5 Awesome Ways to Work from Home

Most people don’t particularly like the idea of having to wake up at a specific time and drive to their workplace every morning, but they’re not sure what other option they have. After all, you can’t survive without making money, and that means holding down a job. Generally speaking, having a job means having a workplace that you travel to.

While it wasn’t impossible to work from home in the past, many of these so-called jobs were really scams designed solely to make money for the person who created them. In today’s digital world, though, things are changing. More than ever before, it’s possible to telecommute or find ways to make money without ever leaving your house (though, really, you should at least leave once in a while.)

Below you’ll find five potential money-making endeavors that are completely legitimate and can be done entirely from the comfort of your own home.

Virtual assistant. Have you worked in an office before? Can you answer phone calls, help maintain someone’s schedule, or provide technical support? Virtual assistants do everything that in-office administrative assistants do (besides, maybe, brewing coffee) but they do it while telecommuting. This helps businesses to cut down on office space – and the costs associated with it – as well as only employing people for the tasks or hours that they need them. What’s the benefit for you (besides working from home)? You’re free to take on other work that a “real” job probably wouldn’t appreciate, and may often be able to set at least some of your own hours.

Web designer. The next few years are going to be tumultuous for many “holdout” businesses as everyone slowly comes to accept the fact that not only is the internet a 100 percent necessity to being successful, but also that you have to keep working on your online offerings to stay up-to-date with ever-evolving technology. Case-in-point right now is how the explosion of the mobile web has caused many companies to optimize their sites for mobile. Some have in-house designers they can use, but many end up looking at freelancers who are hired on a project-by-project basis and work offsite. If you have these skills, you can definitely make good money in this line of work.

1. Just as the evolution of technology is pushing companies to update the way they reach consumers, so is Google. In their quest for a more useful internet, they continue to refine their search algorithm to reward those creating quality content and using non-SPAMmy methods to get people to pay attention to them. This means that companies are turning to people who stay on the cutting edge of internet marketing, as well as writers who can provide the content they need to drive traffic. Both of these are jobs that can be done offsite, and often they are very closely related.

Craft designer. Whether your talent is one-of-a-kind jewelry, hand-crafted rocking chairs, or personalized wicker baskets, the web is becoming a great place for those who have a talent for crafts to make a living. Why? Because you can do the work from home and instantly reach a global audience as well as use analytics to target the right kind of consumer – the kind already interested in the kinds of items that you offer.

Online retailer. There’s some overlap between this and the last job suggestion, but the beauty of becoming an online retailer is that you don’t necessarily need a unique product line that you created yourself. Even better, you can use sites like SheepBuy to set up a seller’s account and have a virtual store ready to go without the time and expense required to create and maintain your own website. And you can decide how you want to brand your business by looking into what sells, where there’s a lack of competition, or both, and work on cornering that market.