5 Legitimate Work From Home Jobs That Pays The Bills in 2023

Over the past decade, the number of work from home jobs have seen a huge rise.

With more and more companies getting familiar with technology, collaboration, and outsourcing, there are many freelance and business opportunities out there that you can pursue in the comfort of your own home. In this guide, we’ll explore 5 legitimate work from home jobs that can pay the bills.

1. Become a Freelance writer

If you have great writing skills and can write copy that sells, one of the best options for you to make a living working from home is to become a freelance writer.

With content marketing and eCommerce becoming more prevalent these days, there’s a growing demand for writers that can write blog posts, product descriptions or entire outreach campaigns.

It is actually one of the highest paid jobs that can be done from home but requires serious dedication to generate a sustainable income. 

The easy way to get started with freelance writing is just to start writing right away, and start applying for almost any writing gig on Fiverr or Upwork. While this ‘throw everything at the wall and see what sticks’ approach is fine for those who are just starting out, you can expect a lot of rejections because you simply don’t stand out. It’s also very unpredictable as you really don’t know what gigs you’ll find, and you’re not specialized in any niche, which will limit on how much you can earn from your writing.

If you’re serious about making a living from freelance writing, first decide on your target niche. There’s no need to overthink this as you can change your niche down the line, but when you’re first starting out, having a general niche – or two – makes things much more manageable.

A simple brainstorming exercise to decide on your niche is to ask yourself:

What do you do for fun or what do you do for a living?

If you’re knowledgeable about a certain field and have an affinity for it, using that as one of your niches should be a no-brainer.

Once you’ve decided on your niche, you can then analyze the profitability for that niche. 

An extremely simple way to gauge this is to Google “write for us” + [your niche] to see what blogs and businesses that need content.

From here, you should be able to tell that some niches are more profitable than others. 

While you can be a successful freelancer in almost any niche, it’s generally recommended to go for the options that’s more profitable and easier to find work in than others, especially when you’re just starting out and don’t have a track record yet.

Remember, you don’t have to stick to a specific niche for your entire freelance writing career.

The ones you choose initially would be a stepping stone for future interests and topics as you gain more credibility for your work.

After deciding on your niche, you can then start working on getting samples out to prospective clients.

Here are 2 of the best ways that you can churn out samples fast to get your first gig as soon as possible:

i) Create your own samples

Yes, you don’t have to wait for your first gig to come up with a sample. You can get started right now by just writing up some sample pieces to show prospective clients.

Create PDFs of multiple different writing samples that focuses on your niches to apply for your first freelance writing job.

By proactively creating your own samples, you get to practice writing beforehand and get your first real taste in freelance writing. It’s also a great way for you to polish your writing skills before any prospective clients sees your work. On top of that, it’s also a great way to start building your portfolio.

ii) Start your own blog

If you’re up for it, starting your own blog goes a long way to show off your work.

Starting a blog isn’t as daunting as you might think, and we have a complete step-by-step guide on starting a blog that you can check out here.

The goal here is to put yourself out there to show clients you know how to write for the web. A blog shows clients that you can write engaging content and demonstrates your technical ability.

By showing your competence in simple tasks such as publishing a post on a platform like WordPress, you’ll be able to stand out in the sea of freelance writers. 

A blog can easily be your most valuable asset if you put the effort into it, and can easily land you some freelance blogging gigs.

If you’re able to demonstrate exceptional quality in your blog, you can expect to get paid up to $100-$200 per 500 words, an insanely lucrative rate that you can realistically aspire to with a blog that you can start today.

On top of that, if you manage to impress your client, you can easily negotiate a contract for recurring income as businesses don’t just post to their blog once; a great opportunity to generate a consistent stream of paid work.

Once you’ve got your portfolio sorted out, all there’s left to do is to develop your online presence and start generating leads for writing gigs. 

You can try your luck by offering your services on Fiverr and Upwork, but as a newbie, you’ll want to build your network beyond those sites. 

Start connecting with other freelance writers on freelance writing sites, such as Be a Freelance Blogger, The Write Life, and Write to Done.

