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If you have decided not to drive during the COVID-19 shutdown, money might be hard to come by. Being shut in at home might not be a bad thing though. This is the perfect opportunity to start a new career, build new skills, monetize a skill you already have, or take on some part-time work-from-home jobs. Finding work doesn’t have to be hard as long as you know your talents and trust yourself.
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Legitimate Work From Home Jobs
If you are just looking for another way to make money, there are plenty of options available to you in a variety of different fields. Many of these online jobs are hiring now, don’t require a college degree, and are easy to get started in right away.
Be a Virtual Assistant
You can work from home by working for others. Plenty of people need a part-time assistant. You could help organize their calendar, process paperwork, create reports, respond to customer inquiries, create spreadsheets and more. The types of tasks depend on who you’re working for and what your skill set includes.
Where to find work:
Pay: $15-$75/hour depending on your qualifications
Do Data Entry
Large companies are always outsourcing tedious jobs such as data entry. This work normally consists of entering numbers, words, or characters into a spreadsheet or database so that files can be digitized. Data may also come from audio or written documents too, so transcribing can be a lucrative job in this area as well. Most data entry jobs are online, so it’s easy to work at home.
Where to find work:
Pay: $10-$15/ hour depending on typing speed
Take Customer Service Calls
Customer service is no longer confined to call centers. Many customer service representatives work from home. Transitioning from driving rideshare to taking calls isn’t as difficult as you’d think. Both help people get through their daily lives, get things done, and act as a guide from one point to the next. A great place to start is to search “work from home customer service representative” or “call center specialist” to get the best results.
Where to find work:
Pay: $12-$18/ hour
Take Surveys Online
You can get paid to offer your opinion from the comfort of your couch. Survey sites like the ones listed below offer profile surveys to ensure that every question is relevant to you and your background. Each website varies slightly in their initial bonuses, redemption methods, and per survey value. In addition to surveys, a few of the websites offer incentives like cashback for shopping and points for playing games or watching TV.
Most of these sites pay you to refer friends, so you should give them a try and let your friends know about them as well.
Top Paid Survey Sites:
Pay: $2-$8/ hour – The pay might seem low, but this is something you can do while sitting in front of the TV or in between Uber rides, so why not. If you’re in one of the age and income groups that they’re looking for, you might be sent a lot of the higher paying surveys as well.
Work as a Freelancer
Freelancing is a popular part-time or full-time work from home career. Maybe you already have a strong background in writing, marketing, graphic design, or some other marketable skill. If you have experience in real estate, insurance, medical billing, etc., there is someone out there willing to pay for your knowledge and experience. There are plenty of ways to sell your talents and make money off of the skills you already have. Check out Grammarly to make sure you’re always producing your best work.
If you have a science background, you can write for a blog.
Where to find work:
Pay: $20-$90/ hour
Start an Online Store
Have an idea for a product? Do you think you could design great t-shirts? Maybe you aren’t the creative type, but you’re willing to put in the hard work. Starting an online store is easier than ever with ecommerce stores that you can create without any technical knowledge.
You don’t need to know how to code to be proficient at this online job. There are plenty of options to have products shipped directly to your customer from the distributor or manufacturer (dropshipped). You can link your store directly to some dropshippers and the orders get sent out automatically. All you need to do is list the products and tell people about your online store.
Where to find products:
- DHGate (wholesale imports)
- AliExpress (wholesale imports)
- Wholesale2b (huge dropshipping selection)
- Printify (custom apparel dropshipped)
Pay: Varies greatly. Can be very lucrative.
Beginner friendly online stores:
Sell Products on Amazon
Amazon is the world’s largest marketplace. The great thing about selling on Amazon is that you don’t have to do much in the way of marketing or advertising, other than writing good product descriptions. You can do Amazon FBM (Fulfillment by Merchant) where you ship products to customers when they place an order, or Amazon FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) where you ship all of your products to Amazon and they fill customer orders as they come in. FBM has higher profit margins, but lower demand. FBA has much higher demand, but thinner margins. You also don’t have to deal with returns or customer service with FBA.
The biggest challenge is finding the right products. A tool like Jungle Scout will help you determine which products are in high demand and will be profitable, as well as help you to find suppliers.
Check out the How To Sell On Amazon For Beginners Guide
Must-have tools:
- Jungle Scout (product research & sourcing)
- Inventory Lab (inventory & profit tracking)
- Seller Labs (keyword & advertising tool)
Pay: Varies greatly. Can be very lucrative.
Where to find products:
- DHGate (wholesale imports)
- AliExpress (wholesale imports)
- Wholesale2b (huge dropshipping selection)
- Printify (custom apparel dropshipped)
Learn New Skills to Jumpstart a Career
This is the perfect time to learn a new skill that can make you money and give you building blocks for a new career.
Learn Basic Technical Skills
Knowing basic technical skills is necessary for any job, and now could be the best time to brush up and learn more! A good start is knowing Microsoft products like powerpoint, word, and excel.
Goskills.com has some easy courses to get you started in Excel. LinkedIn Learning has a good Microsoft Office course. Everyone should know how to type well, quickly , and efficiently – and, if you can’t, ratatype.com has some great games, courses, and typing tests to get you up to speed.
Learn to Code
Learning how to code is probably the quickest way to start making good money fast. When learning to program, it is important to have a logical state of mind and to be patient.
You might feel overwhelmed by all of the information and concepts you’ll be exposed to in a short amount of time. There are so many programming languages out there, but learning Python, C++, and Javascript are probably the most versatile languages that can get you almost any job.
Resources to Learn Online
- Udemy has paid courses in Python, cyber security, Java, and basic data structures. This would be a good option if you want to become an expert in a specific programming language.
- Shaw Academy has a variety of courses on web development, coding and more.
- Check out code bootcamps on Udacity. Code bootcamps are meant for people who have about 6 months to spend becoming an expert in a language or development area. Some companies even sponsor bootcamps if you work for them afterwards. You can do them while working full time, but they include a lot of work.
- Codecademy has some awesome courses to get you started with over 10 programming languages to learn through interactive exercises. This is probably the best place to start for a beginner.
Potential Jobs (salaries according to glassdoor.com)
- Java Developer – $79,100/ year
- Python Developer – $76,500/ year
- Entry Level Software Developer – $67,600/ year
- Mobile App Developer – $96,000/ year
- Javascript Developer – $76,500/ year
Get a certification in IT, Cybersecurity, or Programming
Pluralsight offers numerous online training courses for cyber security, IT, and computer programmer positions. Pluralsight gives its students a personalized course list based on the tech career you want and prepares you for IT certifications from Microsoft, VMWare, and Cisco.
Treehouse has a wide variety of courses, including web design and various other IT related topics.
LinkedIn Learning has some good courses ranging from beginner to advanced including:
- CompTIA A+ Certification Entry Level Computer Technician
- AWS Solutions Architect Certification (Amazon Web Services – Cloud Computing)
- CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional)
Time frame: Training for and getting these certifications will take about 2-6 months each.
Potential Jobs (salaries according to glassdoor.com)
- Web Developer – $68,500/ year
- Entry Level IT Technician – $35,200/ year
- Database Administrator – $78,800/ year
- Information Systems Security Analyst – $81,780 / year
The spread of COVID-19 has resulted in layoffs for many, as well as an overall decrease in business due to safety concerns for those who work in direct contact with others. Now is the time to take action and adapt. Learn new skills, find new work from home opportunities and make a living while keeping yourself and your family safe.
Maddie Eckhart is a mobile developer, writer, and UX designer with a background in computer science. She writes about the mobile industry and about topics for students getting started in tech.
