9 Legitimate Ways To Make Money At Home

Working two jobs and doing regular overtime yet your monthly income is not enough? Do you need an alternative source of cash that would not require you to apply to another job? If so, here are 9 Legitimate Ways to Make Money at Home!

Skeptic about Making Money at Home?

I know, I know. “Make Money At Home” might be a traumatizing phrase for some of you because some might have tried it but got scammed really bad. Or maybe you tried one before but you realize after a while that your effort is going nowhere.

I was too! I failed and got scammed many times.

Can’t blame you. I’ve been in your shoes.

My first adventure was during my late high-school and university yeard. I first did GIC’s but I started investing on mutual funds when I realize that it doesn’t make money. I used my university loan to invest. I figure that the return is much higher than the interest rate so why not. I had a good run doing it and I got greedy so instead of using what works, I started exploring more risky but high return investments.

The first venture in Forex trading. I did it because I couldn’t get a job after I graduated from university. Well, to make long story short, I was not able to make money off it. It is too high-risk. The forex market is moving to fast and if you miss a move, you lose a lot.

The next thing that I did is with an MLM company that sells health insurance. They promise big income, but the catch is you will have to recruit your friends or you must get your license before you can sell their investment products. I guess the red flag there is they make you pay for your school (a school that they own and run) before anything else. Things went south for me when I paid my “tuition” then they wouldn’t let me take my class because I have not recruited yet.

Another thing that I tried is buying and selling individual stocks. This one I had a bit of success. I didn’t lose during my years of trading, but, unfortunately, I did make a lot of money as well. Maybe it is because I am a bit young when I first tried it and I was still very emotional in my trading. I would love to do this again once I save up more.

Today, my new Work from Home venture is blogging, and I would say it is doing pretty well. Not only, I will make money off it, but more importantly, I am able to help people. Double Win!

From what I’ve shared above, you probably should have figure out by now that I am notorious in finding out what Make Money at Home ideas works and which ones doesn’t.

Overview: 9 Legitimate Ways to Make Money at Home

I learned a couple of them over the years, and I will share them on this list. This list contains all Legitimate Ways to Make Money at Home that I know will work if proper attention, time, and effort are put into.

  1. Do Fun and Engaging Activities on Swagbucks
  2. Fulfill Easy and Small Tasks on Amazon Mechanical Turck
  3. Become an Online Freelancer at Fiverr.com
  4. Invest in Index Funds
  5. Be a Couch Potato Investor
  6. Manage and Monetize Social Media
  7. Sell Things as Affiliate Marketer
  8. Buy Items from Flea Market and Sell them on eBay
  9. Create a Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) Business

Hopefully, you will be successful in one or more of these tips, and if you do not forget to come back to this article and SHARE it with other people so they too can benefit from it!

Legitimate Ways to Make Money at Home Rankings Explained

Before we go on to the list, let me just explain to you how my rankings work so you will be able to determine if you are up to the challenge or willing to take your time learning and developing a new skill.

Difficulty Level:

First, let me explain the “Difficulty Level”. This gives you an overview of how much time you need to spend on making the gig work. It also takes into consideration the challenges that you will face when doing the gig.

Easy – You can easily accomplish this without using much of your brain cells 😛

Moderate – You need to put a good amount of effort here. You will need to learn at least the basics of the gig to succeed.

Challenging – I’m not going to lie. This might stress you out a bit maybe a lot sometimes. You will need to set aside time and resources to learn how things work and you will need to constantly develop yourself in order to succeed.


Skill Level Required:

Next, let me explain the Skill Level Required. This indicates how much theoretical and technical knowledge you need to know in order for you to be successful with the gig. The five levels are “Fundamental Awareness”, “Novice”, “Intermediate”, “Advanced”, and “Expert”.

Fundamental Awareness – Maybe this is your first time hearing about the gig and you are Googling the terms or instructions on how to do it. Generally, only basic knowledge and common sense are needed to accomplish the gig.

Novice – You probably got introduced about the gig before and this is not your first time hearing this. You have a piece of limited knowledge about it and a simple instruction or crash course can help you keep ongoing.

Intermediate – You are familiar with how the gig works and have already done it several times (maybe from different companies or set up), but definitely have done a practical application.

Advanced – You are very knowledgeable and experienced in doing the gig. You can teach and explain the process to others.

Expert – You’ve been doing this for an extended period of time now. You now have the knowledge and experience to publish your own book, do your own seminar, or even start your own company in this area. Other experts recognize your ability and contribution.


Affiliate Disclosure – I am an Affiliate of many products promoted on this website and may earn a commission if you purchase something.


