Best Work from Home Jobs for 2021 (Best Online Jobs)
Work from home jobs are on the rise and social distancing is only accelerating this trend.
And it makes sense.
Why should someone have to sit through rush hour traffic and go to an office when all they need is a computer and Internet connection?
Working from home offers a lot of benefits too.
- A typical employer saves around $11,000/year for every employee who works from home half the time.
- Additionally, employees save up to $4,000 per year working from home half the time. This number increases substantially when you factor in living in a less expensive area to work remotely full time.
Second, we live in a world of convenience, and more people are staying home these days. All it takes is an Internet connection, and you can order food, stream Netflix, order products with Amazon’s two-hour delivery, and enjoy modern conveniences most couldn’t dream of a few decades ago.
The days are here when anyone can work from home (or any virtual location) with a computer, webcam, and video conferencing tool.
That’s why this article covers the best work from home jobs to check out so that you can make money online – and do it from home.
To this day, most articles about work from home jobs talk about the same low paying tactics:
- Online surveys
- Coupon clipping
- Home data entry
- Call center work
- Virtual assistant
- Home customer care
- Administrative assistant
- Home customer service agents; customer service representatives
- Most articles even featured babysitting as a tactic
What year is it – 1993? Have I been sleeping this whole time like Chris Farley with Hibernol?
It’s 25+ years later, so I scoured through the minimum wage, entry-level, work-at-home jobs to find the high paying online jobs and business ideas that are best for this century.
Let’s get started.
Disclaimer: Please note, this article includes affiliate links which may provide me a commission at no cost to you. These are merely the best online jobs and the tools to use to be successful. You can read my affiliate disclosure on my privacy policy.
What Are the Best Work From Home Jobs?
With most jobs, we trade our time for money. So the best work from home jobs help you make the most money in the least amount of time.
Here are the top 11 legitimate work from home jobs to start earning money from home on your own time.
Best Online Job #1: Work Remote as a Premium Freelancer
Getting a remote job as a freelancer is a great first option.
You are working straight from your home and choosing your clients. More productivity. No more sitting in pesky traffic. Amazing work-life balance. These are some of the perks of becoming a premium freelancer if you can leverage your knowledge.
The first step is to sign up for FlexJobs to find premium, flexible remote jobs that you can do anywhere in the world.
Freelance revenue is exploding. This infographic by Upwork shows that 57.3 million people freelance, making $1.4 trillion per year:
Moreover, getting jobs as a freelancer is no more difficult than getting a regular job. Many often wonder how they can land a lucrative gig. Sometimes, prospective freelancers look for work from home freelancing jobs for months and months to no avail.
The problem is that most freelancing websites get tons of applications, and hiring for positions are limited.
Therefore, for starters, you have to get creative with your approach. Sending out your proposal and then twiddling your thumb, waiting for someone to contact you won’t get you anywhere.
Here’re some of the tested ways that will help you get your first freelancing gig in no time:
1. Create a portfolio.
The first step is to create a portfolio. Of course, you would need to demonstrate your skills to get some credible freelancing gigs.
Your portfolio should be able to:
- Perfectly showcase your expertise
- Showcase your experience in the niche
- Show your personality
2. Write extensively.
Another important tip I can give you is to write, write, and write!
It doesn’t matter if you are a graphic designer. Or a coder. Or a ninja warrior for that matter.
The only thing that matters is that writing is your best bet to get your name out there.
Are you not a good writer? Then suck it up and still write.
Once you start writing about your niche, clients will come flocking to give you jobs, not the other way round.
I have accomplished a lot due to my writing. And even if you’re a blogger outsourcing some of your content writing, you need to be a great editor regardless.
From writing newsletters to blog posts or even a simple email to clients — it all starts with the written word.
I hope you get the idea. So get started with writing, and you will see a barrage of inbound clients coming your way.
3. How to find your work from home freelance jobs?
If you are reading this blog, you may have just started to think about the option to work remotely. Many companies like Formstack are offering remote work for their employees.
