Introduction
Ways of making money from home have gained significant popularity in recent years, and with the mass rollout of AI, the opportunities to pounce on new ideas and scale rapidly are at your fingertips.
As digital transformation has continued to evolve the way we work and collaborate, avenues to new revenue streams have opened up for anyone with a laptop. No longer, do the major corporations have all the fun.
I love this new dynamic, whereby anyone with a creative idea, or a sense of entrepreneurship can have a go at starting their business in a few steps.
If youâre looking to create a bit of extra cash, or quit your job and make money from home full-time, it’s never too early to start.
Hereâs my top 9 ways to make money from home in 2024.
Blogging
Where else would I start!? The question I get asked the most is âdo people read blogs anymore?â Which is probably the wrong question. Ultimately, even with the advent of Google SGE (AI answers in search), the majority of your blog traffic, and therefore income, will be coming from SEO. So the question as to whether blogging is worthwhile in 2024, is âdo people use Google in 2024?â
If you are passionate about a topic, enjoy writing and are willing to learn about SEO and social media marketing, then blogging can be a highly rewarding way to make money from home. Treat your blog like a business, commit long-term, and by the time you have over 100 blogs you can be making some great income. Check out the latest numbers for blogging stats in 2024.
Pros
Cons
How to Monetize
The top ways to monetize a blog are through affiliate links, sponsored posts and ads.
Resources: Adam Enfroy | Matt Diggity | Proactive Blogging
Difficulty: 8/10
YouTube channel
Got a camera? Ok letâs go! Creating a Youtube channel is very easy from a set-up standpoint. If youâre passionate about a topic, naturally charismatic, funny, entertaining or love to impart knowledge, YouTube could be a great fit.
The competition is fierce and the best approach to learning YouTube, in my opinion, is to take a leaf out of the SpaceX playbook: đ
This involves building a prototype quickly, testing it, analyzing the results, and using the learned data to improve subsequent designs. The cycle of build-test-analyze-improve is repeated numerous times, allowing for accelerated development and real-world testing of design hypotheses.
Elon Musk – Iterative Design Methodology
Most people are novices on YouTube, especially when they start out. You could spend months planning the perfect YouTube video, but in my experience itâs best to jump in, learn and iterate. Youâll move faster as the learning curve is so steep with this one.
This is especially true if you intend to edit the videos yourself and create thumbnails. This can be done on software like Canva for images and Adobe Premiere/DaVinci Resolve for video editing. You can also outsource video editing at a lower rate by hiring someone on platforms like Fiverr or Upwork.
How to monetize
Youâll need to hit 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours over 12 months to monetize your channel. To earn faster, you can add affiliate links to any videos where you talk about products or services.
Pros
Cons
Resources: Canva | Adobe Premiere | DaVinci Resolve | Upwork | Fiverr
Difficulty: 6/10
Selling Your Images (Print on Demand)
Print on demand (POD) enables you to sell your imagery on custom designed products without the need to hold inventory. Products are only created once an order is generated.
You can create designs that go on t-shirts, mugs, posters, phone cases etc in the form of artwork, graphics or text. These designs can be your own, or, if youâre not a designer or photography wizz, you can use AI generation tools such as DALL-E to make them for you.
How to Monetize
Upload your artwork to Printful and connect to your store on Etsy, watch this video explainer I tried selling AI prints on Etsy, to find out how. Then watch the sales roll in!
Pros
Cons
Resources: Printful | Adobe Photoshop | DALL-E | Canva | Etsy
Difficulty: 4/10
Freelance Writing
With the rise of people wanting to make money working from home, the demand for more and more well written content to describe offerings, promote products, convey value propositions, optimise for SEO and fill websites is through the roof.
Writing engaging content is not everyoneâs bag; so demand is high for good writers. Not everyone is confident in writing English too, giving even more opportunities to those wordsmiths who can pen some compelling copy.
Gigs on Fiverr and Upwork are everywhere. The rise of AI written content might seem like a barrier, but itâs currently so far off well structured human writing, that the demand will further increase once anyone seeking quality realises AI generated writing doesnât really cut it.
AI can be leveraged to help with the ideation process and speed up research, though.
If you can, it will stand you in better stead long-term to focus on a niche or industry and build a portfolio of work with reviews to help compel buyers to collaborate with you, drive repeat business and increase your rates.
How to Monetize
Gigs on Fiverr/Upwork. Apply for work at an agency, build a portfolio and list your services.
