Everyone could use some extra money. Side hustles are a great way to inject some cash flow into your bank account. However, the problem with lots of side hustles is the time and location commitment required.
Fortunately, there are ways to run a successful side hustle completely from home. This is a great option for people who have family commitments, locational commitments, or would just rather stay home.
I mean who doesn’t want to sit around in their pajamas all day and collect dollar bills?
I know I would. That’s why side hustles are a passion of mine.
If you’re looking to make some extra money while working from home, keep reading my list of top side hustles to start from home in 2024.
What Are The Best Side Hustles to Start From Home?
1. YouTube Content Creator
YouTube creator is a great business model that is viable for anyone with a smartphone and an internet connection. YouTube has been around for long enough now that there are many different styles of channels that can all make money.
The trick to making money with YouTube is to get viewers. Once you have viewers, you can monetize the channel with ads, affiliate links or sponsorships. You can teach people something, entertain or inspire them.
All you need to start is to point the camera at your face and record! If you have the gift for gab, some expert knowledge, or an entertaining talent, this side hustle could be the one for you.
2. Blogger
Blogging is another one of my top picks for home side hustles. All that is needed to get started is a computer and an internet connection. Bloggers can make mad money by posting articles on a website and driving traffic to them through search engines. Once the traffic is coming in, you can monetize it through affiliate offers, selling eCommerce products, advertising revenue, or generating leads for a service offering.
Blogging has changed a lot over the years. Now, you will need a few different skills to succeed:
- Writing
- Editing Websites (now easier than ever with user-friendly software)
- Communication and collaboration for link building
- SEO for driving traffic through search analysis
Blogging is more of a long game, it can take time to build up authority and get significant traffic from search engines. But once the money is flowing in, it can be relatively passive and with high earning potential. If you’re patient and don’t need the cash for at least 6 months, this side hustle may be for you.
3. Consultant
Expert knowledge is always in high demand. If you’ve been working in an industry that requires a certain amount of know-how, you should consider offering your time for a fee.
Consulting services can take many different forms, but generally, you will be offering analysis and recommendations. These deliverables should be packaged into a professional report that allows your clients to take action and get the results they want. The idea is to give them a highly concentrated dose of your knowledge in an understandable and actionable format.
Here are a few professional consultant roles that might suit you:
- Sales consultant
- Accounting Consultant
- Marketing Consultant
- Legal Consultant
- IT Consultant
The beautiful thing about this side hustle model is that it can now be run completely from home using conferencing technology, email, and uploading documents to the cloud.
4. Online Coach
Online coaching is a fast-growing trend right now. You can guide people through their pursuits all from the comfort of your home. If you have expertise in demanded areas such as health, wealth, or relationships, your help is highly valuable.
With the internet, much of the coaching that was previously done in person can now be done over the phone Start letting people know that you will coach them in a certain area for a fee, and set up a time to have a call. With a few success stories and raving reviews from clients, your online coaching business can really start to take off and bring in some decent income.
5. Social Media Influencer
If you’re a natural at posting on social media, influencing might be a great route for you. Social content producers can make big coin by building an engaged audience and then monetizing it with affiliate offers, sponsorships, or even selling their own products.
Instagram, Tik Tok or YouTube are great platforms for building a following. Here are a few common influencer niches:
- Travel
- Beauty
- Fashion
- Health and Fitness
- Lifestyle
- Parenting
- Business
- Music
- Photography
- Food
- Animals
If you have a passion or a talent in any of these areas, you know what to do: start a social media page and just start posting! Maybe you already have a page and post regularly about a certain topic – in that case, all you have to do is build your audience up and start monetizing it.
6. Marketplace Buying and Reselling
Marketplace buying and reselling really gets back to the roots of side hustles. The practice of buying an item and selling it again at a higher price is as old as commerce itself.
Nowadays, you can buy and sell at breakneck speed using the internet in the privacy of your own home. With a little time and effort, you can find great deals from sellers that might be trying to get rid of old stuff, clean up for a move, or just downsize their lives.
As the old saying goes, one mans junk is another man’s treasure. Take advantage of this golden age of commerce using the big-name internet marketplaces such as Facebook Marketplace, Kijiji, or Ebay.
7. Drop Shipping
Drop shipping involves finding products online, selling them, and then getting the supplier to ship it directly to the consumer. This is a great option for home side hustlers because it takes the logistics out of the picture.
Drop shipping usually involves setting up a website or ecommerce store where products are listed. Then you take out ads to drive traffic to the site. When a customer places an order, you simply provide your drop shipping partner with the customer’s shipping information and they take care of getting the product to them.
Drop shipping has a few moving parts but it’s a great option for a side hustle from home if you want to sell products without storing them in your garage or basement.
8. Etsy Store
Etsy is a popular online marketplace that specializes in handmade items, vintage goods and crafts. Many people have made good money selling their unique art and crafts on Etsy.
If you’re a crafty type, setting up an Etsy ship is a no brainer – its free! From there, you can list your handmade items for a small fee. Etsy takes a cut of any sales that you make but you can pad your margins pretty well by selling one-of-a-kind items and marketing them effectively.
