The Ultimate Guide: How To Make Money From Home (2020)

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There are a lot of real and legitimate ways to make money from home. The ideas that I am going to share with you today have been tried and tested by either myself or other people.

From this list of ideas, you will find how you can make money from home without any investments, how to earn an income online from home as well as some of the most creative ways to make a living at home.

If you read until the end of the article, you will also see two creative (yet little-known) home-based business ideas that you can use to start earning an income at home.

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How To Make Money From Home Without Any Investments

1. Find A Work From Home Job

If you want to make money for free at home, then getting a work-from-home job is probably the best for you.

Today, an increasing number of companies are hiring people to work at home either full-time or part-time, thanks to the advancement in technology.

So, what does it take to get hired for a work-at-home job?

There are more home job opportunities for certain fields such as IT, Programming, Sales, Marketing, Accounting, Project Management, Writing and Customer Service.

If you are an experienced software developer, there is a very good chance (about 2000 job openings based on the screenshot below) that you can get hired for a software development job working from home.

If you can speak a second language very fluently, there is also plenty of work-at-home jobs that require people who are bilingual.

Below is a screenshot of the job categories for work-from-home jobs that are hiring now:

So, how do you find a work-from-home job that matches your experience and skills?

You can go to any of the job portals mentioned below, and search for online job listings.

By applying the appropriate filters, it will return you a list of all the job openings that meet your search criteria.

Here are some popular job portals you can use:

Job Portals For Online Work From Home Jobs ONLY

Job Portals With Remote Options

Further Reading:
Where To Find Legitimate Work From Home Jobs That Pay Well (BEST For 2023)

2. Freelance From Home

If getting a work-at-home job is not something you want, what you can do is sell services online from home as a freelancer.

What skills do you have that you can turn into services that other businesses or individuals already want and are willing to pay for?

Selling services is actually one of the quickest ways to make money.

It is all about solving problems and providing value for other people.

Basically, what problems you can help solve will give you clues as to who your ideal clients are.

So, who are you helping with your service?

Do you help businesses solve their problems?

Or do you help individuals?

Here are some home-based service business ideas for each:

Ideas For Business Services:

Digital Advertising Service
Graphic Design Service
Social Media Marketing Service
Copywriting Service
Translation Service
Website Design Service
Legal Service
Accounting Service
SEO Service
Project Management Consulting
PR Service
Tax Service
HR/Payroll Service
Video Editing Service

Ideas For Personal Services:

Career Consulting/Help (Resume editing / Interview Prep / Finding job)
Give Lessons (Music, Language, Arts, Sports)
Fashion Consulting
Relationship Consulting
Travel Planning
Tax & Financial Planning
SAT Prep
College Application Review

Generally, it is easier to sell to businesses because they are always looking for help to solve their business problems and they also have the willingness and the ability to pay for solutions.

What if you don’t think you have any sellable skills?

The good news is that you can always learn a NEW marketable skill.

If you are interested in picking up one of the in-demand skills, below are a number of useful courses that you can take and go through at your own pace.

Write to 1K (Recommended)
How To Start A Profitable Virtual Assistant Business From Scratch (Recommended)
Video Editing Course
Social Media Marketing Course

By the way, finding a profitable idea is just half the battle won.

You must be able to get paying clients for the services you are selling.

There are quite a few freelancing platforms that connect freelancers with potential clients:

Fiverr
Upwork
Freelancer.com
Coworks
Gun.io
Authentic Jobs
Envato.com (graphic design jobs, website design jobs, etc)
Problogger (writing jobs only)
Canadian Freelance Writing (writing jobs only)
All Freelance Writing Job Board (writing jobs only)
Contena (writing jobs only)
Textbroker (writing jobs only)
WriterAccess (writing jobs only)

Of course, you can also start your own website and market your services yourself through blogging, social media, and paid advertising.