As you leave comments and engage with other people, this helps to show that you really are a serious freelance writer.

Another way to connect expand your network is to join freelance writing and copywriting groups on LinkedIn.

In the context of a group, you can feel free to ask questions as most people are friendly and helpful.

Also be sure to fill out your profile entirely and accept any new invitations that come your way, as this could be potentially be a new client.

With these steps done, you should be well on your way to getting your first ever freelance writing gig and start making a full time income from freelance writing! 

2. Start a private label eCommerce business

While this isn’t strictly a ‘job’, an eCommerce business can be run entirely from the comfort of your own home and can certainly pay the bills if done right. It’s also not as difficult as you might think. In fact, I started an eCommerce business myself from home, so believe me when I tell you that it can be done, and it can indeed pay the bills.

The fundamental roadmap to generate recurring, stable profits from an eCommerce business is super simple: find a product that’s in demand, get a supplier for that product, and fulfill the demand by selling it to customers.

Before we dive deeper, I have to first tell you that starting an eCommerce business does require some upfront capital, and it certainly requires a lot of front loaded effort. While I got started with my online business with just $300, I honestly had to cut a lot of corners to make that budget work. A more reasonable start up capital would be around $1000.

Starting an eCommerce business also requires some digital marketing skills as you’ll be marketing your products online. However, this really isn’t as hard as it seems, and we have a huge resource for everything on the HUSTLR blog that you can check out here which will address any difficulties you have.

If you’re willing to put in the effort to marketing your product and can afford to set aside a modest start up capital, starting an eCommerce business is one of the best ways to make a living from home. 

The first step to start an eCommerce business is to decide what to sell.

There’s no right or wrong answer here, but you definitely want to choose a product that meets all of these criteria:

• Products with strong and stable demand

• Has room for differentiation

• Cheap to source

• Compact and lightweight

You also need to take competition into consideration, as you’re most likely have competitors if the product you’re selling is lucrative. 

A robust way to find high demand, low competition products is on the Amazon Marketplace. Amazon has an insane market share of eCommerce sales in general, making it a good indicator on the demand of a certain product in general.

The BSR (Best Selling Rank) is a score on Amazon which ranks which products are the most popular and sell the most.

Amazon assigns the BSR score to a product’s sales velocity, and the lower the number is, the higher the sales volume (a BSR of 1 means that the item is the #1 best seller in that category).

As a rule of thumb, you want to look for products that fit the 4 factors above that are between 2000-10000 in their BSR score. 

This range ensure that the product has a sizable demand without being too competitive. Anything more 10000 in BSR would have questionable demand, while anything lower than 2000 would be selling so well that competition would be intense, leading to price wars and poor profit margins. 

It’s best to come up with at least 5-10 potential product ideas before you move on to sourcing your product.

Once you’re ready to move on to sourcing your product, your best bet would be Alibaba, the world’s best platform to source products with a network of millions of manufacturers.

Simply search for the product you want and you’ll be able to see listings from different suppliers show up instantly. Reach out to at least 5 suppliers per product to inquire about the pricing, options and MOQ quantities. 

Before negotiating with suppliers to lower the product cost, you want to make sure you have a decent profit margin for every unit sold.

Ideally, the retail price for your product should be at least 5x the cost price, as you would have to account for other costs such as shipping, packaging and other fees. 

Most suppliers on Alibaba can converse in English and would usually be able to provide you some samples for a small fee. 

Take the time to compare the ROI for different products with the pricing on Amazon. Also consider the MOQ from different suppliers to see if the initial order fits in your budget.

Once you’ve decided on your product of choice, you’ll need to utilize the remainder of your budget for branding purposes.

Don’t overthink this too much though, as the key selling point should be your product offering and not your packaging/logo, but do ensure that you have some form of branding on your product, even if it’s a small logo. A simple logo/packaging design would suffice, and I recommend going to Fiverr or Upwork to get this designed for a minimal fee. 

