It wasn’t so long ago that working from home was something only a handful of lucky people could do. In today’s cloud-based digital environment, that’s no longer the case. With endless work from home job opportunities to log in and stay productive online, virtually anyone can start a career from home.
You could take your chances as a dedicated freelancer, find a new job working remotely for company, or pick up some part time projects alongside a more traditional job. There are plenty of ways to make a living online, and here are just some of the options worth checking out.
What are the highest paying work from home jobs?
1. Affiliate marketer
If you’ve never heard of affiliate marketing before, it’s basically the art of referring other people to a product that you want them to buy. Through videos, blogs, and other online content, you gently usher customers towards making a purchase. If your community buys the products you’re trying to sell, you earn a slice of the profits. It’s helpful to be familiar with market research if you really want to target your content. Here are some affiliate marketing sites you can start with.
2. Customer service representative
You don’t need to sit in a bustling call centre to support customers anymore. Customer service assistants now have the option to work at home. Thanks to the cloud, your business can give you a dedicated number that you can answer from your home office. As well as inbound calls, you can be responsible for handling web chat and social media too.
3. Online sales rep
Similar to being a customer service representative, there are plenty of home opportunities in generating sales for a company online. This involves cold-calling potential customers, and even presenting demonstrations to clients online through video conferencing tools and chat. You’ll need to know how to persuade people to be effective in this job. It’s also worth having plenty of experience talking to people.
4. Content marketer
If you love writing, creating podcasts, or producing video, then you can be a content marketer. These people know how to use content to support the growth of another company’s brand and generate potential sales. You can work flexible hours writing blogs and eBooks that help your clients to capture attention online. Some content marketers also work with things like social media posts and website copy too.
5. Virtual assistant
With endless tools for collaboration and communication available online today, it’s easy to build a career as a virtual assistant. These experts perform clerical and administrative tasks on the behalf of the people they work for. This could mean scheduling meetings, dealing with phone calls, typing up reports, and even sending emails. If you’re excellent at organisation, this could be a great job for you. This role often comes with a competitive salary – and since you’re remote, you can often get a London-level wage whilst living somewhere cheaper, like Leeds, or even rural Lancashire!
6. Mentor / Consultant
If you’re particularly skilled in a particular industry, then you might be able to make a living sharing your skills and knowledge with others. Mentoring involves coaching people to achieve their goals, talking people through their problems, and more. You could even be a mentor and a teacher, giving people personalised lessons on the things that you’ve learned in the past. These online mentors provide exceptional, impressive, and successful experiences that deliver exceptional learning outcomes.
Similar to being a mentor, if you’re a consultant, you can sell your knowledge on a specific topic to people all around the world. Today, there are consultants on everything from TikTok marketing, to PPC advertising. Companies often work with consultants to make sure that they have the right strategy in place for business growth.
Consultancy is especially great if you’re looking to move from something full-time to something more part-time, with a flexible schedule.
7. Work from home data entry jobs
Data entry is one of the older jobs in the digital world, but it’s been given new life by the rise of remote working. Since robots can’t always transfer information from PDFs and scanned photos as well as they should, companies still need human intelligence. Data entry is pretty simple, but it can generate a nice income for someone good with accuracy. Just avoid jobs that mention ‘paid surveys’ as these aren’t salaried positions.
Since you might be dealing with personal data, it’s worth familiarising yourself with the United Kingdom’s GDPR policies. You can check the duties and responsibilities of an online data clerk on this article: https://www.talentlyft.com/en/resources/data-entry-operator-job-description
8. Proofreading
If you love reading and you have an eye for detail, then proofreading could be the job for you. In this job, you’ll need to read through crucial pieces of copy and other written content to find mistakes. Proofreading isn’t as easy as it seems. You’ll need excellent grammar, and the patience to read several documents over and over again. However, if you’re confident with your literary skills, then you’ll do well in this home based role.
Proofreader Helpful Resources
If you’re ready to pursue an editing position or looking for more information about proofreader’s responsibilities, these online resources are a great way to get started:
Copy Edit This! – This is the best way to put your editing skills to the test before embarking on your job search. Try this first of at least nine interactive copy editing quizzes created by the New York Times.
Grammarly – This is a tool that allows homeworking proofreaders to spot grammatical errors on the spot.
Encyclopedia Brittanica – This is a wonderful online tool (no longer published in book form) for researching practically everything about anything.
@copyeditors – Follow this active Twitter account run by ACES: The Society for Editing, a trade organization for editing professionals.
9. Online Teaching
There’s no limit to the number of skills that people can teach today. If you’re comfortable with video conferencing, you can create online webinars where people can sign up to learn amazing skills. Alternatively, you could produce pre-recorded videos and podcasts that people can purchase and download. Some teachers work one-on-one with their customers through video and audio chats on the web.
This is especially common in the ESL (English as a second language) field. You might be based in Birmingham, and end up teaching someone all the way in Shanghai!