9 Legitimate Ways to Make Money At Home

1. Swagbucks

Swagbucks 1 of 9 Legitimate Ways to Make Money At Home Swagbucks
What is Swagbucks?

Swagbucks. com introduces themselves as

“the leading destination for earning real rewards for things you do online or on your phone. At home or on the go, you can conveniently earn points (called SB) when you: Shop your favorite stores, Search the web, Answer surveys; Discover great deals; Watch videos, and Play games. SB points can be redeemed easily for cash (PayPal) or gift cards to your favorite stores like Amazon, Walmart, and Target”

Swagbucks.com

Site: Swagbucks.com

Difficulty Level: Easy

All you need to do is to watch videos, download games, answer surveys, register for a trial account and many more

Skill Level Required: Fundamental Awareness

If you know how to read, fill out forms, watch, and click then you are good to go.

Income: Small

It is definitely not an alternative source of income because you will probably just going to make ~$10 to $100 a month depending on how much time you spend on it. This is perfect for students or stays at home moms that are looking for ways to generate extra cash to buy books, food, clothes, etc.


2. Amazon Mechanical Turk

What is Amazon Mechanical Turk:

Amazon defines MTurk as

“a crowdsourcing marketplace that makes it easier for individuals and businesses to outsource their processes and jobs to a distributed workforce who can perform these tasks virtually. This could include anything from conducting simple data validation and research to more subjective tasks like survey participation, content moderation, and more.”

Site: Mechanical Turk

Difficulty Level: Easy to Moderate

The difficulty level depends on the job (known as HITS or Human Intelligence Task) that you will take. Some jobs just need you to answer questions, watch videos, data entry etc. while others may require you to do actual work like participating in a study or doing some “artificial archivist”

Skill Level Required: Fundamental Awareness to Intermediate

The skill level required depends on the HITS you are doing.  Most likely, you need is the ability to read and follow instructions.

Income: ~$10 to $500+ a week

You will be graded on the works you will do. As a starter worker, you will only be allowed to do the simple, cent-paying HITS, but as you accomplish HITS after HITS, you will receive a decent worker grade that will enable you to do a much higher paying HITS.


3. Fiverr.com

Fiverr 1 of 9 Legitimate Ways to Make Money At Home Swagbucks
What is Fiverr.com?

It is an online marketplace where freelancers can post their services for a fee and/or customers can find freelancers to do work for them.

Site: Fiverr.com

Difficulty Level: Moderate to Hard

The difficult part is building your reputation. When you are starting, you will probably have to offer a bargain price so people will go and buy the services you are offering. As you gain a good reputation in the community, then you will be able to start charging a much higher fee.

On top of building your reputation, you will also have to do the services that you are offering. Of course, the more proficient and efficient you are in the services you are offering, the less difficult it will be for you.

Skill Level Required: Intermediate to Expert

You need to have technical skills to offer services. You also need to manage your online reputation/ customer service.

Income: Descent to Great

When you go to their site, you can see beginners people charging around $5 while a more reputable Fiverr Seller charges in the hundreds to thousands of dollars.


4. Index Fund Trading

What is index fund trading?

It is a type of investment strategy where an investor only invests in index funds. An index fund is a type of either a mutual fund or exchange-traded funds where its portfolio reflects the stock market such as the S&P 500, NASDAQ, and Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Index funds are great because the stock market has a 10-year-average return of ~ 7 – 10% and on top of that, your earnings are compounding! But that is not all, an index fund is passively managed, so you need to pay fees for bank’s portfolio managers (Yes, if your funds are actively managed, then you are the one who is paying for their salary). Finally, (Yes, there is one more) when you invest in an index fund, then you do not need to pay the taxes associated with buying and selling of a stock done by portfolio managers.

Difficulty Level: Easy to Moderate

First of all, let me clarify that this strategy is not trading individual stocks. The difficulty level of that strategy is off the charts. On the flip side, investing in “index fund” is plain and simple.

The hardest part with Index fund investing is coming up with the money. Of course, you can start with as little as $1000 then just contribute about $100 or so – for some coming up with this amount might still be hard.

It might also be difficult for some to wait over a very long period of time. This strategy works well on a timeline of 15 to 30 years. Other people can’t stomach the volatility of the stock market which can be another difficulty to overcome.

If you do not know how to set up your investment portfolio, you simply need to go to your financial adviser and ask for their help.

Skill Level Required: Novice to Expert

You need to understand and get familiar with basic investing terms such as index fund, market, return, risk/reward, risk management, gain, loss, as well as become familiar with the risk associated to it, but you do not need to DIY this. You can go to your bank and ask for your financial advisor’s help.

