53 Legitimate Ways to Make Money online from Home

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Whether you are a busy mother, a stay at home father, a college student, or just want to earn some extra money – doing some extra work can help you make money from home.

A quick internet search can reveal many work from home scams. They charge you upfront fees and lure you to work with them. Butactually they are just cheating you out of your hard-earned money.

I know you want to find some legitimate work from home jobs that are not rip-offs. So, I have scoured through hundreds of ways to work at home, and came up with the 53 legitimate ways to make money from home.

Some will just make you a few bucks a month, but others can become powerful moneymakers depending on the time you have to invest in them.

Read on to find out about some of the exciting ways to make money from home. You may even find something you’ve never heard of before.

Good luck!

Make money online and from home

Don’t have any hidden talents? Don’t worry! We’ve got something for you as well.

I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious. – Albert Einstein

My wife Katie is not crafty so instead planned a local 5K run.

We bought our chickens from a woman who raises chicks to sell for $25/each (read on if you don’t want to raise and sell chickens).

1. Start a blog or online business

Online business is how I’ve made a living since 2005 and what has helped me retire early.  I made over $21,000 in October through my blog.  Click here to read my How To Make Money Blogging -The Ultimate Guide .  You can start a blog for as little as $2.85 a month (less than a cup of coffee!).  Create a blog and leverage it into affiliate sales or product endorsement deals. Consider topics like:

• Travel
• Cooking
• Health
• Technology
• Personal finance
• Just about anything else

Check out my guide on how to start a blog in less than 15-minutes along with my step-by-step instructions on how to make money blogging.

2. Take part in surveys to make an extra $100+ a month

Simply answer online surveys or product tests and make money from home. You can easily make an extra $100 a month while watching T.V.

Take a look at some paid survey websites listed below. At all of these websites you not only earn some extra cash, but also get rewarded through gift vouchers, prize drawings, free products, etc. All of these sites are free to sign up and use. Heads up: If any survey site asks you to pay, they are probably scams.

Survey Junkie
Swagbucks
OneOpinion
American Consumer Opinion
InboxDollars
Pinecone Research

Update: Here are some additional survey sites we’ve added since this article was first published: PaidSurveys, Survey Club, ProOpinion, Opinion Outpost, VIP Voice,  YouGov, Clear Voice Surveys, Product Report Card,  Prize Rebel, Survey Spot, and Harris Poll

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3. Watch movie previews, YouTube, and like videos

Do you like watching videos in your free time? Now, you can get paid for watching videos including movie previews, news, celebrity videos, and all kinds of other videos.

Sites like Swagbucks ask you to watch certain videos and like them. You have to watch for a certain number of minutes which you’ll be told ahead of time. You could earn over $200 a month (earnings vary).  You’ll earn Swagbucks for watching (points that can be redeemed for gift cards or Paypal).  You can get $5 just for signing up!

4. Get Money Back Instantly For Stuff You’ve Already Bought

Do you love getting refunds? How cool would it be to get money back on stuff you’ve already bought without having to do a thing? Paribus is an app that lets you find out if stores you’ve shopped at online owe you a refund.  It’s free to sign up. Paribus connects to your email account and checks your receipts.  If they find out a retailer has dropped their price they file a price adjustment claim for you automatically.  Try out Paribus.

Paribus works with a huge number of merchants that you probably already shop at, including Walmart, Amazon, Costco, Best Buy, Target, Apple, Kohl’s, and more!

5. Download and install these apps

A lot of companies – including Google – pay you for installing their apps. Moreover, you get paid for each month the apps are installed on your phone. Some of these sites include:

• ShopTracker – Answer a few questions then launch the app on your device, and you’ll earn $3.00 instantly.  Keep the app on your phone to earn money each month and help companies understand what people are buying online.
• Nielsen Mobile Panel – From the people that run Nielsen TV ratings, the Nielsen mobile app rewards you for using your mobile device. You can earn up to $50 a year.
• MobileXpression – Install this app and you’ll be eligible to win prizes each week. You get to play an instant rewards game by participating in market research.

6. Get a free $10 Amazon gift card

Sign up for MyPoints and get a free $10 Amazon gift card.  It’s easy to get started:

1. Join MyPoints here for free.
2. Shop over 1,900 top online retailers (including Amazon, Walmart, and Target) through MyPoints and earn points for your purchases.
3. Redeem your points for gift cards, travel miles and more from over 75 top retail, restaurant and travel partners.

7. Sign up for free gift cards

Ebates will give you a $10 gift card when you sign up and earn your first cashback rebate.  It’s great for online shoppers.  Ebates is free to use.

