10 Ways To Make Money At Home That Didn’t Exist Ten Years Ago

The information age has brought with it a ton of new professions, from software developer to network specialist, social media marketer to digital strategists. The list goes on and the one place it’s had the biggest effect is at home: there are now more ways than ever to make money from home and here are just a few of them:

1. YouTuber

This profession probably seems like the most fun: filming your hobby, your fine-tuned skill or your day-to-day life and throwing it up on the tubes for all to see. YouTubers earn loads of money, and it comes for the most part, from advertising revenue. YouTube runs ads on each video, and creators get to take a percentage of the revenue generated from those ad impressions and clicks. YouTubers can also sign up for a subscription service, like Patreon, where their viewers pledge a certain number of dollars per video or per month as a way to ensure their favourite YouTubers are able to continue to create the content they love. Some YouTubers net in the millions per year and have no other profession or career outside of YouTube.

2. Etsy Artist

Etsy is a crafty little marketplace where artistic geniuses can create beautiful trinkets and bobbles, clothing and more, and put them up for sale so that the public can take them home. Etsy users pay miniscule fees to list, sell and process payments for their wares, and pocket the rest of their earnings.

3. Viner

Have you heard of Vine? It’s a video sharing network where each video clip is limited to a few seconds long. Surprisingly, the user base of this app have been able to come up with some pretty mind blowing little clips, and many of Vine’s top users make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year creating promoted content, mentioning products or even using them in their tiny video clips. Like Zach King, one of the highest earning Viners in the world.

4. Blogger

Blogging today is like yesterday’s columnist. Most bloggers write in a subjective style talking about personal experiences with travel, parenthood, cooking, sports and more. Bloggers build up their audience by writing consistently and engaging on social media, and they make money by placing ads on their written content. Bloggers can also opt for a subscription service like Patreon, so their fans and readers can support them monetarily, ensuring the content keeps getting published.

5. Distance ESL

If you can speak, read and write English, you can take a quick TESL course to get your ESL teaching certificate and then join one of the many ESL teaching networks like Lingoda or Open English and make a pretty good career out of teaching English on the internet.

6. Sales - Amazon Marketplace

The Amazon marketplace is where people can sell used or new items. It’s sort of like having your own thrift store, except your storefront is virtual. You have to maintain a good standing with your customers in order to continue selling on the marketplace, but outside of that it’s just a matter of managing an inventory and shipping your sold goods. You get the benefit of being listed in the search results when Amazon customers are looking for specific items, so you don’t have to do much of your own marketing. Just put up some good pics, write informative descriptions and place your items for sale!

7. Sales - Ebay

Ebay is much like the Amazon Marketplace, with the added bonus of your customers being able to bid on your items. Sometimes this means you can grab way more for your products.

8. Podcaster

Podcasts are today’s radio shows. There are millions of them, from news and sports shows, to true crime shows and even acted fiction. Whatever your interests are, there is a podcast out there for you. It is surprisingly easy to build up an audience for a podcast. As long as you keep your shows sounding good, limit the awkward pauses and truly know the topic you’re talking about, you should have no trouble finding listeners. Once you hit a few thousand subscribers, you’ll start getting offers from for-profit ventures like Netflix and Audible to put a little 30 second blurb about their products at the beginning or end of your show. Some podcasters make well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars by making their shows available on YouTube and enabling ads.

9. Streaming Gamer

I bet you thought gamers just sat at home with their Xboxes and played Grand Theft Auto by themselves until the wee hours of the night. While some gamers do, there is so much more to gaming these days. For the past few years, gamers have captured their gameplay using screencast tools and uploaded the videos to YouTube. Many gamers have made a great living this way. Clever entrepreneurs saw an opportunity and began streaming services specifically geared towards gamers. One such service is called Twitch, where gamers livestream their gameplay as it’s happening and users can login and watch them play while listening to their commentary. Streamers make money from ad revenue, and can also opt in to subscription services like Patreon.

10. Social Media Manager

Tweeting, posting to Facebook pages and uploading YouTube videos can be a lot of work. For some companies, their social media presence is a full time job for one person or even a team of people. With telecommuting becoming more and more acceptable, many of these social media managers are making a very decent salary while sitting at home on their computers.

Which of these at-home careers would you be most interested? Which would you like the least? Let us know in the comments!