So you need a way to make money from home. Hey, join the crowd. Nearly 4 million Americans are working from home these days. That’s more than the population of Oregon, Utah or Iowa.
In other words, there’s an invisible army of us clocking in and sitting down at our keyboards at home. A 2015 Gallup poll found that 37% of Americans have telecommuted in their careers — four times as many as in 1995.
Problem is, we all know the internet is chock full of work-from-home scams. So many ripoffs! Seriously, it’s like the Wild West out there, except there’s no Lone Ranger to put things right.
When you’re working from home, you’re truly on your own. You’ve got to look out for yourself, ’cause no one else will.
How to Make Money From Home
With that in mind, we’re trying to do you a solid.
We’ve scoured through thousands of different ideas to find you 10 unique ways to make money from home. I guarantee there are some in here you’ve never heard of.
The important thing is: These methods are all road-tested. These are all ideas we’ve tried before, so we know they’re real and that you’ll really get paid.
Here are 10 legitimate ways to make money from home:
- Get Paid to Give Your Opinion
Surveys aren’t the best way to make money fast. But there’s a certain appeal to clicking a few buttons and earning money when you’d otherwise be doing nothing. Here’s our recommendation: Sign up for these legitimate survey sites all at once. Chances are, you’ll qualify for at least one or two surveys on each site a month, and the rewards will add up.
Here are some of our favorite paid survey sites:
You might recognize the Ipsos Panel name because it’s the same company that does most of the political polling during elections. Some of the top-end surveys can pay up to $95, but those are rare and can take awhile to complete. Most surveys pay a buck or two and only take 10 to 15 minutes.
PointClub is awesome because you’ll get points for every single survey you take — guaranteed. Plus, the company gives you $5 just for signing up! Once you accrue enough of them, you can redeem those points for gift cards to a ton of useful vendors like Walmart, Amazon and PayPal.
- Get $5 From Stash to Start Saving
It’s no brilliant secret that investing can be a smart way to make money.
Sometimes, though, it feels restricted to a few wealthy elite.
But Stash is different. This app lets you start investing with as little as $5 and for just a $1 monthly fee for balances under $5,000.
Stash curates investments from professional fund managers and investors and lets you choose where to put your money.
But it leaves the complicated investment terms out of it. You just choose from a set of simple portfolios reflecting your beliefs, interests and goals.
Bonus: Right now, The Penny Hoarder is teaming up with Stash to fund your first investment — so you’ll get an extra $5 bonus to get started.
- Invest in Real Estate (You Don’t Have to Be Rich)
Want to try real-estate investing without playing landlord? We found a company that helps you do just that.
Oh, and you don’t have to have hundreds of thousands of dollars, either. You can get started with a minimum investment of just $500. A company called Fundrise does all the heavy lifting for you.
Through the Fundrise Starter Portfolio, your money will be split into two portfolios that support private real estate around the United States.
This isn’t an obscure investment, though. You can see exactly which properties are included in your portfolios — like a set of townhomes in Snoqualmie, Washington, or an apartment building in Charlotte, North Carolina.
You can earn money through quarterly dividend payments and potential appreciation in the value of your shares, just like a stock. Cash flow typically comes from interest payments and property income (e.g. rent).
(But remember: Investments come with risk. While Fundrise has paid distributions every quarter since at least Q2 2016, dividend and principal payments are never guaranteed.)
You’ll pay a 0.85% annual asset management fee and a 0.15% annual investment advisory fee.
- Earn Cash Back on Your Grocery Ru
Ibotta is an easy-to-use cash-back app that’s partnered with more than 50 retailers, just about anywhere you’d do any kind of shopping.
Before heading to the store, search for items on your shopping list within the app. Strawberries? Check. An ear of corn? Check. Add each cash-back opportunity to your list in the app.
Then shop.
When you get home, snap a photo of your receipt and scan the items’ barcodes.
Bam. Cash back.
Some cash-back opportunities we’ve seen include:
25 cents back for any item
25 cents back on strawberries
50 cents back on frozen fruit snacks
$1 back on a box of tea
$5 back on a case of Shiner Bock beer
Notice a lot of those aren’t tied to a brand — just shop for the staples on your list, and earn cash back!