You just visit the Ebates website and click through to the store you want to shop at. If you buy from the store Ebates gets a commission that they split with you.  It’s an easy way to save. Click here to sign up for Ebates.

8. Test websites for $30 an hour

Ever visit a website and you thought about how bad or how great it was? Now you can get paid to share your thoughts.

Just open a website, click around, and get paid. New or updated website owners compensate you to test their sites.

With User Testing you can earn almost $30 for an hour. Here’s how it works:

• You get paid $10 via PayPal for every 20-minute video you complete.
• UserTesting pays you to visit websites or apps, complete a set of tasks, and record your thoughts.

While you’re visiting a website your screen will be recorded as well as your voice. Their clients include Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, and other Fortune 500 companies.  How would you like a few bucks to share your thoughts?

9. Get paid for being healthy

The health app AchieveMint gives you points for being healthy and doing things like walking, tracking your food, or taking health surveys.  You earn points which can be redeemed for cash or Amazon Gift Cards.  For every 10,000 points, you earn $10 and there is no limit on your earnings.

AchieveMint connects to the fitness apps you may already be using including Fitbit, RunKeeper, Healthkit, and MyFitnessPal.

You can earn 10 points just for signing up with AchieveMint and connecting an app.

10. Become a freelancer or freelance writer

Doing freelance work can greatly increase your income. Are you a stay at home mom with an English degree or a guy who naturally can find mistakes in written text?

Huge and trustworthy sites like Upwork have thousands of employers who want to hire for all kinds of tasks where you can write or edit about anything from technology to business articles. Get paid for every single article. Get a great reputation and you can turn this into a full-time job.

11. Technical freelancing

Freelancing isn’t all about writing. You can do everything from design, graphics, marketing, and web programming jobs from sites like:

• Upwork
• PeoplePerHour
• Freelancer
• Demand Media

Pick your payment on per project basis.

12. Become a virtual assistant

Work for someone from home. Virtual assistances (VAs) can do everything from checking emails and making travel plans to handling internet research or working for their small business.  High-end earners can command $50-$100 an hour.

Some reputable sites are Zirtual and Upwork

13. Tutoring

Give private tuition classes at your home and use your SAT knowledge. Choose your schedule, if you have some imperative routine tasks.

Or rather, go for online tutoring and earn $20 per hour on Chegg Tutors.

14. Share your views

Share your honest opinions for everyday services and products you use with focus group companies. These organizations can improve their products on your feedback, and you get to make $50, $100, or more. Check out 2020 Panel.

A friend does this at his local mall. He only makes a little side money doing the focus groups, but it pays for a babysitter and a night out occasionally.

15. Rate pizzas

Many companies pay you for rating local pizza shops. You just have to rate the place on the quality of their pizza and note their delivery time. For this, you can get a free pizza, plus $5. Just register on Trendsource and get started.

 

 

16. Review stuff

Write a review and earn anything between $1 and $50 per review according to the requirement. Yelp can give you some special invites.

17. Change your search engine

Do you use Google or Yahoo to search for something on the net? Now, leave them behind and opt for the Bing search engine.

Conduct your regular searches on Bing, make it your default search engine, and earn credits that can be redeemed for gift cards. You can earn as much as $5 to $10 per month. Tip: Just stay signed-in, when you perform a search.

Another option is Nielsen Digital Voice. Digital Voice is a part of Nielsen – the big company that publishes T.V. ratings. Just surf the web and you may be able to start earning money.

18. Data entry

Use your accurate and quick typing skills to enter information. Go through Craigslist or Upwork and find data entry and administrative jobs for yourself. These jobs can be easily done through telecommuting.

19. Work for Amazon

Pick micro tasks from Amazon Mechanical Turk. These are services that require human interaction. You can work from home, flexible hours and get paid by one of the world’s largest retailers.

Here are some examples of tasks workers have completed:

• Select the correct spelling for these search terms
• Is this website suitable for a general audience?
• Find the item number for the product in this image
• Rate the search results for these keywords
• Are these two products the same?
• Choose the appropriate category for products
• Categorize the tone of this article
• Translate a paragraph from English to French

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20. Online travel agent

Do you explore travel websites like Expedia in your free time? Then, do it for a commission by offering your services as an alternative to travel agencies. Start at Wikihow for tips to get started.

21. Associate marketing

If you already have a blog on something that interests you, turn it into a money maker.

Join an associate network like Amazon Affiliate or Google AdSense, chose products to promote, and advertise them on your content site. Whenever someone reads your blog or article, you get paid.

 22. Sell lesson plans

Have a soft corner for academic study? Sell your lesson plans, especially to new teachers or first-year teachers.

Teachers Pay Teachers is a market of educators, where you can sell and share your teaching resources.