Just remember that you need to buy a passively managed index fund that tracks the market. Also, remember that your financial adviser is also a salesperson, so they will try to sell you a “better” investment. Always remember to ask the “after-fees” result of whatever fund they are trying to sell. You will be surprised how much less you will get after you pay all those especially if they are offering an actively managed fund.

Income: the 10-year average return of ~6 to 8%, compounding annually
Additional Resources:

If you already have some experience in investing, know what to do, familiar with risk/reward and looking for an institution to do your trading, then I recommend that you open an account with Questrade.


Disclaimer: We are not a registered security broker/dealer nor a  registered investment adviser. The advice is only meant to give you an idea and is for educational purposes only. Please do your own research before purchasing stocks, bonds, and other securities. 

Although investing can be very lucrative and the return can be very huge, the risk accompanying it is also great. Please exercise due to diligence and manage your risk appropriately. We will not be liable for any monetary loss that might happen as a result of trading on index funds.


5. Couch Potato Investing

Couch Potato Investing 1 of 9 Legitimate Ways to Make Money At Home Swagbucks
What is couch potato investing?

Couch potato investing is a type of index fund investing where you buy a US index fund, a Canadian index fund, an International index fund, and a Bonds index fund.

The proportion of each fund is as follows.

  • The percentage of your bond index fund is equal to your age.
  • The percentage of your US, Canadian, and international index is equal to 100 – (your age) divide it by 3.

That is it. You now have a couch potato investing which you should re-balance every year during your birthday since the percentage of the bond index goes up as you age.

Difficulty Level: Easy to Moderate

I am giving Couch Potato investing a difficulty level of easy to moderate because all you need to do is buy the 4 funds then re-balance it once a year.

No daily or yearly research, no watching the stock news, and no analyzing stock charts.

You can always go to your financial advisor if you need more help on setting up your couch potato investment portfolio.

Skill Level Required: Novice to Expert

Of course, the more you know about stock market trading the better.

Like an index fund trading, you must at least know the basics of trading and the risk/reward associated with it.

As mentioned above, your financial adviser should be able to teach you more.

Income: Varies

6. Social Media Marketing

What is social media marketing?
Social Media Marketing 1 of 9 Legitimate Ways to Make Money At Home Swagbucks

Social media marketing is a marketing strategy where businesses and entrepreneurs use social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter to sell their product and services to their target audience.

Difficulty Level: Moderate to Challenging

The most difficult part of social media marketing is building your audience. Of course, you can always cheat and buy your followers but I strongly warn you that this strategy will not work out.

So let us focus on the legit way of doing this. First, you will need to consistently create shareable and engaging content. Next, you will have to manage your online reputation really well. Finally, you need to work hard on your sales funnel.

Skill Level Required: Intermediate to Expert

At the very least, you need to understand the basics of how social media marketing works, how to create content, and how search engine optimization works. However, knowing just the basics is not enough. You need to constantly grow and develop your skills and understanding

Income: Scalable

Your income depends on what products/ services you are selling, how many potential customers you have, and your conversion rate.


7. Affiliate Marketing

What is affiliate marketing?

It is a type of marketing arrangement where an online retailer pays a content marketer, e.i. blogger, YouTuber, or social media influencer, a commission every time they sell items or services of the online retailer using an affiliate link provided by the online retailer.

Difficulty: Moderate to Challenging

The biggest challenge that you need to overcome in order for you to be successful in affiliate marketing is to drive traffic into your blog and/or YouTube channels and to build a large loyal following on your social media account.

Skill Level Required: Intermediate to Expert

The learning curve to affiliate marketing is steep which is why most people give up before they succeed in this business. However, if you have tenacity, loves to solve problems and passionate in outdoing your achievements, then this business is for you.

The list below is the basic things that you will need to know/do to get you started in this business.

  1. Be able to write a 1500-word article (Tip: You do not need to be a writer nor an English major. You just need is to make your article interesting, easy to read, and has a good flow. You can use grammar checker such as Grammarly)
  2. Understand what a niche is and be able to pick what niche your blog is going to be in
  3. Be able to come up with a marketable domain name and register it with a reputable domain registrar such as GoDaddy, Wealthy Affiliate, Host Gator
  4. Be able to use a website builder such as WordPress, Wix, Squarespace or GoDaddy
  5. Understand what search engine optimization is and be able to effectively use it
  6. Be able to manage your online reputation
Income: Scalable

Like in social media marketing, your income depends on the traffic you are receiving, your conversion rate and the payout for each conversion made.

what-is-wealthy-affiliate

8. Flipping Items

What is Flipping Items?

