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Here at Work-At-Home School, I’m all about learning skills that will pay the bills.
There are lots of ways you can earn a little extra money if that’s all you need, but there are also some legitimate options that you can use to build a lucrative business.
You could do the below profitable home business ideas as a side hustle if you wanted to, but many of them are also full-time options if you want them to be.
I know the biggest question on everyone’s mind is “How much can I earn?” so I’ve done my best to include average salaries where possible to help you choose the right career for you.
And because I know money can be a huge stumbling block, I tried to include any free resources I could find.
I recently gave you 17 of the best work-at-home business ideas you should consider, but I still have some ideas up my sleeve! Keep reading to learn what businesses you can start from home!
9 Profitable Home Business Ideas You Need to Consider
1. YouTuber
How much time do you spend every day watching videos on YouTube?
Many people spend hours every day watching their favorite YouTubers (check out my favorite, JP Sears!) or hopping from one video to the next depending on what YouTube suggests.
This platform has really evolved from the days when it was all about funny cat videos, and now it is a viable income stream for many people.
What does a YouTuber do?
A YouTuber records videos and shares them with their audience. There are different styles of videos you can share; for example, tutorials, sit-down videos that cover a specific topic, vlogs where you film your daily life, shopping hauls, cleaning videos, gaming, etc. There is an audience out there for almost anything!
How much can you earn as a YouTuber?
There’s no limit to how much you can earn. Some YouTubers earn just a few hundred dollars a month and some earn tens of thousands a month. It all depends on how much traffic you can get to your channel.
YouTubers get compensated through ads that appear during the video, through affiliate marketing, and through doing sponsored videos where they promote a particular product.
What’s the best way to get started as a YouTuber?
Just do it! You can start your channel and learn as you go. Watch YouTube videos about how to improve your channel. Meredith Marsh shares her tips and tricks on how to grow a YouTube channel.
2. Funnel Builder
The online business world is growing all the time, and a huge part of that growth is thanks to funnels.
Not sure what the heck a funnel is?
A funnel is the journey a customer takes from finding a business to signing up for their email list to purchasing a product or service. It may consist of an opt-in page, an email sequence, and a sales page.
What does a funnel builder do?
A funnel builder designs and creates the web pages required as part of the funnel. These may include opt-in pages, sales pages, order forms, confirmation pages, thank you pages, etc.
They may also write the copy that appears on these pages.
How much can you earn as a funnel builder?
As more online businesses are catching on to the value funnels can bring to their business, the more in demand funnel builders are becoming. It’s possible to earn over six figures as a funnel builder.
What’s the best way to get started as a funnel builder?
It’s possible to teach yourself the skills you need to become a funnel builder. To do so you need to become familiar with various software like ClickFunnels, LeadPages, or Groove Funnels. You would also need to have an understanding of design principles and copywriting best practices.
The best and most efficient way to get started though is to take a course designed to walk you step-by-step through every aspect of the funnel-building process. My friend Brittany Long, a Work-At-Home School contributor and the person who creates my funnels, has created a course that teaches freelancers how to build high-converting funnels through video tutorials and practical assignments.
Check out Learn to Build Funnels here!
3. Graphic Designer
Are you a creative person? Do you love messing around on Canva or PicMonkey?
Graphic designers are always in demand because many people just don’t have the skills to create eye catching images.
What does a graphic designer do?
Graphic designers can create beautiful social media images, logos, packaging, posters, billboards, or design products like workbooks.
They use a variety of software like Canva, PicMonkey, or Adobe Creative Suite.
Graphic designers who work in-house are typically required to have a bachelor’s degree, but this is not usually required when working as a freelancer. All you need to get started is an eye for design!
How much can you earn as a graphic designer?
A freelance graphic designer can make $58,614 on average, according to Glassdoor.
What’s the best way to get started as a graphic designer?
You may already have the skills you need if you are a frequent user of graphic design tools and are familiar with design principles. If not, you may want to brush up by taking a course. Udemy has several graphic design courses at affordable prices like this one.