23. Play online games

Are you an arcade or a poker champion? Play some of your favorite puzzle or card games at InboxDollars. It is fun, plus you can play for free as well as compete for rewards.

24. Take part in an online focus group

Participate in an online focus group like ProOpinion and get paid through a check, gift card, or PayPal deposit.

25. Examine search engines

At Leapforce, you can evaluate search engines by conducting researches on predefined queries, analyzing them, and providing feedback for search engine results by their usage and relevance.

26. Maintain fan pages

Fan pages on Twitter or Facebook require people to connect with them. Log on to Fiverr and get jobs for maintaining social pages.

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27. Fix Google’s mistakes

Sites like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. pay you for fixing their search results. You just have to mend the errors of the search engine results and make them qualitative, relevant, and useful. Doing this you can earn around $12 per hour.

• Leapforce
• LionBridge
• Appen

28. Online juror

Do you love Law and Order? Ever wanted to sit in a courtroom and decide if someone is innocent or guilty?

eJury provides an attorney the opportunity to “pre-try” the case before it goes to trial in front of an actual jury at the courthouse.

eJurors review facts and answer the questions, and click a “Submit Verdict” button upon completion.

For each verdict rendered, eJurors are paid $5 – $10 depending on the length of the case. You certainly won’t get rich serving as an eJuror, but just one case a week would probably pay for your Internet access.

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Be a caregiver

29. Pet sitting

Do you adore pets? Go for pet sitting at your place. Make sure your house can accommodate numerous pets.

Websites like Care.com brings together pet sitters and people looking for pet care. Remember to quote your rates wisely.

30. At-home daycare

If you are home with your children, why not start an at home daycare.

They are highly sought out in our area of Dallas because people like that they are close and that there are much fewer children involved that a more corporate daycare.

You will need to get a certification from your state, but you can make big bucks caring for children while getting to spend the day with your children as well.

Get Creative

31. Calligraphy

Do hand lettering for invitation cards, wedding cards, and other stationery. Use your favorite font combinations and start off with your calligraphy adventure. Look at the Etsy Calligraphy section.

32. Transcriptionist

Even if you don’t like your writing skills or have a programming talent, you can still do freelance transcription. Transcribing is detailed work, but luckily you can do it any time of night or day. Check the same sites listed above.

33. Cook

A college friend makes the most beautiful cookies and finds events to sell them all year long – birthdays, holidays, football parties, the list is endless.

Some people love to cook and bake. If this is you, consider running a catering business from your kitchen. Bake cakes or cookies for birthday parties, dinners, or other events.

Make sure to abide by the food safety laws and have fun.

There are many moms who don’t have time to make homemade food for bake sales and parties and families who want a holiday feast without the trouble.

34. Start a side business

Become an online personal stylist or the many other options to start something on the side. It will take effort, but there are many different routes you can go.

You can work with an existing company, like Avon, Jamberry, and Stitch Fix, which will help you get started. Or find a need in your community that might need addressing. Do local companies need your accounting skills?

Rent your things

35. Rent your parking space

If you don’t use your parking spot during your working hours, consider renting it out on Craigslist.

36. Rent your automobile

Not using your car while on a trip or weekend? Rent it out. RelayRides and GetAround will assist you in this while paying you on a per hour basis.

Is your car sitting idle at the airport parking? Then you can make use of FlightCar and help an arriving tourist.

37. Rent your clothes online

If you have a closet full of clothes that you haven’t worn in a long time, rent them out. Sites like RentNotBuy and Loanables make this possible.

If they don’t fit anymore or not fitting your current lifestyle include them in the garage sale or selling online mentioned above.

38. Rent your bike, cycle, snowsports, or any other gear

When not in use, rent out your favorite equipment. You can use Spinlister to rent your sports gear.

39. Rent out your studio space, music instruments

Is your guitar lying in the corner of your room, without any daily usage? Make money by renting it on Sparkplug. You can do this for other your music instruments also, like amps, mics, harps, or your rehearsal room or studio.

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Make money from stuff you already own

Making money is a hobby that will complement any other hobbies you have, beautifully. – Scott Alexander

40. Tidy up

You probably have much more stuff than you realize. According to The National Association of Homebuilders, the average house size in 1973 was 1,644 square feet. That grew to 2,624 square feet in 2014. Clean the dust, sort out your storage closet, and put up a garage sale.

If you are overwhelmed with “stuff” in your house, check out a great book called, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. The book is about changing your perceptions of your things so you can keep what is really important and get rid of what is not.

41. Sell your antiques

Did you collect things when you were younger or have items that fit your last home but don’t fit your new one? Get out all your collectibles and sell them off. If some are antiques or collectibles, make sure to get them appraised. Otherwise, you may sell some rare items at low prices.