10. Ecommerce store owner
Have you ever wanted to run your own business? Now’s your chance. Anyone can start a company online with the right website and some checkout software. This is quite different from a lot of work from home opportunities. You can even use methods like dropshipping, so you don’t have to store any products in your own home. Dropshipping means that a third-party supplier deals with creating products and sending them to your customers for you.
If you’re keen to run your own ecommerce store, but you want to be a little more creative about it, then marketplaces like Etsy could be the perfect solution. Here, you have the option to create anything you like, from furniture, to clothes, and sell it to people around the world. Just remember that this kind of flexible working will require a lot of time and effort on your part.
11. Event planner
Know how to create memorable, personalised experiences for a specific group of people? Then you could do well as an event planner. Today, event planners don’t have to meet with their clients in-person to discuss parties, conferences, and weddings. Instead, they can do it all from their home office. A quick video conference could be all it takes to get a feel for what your customer needs so that you can create the perfect plan.
12. Graphic Designer and Developer
If you’re a creative person who loves drawing or making art, then you’ll thrive as a work from home graphic designer. These professionals can find gigs all over the web for things like logo and website design, print adverts, or even illustrating a book cover. There are tons of opportunities out there, plus you can also create your own website or portfolio to boost your chances of finding more clients.
Developers don’t need an office to be productive – they just need the right software. As a work from home developer, you can create anything you like, from amazing smartphone applications, to website widgets. Some developers also create entirely new programs from the comfort of their own homes. Just remember that you’ll need a decent amount of coding knowledge to succeed in this arena.
13. Internet security specialist
Ideal for those who have always had a passion for technology, an internet security specialist career involves monitoring networks for potential threats. As a specialist, you’ll also need to provide clients with advice and guidelines on how they can improve their security standards and overcome potential threats. As the demand for security and privacy online continues to grow, the need for people in this role will accelerate.
Since Covid-19, more people are working remotely – so expect to see an increase in job alerts and recruiters looking for people with these skills.
14. Product reviewer
Social proof is crucial to gaining customers these days. Before you buy something online, there’s a good chance that you’ll read reviews from other customers for an insight on what to expect. These reviews are so crucial that some companies even pay people to write them. A company might send you a product every week so you can write detailed reviews on how it works.
You need a blog or a YouTube channel in order to post reviews of the products. But it is more effective to have both, as well as active social media accounts. If there is a good user community on the sellers website, you can also post your reviews directly on the website.
15. SEO expert / Social media manager
SEO is all about making sure that certain websites and web pages appear at the top of the search engines when customers are searching for specific terms. To excel in a SEO role, you’ll need to keep up to date with Google’s latest algorithms and know-how things like keywords and meta descriptions work. As a SEO expert, you can work with a business on their entire online marketing strategy.
If you’ve always been a fan of Facebook and Instagram, and you know how to get people’s attention online, then you can find a work from home job as a social media manager. There are countless companies out there that need help managing their social media accounts. Some might even want you to build a social strategy from scratch for their brand.
16. Accountant
Accountancy is becoming a particularly popular field for those who prefer to work from home. With so much technology available to help you with things like sorting through expense reports, calculating income, and more, there’s no need for a physical office anymore as long as you have a laptop or smartphone. You can even have meetings with your clients over the web and discuss their cash flow with them.
17. Influencer
Influencers are one of the most valuable tools in a brand’s marketing arsenal these days. Customers are becoming less likely to trust big-name companies, and more likely to listen to people who they feel an affinity with. As an influencer, you’ll need to build a dedicated following of potential customers on social media. When brands see that you can influence the customer base that they need, they’ll pay you for your help.
18. Scriptwriting
If you love movies, television shows, and even the content that you find streaming on YouTube, then you might do well as a scriptwriter. Today’s companies look for scriptwriters to help them with everything – adverts, landing page videos, even movies that they want to publish with companies like Netflix. There are endless opportunities out there for getting your ideas on screen.
19. Data analyst
This is another great home opportunity for people who have a passion for technology. With big data growing around the world, it’s easy to find job alerts for people who know how to take the insights generated by analytics tools and transform it into actionable strategies that businesses can understand.
20. Paralegal
In today’s busy landscape, people don’t always have time to arrange an appointment with a lawyer in-person. Instead, they want a reliable way to get quick advice. Paralegals can offer their services online and provide plenty of guidance, all from their home office. Even lawyers and attorneys can do much of their work remotely these days.
21. Translator
Finally, if you’re familiar with more than one language, then you can rest assured that there’s going to be someone out there looking for your help. Many companies need to translate their content into different languages to suit a wider audience. Although there are options out there like Google Translate, these are rarely as accurate as they should be.
Enjoy working from home
Remote working is easier than ever in today’s constantly connected world. With the cloud to keep employees equipped with all the team collaboration and messaging tools they need and communication tools to connect teams, there’s no need for a physical office in many careers.
Originally published Jun 12, 2020, updated Jan 16, 2023