While you build your credibility in the job market, you can easily find jobs on various freelance sites as well.
Finally, if you want to start making money online, remote freelancing with Flexjobs is my #1 choice.
First, Flexjobs screens employers for you so you have the best matches.
FlexJobs comes with a small monthly fee – not a percentage – and in return, they vet all job opportunities so you can start making money right away.
Start your freelancing journey today with Flexjobs and start making money.
Best Online Work from Home Job #2: Start a High-End Blog
It seems that everyone is blogging these days — from your nosy co-workers to distant acquaintances and even Grandma Mary.
Let me be blunt: if you are going to treat blogging as just writing about your passions and hoping you make money, you may be disappointed.
Because once you see that you’re not getting desirable results, you are likely to quit — just like at least 59.3% other bloggers.
However, if you are serious about learning how to start a blog to make real money, then keep reading.
The first step is to get a paid domain name and WordPress hosting. I recommend Bluehost, and they’ve helped me tremendously in scaling my blog to make over $80k/month.
1. Focus on building a personal brand.
If you’re not a great writer yet, don’t worry. You have to become the next Hemingway or Shakespeare to build a personal brand presence online.
Blogging is not penning an editorial to the New York Times.
With blogging, you have to write like you talk — because here, your main motto is to influence others to act.
And you cannot influence others under the guise of intellectualism.
Part of being a blogger is sharing your story with the world and not holding things back.
This is what my About page looks like:
As you can see, I don’t talk about any business success or what I claim to be good at – it’s mostly just a photo of me as a baby haha.
By being vulnerable and real in your content, you can break through the noise, connect with your followers, and build your influence faster.
You will also be happy to know that influencers are in high demand these days. According to statistics, influencer marketing has skyrocketed 90x since 2013.
Here are the main steps that turned my blog into an effective personal brand platform:
2. Pick a profitable niche.
“Follow your dreams; write about what your heart says, and money will follow.”
I reject this popular notion.
I’m passionate about all kinds of topics – distance running, astronomy, traveling to far off places, fantasy football, elephants lol – but if I had to write about any of these topics incessantly without seeing any readers or income, I’d quit 100% of the time.
This sort of advice is not only wrong but also ineffective.
Whether you’re a starving artist, graphic designer, coach, consultant, teacher – anything in life – recognition and human connection are what we’re after. And focusing just on your passions without a business plan is no way to start a project that is supposed to build a following and generate income. So rather than focusing first on just your passions and hobbies, begin with a business mindset.
You should first pick your niche based on market factors.
When it comes to blogging, start by picking a niche that you’re well versed in, but also has decent search volume on Google and market demand.
For instance, if you are trying to tap into the digital marketing industry, then don’t only base your blog on “Digital Marketing.” It’s too broad.
Instead, start more narrow like SaaS SEO, B2B content marketing, or any other sub-niche.
Start as the #1 expert in one small niche with an audience you cater entirely to. Then you can expand and work toward other niches in the same vertical.
Ultimately, your niche needs what I call ARP – audience revenue potential. How much money is your target audience willing to spend with you?
When selling, it works better to go after a high-quality B2B audience that can drop $5k at the drop of a hat, rather than an audience with less money. For example, it’s harder to sell to a struggling college student with $15 or less for pizza and beer (been there, done that).
In the end, money and recognition fuel human passion more than tortured writing ever will.
Focus on high-end consulting when starting out.
Once you’ve positioned yourself as an influencer in your industry, the first step to monetization is selling high-end consulting services.
The great thing with high-end B2B consulting is you don’t need much traffic to make a lot of money.
It’s a simple formula when you’re just starting:
- A blog at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by an “unbalanced” force of SEO knowledge
- This law shows how traffic, links, and audience potential are related, as shown in the equation below:
- Low Traffic * High Price = High Traffic * Low Price
It’s pretty simple. When you’re just starting out and not getting as much traffic, you naturally need to charge a higher price and do more hands-on consulting work to make the same amount of money from lower traffic. For example, if when you start your blog and are getting 10x less traffic than in the future, you need to charge 10x more to make the same amount of money from your passive income streams.
