The need for making money while staying at home is one thing that probably unites most of us right now, and my goal is to help you do exactly that: Make money while staying at home.
(That being said, huge KUDOS and RESPECT to those people who are currently out there in order to perform the necessary work that enables US to stay at home and #flattenthecurve!!)
Anyway, I feel like I need to apologize – I had been planning to continue this blog post series a lot sooner. And then “life happened”, so to speak, and I started to overthink how to best continue this article and provide the best value and feel I did not get it right, especially under these particular circumstances… and so nothing got published, obviously.
Making money from home – an ultimate guide????
The truth is, I will hardly be able to provide an all-encompassing, fits-all, go-to, ultimate resource that is guaranteed to help you making money while sheltering-in-place (or staying at home) in general. All I can do right now is to provide a few tips based on my personal experience and expertise as a writer, life and business coach, and freelancer-who-knows-the-hustle…
Links for finding freelance work and/or other work-from-home options
You gotta start somewhere, right? There are all sorts of paid training/courses/ certifications out there – yes, my own training, coaching, and consulting services included, but…
Freelancer Marketplace(s)
…here is a list of links to websites that allow you to get started quickly, offer your own services as a virtual assistant/freelancer, and connect with potential customers.
(Affiliate disclosure: The links with a star* belong to my affiliate partners. This means that if you make a purchase, download, sign-up via this link I might get a small commission from that company. This does not cost you anything more than when you use the general URLs to make those purchases, but it does help me to provide blog content like this free of charge :))
There are many more like these, of course, but I wanted to concentrate on those with whom I at least have some sort of prior experience.
General virtual jobs and home-based employment
“Rat Race Rebellion” is an additional website to check regularly if you are looking for online employment, telecommute work, or the occasional side gig that you can do from home. It is not a market place like the ones listed above but basically works like a job board.
Speaking of “job boards”: Don’t forget the classic job boards like:
Use search words like “remote” (not to be confused with the town of the same name!), “home-based“, “home office“, “telecommute“, “virtual“, and you might be surprised how much regular employment beyond the typical gig economy is offered that can be performed while staying at home!
Get active on Social Media
Depending on your social media presence, pages like
- Facebook and
can be great resources to find online work. You can do this by regular networking activities in interest-based groups, but there are of course a lot of industry-based groups including job boards for virtual assistants, freelance writers, coaches and teachers, graphic designers, SEO specialists, etc.
I have also just come across this great article about lead generation on LinkedIn, you can find it here.
Work for freelance writers
If you are a freelance writer (or want to become one), there is a lot of information out there as well. In fact, I have developed a whole program to get your writing career started.
I plan on writing more on that subject at a later point, but one thing you can do in the meantime to gain some insight into the industry is to check out a few of these writing-related newsletters!
A few words about “Simbi”
If you are interested in trading and bartering options, you might already be familiar with Simbi.com*.
Simbi is a platform to do exactly that: trading and bartering services (and, occasionally, goods, though that is clearly not their focus). There is no exchange of cash involved, but they do have their own currency (yes, it’s called “Simbi”), which you can use to “pay” for services (or goods) exclusively on the Simbi platform.
Keep in mind, you cannot buy this currency or use it for anything outside Simbi. You can earn it by performing services for others, and also by “completing actions that improve the experience of the entire community”, such as verifying your profile, posting your first service offer. share your service on Facebook etc. In fact, you earn your first 25 Simbi tokens by simply signing up!
“And why should I sign up there?”
A good question! After all, we’ve just established that there is no money involved here, right?? So why would you be interested in bartering if your goal is making money from home? Well…
- It’s a great try-out place for offering services, especially if you lack experience.
- You can network with other freelancers.
- Perhaps the most important for you: You might need other people’s services in order to get your own business going! Unless you know how to do everything yourself of course – and seriously, who does?! So if you don’t want to invest your money for such services, finding them here might be a way around that!
susa(nne) wagner 