8 Ways: How To Make Money Working From Home

Having no boss - that's something I'm sure everybody's dreamed of: working from home, having no boss ... yet somehow the money would still come in. Well, it is possible and I hope this gives you some ideas.

I've been working from home, with nobody calling the shots, since late 2006 when I decided to dabble around a bit with finding a job working from home. Now, I had a lot of experience of looking for jobs working from home and could spot the duffers a mile off! So I started to search and found lots of real work at home jobs, the only thing was I couldn't DO them. Now, I thought that was a shame, so I created my first blog so I could tell people where they were. I thought I'd help out people who couldn't find such jobs... and made my first mistake :)

Oh yes, everybody makes mistakes... but from the mistakes you learn. My mistake there was that Wordpress deemed that my blog was breaking their Terms & Conditions, by driving traffic to other sites. It didn't matter that it wasn't my site as such. They shut down my blog :(

But that didn't put me off. By this time I'd actually found myself a proper job working from home. I had to be self-employed and had to invoice the company monthly, but I was earning £1500 per month. Great. The job was taking inbound calls for a company, which meant I was sat at the computer all day anyway, so I continued to dabble. And here's an outline list of some ways you too can earn money working from home.

The types of jobs that can be done working from home break down into roughly 3-4 categories:

This is probably the hardest of all to do. Most people working from home for an employer were actually employed first by the company, then managed to grab themselves a job with that same company working from home. There are an emerging number of exceptions to this. e.g. there are an increasing number of companies providing remote support to companies. They will provide customer support call centres for their clients and they advertise from time to time for people to take those inbound calls.

If you have a skill, that can be done from home, then freelancing is very lucrative.

Traditionally, freelancers would have been writers, computer programmers, designers, accountancy staff, etc. All jobs which can be done by somebody sat in an office anywhere.

Now the Internet's got so large a lot of people are making a good living from creating websites - and they are creating a LOT of websites. But they don't do any of the work themselves. These people are creating a lot of small freelance jobs and advertising them online. e.g. if somebody were creating a website about training puppies they might need one person to design the website, another person to write an ebook about puppy training, somebody else would be needed to write 100 articles about puppies and puppy training and another person might be hired to do some data entry into Excel by searching the web for the contact details of doggy websites and copy/paste that information into MS Excel.

Believe me, there are thousands of people doing this every day, needing a writer, a proofreader, article writers and data entry people. All they do is come up with the idea and farm out all the tasks. So freelance work just got a whole lot easier. The way freelancing works is you find a job you can do and you contact the advertiser and tell them how much you'd charge to do the job.

Most freelance websites won't charge you to sign up and apply for these jobs, so it's not even going to cost you anything

Now, this is the hard one maybe ... most people would wrack their brain just trying to think of what they're interested in! But, if you can think of something, then you can simply create a website about it. Now, obviously it's a bit harder than that because you have to think about how you'll create the site, what's going to be on it, where you can make the money .... but that can come later.

For now you might like to just start a website to see how it all works. I'd recommend using some free blogging software like Wordpress or Blogger - and don't even think about how you're going to make money out of it, use it as a learning experience. Note though, Blogger will let you advertise on your site without shutting you down; if you want to do that with Wordpress you'll need to get your own (free) copy of Wordpress software from Wordpress.org and host it yourself. So that means you'd need a domain name and hosting - a lot of web hosts have an automatic install feature for a Wordpress blog so you don't have to be technical.

There are a lot of sites that will pay you to write articles on them. Some will pay you directly, some (like Hubpages) will get you paid through the advertising that's on the page around your article.

Another way to make money without actually having a plan is to sign up with a lot of paid surveys websites and get paid for doing surveys (I do that too, which probably brings in £1000/year for the time it takes me to drink a coffee in the morning while I am doing it!).

Alternatively, you can blog for cash at sites like You Say Too, where they share the advertising revenue with you. It's probably the easiest way to blog I've seen so far because they made it so simple to sign up and just crack on.

The site you're reading right now gives writers the chance to get paid for writing informative, or interesting, short pieces of 1000-2000 words - it's also free to join, with a supportive community and great Content Management System (CMS) that makes it easy to publish articles online and reap a passive income for years to come.

A franchise is, quite simply, buying into a ready made business, where everything's done for you and you just do the work.

There are many well known franchises, for example the Subway baguette shops are a franchise. Each Subway store you go into is owned by an individual, just like you. When you buy a franchise you buy all the name, branding, business plan, supplies and help.

Franchising is a great way to get up and running quickly and have the potential to make the most money soonest. It's less hit and miss than simply starting your own business doing the same thing.

Franchises will vary in price, depending what it is and how big the brand name is that you're buying into. They are a popular way for people who want to change career after a redundancy, or who have a dream but are interested in running the business and not in finding out everything they need to know and establishing themselves.

Party plan have always been a popular way to earn money. While it's not entirely working from home, it's only the actual parties that you have to attend - you can do all the contacting, marketing, ordering and bagging up of the items from home.

The party plan business relies on you finding people who want to invite their friends round for an evening (or even morning/afternoon) to look through products. Tupperware was built up in the 1960s from party plan. Nowadays there is party plan for everything from scented candles and lingerie through to books and childrens toys.

Jewelry parties have always been popular - and now things are a little tighter for money, one growth area has been Gold Buying parties.

Within party plan, you usually have the option to book parties and go out yourself and make money holding the parties, or by introducing and managing other people to run parties.

Start Your Own Party Plan Business

If you have a good idea, or maybe you make your own products, then you can even set up your own party plan business. Setting up a party plan business will involve you researching the market, finding your suppliers, working out your prices and commission margins and producing some leaflets/catalogues. One idea is to join a party plan company to find out how they work, get the details for several different party plan businesses to find the different ways they can be organised, then take the best ideas for yourself!

One frowth area in recent years has been to become an online tutor. If you have something you know and can teach it to others over the Internet, then this can be a great way to earn money.

There are many websites that enable you to teach online, through their website. You pick the rate of pay and then people will sign up to your online course and you're paid for each one that joins your class. The amount of work this needs will vary depending on the subject, how long the course lasts and the tools the website provide for you to do the teaching. Maybe you will set a test at the end of each class and need to mark it and give feedback, maybe you will answer email enquiries from your students.

If you have some knowledge to teach others (from making sock monkeys through to rocket science) you should find out more about teaching and tutoring online.

Find out more about online tutoring here:

• Online Teaching Opportunities - List of Tutoring and Mentoring Jobs

If you're more of the creative sort, then maybe something with crafts will suit you better. There are some great ways to earn money involving music and actually creating something to sell.

Everybody has different interests and skills, you have to find what works best for you, what really makes you sparkle!

There's a lot of money to be made selling your art, photos, or other items you've handcrafted either at local craft fairs and festivals, or even online.

So, there are some great ideas. If you need some starting points for where to look for work from home ideas and jobs, then try these, you'll find all the above types of jobs and more on these sites.

• Real Work at Home - ideas and lists of companies that employ people to work from home in a variety of roles. This is a huge list of work at home companies.

One thing is sure, you'll make mistakes along the way, but you'll learn from them. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. . . after all, in the time it's taken you to read this article, somebody somewhere is writing an article just like it and being paid to work from home! This time tomorrow it could be you.

Good luck!