Want to make money from home, but don’t want the stress of starting a business yourself? Try one of these online jobs that pay well instead.
Imagine it’s a Friday morning and the kids are at school and your significant other is out of the house at work…
You could:
A). Sit down and finally start working on your online business.
Or
B). Look around your house and see the million other things that need to get done first and do those.
Or
C). Start watching the latest HGTV design challenge that’s on in the background.
Let’s get brutally honest here for a sec…If choice A just doesn’t seem realistically doable to you, then starting an online business might not be the best option for you.
And, you know what, that’s ok.
You can go another route and choose one of the many online jobs that pay well instead.
Well enough to help pay your bills, without all of the stress and sole responsibility of running a business by yourself.
That’s life-changing type money right there.
With an online job vs. starting a business, you have clients or a boss to get work done for. In this way, someone other than yourself provides the motivation, which is hard to conjure when you’re trying to work from home. This, I know oh too well.
Some of the online jobs below are freelance based and some you would actually be working for a company. Either way, they are task based as opposed to starting a business which can be more obscure.
So, without further ado, here are the online jobs that pay well that I would recommend you give a try.
This post may contain affiliate links. This means I could earn a commission if you purchase through my links, however, there is no cost to you. Rest assured, I only promote products that I use or think are great. Thanks for reading!!
Online Jobs That Pay Well
Virtual Assistant
I’m sure we’ve all seen virtual assistant jobs floating around the internet and thought they were not real jobs.
In fact, virtual assistant jobs are all too real, and they can pay well, very well – six figures well if you are good at it.
A virtual assistant, or VA, works as an assistant for someone or a business, but does it remotely.
Being an assistant for someone can mean many different things depending on who you’re working for.
For a business, or an executive type person, this could mean light data entry, taking notes, answering emails, doing social media posts, or other clerical type work.
For a busy mom or dad, this could mean planning family events, scheduling appointments, organizing calendars or anything household related that they can’t get to.
To be a virtual assistant, you want to make sure that you are an organized person who is good at planning and has decent computer literacy.
Some places to check out:
Proofreading
If you are a person who doesn’t rely on spell check, then proofreading may be the perfect online job for you.
Proofreading is exactly that, you proofread text of any sort to fix any grammatical or spelling errors for the author. This can be books, magazine or newspaper articles, website pages, blog articles, etc…
Proofreading can be as big or as small of a job as you’d like it to be since it is more of a freelance situation again. There are companies that will hire full or part-time workers on a permanent basis, but freelance is usually easier to get hired for. Once you get a few freelance jobs under your belt, then you could switch to a more regular situation, only if you’d want to.
For freelance work, I’d look at:
If you’re looking for a course to get you started, check out:
Graphic Designer / Web Designer
Little did you know about me, but I’m a professionally trained graphic designer. I have a 4-year degree and everything.
Do you need that to be a graphic designer? Absolutely not.
If you want to be a graphic or web designer for a company and work remotely, most will want you to have some sort of degree or enough years of corporate experience to compensate for the lack of education. You will also have to know professional level graphic design software (Adobe Creative Suite) and web coding/css skills.
But, if you want to go freelance and pick up jobs for yourself, then there are no rules. You just need to have a love (or like) for designing on the computer.
Graphic designers create branding, page layouts, logos, business cards, posters, flyers, brochures, etc…
Web designers create web page layouts and overall functionality of websites.
For freelance work, check out:
Freelancer
Transcriptionist
When I was home from college one weekend, I went over to a guy’s house I went to high school with who was also in several of my college classes. We walked upstairs and his parents were both in one of the spare rooms working. They had funny headsets on and were typing.
I thought it was the weirdest thing at the time, but I still remember it to this day for some reason.
You can either work for a company, or you can go freelance if you want to be a transcriptionist. It is one of the best online jobs that pay well and it is 100% legit if you do it right.
As a transcriptionist, you will listen to recorded audio and type it out into electronic written form.