9. Online Course Creator
Online courses can be a great way to make some money from home. If you have a skill or knowledge in an in demand area, an online course could be a scalable way to share your expertise for a fee.
Online courses can take the form of written material, prerecorded videos, or an online mentorship group with weekly meetings and group chats.
There’s some freedom in how you want to present the information. Online courses differ from consulting and coaching in the sense that you can induct multiple people into your course without any extra work per additional sign-up. This makes online courses highly lucrative if you can sell them well.
The course material can be hosted on online course platforms like Coursera, Skillshare, or Udemy.
10. Digital Marketing Agency
Starting your own digital marketing agency can be a great way to side hustle from home. Digital marketing activities like managing pay-per-click ads, generating social media content, or running email campaigns are in high demand across multiple industries.
If you’re brand new to digital marketing, you can get a crash course on advertising from Facebook Blueprint, Google Ads, or Hubspot Academy.
After learning the basics, start doing some free work for friends or small companies – you’ll need a track record to start landing clients. Once you have some successful campaigns under your belt, you can start charging for your services!
11. Designer
Design work can also be performed over the internet so it’s perfectly setup for work from home. Freelance designers can work for big and small companies, one-off jobs, or ongoing contracts. If you know your way around creative software like Adobe Suite, Blender, DaVinci Resolve or others, you can start charging for you services.
Get a portfolio of you work up online and start sending it out to generate interest and land your first gigs.
12. Writer
Until AI can write better than humans, writing will always be in high demand. Writers can work in many different industries writing for many different purposes and styles. For example, writers are needed for all kinds of digtial marketing practices – blogs, sales copy, email copy, landing pages and more.
Some industries need someone with both technical knowledge and the ability to communicate it effectively. To start writing from home, get some free work done to build your portfolio and start posting ads on job boards like Upwork or Problogger. You can get paid either on a per project or per word basis.
13. Virtual Assistant
Virtual assistants were made popular by Tim Ferriss in his book The 4-hour Workweek. As an organized and diligent person, you could be on the flip side of this arrangement and take care of someone else’s business completely from home.
Start looking for virtual assistant gigs on job boards and offer to do a trial period to get some experience doing odd jobs like sending emails, formatting text, or filling out forms. Once you have a good reference from a past client, you’ll be able to land more and more. Before you know it, you’ll have a functional virtual assistant business running on the side.
14. Transcribing
Transcribing involves listening to audio clips and writing down what is being said in the clip. The writing is then usually used to make written documents from the information being provided in the video. Transcribing is an easy way to make money from home if you have a good grasp of English and the time to listen to the audio recordings.
You can find transcribing work most easily by signing up to transcribing platform like TranscribeMe, QA World, or Rev. Most clients will likely go through these platforms to get their transcribing needs met so why not be the one they go to?
15. Voice Acting
Voice acting is the practice of making recordings for voice overs. Commercials, flims, television, radio, and audiobooks all use voice acting in them.
If you want to get into this kind of work, you’ll have to get your own recording equipment and act as your own audio engineer. It will be your responsibility to submit the high quality recording as a paid deliverable.
16. Freelance Service Provider
Freelancing is the most general way to work from home. Whatever you skill is, you can post online and work for clients from all over the world. Here’s a few great freelance jobs:
- Web or software developer
- Teacher
- Editor
- Financial Advisor
- Social Media Marketer
The great thing about freelancing is that you can tailor it to your specific skillset. The more you differentiate yourself in the marketplace, the more interest you will get from potential clients. The best way to get started freelancing is to start a profile on a popular outsourcing platform.
17. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a diverse and growing field. It’s the practice of using your reach and communication skills to generate leads and influence sales of other people’s products.
One of the most common ways that affiliate marketers make money is by posting affiliate links on their blog or Youtube channel. Brands will pay you for every click-through that’s made on your site, leads to their site, and results in a conversion.
Some of the biggest brands in the world such as Walmart and Amazon have affiliate marketing programs . You can often sign up for free and start posting affiliate links right away. So if you have the ability to build an online audience, affiliate marketing is a no-brainer for side hustle revenue.
18. Photographer
Photography is a perfect side hustle from home for the creative types. With a high-quality camera, some editing software, and a little practice you can start taking pictures of all sorts of stuff – scenery, product layouts, couples sessions, or family portraits.
Like lots of side-hustles, you don’t need to be fancy when you’re starting out – a DSLR camera, a computer, and editing software like Adobe Lightroom are enough to start posting your work. Visual platforms such as Instagram are great for getting some exposure. After a while, you can start investing in lighting, backdrops, lenses, color grading software and all the advanced tools that professionals use. The trick is to just get started!
19. List Your House for Rentals
Since we’re talking about “home” side hustles, listing your home should definitely be included on this list. Property owners can make some real bank by renting out their villas for various functions.
You could rent your house out for a short or long-term period – maybe you’re looking at renting for a couple of years or just a couple of weeks as a vacation spot.
To start renting, you’ll have to get a listing put up, drive traffic to the listing, and probably do showings to interested renters.
