6 Min. Read

Ways to Make Extra Money from Home: 5 Recommendations

March 28, 2019

There are ways to make extra money without leaving the comfort of your home. Here are our 5 recommendations:

Start a Blog And Monetize It
Start a Home Exercise Studio
Tutoring
Online Gaming
Become a Direct Seller

1. Start a Blog And Monetize It

This is number one on our list, and running a blog is easy to do from home (in fact, running it from home is the ideal scenario). We all know somebody who has started one. The key to a successful blog, of course, is monetizing it, so your blogging ultimately makes you some profit. It’s one thing to do a ‘hobbyist’ blog where you write about something you love just for the fun of it (like favourite recipes or fashion tips), it’s another to attract a lot of people so you can start to make money off advertising.

To start, you need to find a niche in the market that nobody is exploiting. Remember to think globally here – your readers can be anywhere in the world. What can you blog about, or do differently than what a lot of others are doing, that will attract attention?

Check out this health and wellness blog from Avocadu. It was started by Lauren and Alex, both who have a passion for exercising and eating right. They realized there was a hole in the market for proper information (not myths or rumors) about dieting and healthy eating, so they filled it. And now the blog has over 500,000 readers per month.

Once you have your blog, your goal is to then drive traffic to your site. You do this through proper SEO (or “Search Engine Optimization”). In fact, SEO is how you found this blog. If you don’t have any experience with SEO, you can get acquainted with it here with HubSpot’s free SEO starter pack. But there are plenty of other online resources too.

Now let’s say your blog explodes in popularity. Here are some ways you can make money on a blog:

Affiliate Programs. A link on your blog links through to an online retailer. A click-through that results in a sale earns you a commission.
Google AdSense or Other Website Advertising Programs. You allow text or displays ads (or both) from advertisers to be placed on your website. You decide exactly where these ads can appear. You get paid when the ads are seen (this is called “impressions”) or clicked on (called “pay-per-click”).

Running your own blog is something that can be profitable, and there’s no real high startup costs (depending on what you do, perhaps there’s no startup costs at all) but don’t count on dollars right out of the gate. Work on finding that niche and building your audience first.

2. Start a Home Exercise Studio

Do you have extra space at home, maybe a large rec room, or another area that doesn’t get much use? Maybe you can use it to get yourself in shape, both physically and financially?

You’ll want to specialize, which will help if you don’t have a tremendous amount of space. Maybe two or three times a week you are hosting a hot yoga class. Maybe it’s Pilates. Whatever it is, make sure it’s something you’re both good at doing, and can instruct others at.

You’ll want to market yourself but if your class size is small, word of mouth through friends may be enough, if not you can try posting on Facebook or Twitter. Lastly, if you’re going to run a business like this where clients are in your home, make sure you check out the legal requirements for your area and get some insurance too.

3. Tutoring

Everybody has special skills. Do you have one you can share? Can you teach? Maybe you can start a tutoring service. This one can be done from home easily enough, and can apply to a whole range of topics, including languages, math and music. It’s an easy way to make some money, and typically lessons are in short bursts of no more than an hour (even shorter if it’s for a child under 10). Often word of mouth is enough to get some tutoring work in your area, but you can try your contacts on social media too, to spread the word.

4. Online Gaming

If you have the skill, as a gamer you can make some serious coin. We are not talking poker playing or other online casino gambling, we’re talking about playing video games against other gamers who are also playing from their homes. You do this through an online gaming platform (all you need is your own gaming system, like an Xbox One or PlayStation, and a couch). WorldGaming, an online video gaming platform, has almost 3 million players and they’ve been the portal for 25 million matches since 2010. They offer free-to-enter tournaments as well as pay-to-enter.

Online gaming is so popular now it has an official name – “eSports”. Games are also live-streamed for audiences.

If you get really good, then you get invited to a tournament. It’s not uncommon to award prizes of $10,000 or $25,000. There are some gamers out there who have made this their full-time job.

We don’t recommend this unless you are at the top of your game.

5. Become a Direct Seller

Direct selling can be a profitable startup for you, and you can do a lot of the selling from your home, if not all of it.

Take The Pampered Chef, it was a business started by Doris Christopher in his basement in 1980. The company offers a full line of kitchen products and it has about 35,000 people selling for it in the United states, Canada and Germany. These sales people are called “consultants” and they can sell however they choose to – online, at group gatherings in their homes, or through teams that they can build themselves.

Some other companies that offer direct selling opportunities are:

These jobs are all commission-based, but if you’re a self-starter, then perhaps that’s no problem. If you find something you think you’ll be good at selling, you’ll want to talk to the company representative first to see what kind of support you have, and if there are any fees involved in becoming a direct seller.