The concept is to find cheap items from online auction houses, online classified ad sites, garage sales, etc and sell it on a higher price on sites like eBay.

Difficulty: Easy to Moderate

The main difficulty of this gig is understanding what to buy for reselling. You cannot just buy items and hope for the best that it will automatically sell on. Once you get the hang of researching what products to sell and get familiar with the process of how to list your items on eBay and how to ship your products, then things should become easy and straightforward.

Another thing that you need to keep in mind is you need to build your eBay Seller reputation and this happens over time.

Skill Level Required: Novice to Intermediate

The process is very straight forward. You do not need any special skills to become successful in this gig. All you need is the ability to use the internet, know how to do research, a few customer services and an understanding of the process of shipping items.

Income: Varies

There are people who claim that they are able to replace their full-time income using this business strategy. Expect that when you are starting, you will only make a small amount of money.


9. Fulfilled By Amazon

What is fulfilled by Amazon?

The concept of fulfilled by Amazon is simple. Create an Amazon Seller’s account, research products to sell on Amazon, find a manufacturer in China through Alibaba or AliExpress, list the item on Amazon, order the product from your manufacturer and ship the product to an Amazon fulfillment center. After that Amazon will take care of the rest!

Difficulty: Moderate to Challenging 

The first thing that you need to be comfortable doing is gig is learning and getting comfortable with the process of researching a product to sell and buying and shipping it to Amazon. The other hard thing you need to overcome is building your reputation in Amazon. The higher your reputation the higher your chance to sell items. Finally, you may also need to understand how keywords work so you can stuff your product listing with keywords to make it discoverable.

Knowledge: Novice to Advanced

The process is straight-forward. Just find a reliable training material (I got mine from Udemy) and follow the instructions. Other than that, you just need to be patient, consistent and diligent on what you are doing.

Income: Scalable

Your initial profit will be small, but as you gain experience over time and build your reputation, your potential income will depend on how much work you can put. There are stories where individuals start to hire people to increase their output!


Suggestions?

So there you are, these are my suggestions that you should try at home. Remember not to rush the process. Some gig needs to be treated as an actual business. In other words, do not expect it to be a quick-rich scheme, rather, expect that you will have to have an initial startup cost, a vision/mission, and strategy, invest time and energy in building it, etc.

If you happen to know a legitimate way to make money at home, then please do not hesitate to share it down below.

 Join Our Community!

Here is the truth, due to the internet, the way companies do their business and the way humans interact with each other had changed and is changing dramatically. That being said, I can assure you that there will be a new way to make money from home.

My mission is to learn these things, try it out myself, make it work and share the results with you. In addition to my goal is to help you learn how to do these things so you can make money at home yourself.

Now, I urge you to like our Wealth-Builder Tips’ Facebook Page and Pinterest Board so I can reach you whenever I have a new tip that will help you build your wealth!

14 thoughts on “9 Legitimate Ways To Make Money At Home”

  1. Some really good options here for some Legitimate Ways To Make Money At Home…

    As you mentioned, when a lot of people hear “work from home” they often think of a scam, but that’s really not the case at all, so it is good to see you outline a lot of good choices!

    I like your rating system as well, I think that really will help people make an informed choice in which way they want to go.

    So what would be your personal preference in this list?

    I have an affiliate marketing business myself, and while it is a lot of hard work, it has so many benefits, but I would be interested in your “pick”

    Cheers 🙂

    Reply
    • Hi John,

      I do affiliate marketing as well. I am enjoying the process and I know I am able to help others as well so double win for me.

      My favorite in the list is index investing or couch potato investing. These two can potentially give you thousands of dollars (even millions) after 20-30 years and all you need to do is to spend 30 to 60 mins of your time every year. The downside though is you might lose a lot of money too.

      Regards,
      JG

      Reply
  2. Awesome advice!

    I really like the idea of Affiliate marketing (number 7) have you got any tips or advice for someone starting out?

    Thanks so much for sharing these great ways to make money at home!

    Mike

    Reply
    • Hi,

      My first advice is to take an affiliate bootcamp with Wealthy Affiliate (http://bit.ly/2Halwzf). Try to learn one lesson then apply it over and over again until you master it.

      Second is to have perseverance. Affiliate marketing is very lucrative and you can make thousands of dollars per month, but it doesn’t happen overnight. It could take many months or years before you see your first paycheque. During your first year, your income might not be consistent at all. This is why I’m advising you to persevere.

      Another is to be consistent. I want you to know that for the first 6 to 12 months, you will be putting a lot of work and will gain nothing. That will make you think of quitting. Instead of getting discouraged and quitting, try to consistently write blogs, learn new things, and fail and improve your blogging business.