Further Reading:
This Is The FASTEST Way To Make $1000 In 2020 (Hands Down)

How To Make Money Online From Home

3. Selling Advice Online

Selling advice is probably the best online business to start with if you have very little money to invest in your business or you want to start making money quickly.

When you are selling your advice, you just need to have a working email address or Skype account to get started.

Yes, you can get started quickly even without any website.

How does that work?

You can establish yourself as an expert in certain areas by either answering questions on Quora, giving value for free in relevant Facebook groups or write a guest article for an online publication that has your target audience.

For example, if you are very good at video editing, you can go to Quora and answer as many video editing-related questions as possible.

The more questions you answer, the more exposure you get and the more people you reach.

In your mind, you might be thinking that you are giving too much valuable advice away for FREE.

That’s where you need to have a change of mindset.

Give first before you take.

It works wonders in business and other aspects of your life as well.

When you give value for free, you gain trust and establish your expert status.

If they ever need to hire help in your area of expertise, you would probably be the first one they reach out to.

A website is a good to have because you can use your website to build an online presence and establish authority in your niche.

Let’s look at a few examples.

Above is the website of a well-known public-speaking coach Dr Genard.

On his website, you can find out a lot of information about him such as:

His public speaking methodology
His background and experience
His knowledge on this topic (based on the blog posts he has written on the website)
What services he provide
How to reach out to him

So, having a website definitely helps you build an online presence and reach your target clients.

In fact, you can get a proper website set up and running with less than $50.

With one less Starbucks coffee for 10 days, you could use the saved cash to start an online business helping other people solve their problems with your knowledge and expertise.

Domain Name & Web Hosting:

Here’s what I recommend.

Below is the web hosting plan that I am personally using:

Bluehost at $3.95/Month

Bluehost is the BEST web hosting for beginner bloggers for a few reasons:

FREE domain name
FREE SSL for your blog
99% server uptime (i.e. your blog is up 99% of the time)
Fast website load time

Register Your FREE Domain Name with BlueHost Now

Free WordPress Theme: 70+ Best Free WordPress Themes For Your Website

Email Marketing Software:

Getresponse: Free Trial For One Month

Further Reading:
How To Make Money Selling Advice Online: A Step-By-Step Guide (With Case Studies)

4. Blogging

Blogging is a proven method to make money online. If you are new to the online business world, blogging is actually a good starting point for you for a few reasons.

Reason #1: It’s easy and quick to get started. All you need is a domain name and web hosting. Even if you are not tech-savvy, you can set everything up with a few clicks.

Reason #2: You can build and grow your blog on the side without quitting your job. It’s extremely flexible. If you have other commitments, you just need to fit your blogging schedule around them.

Reason #3: There are many ways to earn money from your blog. Most of them are truly passive income such as affiliate earnings and advertising earnings.

There are quite a few bloggers who are making at least 5 to 6 figures every month.

So, what do you need to succeed in it?

Just two things:

Know how to get people to visit your blog (i.e. blog traffic)
Know how to turn blog traffic into money (i.e. blog monetization)

With traffic, money will follow.

One of the guaranteed ways to get passive income from your blog is to display advertising revenue.

There are, of course, other more profitable ways to monetize your blog.

So, is it difficult to get traffic to your blog?

It is not if you know how to do it the right way.

For my own blog, I started implementing a new strategy of driving traffic to my blog just 5 months ago.

The result?

Heres’ the best part…

I did all this without spending a single cent!

This is 100% free traffic from Google and any revenue generated is pure profit.

Further Reading:
How To Find Profitable Blogging Ideas (If You Are A Total Beginner)

5. Sell Online Courses

There are many advantages to creating and selling online courses.

First of all, It requires very little capital to get started.

Unlike selling physical products, you can keep your costs very low to create your online courses.

And you don’t need to worry about inventory and shipping.

Once your clients make the payment, they can access it instantly.

Now, here’s the best part.

You only have to do the work once – creating the course.