4. Online Tutor
Online tutoring is very popular these days, especially due to the pandemic!
Even before that, many people were finding success working from home teaching English to kids abroad, particularly kids in China.
What does an online tutor do?
An online tutor meets with students on a one-to-one basis to help them understand a subject better. The most common way to earn money as an online tutor is helping students learn to speak better English.
Some companies require you to have a bachelor’s degree and some require basic teaching experience, but others don’t require any degree or experience.
What you will need is access to apps like Zoom or Skype and a stable internet connection.
How much can you earn as an online tutor?
The pay differs between companies and ranges from $10 per hour to $25 per hour.
What’s the best way to get started as an online tutor?
There are tons of online tutoring companies where you can apply to get hired as an online tutor; for example, VIPKid, Qkids, Cambly, and DaDa.
5. Course Creator
Do you know what one thing took my income from getting by to thriving?
Creating a proofreading course!
That’s what took my income from around $40K per year as a freelance proofreader working part-time hours to amounts I’d never even dreamed of.
And you know what… You can do it too!
There are LOTS of people in the world who want to know what *you* know, and who are looking for ways to learn it.
What does a course creator do?
They do exactly that — create courses! There is a market out there for almost any course topic. You just need to create it.
How much can you earn as a course creator?
How long is a piece of string? It all depends on how much value you pack into the course and how hard you work at getting it in front of your target audience.
What’s the best way to get started as a course creator?
A lot of work goes into creating a course. Much more than you would actually think!
Here’s a rough idea of what it takes to create a successful course:
- You need to decide on a topic.
- Determine if your target audience would pay for it.
- Write your content/record videos.
- Figure out what platform you’re going to use.
- Create all the marketing materials.
- Market it like crazy.
- Provide stellar customer service.
It can feel overwhelming. My friend Danny Iny has a Course Business Masterclass where he teaches you how to pinpoint your ideal topic, avoid mistakes that beginners make, and how to launch your course and attract clients quickly!
Best free resource to get started:
If you’re quick, you might be able to catch his free 5-day Winning Course Idea Challenge! It runs from August 24–28, 2020.
6. Social Media Manager
Everyone and their mother is on social media these days. You would be hard pressed to find someone who isn’t!
So that’s why it’s essential for businesses to interact with their customers and potential customers on social media.
Managing social media accounts is super time-consuming though, so many successful business owners outsource this task to a social media manager.
What does a social media manager do?
Social media managers help business owners create and grow their social media presence so that the company attracts and retains clients or customers.
There are lots of different tasks you can offer as a social media manager from setting up profiles/pages to optimizing them to curating content to keyword research to group/community management.
How much can you earn as a social media manager?
The average salary for a freelance social media manager is $50,834, according to ZipRecruiter.
What’s the best way to get started as a social media manager?
As many of us are familiar with social media platforms, this is an easy work-from-home business to get into.
To jump-start your business and learn how to find the best clients, check out Gina Horkey’s Social Media for Virtual Assistants course. This course will cover the features of each social media platform, help you discover what services to provide, how to find clients, and what exactly you need to do once you have clients!
7. SEO Writer
Have you ever wondered how Google knows to return the exact information you were looking for when you search for something?
Google uses algorithms to crawl every single page on the internet to see if they match up with what people are searching for, and then it returns the ones that do.
The challenge for website owners and bloggers is to use the right keywords so that Google will return their content high up in the search results.
Enter search engine optimization (SEO), which, according to Moz, “is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.”
What does an SEO writer do?
SEO writers and experts identify the right keywords and write a piece of content that uses these words in a way that answers the reader’s question without sounding like they stuffed the keywords in to fill a quota.
How much can you earn as an SEO writer?
According to Glassdoor, the average freelance copywriter salary is $81,748. Sweet!
What’s the best way to get started as an SEO writer?
