Written By: Michael Gardon
I’m a huge believer that making money from home should be the goal for most people. Whether that means simply making extra cash with a side hustle or getting a fully remote job depends on how you like to work and what your goals are, but it’s clear that it has never been easier to do both today.
To me, the positives of making money from home far outweigh the negatives. You get a greater sense of freedom and creativity, and you get your time back so you have more of it to spend with family and friends.
The ways to make money from home are endless, but generally fall into a few buckets:
- Find a fully remote job
- Find a remote gig job
- Learn how to start a freelance business
- Start a side hustle
The options are endless. How you transition is more about tactics and planning than options. If you have an online business idea, we recommend using WordPress + WP Engine for a fast, secure website.
If you are ready to make money from home, start your remote job search on ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter is free for job seekers and you can apply for jobs with a single click.
My Quick Remote Money Making Story
I got out of the office through freelance consulting. I just had my first child, we were moving states, and my startup failed. I wasn’t sure where I’d end up employed, but to keep making some income through that transition, I started my own freelance consulting business. The only thing I knew was startup financing, and I had a general ability to plug in anywhere to GSD (get sh*t done).
Through some networking I soon had 3 clients I was helping at the same time and I was making just a bit more money than I was at my startup. Once I saw this power, I was determined to never work in an office again.
Fast forward a few years, and I now have a fully remote business and team. I work out of my home office where I record my podcast and get to see my kids more. I also work out of the occasional coffee shop.
Even now, I’m still working on more ways to diversify my income from home by dabbling in passive income strategies, and creating ecommerce side hustles like my family journal, Quotebook.
Your Options To Make Money From Home
The first step towards a life of at home work is getting clear on what your goal is. This is an investment in yourself and your well being for the future. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking for a little pocket change or a full time remote job, just decide and decide how much you’re looking to make from it.
Get A Remote Job
The trend toward remote was clear pre-pandemic and crystalized post pandemic. 36% of companies have remote roles and half of those are permanent. High profile tech companies like Spotify, AirBnB, Slack, Square, Twitter, Facebook and more are all leading the charge to support full time, high paying remote work options.
Our team at Careercloud.com is fully remote. We were remote before the pandemic, and will always be!
Where To Find A Remote Job
- Ziprecruiter is the first place I’d start. They have the largest selection of open jobs anywhere.
- Remote.co is another great option
Join The Break Community
- Sign up for my newsletter where every week we highlight remote job opportunities. You’ll also get tips to Break out of your career, and gain control of your work-life balance.
Find An At-Home Gig
If you’re not looking for full time work, but rather you’re looking to supplement your income, or simply have some flex time, then getting a home based “gig” is a great option. If you have any type of skill that you can do from a computer or over the phone, you can find a gig job. Skills like writing, coding, web design, graphic design, sales, social media marketing, data entry and customer support are just some of the roles that you can find gigs doing.
You may see other articles covering “gigs” like driving for Uber/Lyft, delivering food, or buying groceries, but those aren’t really done from home, so we’re not including them here.
We cover all the best sites to find gig jobs in this article.
Learn To Start A Freelance Business
If you’re looking for more of a career, you can take your “gig” to the next level by starting a freelance business from home. In my story above, this is where I started my journey to working for myself. To start, you really don’t need to incorporate a business. It can just be you doing work as a contractor for multiple clients. Then, as you grow and add employees or subcontractors, you can start an LLC (I did mine with LegalZoom for $300).
Follow these steps to start a freelance business, and sign up for my email list where I talk about tactics and mindsets to Break out of your office job and work for yourself.
Start A Side Hustle Business
By far, my favorite way to make money is with a small side business of your own. I don’t include gigs or freelance work as side hustles. I reserve the side hustle designation only for creative products or services that are brought into the world, and could be stand alone businesses. I LOVE side hustles because sure, they can provide income, but more than that, I see busy employees using side hustles to access their creativity gene that they may not be accessing through their work - and that is exciting!
A side hustle business is unique because it can also provide a path to completely breaking your career altogether. Imagine taking a small little product you came up with in your head and making more with that than you make at your own job, but you only work half as much. That’s the power of the side hustle business.
Here are some real life side hustles straight from friends of mine:
- Design and sell bracelets into women’s retail stores
- Throw wine parties and sell wine
- Plan vacations
- Make and sell baby clothes
- Sell promotional merchandise to businesses (think: that cool company golf shirt you just saw, or the coffee mug and hat you just got from your accountant).
- Build a notebook to capture all of your family’s funny moments as a keepsake (this one’s mine!)
You can easily start a side hustle business with WordPress + WP Engine. WP Engine helps you focus on growing your business, rather than worrying about site maintenance.
More Home Money-Making Inspiration
If you need to spark that idea engine, the internet has no end to the amount of reading you could do. So as you browse, try to get tactical about how you approach the way you find and eventually, execute on your at home money making idea. Here are the steps I would take find options and then narrow them down to the best choice. This is super simple and intuitive. Most of us tend to over think everything and as a result make no progress. Let’s not do that - this isn’t rocket science after all.
1. Ideate In One Phase
Do all your googling at one time, and put a time cap on it. Give yourself 2 hours to scour the internet and collect ideas. My friend Jeff Rose has a great resource to start with. I’d also recommend our article on how to make extra money.
2. Capture The Ideas In One Place
I used to keep all my ideas in a place called Evernote. Today I use Notion or simply a Google Doc. It doesn’t matter where you have them, the important thing is to have them in one place you can find and access easily.
3. Circle The Three That You Feel The Most Interest For
It’s as simple as that. 3 is enough options. Cross the rest off and forget about them.
4. Write Down Your Next Step
Figure out the next step you need to take on each of the 3 choices.
5. Take The Next Step
Take the single next step on each of the three ideas. You will feel resistance to some ideas (if not all), you may lose interest on a few of them or the next step may be unclear. Whichever path feels easiest to continue on is your choice. Here’s why.
The best path when doing something new is the path you can continue. Also, at this juncture the cost of changing your mind is very small. These are not irreversible decisions, so you can more heavily lean on your gut feel to take action instead of bogging yourself down in thought. This way you’ll be one step closer to freedom.
Bottom Line
We hope this guide helps to provide you with actionable steps to start making money from home. If you’re ready to start making money at home or land a remote job, we recommend using ZipRecruiter.