Luckily, now nowadays, many property management functions can be outsourced to platforms like Zillow or Airbnb. You’ll still have to do the book-work to make sure you charge the right amount and, at the end of the day, make sure your rental side hustle is profitable.
20. Scooter Charging
Scooter charging is picking up as a viable way to make cash from home. Electric scooter companies like Lime and Bird are becoming very popular in some major cities. If you live in one of these cities, scooter charging may be for you – all you need to get started is the scooter chargers.
The big e-scooter companies rely on people to go out, collect scooters that are low on batteries, and charge them up. Your mission, should you choose it, is to find low-charge scooters on your phone app, pick them up, charge them, and drop them off at a designated area.
This side hustle is most profitable if you can batch your scooter charging operation. Focus on a central area, pick up multiple scooters, and charge around your work schedule for best results.
21. Online Surveying
Companies are always looking for ways to gather consumer data. One of the ways they gather info is to put surveys out and pay people to fill them out.
You can collect on these bounties by simply filling out the surveys online!
To get started, signup for one of the many survey sites out there. These sites aggregate surveys from various sources and serve them to qualified survey takers. You’ll have to create an account with various demographic information to see which survey’s you qualify for.
Once you find out which surveys you’re eligible for, you can start filling them out from home and start getting paid.
22. Teach English
English is still the main language for international business. Therefore, your services as a native English speaker are in high demand.
Now, with the internet, you don’t have to be in a specific physical location to teach English. You can do it over video conference from home.
You can find some great Enlgish teaching jobs on online job boards such as Skooli, Vipkid, Okids, or Gogokid. Some of these platforms require bachelor degrees and teaching licences while some do not.
23. Amazon FBA Seller
Selling products on Amazon can be easy and done completely from home. FBA stands for “Fulfillment By Amazon” which means that Amazon will take care of the warehousing, packaging, labeling and shipping of your products. They even take care of customer service and returns!
Amazon FBA is a very convenient option for home side hustlers because you likely won’t have the infrastructure to do the heavy lifting of sales fulfillment. Amazon has warehouses and fulfillment centers all over the world – they can store and ship your products for much cheaper and take the headache off of your plate. All you have to focus on is selling.
If you have a great product, you can start a personal sellers account on Amazon today that only charges you per item – this allows you to make a product listing and start driving traffic to it. A monthly subscription will get you fulfillment services for bulk product sales.
24. Website Flipping
Website flipping is the practice of buying websites, making some tweaks to increase the value, and then selling them again for a profit. This side hustle is a great option for content marketers and web designers that have some experience working on websites.
Content websites are often evaluated on recurring monthly traffic. This means that a website has to get consistent traffic for several months before buyers will find it valuable. If you can take an inconsistent or promising website from good to great, you can often make a pretty penny in just a few months’ time.
25. Podcasting
A podcast is simply a recurring show that is published in audio and/or video format. Podcasting is like any other content-centric business – consistent content published to an engaged audience can be monetized for cash.
Video podcasts tend to do very well but audio-only podcasts can also bring in some listeners. All you really need to get started is a microphone and audio recording software like Audacity to get started.
Talk about something you’re interested in, get guests on your show, and offer value to your audience by teaching, entertaining, or inspiring them.
Podcasts are served on several major platforms such as Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Luckily, there are many podcast hosting platforms such as Castos that can distribute your episodes to all the major platforms for a fee.
26. Dog Walking & Pet Sitting
If you’re an experienced animal lover, dog walking and pet sitting might be a great home side hustle option.
Many pet owners have busy lives and often need someone to take care of their pets when they don’t have time. This is a golden opportunity for you to take some pet care off of their plates and walk their dogs around the neighborhood.
To get started, many professional dog walkers suggest getting insurance in case anything goes wrong. Many dog walkers also suggest setting a neighborhood or area to operate in – ideally something close to home to save time and travel.
Once you have a game plan for where and when you’ll be dog walking, get some clients by handing out business cards and flyers! Once you get some satisfied customers, word of mouth can do wonders to get a solid base of dog-walking and pet-sitting clients.
27. Streamer
Many online content platforms have live streaming capabilities. This content production medium makes it possible to point a camera at your face and make some cash.
The most common ways for streamers to make money are:
- Donations
- Subscriptions
- Ads
- Sponsorships
- Affiliate marketing
- Selling own products and merch
Like other content production side hustles on this list, streaming takes consistent work to build an audience and then monetize it. Luckily, this is work that can be done at home in your spare time.
Streaming is unique because it’s not only a great way to produce valuable content, but you can also interact with your audience. Youtube, Facebook, Twitch, and others all have growing streaming communities so the first step is to pick one and start putting up videos.
Final Thoughts
Side hustling from home is the ideal setup to acquire some financial leverage with the added benefit of convenience.
While there are many different ways to make money from home, the key is to pick something you can do and stick with it.
Hopefully, this article has stimulated your thinking juices so you can pick a great side hustle for your unique home situation. There are literally thousands of people that make good coin on the side these days with a simple yet effective business model.
Why not become one of these people?
As the old saying goes, the best time and place to start is right here and right now.