You can check out my email newsletter to dive into this further, but with the right guest blogging strategies to grow your Domain Authority, you can use your consulting profits to accelerate your blog’s growth with content and links.
In the end, I want you to start making a lot of passive income in 3-6 months, not 3-5 years.
Remember, you first have to position yourself as a high-end consultant. Make sure that you focus on converting your visitors into business clients and providing excellent customer service experience.
Next, remember you’re not just a blogger, but a business owner so thinks like one. Hire writers instead of writing everything yourself, focus on sales at the beginning, and realize you can be successful fast if you put in the work.
To summarize again, start by focusing on consulting, then use this revenue to fund your blog and accelerate your content production. As your traffic grows, you can then move into passive income streams like affiliate marketing, digital products, and online courses.
The first step to start a high-end blog is to sign up for web hosting with Bluehost.
You can get started with them for just $2.95/month (63% off) and start your blogging empire.
#3 of the Best Jobs Online: Dropshipping
What if I tell you that you can get involved in selling products without worrying over inventory or fulfilling orders?
That method of ecommerce is called dropshipping.
Here’s how dropshipping works:
- You (the retailer) launch an ecommerce store and advertise a manufacturer’s product.
- A customer completes an order on your website.
- You then forward the customer and order information to the manufacturer, and they handle the shipping.
Here’s how the whole process works compliments of Visual.ly:
The process is simple and only requires a website to become an online retailer of thousands of potential products online.
However, like any business models, it has a few downsides:
- Lower profit margins than selling your own products. When it comes to dropshipping, overhead is low — but so are the profit margins. A large chunk of what you will earn is going to be skimmed off by the supplier.
- High competition. If you’re selling commodity products, there are likely many others doing the same. Therefore, it’s a given that the competition is pretty high.
- Less control over branding. Since you’re selling a manufacturer’s products, your brand image can suffer. One way to mitigate this is by having your manufacturer place custom branded inserts into the boxes.
- Less control over customer service. As you’re not shipping the product yourself, you could get bad reviews from things completely out of your control.
Overall, around 27% of online retailers have adopted dropshipping.
The competition is pretty high. However, if you go about it the right way, there’s a lot of potential with dropshipping.
If you need help to get started with dropshipping, you can rely on an expert freelancer from a site like Fiverr. Fiverr’s dropshipping section includes freelancers that can help with anything from setting up and designing your store to syncing your products and marketing your business.
Overall, here’s a quick guide for you to get started with dropshipping:
- Choose a niche market and research which products are best suited for your audience.
- Conduct competitor research to see their products and pricing.
- Choose an ecommerce platform and design your online store.
- Carefully find a reputable dropshipping supplier.
- Sync your product inventory with a supplier like Inventory Source.
- Launch your ecommerce website.
- Start marketing your online store.
To get started, I recommend Wix as your ecommerce platform since they’re super easy to use and integrate with lots of dropshipping tools.
Ultimately, to succeed as a dropshipper, you have to build a real brand behind your products. It’s more challenging to do this when you’re selling other wholesaler’s products. But by only selling 5-10 highly unique products, you stand the best chance at real success.
You can get started for free with Wix and upgrade to a business plan.
Digital Marketing Freelancing
Online digital marketing jobs are in high demand, and there is a skills gap that can’t fill these positions. They’re a great way to use your creative chops and analytics skills to help businesses grow their online presence.
According to a study, around 50% of modern businesses lack skilled workers.
With advances in globalization, we are currently witnessing an upsurge in companies outsourcing their digital marketing functions – and you don’t need a Bachelor’s Degree, a college degree, (or even a high school diploma for that matter) when you’re freelancing.
Therefore, it’s a win-win situation for everyone.
On the one hand, companies are saving extra money and unnecessary headache this way. They don’t have to hire a skilled team for each department when they can outsource them. And on the other hand, those willing to work from home are getting more lucrative opportunities
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