As a single stay-at-home-mom, I’ve had the privilege of getting to know the myriad of real ways in which to earn extra income from home, which I’ve done for the past 23 years! Here are my top 10 favorite income from home ideas.
1) Sell stuff around the house on ebay
Most people have no idea how much clutter, cough cough, I mean, priceless heirlooms, they have laying around the house. If you’re not using it, why not put that money in your saving account? This is how I look at it. Everything in your home has two price tags on it. What it’s worth to you…and what it’s worth to someone else. Many times, we overprice our own stuff. But, there are lots of times where things sitting around the house can fetch us some good money.
Here’s a great example…
This spring as I was de-cluttering my home, I found a children’s board game that I wanted to sell. Of course before I donate or sell anything, I always check ebay. The board game itself, as a complete deal went for $15 on ebay. Not good in my opinion, considering I’d have to spend about $8-$10 to ship it, then add 16% ebay/Paypal fees, and I’m looking at a whopping $2.60 profit. Not really worth the time.
Now being on ebay so long, I also know to search out replacement parts. You see, in many cases, you actually make MORE selling replacements parts than the item as a complete set. Totally weird, I know, but it’s true.
So, I searched and sure enough, I could make $35 by splitting it up. I made 5 small lots and made about $25 in profits.
$25 for one single board game = totally worth my time.
So, the next time you are searching for ebay for some things to sell, keep in the back of your mind that many times, splitting up your item, may just fetch you a much prettier penny!
Really, I’ve seen all kinds of things sell on ebay. I’m sure you have some old textbooks or books laying around that may be worth some money.
Amazon is great for selling books. I’ve seen people sell melted snow for thousands, I’ve seen large 3″ dust bunnies sell for $10. I’ve seen coffee mugs and old plates go for upwards of $50. Why I’ve even seen someone take apart an old mattress and sell the inner springs, a set of 10 for $30! The rarer the item is, the more money you can get. Be creative; let your imagination go wild and research everything first.
Also check out my list of 40+ Things to Sell To Make Money Now here.
2) Affiliate Marketing
This is a super quick way to make cash. Simply share with your friends the things that you love. Two of my favorite companies are ePantry and Ebates. Both companies give you $10 and your friend gets $10 each and every single time. This adds up super quickly! As you can from my account screenshot below, I’ve earned $1,943.33 from Ebates thus far (I’ve been with them for a few years now) and if you get into referrals, you can earn a LOT more (I earned $2,000 this quarter JUST in referral bonuses from Ebates!). It’s DEFINITELY worth your time to sign up. You earn cash back on all your purchases as well. If you tend to forget to go through Ebates before shopping online, I like to stick a post-it note to my computer so I always remember. Once you get past $1k, trust me, you’ll start remembering! LOL.
Having trouble finding affiliate programs to join? I hear ya! You can spend weeks searching for different affiliate products to recommend and make money online OR you can click here to get my free eBook, Huge Affiliate Products Resource List for Lifestyle Bloggers!
3) Resell
Buy for less and sell for more. This is pretty common and one of my least favorite ways of how to make money because it is so time consuming, but it seems to be pretty popular and I DID do it extensively right after I got out of the homeless shelter for many years in order to survive and to build up a savings so that I could invest in growing a bigger business, so I will include it.
If your strapped for cash, you can even go to Craigslist and find curb alerts, get the free stuff, fix it up and sell it. The possibilities are endless. You can restore old furniture. You can sell clothing, toys, repair vacuums, anything really. Anything you can get for a cheaper price, sell it for fair market value, you profit. It’s as simple as that.
Here are some posts to get you started reselling:
- How to Start a Home Business When You Have No Money
- How to Get Free Stuff to Sell
- 5 Secrets to Sell Anything You Want
- 7 Tips to Making a Living on Ebay
- Rare Littlest Pet Shop List – Make Money on Ebay
- LPS Buying Guide
- Littlest Pet Shop Collection List
- Daily Habits of a Successful Ebayer
4) Monetize your skills
Maybe you can type 65 wpm like me. Maybe you’re really good at English grammar and can proofread. Maybe you have a knack for fixing computer issues, setting up WordPress blogs. Maybe you love creating beautiful pictures on photo editing software. Whatever it is that you like to do and your good at, you can monetize. A couple of the sites to use for this are Fiverr and Odesk. Check out this seller on Fiverr who paid off his student loans with money he made on the site!
There are also groups on Facebook that you can sell your work. You could become a virtual assistant, create printables for others, or help other bloggers blog. There’s plenty of opportunities and I have all that and more information in my course, How to Make Money From Home.
Love shopping? You can monetize those skills as well! Like taking surveys (#8 below in the list), you won’t get rich quick, but you can make some quick cash. The average you make is approx. $10-$25 and you get to keep what you purchase through MarketForce.
5) Sell your photos
If you love photography and would like to make some money, you can become a contributor on Shuttershock or IngImage or Deposit Photos. It is free to join and you can get anywhere from 25¢-$75 per download!
6) Sell handmade items or food items at craft fairs
Do you like to sew? Maybe you create clay sculptures. Whatever you hand make, you can sell at a craft fair. A friend of mine makes purses and sells them on Etsy and at craft fairs. Especially around Christmas-time, craft fairs can make good money and you’d be surprised how many different things qualify as crafts!
The best things to sell at craft fairs are food and drinks. Think about it, people walking around for an hour or two, browsing, they get hungry! Food tables are usually the best sellers at any craft fair. Things like a pretty new straw cup filled with lemonade, tied with a bow on the top. Other treats that do well are homemade brownies or protein bars. Things like cupcakes don’t do as well because it’s more messy. Think: they need a little something to tide themselves over while they finish browsing.