Sadly my long kept collection of Star Wars and X-Files trading cards were only selling for a few cents on eBay, so I decided just to keep them for the memories.

42. Flea market tossing or flipping

If you have a crafty side, put it to good use. Visit the nearest flea market, Craigslist, or Freecycle.org and buy some interesting items, restore them, add your special touch, and resell them for a profit.

Think about refinishing tables or converting old plates into art. Turn trash into treasure.

If you need ideas, check out Pinterest. It has a world of ideas, and you’d be surprised how much people will pay for a custom baby nursery lamp or a re-stained bar from the 70s.

If you enjoy this type of work, consider starting an Etsy store. One of my wife’s friends felt staying home with her two boys was great, but she missed having an artistic outlet. She researched what was popular on Etsy and started making artistic versions of people’s photos. It only took a few months for her shop to become as busy.

 43. Sell your cell phone

Whether a new model or an old one, you can sell your cell phone. You can go for Amazon that gives gift cards for working iPhones, or websites like Swappa and Gazelle that give you cash for that old phone.

44. Return printer cartridges

Hand in your empty printer cartridges to office supply stores like Office Depot, Staples, etc. for free credits.

45. Sell your old snapshots

Do you have some random pictures lying somewhere or taking computer space? Sell them on stock photo sites like iStockPhoto.

Such websites purchase photos from anyone. Even if you feel that the images are not worth selling, just give it a try. Very often, the most neglected pictures of everyday objects do the trick, like a simple pen and paper.

46. Bed and breakfast or AirBnB

You already have a place to live. If you live near a college campus with visiting parents or near music or sports venues, consider starting a little bed and breakfast.

If that seems too hard, check out sites like AirBnB, which help you rent safely and ensure you get paid. I used this service when traveling in Switzerland with a friend and can confirm it is a great service.

Sign up with my link and you’ll get $35 off your first booking!

47. Sell online

A garage sale might not be your style, or maybe you only have a few really nice things you want to sell. Consider selling on Ebay, Craigslist, and Facebook groups.

My wife sold some Kate Spade purses that she no longer used and made much more by using Ebay than trying to sell locally. She started by asking a very low price for the purses and the bidding drove the price up much higher than she expected.

48. Open a bank account

A simple Google search for banks giving bonuses for opening accounts returns a list of current offers. Be careful to read the requirements, but if you have time, you can make a few hundred dollars.

49. Sell your books

Check out this recent story from frugal living expert Lauren Greutman:

My 10-year-old son brought home a book from our park’s free library box. It was a biology textbook – teachers edition. He said it looked interesting and hey, it was free (having no idea you could sell it). I scanned it in my Amazon seller app and realized it was worth around $150. He was so excited. We listed it for sale for $130 and it sold! Going to tell him, he just made $130!

My father-in-law did this with his old seminary books. I couldn’t believe that books 30 years old were still worth so much!

Even regular books can earn you money. Stores like Half Priced Books and others will give you cents to dollars for each of your current books. It saves space on your shelves for something new, and you earn a few bucks.

But if you want the most cash for your books, check out getting rid of your old books using BookScouter.

1. Enter the ISBN of your book into BookScouter
2. BookScouter searches their database for the highest paying book buyback companies.
3. Once you find the company offering you the most money for your books, you fill out some information
4. Ship off your book, and get paid! Most companies offer pre-paid shipping labels which saves you time from having to print shipping or go to the post office. It’s super easy!

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50. Shop online and earn cash back

Sites like Fat Wallet pay you back when you shop at their store. This can mean discounts for you or simple cash back deals.

51. Buy groceries and get rebates

Many rebate apps like Ibotta and Checkout51 offer cash rebates on grocery store purchases. You just have to take a picture of your grocery receipt with your phone, and you can even buy groceries from your regular grocery store.

52. Share what’s in your fridge

The Nielsen Consumer Panel offers gift points to look what’s in your fridge. You just have to scan barcodes of your fridge products and send it to them. Here’s how it works:

1. Each week, you scan all of your purchases and transmit the data. You may also be contacted from time to time about your opinions and to answer questions.
2. Being a panelist takes about an hour a week.
3. You accumulate points with each interaction and earn more points the longer you’re on the panel.
4. When you’re ready, you cash these points in to get rewards.

53. Sell your junk mail

Do you love getting junk mail? If you’re like me, you probably don’t – that’s why we call it junk! Other than recycle, trash, or burn it in the winter what can you do with it?

The Small Business Knowledge Center is a market research company that will take your junk mail and email and give you a Visa prepaid card.

 

Disclosure: We have some famous office cats around here. The affiliate links in this post help us buy them the good cat food. Thanks for your support!