If you are looking for a list of easy to start online work from home jobs or a side hustle alongside your regular 9-5, this is the post for you.
The Work from home job market has experienced a meteoric rise over the last year obviously due to the pandemic and several international lockdown guidelines.
I would share 5 Hot Easy to Start Online Side Job Niches to consider with decent pay.
1. Affiliate Marketing
First off, What is Affiliate Marketing?
The best way to describe it is to think of it as an extensive referral program.
Although large corporations have marketing teams and huge advertising budgets, they still understand they can miss out on a massive chunk of their target audience.
This is where you step in!
Affiliate Marketing is simply referring a specific company’s product to customers of interest.
This could be a direct purchase, registration or subscription to their services.
With every successful conversion, you get a specified percentage to keep!
The best way to start Affiliate Marketing is to first look for companies or services with Affiliate Programs.
The easiest and the largest Affiliate Program currently is the Amazon Associates Program.
The program gives you access to the largest product database to refer with your personalised link for tracking referral purchases.
The unique thing about the Amazon Affiliate’s Program is the fact that you get a percentage of all goods in the cart at checkout regardless of the customer only clicking one product affiliate link!
It also helps to recommend products that are in your niche or you use regularly.
The product can then be referred in a product review which would significantly help in building consumer trust.
2. Advertising
If there was a perfect time to jump into advertising specifically on online platforms, it would be NOW!
It is increasingly apparent that customers are more comfortable with getting and engaging with tailored ads for their specific needs.
If you are good in writing engaging sales pitches in terms of posts, pictures and emails, this might be a job niche you should consider.
The part to research is how and where to monetise those skills.
Look no further, I’ll list easy places to start.
- Facebook Pixel Website Installation
- Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp Ad Integration
- Google Ads and Keyword Planner
- YouTube Ads
- Get Response Email Marketing
- MailChimp Email Marketing
- GMass Email Marketing
- Lead Generation & Email Lists Building
- Click Funnels
The above are monetisable advertising niches that are easy to start for your skills.
My advice is pick one, learn the basics and plug to play!
3. E-commerce and Drop Shipping
This is the holy grail of side hustle work from home jobs as it is extremely customisable to your existing skill set and easy to start up.
What is the major difference between E-commerce and Drop Shipping?
It mainly has to do with how inventory of products are acquired, stored and shipped.
E-commerce is an umbrella term for buying and selling services on virtual platforms or over the internet.
So in that case, Drop shipping can be classified as a type of e-commerce.
What is particularly special about Drop shipping is the fact that the seller doesn’t have to buy or keep physical stock to sell to potential buyers.
Drop shipping involves you being a middle man or woman between interested buyers and a third party manufacturer of the product.
So instead of buying the product to sell, you communicate with the third party supplier to ship directly to the customer and follow up for fulfillment of the orders.
The profit is the margin of the retail price sold to the customer and the wholesale price of the product from the supplier.
The drop shipping model for e-commerce has exponentially increased and drop shippers are estimated to make between $300-$5000 monthly depending on the product niche.
I would also express a little caution if you are beginner looking to start drop shipping as it could be challenging fulfilling orders without having physical stock so be careful.
Definitely start with e-commerce, build a network of trustworthy suppliers and then consider drop shipping.
How to start with E-Commerce?
- Do your research on products or niches that are high in demand in your area.
- Find and contact wholesale suppliers.
- Figure out your desired profit margin and prices. You shouldn’t be running at a loss. Make sure to account for VAT, shipping, website hosting and advertisement costs.
- Build your website or landing page for running ads (Shopify, Get Response or Click Funnels are extremely helpful as landing pages).
- Post engaging pictures and videos of your products on your social media pages.
- Sell!
4. Content Creation
This is one of my favorite types of side jobs as this job niche is one of the easiest to start and allows for extreme flexibility.
‘Content creators’ don’t include only Instagram models and brand influencers but can include you.
You have knowledge on a particular niche or topic, why not make a video or a blog post.
With the recent rise in Clubhouse participation especially for business visibility, it is apparent that social media can be used to bring traffic to your desired business without necessarily being a traditional influencer.
Content monetization could come in different ways and could be a great passive income stream once enough traffic gets to your page.
Here are some ways to monetise your content;
- Google Ad Sense – This is universal for Youtube Videos, Websites or Mobile Apps.
- Sponsored posts endorsing brands.
- Affiliate Product Links.
Bottom line is don’t sit on the knowledge you have, even if you’re not an expert.
There’s someone out there that would appreciate your level of insight and plug in.
Make content around it, be consistent and monetise today!
5. Personal Subscription Services
An amazing steady option for an online side job!
This is related to content creation but is slightly different.
Some of you may not be willing to commit to content creation and depend heavily on Adsense or similar monetisation programs which is completely fine.
An alternative to that can be personal subscription services.
Let me explain. For example, you are not a licensed dietician but you understand weight loss work out programs and diet plans cause they have worked for you.
Where you can start from as suggested above is to make content around your existing weight loss knowledge.
This could be;
- Diet Plans (Low Carb, Keto, Intermittent Fasting, OMAD etc.)
- Cooking Tutorial Videos on Healthy Food Alternatives
- Work Out Plans
- Corresponding Work Out Videos
- Zoom Live Work Out Sessions
With the content you create, you could charge a subscription plan to potential customers that are interested in your services.
This model is applicable to any of your skill sets or your knowledge base.
Subscription services could span across numerous niches; personal accounting templates, tax education, CV building, Job seeking tips, investment portfolio templates, stock market education, forex trading… the list is endless!
A website to check out for set up of subscription or membership services is Link Tree.
You could also manually keep track of your clients and email them content after they have paid for subscription. For automatic billing payments, you could link Stripe to your payment platform.
Be creative and flexible with your subscription packages and don’t try to make a one size fits all.
And that’s it for this week guys!
I hope this post was useful.
If you have any other side or work from home jobs you have heard of or are currently doing, feel free to drop it in the comments and share your experience so far.
Also if you are starting a business and need inspiration for actualising those goals and milestones, check out my post on how to create a vision board.
And with that, I’ll catch you later.
Till next time! Ciao.
