Freelance Jobs You Can Do From Home
Part of the path to financial independence and sustainability involves paying down debt as soon as possible. When you’re on a fixed income, this can be hard since you may only have a small amount of your take home pay left over for debt or other random bills. Many people will often tell you to “get a second job” but in most situations, that can be unrealistic.
Doing freelance jobs online gives you the chance to work during your off-hours, allowing you to pay down debt faster, freeing up more of your fixed income for other things.
These are a few of the better paying types of jobs you can do in your spare time, all of which can bring in money relatively quickly.
Be a Writer
Freelance writing jobs are a great way to bring in extra money without needing to leave your house. Dozens of writing platforms are already available for those looking to write, with the most popular ones being WriterAccess (higher pay, 2 week payment delay) and TextBroker (lower pay, more jobs, weekly payments).
If you did well in English classes in high school and/or college, there is a good chance that you would write at a sufficiently advanced level to be appealing to clients on a writing platform. Many people make this kind of work their primary source of income, but if you already work, it can be a great way to bring in up to ~$1000 extra a month.
Flip Auction Finds
All it takes is a few dollars and an eBay account to get started, but you can make some decent money by going to even just one auction a month.
The trick here is not to buy anything super-expensive. If you can, stick to items that go for $1, generally the minimum bid an auctioneer will take. Some of the best things to look for are boxes of books, old decorations, small trinkets, etc. You might end up spending $5 over the course of a couple of hours and another couple of hours researching and listing items on eBay.
Not everything you buy is going to be worth it to list, let alone ship. You can still recoup some of your investment even on the duds by holding a garage sale a couple of times a year with your leftovers, or taking them to a consignment auction.
Fiverr Gigs
While not particularly well paying, a Fiverr gig can make you a few extra dollars on the side for doing something you already know how to do. The hardest part is usually marketing and designing your gig in such a way that makes people want to order from you.
You can increase business by offering high quality services, but your hourly rate will be relatively small if you have to spend even two hours doing each gig. On the other hand, every little bit helps when you are trying to pay down debt, so it is something to consider.
Setup an Elance Account
Elance is a comprehensive marketplace for those who have skills to share (namely in design, programming, content creation, etc.) and it can be fairly useful if you do need a lot of extra cash. The caveat is that outside of programming jobs, you may need to market yourself hard in order to find decent jobs.
If you are an app designer/programmer/website developer you should have a fairly easy time finding work on Elance, though you will probably make less than what you would at a comparable job.
For most people, Elance can make for a great second income since many jobs on the platform start payments at $1000+.