Pros
Cons
Resources: Grammarly | Fiverr | Upwork
Difficulty: 6/10
Online Tutoring
If you have a strong level of expertise in a given field, online tutoring not only gives you the chance to make money from home, but it can also be highly rewarding. From academia, test prep, coding, music, languages all the way through to health and fitness; the opportunity areas to teach others are highly varied.
Once you have a field, you can get set-up on a tutoring platform like Wyzant or Outschool to offer your services and promote yourself, your expertise and your qualifications.
How to Monetize
Set your rates based upon your level of experience to make sure you either get work as a beginner, or show your value if youâre already a teacher, for example.
Pros
Cons
Resources: Wyzant | Outschool.com
Difficulty: 5/10
Ecommerce
Selling products online whilst creating your own brand is still one of the best and most profitable ways to make money from home in 2024. Dropshipping is very saturated, but custom made products that offer a unique, individual touch can still do very well.
From neon signs, candles, to personalised cookies, Iâve seen it all on Etsy. Most successful buyers seem to offer quite niche products that cater to individualism, so that could be a good starting point.
After deciding on your products, list them on a marketplace like Etsy, or create your own website and brand with Shopify. To market your products, leverage content, email, SEO and social media to drive sales.
How to monetize
Payment tools like Stripe and PayPal can be integrated, and shipping providers like Shipstation can seamlessly integrate with your store to provide shipping and logistics to your customers.
Pros
Cons
Resources: Shopify | Etsy | Shipstation | Stripe | PayPal
Difficulty: 8/10
Affiliate Marketing (No Website)
You donât need a website nowadays to run affiliate marketing. Promoting links to brand’s websites to sell their product and services can now be run in a very simple way.
Once you have a foundational social media following (1000 Instagram followers/YouTube subscribers etc), you can begin to monetize the products you refer to in your posts/videos. This can be done across any platform, social media, email, podcasts etc.
How to Monetize
Apply to affiliate networks like Awin, Impact, Svorn, Skimlinks and once youâre accepted you can create tracked links to the product/service pages of the brands you promote. Then once your followers start clicking on the links and buying, based upon your recommendations, the money starts coming in.
As you build your followings further you can seek exclusive deals with brands and promote personalised discount codes to increase your average sale commission and boost conversion rates respectively.
Pros
Cons
Resources: Awin | Impact | Svorn | Skimlinks | Adam Enfroy
Difficulty: 3/10
Web Development
A fair amount of ways to make money from home require individuals to create their own websites. This can be a daunting task for many and they can be willing to pay a decent penny to freelancers who know how to get them up and running.
If you know what youâre doing already in this space, Fiverr and Upwork are good platforms to find work.
If youâre looking to upskill, Codecademy is a great starting place. If you want a free option, Iâve used W3Schools for as long as I can remember. Remember, you donât have to be an expert coder to build websites in 2024. WordPress takes some learning and youâll need to know how to register a domain and set up hosting, but itâs not the rocket science some might believe it to be.
How to Monetize
Longer-term, repeat business can work wonders in this space, further development work from setup and bespoke landing page builds can help bolster your portfolio. Working to a retainer is also an option here.
Pros
Cons
Resources: Codeacademy | W3Schools | WordPress | Fiverr | Upwork
Difficulty: 7/10
Virtual Fitness
This space boomed during the pandemic and has flourished ever since. With the cost of living causing a tightening of household budgets, gym memberships can often be the first to go, causing people to look elsewhere for their fitness needs.
With the increase in remote work, the demand in this space has further increased as people look to get their stretching/cardio/weights in at home.
Youâll need qualifications in the discipline youâd like to teach.
How to Monetize
Form there you have a few options. You can create YouTube videos and monetize through premium memberships and ads, you could create your own website and subscription model, or promote yourself through social media and run classes from your own home on Zoom or dedicated fitness programs like Peloton, FitOn, or Trainerize. Or you could do all three!
Pros
Cons
Resources: Zoom | FitOn | Trainersize
Difficulty: 7/10
Conclusion
Whatever method you choose, itâs important to make sure you go for something youâre passionate about and undertake research before you commit to getting into a field.
There’s tonnes of content online, especially on YouTube, with people stating ‘I made 10 grand in a week dropshipping‘ etc. These figures and timeframes tend to be a huge understatement. The reality is, as with most things in life, you have to put in some upfront graft to start seeing results.
Make sure itâs something you can really commit to so that you can, not only make the most out of your time investment long-term, but have fun in the process.
James Waite
Founder of Remoteopia, James has worked in remote roles for 6 years. After a stint in recruitment, he now works as a director of website strategy in tech.