SEO can be a complicated process, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing, so it’s best to learn SEO best practices from an expert.
Yuwanda Black of Inkwell Editorial offers an in-depth course on SEO copywriting where she teaches her students how to find long-tail keywords, how to do keyword research, what SEO practices to avoid, AND how to market your business, find clients, and build a successful SEO writer business.
Best free resource to get started:
If you’re not sure yet if SEO writing is for you, Yuwanda offers a free SEO writing eCourse where you’ll learn what it takes to succeed as a SEO writer, how to avoid the top 3 mistakes new SEO writers make, and how to overcome your fear of “all things tech.”
8. Facebook Ads Manager
Social media is a huge part of the marketing strategy of most businesses. Unfortunately, platforms like Facebook are all too aware of that now and they want a piece of the pie too!
So now if you want your posts to be seen, you have to pay to play.
A lot of business owners aren’t very techie though, and they have no interest in messing around with pixels and conversion data or any of that jazz. So they pay Facebook ad managers to do it!
What does a Facebook ads manager do?
A Facebook ad manager sets up, monitors, and optimizes a business’s ads to make sure that their clients are getting the best return on their investment (i.e., new signups to their email list, sales, clients, etc.).
This is the perfect job for data nerds!
How much can you earn as a Facebook ads manager?
According to Indeed, Facebook ad managers can earn $47,285 per year as employees of companies. If you work as a freelancer and take on several different clients, you could earn more.
What’s the best way to get started as a Facebook ads manager?
I’m not going to lie; Facebook ads have a pretty steep learning curve, but if you’re the kind of person who geeks out when it comes to analyzing data, then you could be a kick-ass ads manager. The quickest way to get started in this industry is to take a step-by-step course. (I know I say that a lot, but I’m not one for wasting time googling everything when I can get all the answers in one place!)
Monica Louie’s course Flourish with Facebook Ads in an in-depth six-module course that will teach you everything you need to know about scaling your business or your client’s business with Facebook ads.
Best free resource to get started:
If you want to dip your toe into ads first before you commit to the full course, check out Monica’s free Facebook Ads Starter Kit.
Her course 5-Days to Profitable Facebook Ads course is also included in Work-At-Home School this year (2020)!
9. Affiliate Marketer
Affiliate marketing is not a new thing; it’s almost as old as the internet! But it has been steadily gaining popularity over the last ten years.
If you’re the kind of person who loves helping others out by recommending products you think they will really love, then affiliate marketing could be a great income source for you!
What does an affiliate marketer do?
Affiliate marketing is when you promote a product and earn a commission if someone buys that product through your link.
You can add affiliate links to blog posts, social media posts, the description of YouTube videos, and send them via email if you have a list of subscribers.
It works best if you only promote products that you love and use yourself or have a lot of faith in the product/product creator, otherwise it can come across as icky and spammy.
How much can you earn as an affiliate marketer?
Again, this is another income stream where the sky’s the limit. Some affiliate marketers earn a couple of hundred a month whereas others earn upwards of $50,000 a month! If I didn’t know bloggers in real life who actually earn this much through affiliate marketing, I wouldn’t believe it, but it’s true!
What’s the best way to get started as an affiliate marketer?
Anyone with a website or social media account can sign up to various affiliate programs and start sticking their affiliate links in their posts. For best results, you should learn the strategies that other affiliates use to bring in tons of commissions each month.
Michelle Shroeder-Gardner’s course Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing teaches you what affiliate marketing is, how to find and apply to affiliate programs, how to follow affiliate marketing rules, how to get your readers to convert, and most importantly, the strategies and ways to promote affiliate links!
OUR TAKE
There you have it! Nine of the most profitable home business ideas you need to consider if you want to be your own boss.
Some of the courses listed above are included in Work-At-Home School this year, so make sure you check out the masterclass below to learn more!
YOUR TURN
Still can’t decide what route you want to take into working from home? No problem! Check out our free masterclass to learn more about your work-at-home options.
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