Then you can sell it over and over again and sell to as many people as you can.

So, it’s a very scalable business model.

But, there are also downsides that you need to be aware of.

It might take weeks, maybe even months, to put together a good online course.

Secondly, it’s just a one-time sale, so you always have to get new customers for your online courses each month.

The only way you can increase the lifetime value of your customers is to keep creating new courses to sell to your old customers.

Lastly, creating your online courses is only half the battle won.

You need to know how to market your online courses well.

If nobody sees your online course and nobody is convinced that your course can get the results they want, you won’t get any sales.

That’s also why many course creators are struggling to make sales for their online courses.

What do you need to succeed in it?

Create an online course that people actually want and are willing to pay for it ( i.e. market demand)
Marketing know-how (i.e. get eyeballs on your online course)
Conversion skills (i.e. converting them into paying customers)

Further Reading:
A Beginner’s Guide: How To Make Money Selling Online Courses

6. Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing means that you promote other people’s(or company’s) products/ services and earn a commission for each sale you make.

How it works is that you find an affiliate program that you want to join, then you apply to become an affiliate.

Once they have approved you as an affiliate, you will be given a personalized tracking link.

When people click this link to buy the product or service, they will know that this sale comes from you.

Typically, when you join an affiliate program, you will have an affiliate account set up and you can monitor all your sales and earnings from there.

Some popular affiliate programs include Amazon affiliate programs and ShareASale affiliate programs.

For each affiliate program, it has its own payout structure.

Some offer you a one-time fixed dollar amount payout while others give you a percentage of their sales as your commission.

So, how much can you make from affiliate marketing?

It all comes down to two factors:

How many people you can get to click your affiliate links to check out the product or service that you are promoting
What percentage of them you can actually convert into buyers

The income potential from affiliate marketing can be quite high if you follow the right strategy.

For example, Rosemarie of BusyBudgeter makes more than $20,000 every month just from affiliate marketing alone.

If you are just a beginner, I highly recommend that you start with affiliate marketing first because it’s the quickest way to make money from your blog.

Right now, more than half of my blog revenue comes from affiliate marketing.

The best part about affiliate marketing is that it’s completely passive.

So, you could be earning an affiliate commission even while you are sleeping or spending time with your family.

That’s also one of the reasons I chose affiliate marketing because it gives me a lot of flexibility to spend more time with my son.

Here’s an example of me promoting investment books on my website.

Basically, what I did was that I signed up to be an Amazon affiliate.

As an Amazon affiliate, I can promote any product that is being sold on Amazon using my unique affiliate link ( yes, that is how they know the sale is referred by you)

The investment books above are shown at the end of one of my investing blog posts because I felt that it was relevant and it might even be helpful to some readers who want to read more on the topic.

If my readers think that the book is good and decides to buy, then I will be paid a small commission by Amazon at no additional cost to him or her.

So, I highly recommend affiliate marketing to anyone who wants to start blogging for the first time.

But, to succeed in affiliate marketing, you need to learn how to get started the right way.

Here’s a FREE affiliate training that you can sign up to get yourself started.

7. E-commerce

When it comes to e-commerce, I think many of us are very familiar with it.

Personally, I buy a lot of things online, especially groceries, children’s toys and baby care products.

I have never sold physical products before, but I have friends and relatives who have done it and had success with it.

So, now let’s dive in and decode how thousands of e-commerce business owners are making money online.

If you want to sell physical products online, you either create your own or you can sell private label products.

Private label products are those manufactured by one company for sale under another company’s brand. Private-label goods are available in a wide range of industries from food to cosmetics. Simply put, a private label product has your brand name on it but is manufactured by someone else.
-STARTUPBROS

To sell your physical products, you can either sell it on platforms such as Amazon or Etsy, or you can start your own online store.

If you prefer to have your own online store, Sellfy is one of the best e-commerce platforms you can use to do that.

It’s very easy to use, and you can literally get your online store up and running in minutes.