7) Write posts and reviews for cash
If you love to write, you can submit articles on Hubpages.com. I know a couple who makes $300/month solely writing articles, posts, and reviews for the site. There are a lot of other places to make money writing posts. You can get involved in Facebook groups for VA’s (virtual assistants) and find income from home jobs, assignments, and even steady blogs to write for!
8) Survey Companies – List of Top 25 Best
Did you know that when a company is wanting to release a new product, they hire companies, who hire you, to test the products and/or give them feedback for your opinions! There are MANY scammer survey companies out there, please be advised. One of my favorite survey companies is Pinecone Research. I was with them for a good 7 years before stopping last year. It is hard to get into their database, so if you ever see their name in an ad, join right away. (UPDATE: CURRENTLY ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS for Male (get hubby to join), Hispanic, African American, are between the ages of 18-24, or live in Canada! HURRY!)
Other legitimate companies (not the whole list of course, there are literally thousands of companies, but these are the top 25 best):
- American Consumer Opinion
- National Consumer Panel
- Harris Poll Online
- Survey Junkie
- Inbox Dollars
- Reward Survey
- Nielson
- Branded Surveys
- My Points
- Vindale Research
- E-Poll
- Points2Shop
- ySense
- CashCrate
- Opinion Outpost
- Bzz Agent
- Crowdology
- iPoll
- MindField
- Survey Club
- Ipsos I-Say
- Toluna
- Pinecone Research – best survey company on the planet (hiring NOW!)
- SwagBucks
- FusionCash (similar to SwagBucks)
9) Sell on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace
Craigslist is like an online yard sale. There are so many things you can sell on there. You can purchase things on Craigslist to sell or even get things for free in the free section. I used to refinish old furniture and make quite a lot doing this. You can also check out places like Slickdeals, ebay, or yard sales and resell on Craigslist.
There are a lot of women selling things on Facebook Marketplace that are handmade (I know because I buy them often!)
Here’s a guy selling his woodworking skills at Christmastime….
Here’s a girl selling wood signs for your door (I bought a different one and put it with the wood trees I purchased from the example above together on my fireplace for Christmas and it looked AMAZING!)…
If you have a website or something like that, this is a great place to promote yourself as well as she does!
Here’s a girl selling custom pumpkins for Fall…
I purchased one and put it on my bookshelf in the Fall and it looked beautiful!
It’s also a great place to sell things you no longer need, around your house. But research both ebay and Facebook Marketplace because sometimes you’ll get better money for the item on ebay. Always sell it wherever you get more money!
10) Start a Shopify store (my FAVORITE WAY!)
In all my 23+ years making money online now, THIS is my favorite way! Why? Because all I have to do is set up and create the products, give a steady streamline of free printables to my email list that I BUILT much of it WITH those printables (releasing a new binder every month, giving it free to get traction, get reviews, help others in their journey, etc.) then the empire is built and now it’s really great money and I don’t have to work a ton to maintain it.
In fact, my very first month on Shopify, selling printables, I made $52,060. You read that absolutely right! Today, I make $7 million/year in revenue selling printables on Shopify. I have over 150,000 sales and it’s been an amazing ride the past couple years! It’s DEFINITELY a hot business model!
What I love about this, rather than selling physical products, is that I don’t have to chase down deals, drive around looking for stuff. I don’t have to be shipping a ton of orders each day. I don’t have to be doing any of that. They are DIGITAL products and I can make the product once, and then sell it over and over and over again.
It’s a brilliant business model, really, and it’s so little to maintain. Really after you’re done with it is just the weekly emails, which I do anyway for my blog so it’s not any extra work for me, and creating a new product each month to give them. I can make that product as big or as little as I want, depending on my time. Then it’s just about customer service emails and I have an assistant who takes care of those. There’s so little work that goes into it for me now. Maybe that will change over time, but for now, it’s a pretty cushy “job”. 🙂
I’m able to sell the products well because *I* created them. I know more about them than anyone. If anyone has any questions, I can answer it. Whereas when you sell other people’s stuff, you don’t know all the answers of the questions they ask and you lose a sale. This is different. I know the answers, because I made it.
11) Start a Blog
This is #11, because it cannot be considered an EASY or fast way to make money. There is a lot of time and energy that goes into blogging. However, I CAN tell you that within my first year of blogging, I was making $10k/month income (no joke). It has most definitely changed my family’s life! Not one of the easy income from home opportunities, no, but it sure is a fantastic way to go and as time goes on, will become more and more popular, so best to get in now!!!
If you think that blogging might be the path for you, here are a couple fantastic articles that can help:
- My step by step VIDEO tutorial for how to start up a blog, so that you are confident in knowing how to do the techy stuff to begin
- 47 Reasons to Start a Blog, to see if it’s right for you
- How to Start a Money Making Blog, a guide to help walk you through some of the big decisions when starting up a blog and what you’ll need to know
- How I Made $10,015 Last Month Blogging (Income Report), seriously, it’s great income if you are persistent and work hard.
- How to Make $10,000/month Online Blogging – no experience needed
- How I started Making $10,000/month My First Year Blogging, article on everything from start to finish, step by step, everything you’ll need to know to run a fantastic, profit-making blog.
Would you like to know more in detail about how I make money from home? If so, let me know in the comments HOW and what platform you’d like to learn about. Would you like to learn how to sell on ebay, how to resell, how to make money blogging for beginners, make money from surveys. How can I help you achieve your goals? If there’s enough interest, I’d love to teach more in detail how I do it and have been making money from home for 18 years!!