      Regards,
      JG

      Reply
  3. For those who want to build a thriving online business, I’d suggest to learn about affiliate marketing and to work on Fiverr to get some cash flowing.

    John said that affiliate marketing is moderate to challenging, but I would say that it’s quite challenging if you want to make decent income. Here are some things that you need to learn in order to succeed with affiliate marketing.

    – Building a website with WordPress (writing posts, creating pages, plugins, customization, redirects, website backup, performance, etc.)
    – How affiliate system works (payments, commissions, networks, link placement, tracking and all other dos and don’ts)
    – Social media marketing
    – Email marketing
    – Content marketing
    – SEO
    – YouTube (not required but highly preferred)
    – Graphic design
    – Advertising
    – Networking
    and more

    It’s a long way from starting to learn about affiliate marketing to seeing return on investment, but once you break through that barrier you will be pleased that you started in the first place.

    Reply
    • Hi Milan,

      Thanks for your insight. Yes. I do agree with your feedback. Affiliate Marketing can be very challenging especially if you want to upscale your business. The more you know about the things you mentioned the farther your reach will going to be and the farther your reach then higher your conversion is (more money).

      Since this is just an overview article, then the 6 basic items that I mentioned in the Affiliate Marketing section is good enough to get a person going and doing those things should not be a problem.

      Regards,
      JG

      Reply
  4. Hi John,

    This is a great array of options for developing a side hustle – thanks for pulling it together.

    My parents did well out of stock investing and, for some years I thought this was really the way to go. Over the past 10 – 12 years or so, though, I have become very disillusioned with that approach and by 2015 I had moved all my investments out of the financial markets.

    My view was that I had no control over what happened to my investments. Some event over which I had absolutely no influence at all would cause the stock market (and/or the particular stocks in which I had invested) to plummet. I eventually came to look on the financial markets as nothing more than a giant casino..!

    I do affiliate marketing now (and you’re absolutely right about the need to stick at it over the long term) and I have my own agency business, which I do from home.

    With both of these income streams I am in control of my own destiny, which makes me much happier and less stressed.

    Cheers,

    Martin.

    Reply
    • Hi Martin,

      I understand your concern about investment in the stock market. It can be a roller coaster ride and it is not for everyone. I just want to make it clear that both investment strategies that I mentioned here is trading an “index fund” or collection of 300+ stocks. That means a decline of one stock can be offset by others, so theoretically and historically it should go up over a long period of time. But then again, I, myself, has been actively trading individual stocks since 2013 and I am willing to admit that investing in stock market is hard and not for everyone.

      You mentioned that you are now in affiliate marketing and that is great! Different strategy and different mindset and different result.

      This is the beauty of this list. I tried to diversify it so it offers different risk, different reward, different challenge and different learning curve.

      Cheers,
      JG

      Reply
  5. There is a lot of ways to make money right from home. What is the best way you would suggest? Can you really make money? Are there scams that we have to be worried about? I would like to hear from you.

    Blessing
    Claudia

    Reply
    • Hi Claudia,

      The one that I like the most is index investing and couch potato investing because it is truly a passive income. If you have a retirement plan, then the concept of it is the same. The only difference is what fund/s your money is in. If it is in a one or more index fund then you are doing it without even knowing it.

      Yes there are many scams out there. Specifically watch out to those that promises you that you will become rich in just a matter of x-days. Generally, anything that seems to good to be true are scams. If you want to make money then you will have to put an effort into it.

      Let me know if you have more questions. I’m here and happy to help.

      Cheers,
      John Greg

      Reply
  6. Hey John,

    I just read your article. It always amazes me to see all these methods to make money online. I never heard of couch potato investing or Amazon Mechanical Turk. I personally, work as an affiliate marketer and I love it.

    It’s just like you said the biggest challenge in affiliate marketing is getting traffic but the moment you solve that, everything gets a lot easier.

    really great post!

    Greetings,

    Rogier

    Reply
    • Hi Rogier,

      Yes, there are hundreds of ways to make money online. Some of it are quick bucks for little amount of time and effort while others might need a lot of studying, patience and hard work before you make money.

      I agree with your comments about affiliate marketing. Unfortunately, most people give up before overcoming this challenge then they say to others that it wouldn’t work. If only people can be patient and be consistent with their work, then they will be able to reap the rewards.

      Regards,
      John Greg

      Reply
  7. Hey great article! I would like to further explore some of the list items you talked about. Could you make a in depth article about social media marketing? That would be awesome!

    Reply

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