5 Ideas to Help You Start Working from Home

So you’ve decided to start working from home. Good for you! Even if you aren’t planning to give up your day job, working from home will open a whole new world to you. Plus it will help you make some extra money. But how do you go about finding the right work from home occupation? Here are five ideas that will help.

Become a Seller on Fiverr

Fiverr is probably the best place to start working from home because it doesn’t require you to have any particular skills or education. Basically, the site is a huge marketplace for all sorts of services where the price starts at $5. The possibilities are endless – sellers on Fiverr do programming, make videos singing Happy Birthday, translate things, do tarot readings, give personal development advice, compose music, send postcards and more. The thing I really like about Fiverr is that you can sell both services and physical hand made goods. A lot of the gigs (that’s how Fiverr calls services) include packages where you can charge more than $5, plus you can offer gig extras and charge extra fees.

Fiverr takes $1 for every $5 you earn, which may seem a lot, but they do offer a 100% secure seller-buyer environment. Once the money is cleared (takes about two weeks per gig), you can withdraw your money to your PayPal account or a Fiverr Payoneer card.

Make Money from Your Photos

Even if you’re not a professional photographer, you can start working from home selling your photos. All you need to do is get a big creative, learn some basic image editing (use any tool you have handy – you don’t need to be a Lightroom expert), and upload them to the right site.

There are tons of websites where you can sell your photos as prints and other merchandise. Here are my favourite ones:

• Displate – sell your images as metal posters. The quality requirements are pretty strict because your photos go through an approval process and the shortest image side needs to be at least 2800 pixels.
• Society6 – sell your photos as prints and other merchandise (mugs, clothes, rugs, duvet covers and so on). The uploading process is easy, but you do need to make some adjustments to the images.
• Fine Art America and Pixels.com – great sites for selling your photos as all types of prints as well as tote bags, phone cases, shower curtains and everything else. Just upload your images, write descriptions, add some keywords and you’re done!
• Zazzle – perhaps the most popular site for selling images on literally everything. For me, postcards and greeting cards work best on Zazzle. I’ve also started a store selling clothes and baby products with my own designs, DonovanArtwear. Make sure you check it out! On Zazzle, the uploading process is easy, but sometimes prints turn out dark, so you need to keep that in mind when adjusting exposure.
• RedBubble – this is Zazzle’s rival that offers a super-easy upload process and helps you sell your photos on all types of goods. I’ve sold quite a few prints there.

Sell Hand-Made Goods on Etsy

If you make anything – toys, wooden spoons, knit beanies or whatever – you really should start selling on Etsy. It’s the best site for selling handmade and vintage goods. Open a store on Etsy and add some items for sale. Listing an item costs only 20 cents and you can easily make a living selling on Etsy.

When creating your store, make sure you read everything Etsy posted in the Help section because it’s vitally important to get things right from the start.

Start a YouTube Channel

I’m sure you have a smartphone. So why not use it to make some extra money? People watch ANYTHING on YouTube and the sillier it is, the better. Get creative and start posting regularly, then apply for an AdSense account with Google and monetize your videos. You won’t see immediate results, but eventually you’ll see the money coming in.

Write Articles for Sale

You don’t need to have a degree in journalism to write online. If you have good writing skills, try your hand at article writing. There’s a constant need for website content and people are prepared to pay well for quality texts. Constant Content is a good place to start selling articles because it has a well-developed client base, professional editors to help you perfect your writing, and there’s no minimum payout (they pay by PayPal).

Bonus: Offer Your Services on Airtasker

If you’re located in Australia, the UK or Ireland, you can earn money by offering your services on Airtasker. This website is an outsourcing hub for all sorts of job, from furniture assembly and dog walking to graphic design, computer help, and administrative tasks.

I really hope that these ideas will help you start working from home doing what you love. If you know of any other ways to work from the comfort of your own home, do let us all know in your comments.