12 Highest Paying Work-from-Home Jobs
If you’ve ever googled “How to make money from home” or “How to make money online,” you’ve almost certainly been met with a slew of ideas mostly centered around doing tiny, pointless tasks such as Swagbucks, taking surveys, or testing websites.
However, not only are these “jobs” mind-numbingly boring, they also only pay pennies. Seriously, you could take surveys all. day. long. and you wouldn’t even make minimum wage. I don’t know about you, but that isn’t exactly the lifestyle I’m striving for.
After seeing so many lists of “jobs” like these, you might start to wonder if it’s really possible to actually make a living online. (Not just “make money,” but actually make plenty of money to happily quit your day job.)
Well, I’m happy to tell you that the answer is definitely YES.
I myself make my living online, and I personally know many other people who do as well.
How to Actually Make a Living Online
The following list isn’t comprised of theoretical ideas. These are actual ways that people who I personally know make good money working for themselves.
Whether you want to travel the world working from your laptop, or you just want a little more flexibility so that you can stay home with your kids, these jobs can provide you with plenty of income and options to make your dreams a reality.
Social Media Manager
These days, most businesses are all about marketing themselves on social media. Attracting customers from Facebook, Instagram, and even Snapchat is appealing because it’s powerful and “free,” at least compared to other types of advertising.
However, while social media may be “free,” it is very time-consuming. Multiple times per day, every day, posts have to be published on a variety of platforms. Those posts have to be written, graphics need to be put together, and comments need to be moderated.
Especially for small businesses, these little tasks can really add up to eat away valuable time. Because of this, many small businesses hire individuals to manage their social media.
Social media managers generally get paid $15 – $35 per hour. Some charge by the hour, but many charge a fixed monthly amount (such as $375 per month, per platform). Charging a fixed amount is great because it means that you can increase your “hourly wage” if you figure out ways to work faster.
Here’s how to become a social media manager:
Learn about social media marketing.
Create a simple website to advertise your services.
Create profiles on freelance sites such as Upwork.
Create content (blog posts, videos, etc.) to demonstrate that you know what you’re doing.
Network with entrepreneurs to find clients.
(For a detailed, step-by-step plan to start a social media management business, or really any type of online business, click here to download my free Online Business Quickstart Guide.)
Virtual Assistant
Social media isn’t the only thing that online entrepreneurs need help with! Most people who own businesses have many small, routine tasks that they need to outsource so that they can focus on lifting the heavy weights in their business.
Virtual assistants can make good money helping out these business owners by performing tasks such as: formatting blog posts, making simple website updates, sorting email inboxes, scheduling appointments, researching, and posting to social media.
Virtual assistants generally make $10 – $30 per hour. If English is your first language, then you’ll be able to command a higher price and experience less competition.
Here’s how to become a virtual assistant:
Become proficient in 2 – 3 common virtual assistant tasks.
Create a simple website to advertise your services.
Create profiles on freelance sites such as Upwork.
Create content (blog posts, videos, etc.) to demonstrate that you know what you’re doing.
Network with entrepreneurs to find clients.
Web Designer
Every business needs a website, and you could help them out! Web design is a valuable skill that you can learn and then market to create a significant amount of income.
There are several different ways learn how to design and develop websites. You could go to college (online or off), attend a vocational training school (there are many 3 – 12 month coding and web design academies), participate in a self-paced course, or teach yourself with books and free tutorials.
Just remember, businesses care a lot more about the results you can give them than they care about how you learned web design.
Web designers typically earn $1,200 – $8,000 per website, which can take anywhere from 3 days to 2 months to complete.
To become a web designer:
Decide how you’ll learn web design.
Complete education.
Create a website to advertise your services.
Join networking groups (online or off).
Network to find clients.
Advertise to find clients.
Graphic Designer
Even with just basic artistic skills and familiarity in one design program (InDesign, Illustrator, etc.) you can start your career as a graphic designer. Over time, you can continue to improve your skills and add more services to your repertoire.
We live in a highly visual culture, and every business needs many, many graphics for branding, advertising, customer education and more. As a graphic designer, you can help fill this market and make the world a more beautiful place.
If you’re interested in becoming a graphic designer, you’ll discover that there is a myriad of resources available to help you learn the skills you need to get started! Once you’ve learned the technical how-to, you can get practice under your belt by doing pro-bono work for local charities. Eventually, your skills will be honed enough that you’ll feel confident charging clients.