- Stop Deleting Your Emails
It turns out deleting your emails could be costing you serious money. Intrigued?
One of our secret weapons is called Paribus — a tool that gets you money back for your online purchases. It’s free to sign up, and once you do, it will scan your email archives for any receipts. If it discovers you’ve purchased something from one of its monitored retailers, it will track the item’s price and help you get a refund anytime there’s a price drop.
Plus, if your guaranteed shipment shows up late, Paribus will help you get money back for what you paid for shipping.
- Share What’s in Your Fridge
Believe it or not, this company wants to know what’s in your fridge…
Once you sign up to be on the Nielsen Consumer Panel, the company will send you a free scanner, or you can use your smartphone. Every time you go shopping, you simply scan the barcodes on the back of each product and send your data off to NCP.
As an active participant, you earn gift points which you can redeem for different types of merchandise. You can choose electronics, jewelry, household items, and even toys for the kids.
The longer you stay on the panel, the more opportunity you have to earn points toward prizes. You also receive entries for the panel’s many sweepstakes. Prizes include vacations and brand new vehicles.
- Get $5 to Invest With Acorns
Acorns is a simple savings and investment app that rounds your credit or debit card purchases up to the nearest dollar and invests the digital change.
You can connect the app to your credit or debit card and let it automatically round up all your transactions, or manually round up only the ones you choose.
Contributor CJ Reid does the latter, accepting roundups of less than $0.50, such as his $3.60 cup of coffee.
“Rounding up 40 cents here and 25 cents there moves me swiftly enough to $5 so that I can begin investing without putting myself into the red,” she says.
Once your round ups reach $5, that amount will be transferred from your bank to your Acorns account, and invested into your chosen portfolio.
“Acorns makes it easy to invest by removing the responsibility of choosing individual investments or worrying about trades,” Reid explains. “You don’t need any previous investment knowledge or history.”
And once you get the process automated, Acorns investments make your digital change work for you.
“With a conservative portfolio,” Reid says, “I turned $15 into $19 within a few weeks.”
You can sign up and download the app for a $5 bonus here.
- Earn Money for Shopping on Amazon
If you’re a regular Amazon shopper, you can earn money each month contributing to research to help companies understand what people are buying online.
Companies use this information to improve the online shopping experience.
Before you download an app called ShopTracker by Harris Poll, let us give you the basic requirements:
This will be a waste of time if you don’t shop on Amazon.
You must be 18 and live in the U.S.
You’ll need at least a Windows 7-compatible PC. If you have Windows XP or a Mac, it won’t work.
All good? Time to download.
Once you connect your Amazon account, you’ll receive your Visa e-gift card code for $3 via email within 48 hours — and another $3 every month you continue to share your purchase history.
- Cash in on Your iPhonetography
If you have a smartphone and a photographic eye, making money may have just gotten a lot easier. Oh – you’ll also need access to marketable scenery.
An app called Foap lets you turn your smartphone photos into cash.
Here’s how it works:
Download the free app and create an account.
Take a quality photo and upload it to Foap’s marketplace.
Someone buys the license to your photo for $10. You make $5.
If your photo sells 20 times, you make $5 each time and end up with $100 in your pocket — all for about five minutes of work. Pretty cool, right?
- Earn Up to $60/Hour as a Part-Time Bookkeeper
Does earning $60 an hour sound appealing? How about the freedom to work from home while helping others succeed?
Those are the perks of working as a bookkeeper, says Ben Robinson, a certified public accountant and business owner who teaches others to become virtual bookkeepers.
And no, you don’t have to have a CPA to be successful in this business. In fact, all you really need are decent computer skills and a passion for helping business owners tackle real-world problems.
It’s a great opportunity for moms who want to work part time, millennials who are just out of college and anyone who wants to bring in real money while working from home.
We talked to Robinson about what it takes to become a virtual bookkeeper, as well as tips and advice for making this career track work for you.