The best thing about Sellfy is that it allows you to sell digital products, physical goods and subscriptions all from one place without any third-party app.

You can sign up for a free trial with Sellfy here (no credit card required) and start selling online right away.

So, how much can you really make selling products online?

One of my friends started an online store selling private label products – handphone case covers.

He sourced the products from China at a very low cost per unit. Then he spent some money running Facebook ads to promote his products.

In the first two months, he made 5 figures in pure profit.

BUT, other sellers started to bring in EXACTLY the same products and sell at a much cheaper price.

His sales suffered, and he was forced to find other products.

When you sell private label products, you don’t really have any competitive edge.

Your competitors can easily go into the same market and squeeze your profit margin.

But, if you can design and create your own unique products, then it’s entirely a different story.

You can compete with your competitors on so many levels such as branding, product quality, and customer service.

Further Reading:
How You Can Start A Profitable Online Store (In 12 Weeks Or Less)

Creative Ways To Make Money From Home

8. Service Arbitrage

A few years ago, both my husband and I lost our jobs unexpectedly (The company that we both worked for suddenly closed down).

So, we needed to make some money quickly to help pay the bills.

After some research, I found out that the fastest way to make money was to sell services.

But, there was one problem – no sell-able skills.

Then, an idea struck me.

Why not sell other people’s skills?

Then, I noticed that there are literally hundreds of thousands of talented freelancers selling their skills on freelance platforms such as Fiverr & Upwork.

And, a lot of them are always looking for more freelance work.

So, why not get clients for the service they offer and outsource the work to them?

And I call this business Service Arbitrage.

So here’s how it works.

First, you find in-demand services that freelancers are already offering at a super low price on freelancing websites.

Then, you market their services to businesses that need it. Once you get a sale, you hire the freelancers to deliver the work for you.

How you make money is that you quote a higher price to your clients than what your freelancers quote you and pocket the price difference as your profit.

This can be considered another variant of freelancing.

The only difference is that you are outsourcing the work to other freelancers instead of doing the work yourself.

9. Flipping Websites

You might have heard of flipping houses where people buy a house and renovate it and then resell it for a profit quickly.

Flipping websites is kind of similar to that.

The only difference is that websites are digital properties instead of physical properties.

To flip a website for profit, you also need to “renovate” it in terms of improving its traffic numbers and content.

Once you have managed to publish more high-quality content and grow your website traffic, you are able to command a higher price for your “property”.

Flippa is one of the most well-known website brokers for buying and selling websites:

For example, you will find many different types of content websites (e.g. blogs) up for sale.

These content websites are already getting traffic from Google and it is earning a stable advertising monthly revenue.

There might be other sources of revenue for these websites such as affiliate income, where they get paid a commission promoting other people’s products and services.

Let’s say the website is generating an average monthly passive income of $1,000.

That’s $12,000 a year in passive income.

Generally, potential buyers would be willing to pay 2 to 3 times the annual income of the website.

So, based on the website valuation formula, you could purchase the website for about $24,000 to $36,000.

By the way, these are not the most expensive websites for sale.

One of the bloggers I know sold his photography website for half a million after a few years.

If the website is making a lot of money, its valuation will reflect that.

Now, is it worth buying such a website?

Let’s look at some numbers and facts.

First of all, if the traffic stays the same, you will break even on your investment in about 2 years.

After that, you are earning a profit of $12,000 year after year.

So, you would likely double your investment in 4 years and triple your investment in 6 years.

What’s more, there is no limit to how much your website can earn because you can always improve the website to get more traffic and thus increase its revenue.

What this means is that you might be able to make back your investment much sooner and realize much more profits in the future.

Check out Flippa for the latest website listings for sale

Summary

All of the above are tried and tested ways to make money from home. Regardless of which one you use, you need to understand that to make a full-time living from home takes not only learning the right strategies but also putting in the hard work and time to implement the strategies.