Graphic designers’ wages vary greatly, but as a proficient designer, you could earn anywhere between $25 and $100 per hour.
How to become a graphic designer? Just follow these steps:
Learn about graphic design.
Practice your design skills extensively.
Create a portfolio website.
Network to find clients.
Advertise to find clients.
Amazon Flex Driver
Perhaps not technically a “work from home” job, becoming a driver for Amazon Flex is still a great, profitable gig that you can do anywhere and on your own time.
Amazon Flex drivers deliver packages for Amazon’s instant and one-day ordering services. Flex drivers pick up packages from Amazon distribution centers and deliver them to customers at their homes or offices.
Amazon pays their drivers pretty well! $18 – $25 per hour is their standard starting wage.
To get started as an Amazon Flex driver, just download the app and then complete an application. Once you’re accepted, you’ll be able to choose routes and sign up for shifts each day.
How to become an Amazon Flex driver:
Download Amazon Flex app.
Complete application.
If accepted as a driver, begin selecting routes and shifts.
Make deliveries and get paid.
Uber/Lyft Driver
Similar to Amazon Flex, becoming a driver for Uber and Lyft is a flexible, location independent job that can earn you a living.
In recent years, “ride sharing” has overtaken the taxi industry, with Uber and Lyft now more common than the industry standard yellow taxies.
Drivers are able to set their own hours and can start and stop working whenever they like. Most full-time drivers earn $650 – $750 per week.
Of course, to be a driver you have to have a relatively new car in good condition, and your driving record must be fairly clean, with no major infractions.
Event Planner
As an event planner, you can coordinate all of the details for weddings, conferences, trade shows, parties, and more. Most event planners specialize primarily in one type of event.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics, event planners make an average of $26,000 to $79,000 per year.
As an event planner, you might have to do some local work, but most of your tasks can be done from home. You can also plan events anywhere you like! No need to stay stuck in one location.
Here’s how to become an event planner:
Get experience by volunteering to work for an event planner.
Gain further experience by planning progressively larger events for family, friends, and charities.
Create a portfolio website.
Network to find clients.
Advertise to find clients.
Expert
Have you ever heard someone talk about “getting paid to do what you love”? Sound too good to be true?
Well, the fact is that it doesn’t matter how much you “love” something, nobody is going to pay you for that. However, IF you love something, then you probably devote a lot of time to learning about it — and people will likely be willing to pay for your knowledge and expertise on the topic!
Being an “expert” on just about anything can get you: speaking gigs, writing contracts, or consulting clients. As an expert, you can either teach what you know, or you can use your expertise to provide services.
For example, I’m an expert in marketing and online business strategy, so people pay me to:
Develop strategic marketing campaigns to grow their businesses.
Coach them on how to market their business more effectively.
Write about marketing.
Speak about social media marketing strategy.
Advise them on how to market their books and services.
Becoming an expert is a lot easier than you might think! Here’s what to do:
Choose a specific topic, research, and learn as much as you can.
Create a website about that topic.
Publish helpful, authoritative, or explanatory content on your site.
Join HARO (Help a Reporter Out) and start pitching news outlets with your expertise.
Write a book about your topic (See: How to write a book in one month).
Create a services page on your website so people know how they can hire you.
Pitch podcasts and blogs to contribute (this will get you free exposure).
Network in industry specific groups.
Learn more about how to position yourself as an expert with my free guide Establishing Credibility from Scratch.
Author/Writer
“Do authors actually make money?”
As an author, I get this question a lot! The short answer is “yes, definitely.”
Personally, I make money as a writer in two main ways: royalties from my book (Sorted: Freedom through Structure) and freelance writing gigs.
I make about $5 per book sale and about $30/hour for freelance writing.
I self-published my book (for a number of reasons), and that’s what I recommend most people do. Why? Well, there are two primary benefits: 1) my book actually got published (always a plus, ya know?) 2) I actually get paid (also useful, if you want to be a professional writer).
Here’s how to self-publish your own book and start your career as a professional writer:
Choose your topic and outline your book.
Do market research to confirm that there’s an interest in your topic.
Write the book.
Network to make connections of people who will help you promote your book.
Edit, edit, edit, edit, format.
Form a launch team (a group of people who will help promote your book).
Launch your book with a bang! Get as much exposure as possible.
(For more information on how to have a successful book launch, check out this article: Book Launch: 10,000 Downloads in the First 3 Days (with No Audience).)