You will need to be able to type relatively fast and have decent concentration skills. The faster you can type, the more money you can make as most transcriptionists are paid per audio hour that you transcribe, not the amount of time you are actually working.
Places to check out:
Freelance Writer / Copywriter
If words easily flow from your brain onto the page for you, then I am envious and you should become an online freelance writer or copywriter.
Do you need to have experience? Not necessarily, but you do need some examples of your work to show potential employers.
As a writer working remotely, you can write for ad agencies, newspapers, magazines, corporations, bloggers, influencers, and pretty much anywhere else that might need something professionally written. You could even do technical writing or things like resumes or white papers.
Writing is such a broad niche and there is a lot of different avenues this could go, which means there are lots of opportunities out there.
Places to check out:
Read my post How to Start Freelance Writing with No Experience and Not Cry Yourself to Sleep or jump right on over to one of the below to get started.
Digital Marketing
Are you one of the many people out there that went into Marketing as a career choice only to realize that everyone and their brother also did the same thing?
Instead of trying to fit a slot at a corporate job, take the parts of marketing that suit you the best and make an online job out of it.
Online jobs that pay well can be hard to find, but if you are more or less creating your own, you theoretically can’t lose.
When you are a digital marketer, you are trying to get your clients noticed, online usually, so they can make more money.
This can include posting to social media, setting up email campaigns, writing compelling ad or webpage copy, or even drafting a marketing or advertising strategy.
Places to check out:
Teach English Online
My cousin taught English to Japanese students…but it was actually in Japan.
You definitely don’t need to fly all the way to a foreign country to teach English anymore.
This online job is becoming one of the most popular.
To teach English online, you don’t have to speak two languages, you don’t have to have a teaching degree and you don’t have to have experience.
What you will need is an internet connection, obviously, and usually a college degree (it can be from any major).
Places to check out:
Online Tutor / Teacher
If you are at heart a teacher, teaching or tutoring online can be hugely rewarding.
You can be a teacher for an online class in almost any subject, including crafting, dancing, etc…
You will usually have to do a mock class or record yourself actually giving a class so you can prove you have the chops. Some places also want experience in the subject you are going to teach or tutor in, or a degree of some sort.
Tutoring and/or teaching usually do require more background experience and education, but that means that they are some of the better online jobs that pay well.
Teaching is a legitimate career, and now it can be done online in a subject that you are interested in.
Places to check out:
Virtual Receptionist
No longer are receptionists tied to a front desk having to get coffee. Now, you can sip on your own coffee and get paid.
Being a virtual receptionist is similar to a virtual assistant, but as a receptionist, you will be answering phone calls, handling customer questions, scheduling meetings and light virtual paperwork.
You’ll need to be computer literate, professional and being organized never hurts.
Places to check out:
Customer Service Representative
The OG online job.
Being a customer service representative has somewhat of a bad rap.
Yes, you can get less than happy people on the other end of the phone, but you also have the benefit of not having to look at them while you are secretly flipping them off. 😉
Almost any size company has some sort of customer service department that they need people for. Large companies with lots of technical products are your best bet – think Apple.
If you have the patience of a saint and want a reliable hourly wage, consider becoming a customer service rep.
Places to check out:
Fear not! If you are looking for online jobs that pay well, all is not lost. There are many opportunities online these days that can help you transition to forever working out of your home and making a decent living.
If you want to flexibility to control your own working life, but don’t want to burden of trying to create a product or business, then check out one of the online job ideas above.
(Also see Your Fingers Are Not Just For Insults: Legit Online Typing Jobs)
If you change your mind and think an online business might be a good idea for you, check out my post Get off the 9 to 5 Hamster Wheel: Passive Online Side Hustles from Home.
It doesn’t cost you anything to apply to a company or to submit to a freelance request. If you get a “no”, so what? You haven’t lost anything.
But, if you get a “yes”, it could change how you think about your work and how you make money – life-changing even.
