Marc Andre — March 25, 2020 
Pexels / Pixabay
An unfortunate reality of the current economic situation is the fact that millions of people are stuck at home due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Many people are looking for ways to make money while they’re unable to get to work, and unemployment rates are increasing as some companies are starting to layoff employees.
If you’re in a situation where you can’t get to work or you no longer have a job, there are some things you can start doing from home to make money. Regardless of whether you’re wondering how to make an extra $ 1,000 per month or whether you’re looking for something that you could do full-time, one of these five options could be a good fit for you.
1. Virtual Assistant
Virtual assistants provide clients with a wide variety of services like blog editing, customer service, moderating forums or Facebook groups, managing social media profiles, designing graphics, and much more. There is really no limit to the services that you could offer as a VA.
When you think of VA jobs, the first thing that comes to mind may be low-paying work that is outsourced to developing countries like the Philippines. However, there are also many VA’s that earn a great income.
Most of the high-paid VA’s have elected to specialize in a particular service rather than taking a generalized approach that involves offering a wide range of services. Specialists are able to demonstrate expertise and demand a higher hourly rate, some as high as $ 100 per hour.
Working as a virtual assistant is a very flexible job. You can schedule your work around your life, whenever it’s convenient for you. It makes a great part-time side hustle and is equally well-suited to becoming a full-time business.
2. Freelance Writing
Another excellent and flexible way to make money from home is to work as a freelance writer. While there are a lot of different types of publications that hire freelance writers (newspapers, magazines, journals, etc.), most of the work available to freelance writers these days is for online publications. There are millions of websites and blogs that constantly publish new articles and most of them rely on freelancers to produce that content.
Just like working as a virtual assistant, there are some low-paying freelance writing gigs and there are others that pay very, very well. When you’re first getting started, you may need to take some of the lower-paying freelance writing jobs for beginners in order to get some experience, but you should be working towards finding better-paying jobs once you have a little bit of experience.
There are a number of job boards that are great for finding freelance writing opportunities, including ProBlogger and Blogging Pro. You can also find work by proactively reaching out to websites and blogs that publish content from a lot of different writers (most likely they’re freelancers). It’s a good idea to set up your own blog so you have some writing samples that you can send when you’re applying for your first jobs.
Working as a freelance writer is very flexible because you can choose the topics that you want to specialize in. Some freelancers cover a wide range of topics and will write about almost anything, but the highest-paid freelance writers have taken a specialized approach. For example, you might choose to focus on a topic like finance, business, health and wellness, travel, fashion, beauty, or some other popular topic.
Freelance writing also offers flexibility in terms of the hours that you work. Most of your assignments will have deadlines, but you can work on them whenever it suits your schedule. It’s also something that you can do part-time or full-time.
While there are obviously a lot of reasons to consider working as a freelance writer, another factor that could be important is that you can get started without any financial investment. As long as you have a computer and an internet connection, you have everything you need. You can use Google Docs (free) for most of your work, or your clients may prefer to have you enter your articles into their content management system, like WordPress. It’s easily one of the best ways to make money online without paying anything.
3. Social Media Manager
Many entrepreneurs and small businesses use social media as a way to generate traffic to their website and to gain exposure, but a lot of them don’t have time to manage their own social profiles. This is a task that many business owners prefer to outsource so they can focus their time on the core aspects of their business, which opens up an opportunity for service providers.
As a social media manager, you could manage the social profiles of your clients on a recurring basis. For example, many social media managers offer packages with a flat monthly fee that includes a specific number of posts per month. You may charge the client a specific rate for a packing that includes 3 tweets per day and 2 posts to a Facebook page.
Some social media managers have chosen to specialize in a particular platform. Pinterest is a very popular platform because it’s great for traffic generation, so there are a lot of Pinterest specialists that manage Pinterest profiles for their clients. They may design graphics to use on Pinterest, create the pins, and schedule repins.
As a social media manager, you could also manage ad campaigns for your clients. Some social media managers specialize in setting up and managing Facebook ads for clients, which is a service that is in high demand right now. Most business owners recognize the potential of advertising on Facebook, but they don’t have the experience needed to set up and manage successful ad campaigns on their own.
Like the other options covered in this article, working as a social media manager is something you could do part-time or full-time. It’s also an ideal opportunity if you already have some experience with social media.
4. Bookkeeping
Working as a bookkeeper is another ideal work-from-home opportunity. You could work as a remote employee or start your own business. Many bookkeeping jobs are entry-level and require no previous experience.
Bookkeeping is often confused with accounting, but the duties and requirements of the two jobs are significantly different. Accounting jobs typically require an accounting degree and some level of accounting experience, but bookkeeping jobs do not require either.
As a self-employed bookkeeper, you could work part-time or full-time, depending on how many clients you are managing.
5. Consulting
Depending on your work experience, there may be an opportunity for you to work as an independent consultant. There are consultants in all different industries and so there are plenty of possibilities.
Not only is consulting very flexible, but it can also be highly lucrative as many consultants are able to demand a high hourly rate. If you have extensive experience in your industry, this is something that you should consider.
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