To make money from home, you have to make a solid-gold choice that fits your schedule and complements your skills. Your skills must be marketable, and the ability to sell must be among your top priorities.
It makes sense if you want to make money online from home because working online requires a minimal setup.
If you already have a job, you can earn money from home by venturing into freelancing. Moreover, if you want to grow an agency or develop a side hustle besides your main job, hiring freelancers is one of the best real ways to make money from home.
High, Medium, and Low-Risk Ways to Earn Money Working from Home in 2021
If you look at long lists about the best ways to make money from home, all of them include some aspect of sales and entrepreneurship. You have to be willing to become an independent contractor and to take risks.
Get Rich Quick Schemes
However, some money-making opportunities are “get rich quick schemes” that promise huge returns on minimal investments. They come with unjustified risks that look more like gambling than investing. And although a certain level of risk is mandatory if you want to make money working from home, you cannot rush headlong into dubious endeavors.
Real Ways to Make Money Online
Other, more realistic ways to earn online include:
- Affiliate marketing
- Virtual assistance
- Becoming an influencer
- Consulting
- Online tutoring, teaching, or coaching services.
Any of these can be used to make money as a freelancer or as a side gig to your regular job.
Medium-Risk Ways to Work from Home
On the other hand, some earning ways won’t be as simple to start in a day.
A notable example that comes to mind is running an e-commerce site: you may simply not have the skills to build or run one by yourself in a very short time.
Dropshipping is another example. Dropshippers frequently experience delivery and manufacturing setbacks.
But by engaging a freelance team, you certainly can make money from home by selling stuff online even if you have a challenging task in front of you.
The greatest advantage of freelancing from home is risk scaling.
Why Freelancing is the Best Way to Make Money from Home
Regardless of whether you do it as an employee or as a business owner, freelancing provides that level of risk scaling that allows for comfortably expanding your expertise beyond your comfort zone.
Freelancing is the best way to make money from home because you can:
1. Work from anywhere (home included).
The obvious advantages of working from home are no commute time and more focus. You can visit friends and family, go on vacation, travel to different locations, and still have your office with you. In this case, your skills are your best asset and capital.
Miss the team spirit of physical contact? Introduce team building energizers in your virtual office.
2. Build skills people are willing to pay for.
Because skills are your greatest asset, it makes sense that you invest in them.
Think of your skills as the service you provide. By improving your skills or enhancing your team with experts with the right skills, you invest in your work as you would in a business. Since you know your trade secrets perfectly, people are willing to hire you and pay for what you have to offer.
Learn this trick about improvement by repetition. Hone your skills to become the absolute best provider of a concrete gift.
3. Have small capital and fixed costs investments.
You don’t need to invest a lot to make money from home by working as a freelancer.
- Capital investment and fixed costs are relatively stable.
- You can use cloud services on-demand to expand business objectives in the virtual environment
- Rent safe data storage
- Purchase accounting software
- Subscribe to marketing software every month
- Become a low-tier member of a project management app
- Grow a team according to your business goals
Due to the gradually expanding long-term return on investment, being a part of a freelancers’ team is one of the most effective real ways to make money from home.
4. Set your pricing.
Freelancing is a dynamic business in which you are regularly exposed to market trends and new technologies.
Price Setting for Freelancers
The following four factors help you establish a price that is fair, competitive, and rewarding:
- Quick turnaround time
- Short-term projects
- Steep learning curve
- Feedback from clients
Price Setting for Clients
If you are a CEO that works from home and wants to scale the company, you can:
- Get a matter-of-fact sense of the worth of your employees
- Hire people that are perfect for the job, the company, and the team
- Tweak job roles as business goals shift
Unlike investment funds or selling physical products, freelancing is a method you can use to make money online by exchanging services from home. It is a service-based method – even if you sell products, for example, art, the quality is the service you provide that dictates the price.
5. Capitalize on productivity.
Some days are more productive, others not so much; you can control your workload and give your best on days with maximum potential while leaving less demanding tasks for more relaxed days (or time of day.)
Tip: Do the most challenging task first thing in the morning (or whenever you are most productive).
Struggle with a lack of focus? Tackle them with our home office productivity tips.
6. Build credibility and relationships.
You have probably heard of the Pareto principle: 80% of consequences arise from 20% of the causes. You can apply this productivity hack principle to choosing clients; rather than choosing clients to work for, freelancing is a way to choose clients to work with.
In the most lucrative, productive, and mutually beneficial business models, the above rule is valid on both sides of the relationship. The maximum benefit on the side of the client and the side of the freelancer is when they:
- Are a good match
- Set clear expectations
A good match is the essence of the Pareto principle. Watch how to fix your business model below:
7. Scale and adjust the business model.
If your business model is elastic, you don’t play with risks beyond your means. In contrast to quick money-making schemes, freelancing is a business model that delivers risk flexibility.
Risk Scaling for Clients
You can scale a virtual on-demand team by choosing to scale one or more of the following:
- Goals
- Products and services
- People
- Roles
- Skills
- Teams
Risk Scaling for Freelancers
For individual freelancers, the scaling benefit comes to three simple secrets of choice:
- Type of clients
- Scope of work
- The number of hours they need to make enough money online.
8. Choose and expand your niche.
By becoming a freelancer, you gain exposure.
You create a brand.
You build a name.
Freelancing is the humble start to entrepreneurship.
If you are unsure whether you are the person to take the responsibility of owning a company, exposing yourself to the niche market is an excellent business opportunity to see what you are made of and how far you can go with making money online.
9. Start with almost no experience.
Not all freelance jobs require top-notch expert skills; some are more about personality traits. For example, one of the most sought after freelance jobs – a virtual assistant – often requires no more than the average computer literacy and people skills.
As long as you are a self-organized self-starter and know how to unload your client from time-consuming tasks, you are a great candidate to make money from home by providing virtual assistant services.
10. Create your team.
Many freelancers earn money by working independently; they have a say in how they organize their workload.
However, online work is teamwork. With rare exceptions (earning by blogging or coaching, to name a few examples), it is next to impossible to work as a one-person company.
Freelancing is like running a small business. CEOs and freelancers understand each other better than everyone else, especially if they are the proper match.
You cannot be the jack of all trades. Most clients will look for the top 10% of freelancers in a specific niche; most quality freelancers will look for the best-paying clients who need the skills they possess.
Learn to grow and scale your business with virtual teams and global freelancers with our FREE Virtual Team Starter Pack!