If you’re interested in learning how to successfully (and profitably) publish your first book, I’d love to chat with you about how I can help! You can schedule a FREE discovery call by clicking here.
Course Creator
Along similar lines to being an expert or a writer, creating courses is another great opportunity to earn an income online, from home.
Online courses are an increasingly popular trend across all industries. Students purchase these courses, which are generally a combination of videos and written instructive material, in order to learn new skills, such as photography, computer science, or cooking, or to achieve specific results, such as losing weight, writing their first book, or starting a business.
These online courses (also known as “e-courses”) are often self-paced, with pre-recorded video lessons. However, they also are sometimes offered as live, scheduled sessions to help keep students more focused and motivated.
How much does a course creator make? Really, there is no norm in this market. Courses sell for anywhere between $10 and $5000, with $50 – $2000 being well within the “normal” range. Course sales depend entirely on marketing, and how well the course creator is able to generate exposure for their product.
Here’s how to make money with courses:
Develop an idea for your course.
Do extensive market research to discover if there is a real demand for your product.
Outline your course.
Create a website & sales page for your course.
Soft-launch your course to your connections.
Run your course live as a beta test.
Tweak based on what you learned with your beta group.
Plan and execute your marketing campaign.
Enroll students in your course.
Facebook Ads Manager
If marketing is your thing, and you love analytics, then perhaps you should consider become a Facebook ads manager!
Ad managers help their clients create and run successful advertising campaigns by writing ads, deploying them to targeted audiences, tracking how ads are performing, and adjusting to get better results.
Ad managers charge anywhere from $200 – $1500 to initially set up ad campaigns, and then charge an ongoing fee of $200 – $1200 per month to manage the ads. (Of course, more extensive campaigns might cost even more.)
A skilled Facebook ads manager who is working full time can easily earn an income of $10,000 – $25,000 per month, possibly more.
How to become a Facebook Ads Manager:
Learn about FB ads by watching tutorials and reading articles.
Offer to run test ads for free for your business connections. Charge per lead, so that you won’t be wasting your customers’ money while you figure out what you’re doing.
Start SMALL. FB ads are all about learning by testing. Start with a small budget so you have little to lose.
Test, test, test. Track your metrics so you’ll be able to figure out what is working.
Form relationships with related professionals, such as copywriters, web designers, and marketers in other fields.
Run FB ad campaigns to promote your services.
Editor
Good at English, but don’t feel like writing a whole book? Or maybe you write a lot, but you just want to earn more money? Becoming an editor might be a great option for you!
With self-publishing becoming increasingly popular, the need for good editors is on a constant rise. So, if you are very detail oriented, precise, and good with language, then you are quite needed! Don’t keep those skills to yourself.
Editors generally charge by the word, with $0.01 – $0.04 being the common range. This means how much you make all depends on how quickly you can work.
On average, a good, careful, relatively fast editor can easily earn $3,000 – $6,500 per month. The best part is — there’s definitely NO shortage of work and not as much competition as there is in some fields.
How to become a professional, freelance editor:
Study English language, grammar, and composition extensively.
Complete test editing assignments (“Editor-in-Chief” is a children’s school book series that is excellent for this.)
Create a profile on freelance sites, such as Upwork.
Network, especially with entrepreneurs and content creators, to connect with potential clients
Copywriter
“Copy” is text used to sell and market. Every single product, ever, needs to have copy written for it. Sometimes copy is simply descriptive, but generally it tries to be persuasive.
Good copywriters are in constant demand because every business wants their copy to be as persuasive as possible. The better copy you can write, the higher a price you can command.
Copywriters commonly charge anywhere from $100 – $1000 per ad, but generally give individual quotes for projects. A full-time copywriter can generally earn $3000 – $5000 per month.
Here’s how to become a copywriter:
Write, write, write. Take writing classes if you haven’t already.
Study writing and ad copy everywhere you go.
Learn about advertising, marketing, and the psychology of sales.
Offer to write for charities and for some trial clients and have them pay whatever they feel your services are worth.
Once you’re confident in your ability, set up your website to sell your services.
Promote your services by networking.
Form relationships with others in the marketing industry to get referrals.
How to become location independent
Some of us desire to travel the world, others just want a little more freedom and flexibility. Whatever your reasons for desiring to work from home are, I hope that these ideas gave you inspiration!
Just please, please do NOT fill out surveys or spend hours trying to earn points with Swagbucks. Really — you can do so much better than that!
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