of selling your used items

Pros

  • Declutter your home
  • Selling used goods is environmentally friendly
  • A good way to socialize with your acquaintances

Cons

  • You’ll be responsible for packaging, posting, and shipping sold items (if your sale is virtual)
  • A short-term business model because you’ll only have so much lying around that you can sell

Now granted, you can always pop into your local second-hand shop to buy ‘new’ stock for very little money and do the process all over again.

Monetize your gaming with Twitch

Twitch gamers image

Requirements:

  • An account on Twitch
  • Actual skills in playing games
  • A character that appeals to people (at least those who are defined as your average Twitch user)

How much money can you earn: Depends on how many views you pull in per stream.


Once you average 100 viewers per stream, you can make around $1000 per month (From ads, donations, subscriptions, and sponsors).


If you’re an amazing gamer, we know a way you can monetize that skill! With Twitch, you can turn your hobby into a money magnet.


For the uninitiated, Twitch is an online platform where gamers and streamers share their screens, and viewers pay to watch them.


With almost 3 million active viewers at any given time, streaming on Twitch is a solid way to make money from home.


The main way of making money on Twitch is through donations. But building up a big enough following will earn you Affiliate or Partner status, and you’ll start earning ad revenue.


Furthermore, you can easily get sponsors down the road and compete with events happening in your local country.


It doesn’t get any better than earning money by doing something you enjoy.

Pros and cons of becoming a streamer

Pros

  • You’d probably be gaming anyway, right?
  • The ceiling is really high on how much money you can make
  • Meet like-minded people and streamers
  • Go to events and compete for being the best in your game

Cons

  • It takes a while to work up to Affiliate or Partner status
  • This ‘job’ might confuse your parents, future employers, and yourself at times
  • You’ll deal with a level of toxicity frequently, keep that “block” button close
  • You’ll have to keep up with gaming trends, there’s no point in playing a game no one wants to watch

Become a YouTuber

Requirements:

  • Content that people want to watch
  • Business skills to capitalize on opportunities and not get locked in shady contracts
  • Recording tools that would present your content in the best light possible

How much money can you earn: Around $1 per 1,000 video views when starting out.


Have you ever considered opening a YouTube channel?


Beyond sharing your skills, there are so many genres on YouTube that you can create content for.


At the time of writing, the top five YouTube genres were:

  • Vlogs and commentary
  • Product Reviews
  • How-To’s/Tutorials
  • Top Lists
  • Comedies

Once you have 1000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time, YouTube will start paying you ad revenue.


To get that subscriber count up, always include a strong call-to-action at the end of your videos ― that’s when YouTubers say: “Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and comment if you enjoyed the video”.


You should also write compelling video titles, reply to every comment when possible, and remove all the bot accounts that might fill your comment sections.


Pro tip: You can use your YouTube Channel as a platform for some of the other ways to make money such as affiliate marketing or selling things online.

Pros and cons of becoming a YouTuber

Pros

  • Starting a YouTube channel is free
  • You can reach a massive, worldwide audience
  • Genuinely help people and receive feedback from them

Cons

  • Editing videos for YouTube takes time (varies by niche)
  • YouTube is very competitive
  • Deal with online toxicity

Offer virtual assistance services

Requirements:

  • Internet access
  • Computer skills
  • Deep knowledge in researching the web
  • A passion for wanting to learn more

How much money can you earn: Anywhere from $7 — $60/hour. This depends on your location, experience, and the niche you’re in.


Being a virtual assistant is like being a personal assistant for your client, you help them with day-to-day tasks, and handle trivial stuff that gets in the way of their productivity like data entry and scheduling appointments — but it’s all done virtually while you’re at home, duh.


This is very appealing to people who naturally want to help others succeed by unlocking their full productivity levels.


So if this sounds like someone like you, give it a shot! Go make a profile at some of the freelancing platforms we mentioned earlier, and start looking for clients that you can work with.


Pro tip: Always look to build long-term relationships with your clients and once you’re big enough, open up your own agency!

Pros and cons of becoming a virtual assistant

Pros

  • Minimal starting costs
  • Choose your own schedule and your own clients that you’d like to work with
  • It’s scalable long-term

Cons

  • Lots of moving parts between clients that you need to keep an eye on
  • No regular job benefits
  • It can feel lonely at times when you’re just there to do the tasks you’re asked for by clients

FAQs

How soon can I get my 1st $1 working from home?

This week, and probably even faster if you dedicate full-time to doing it.


Want proof? Check out this $500 in 27 challenge — starting with no money, no audience, and it’s really easy!

Can I work from home, full-time, on my own?

Yes! A lot of people are already doing it, and most of them are using tactics mentioned in this very blog post.


You can generate more than enough money to sustain your lifestyle.

Conclusion

Life’s too short to stay at your desk job!


As you can see, there are lots of ways to make money from home.


Whether it’s a side hustle or a main hustle, these tips will help you escape the rat race.


But they definitely work best in conjunction so consider doing 2 or 3 of these for amazing results.


Remember to do your research and be patient with the method you choose.


And don’t forget to grab your forever-free systeme.io account to start:

  • Building your own website
  • Experimenting with affiliate marketing, and email marketing.
  • Selling online courses, eBooks, and other digital products
  • Creating membership sites, subscriptions, and coupon codes for your products (physical or digital)

Now, go out there and start making money from home today!

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