With that said, you should definitely allocate a reasonable budget for photography. I’m not talking about fancy lifestyle shots here, though you should include those if you can fit it within your budget. The important photos to take are multiple angles of your product on a plain white background, to clearly show it’s features and dimensions. 

Now that you’ve got your products manufactured and ready, it’s time to get selling and rake in profits!

You have two main choices –  Amazon or Shopify.

While I can’t possibly cover everything about Amazon or Shopify here, I’ll highlight some key differences between the 2 platforms that are the most important.

i) Amazon

Use this option if you don’t like the idea of setting up your own website and driving traffic to your store. All you need to do is set up your Amazon account and create your listing with your product details and images. After that, they’ll show up on Amazon’s product feed just like any other brand.

Then, ship your products from your manufacturer in China to Amazon’s warehouse, where you can utilize FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon). When you sign up for FBA, Amazon takes care of storage, packaging and shipping for you.

Amazon, however, charges you for this convenience and takes a cut from your sales to account for their FBA fees. This is on top of their referral fee, which can range between 10-15% depending on your product category.

While it’s so much easier to set up shop on Amazon, you’ll have far less control over your product, as in Amazon’s eyes, your business belongs to them, and they see your product as a means to grow their platform. As a result of that, you are always at risk of your product being removed, or even worse, being copied by Amazon themselves with their in-house brands. 

ii) Shopify

Selling on Shopify is a totally different ballgame than Amazon, as you’ll be able to truly own your own store with your own website, and nobody can take that from you. You’ll also be able to brand your products much more effectively as you’re not just a listing among thousands of different sellers. 

The downside here is that you’ll need to pick up more digital marketing skills, as it’s entirely up to you to set up your own website, design your store, and drive traffic to it. You’ll also need to figure out a way to fulfill your orders, be it from your house or via a fulfillment center.

You’ll need to familiarize yourself with paid advertising, as you’ll leveraging on paid traffic to drive customers to your store with Facebook, Google or other paid advertising avenues. 

On top of that, you will be responsible for designing your store. This isn’t as hard as it sounds, creating a store on Shopify is really as easy as installing apps on your phone, as Shopify’s incredible app ecosystem essentially means there’s an app for pretty much any feature you could possibly want for a minimal subscription fee.

It’s up to you to decide which platform is right for you, considering the pros and cons of each. The best analogy here is that you’re renting for eCommerce real estate on Amazon, while on Shopify, you set up your own shop. Amazon is great if you want to get started as soon as possible, while Shopify promises the best long-term stability.

After you get your first product up and selling, there’s really not much left to do other than occasionally managing your inventory levels and any paid advertising campaigns you may have. The beauty about an eCommerce business is that most of the work is front loaded, meaning that you put in most of the work initially to let it run on autopilot once it’s all running properly.

With your first product out of the way, you can easily launch many more products with your profits, and slowly but surely scaling up your profits along the way.

While there is so much more nuances in eCommerce that what I’ve covered here, you should have the general gist of running an eCommerce business by now, and the HUSTLR blog has a ton of eCommerce specific resources that you can check out here if you need help with anything along your eCommerce journey. 

3. Start a dropshipping business

If you like the idea of starting an eCommerce but prefer not to go through the hassle of sourcing your own product via private labeling, then dropshipping is for you.

The upfront investment of getting a supplier to manufacture your product, work on branding, and shipping it out can put off many people, and for good reason: you have to make a huge investment even before your first sale.

While I still think private label eCommerce is one of the most profitable long-term businesses you can start, you can get your feet wet in eCommerce with a much smaller investment with dropshipping. 

If you’re not familiar with dropshipping, it’s basically just like private labeling, but the product is already made and will be fulfilled by the supplier without ever going through you.

You basically handle the marketing and drive sales to your website, where orders are fulfilled directly from your supplier to the customer. You don’t have to worry about keeping inventory, shipping out orders, or managing returns. 

The startup cost for this business is way lower, since you only need to set up your online store which can be done easily with Shopify. You also get to charge any price you want, and the difference between your selling price and the cost from the supplier is your profit margin.

In fact, I can confidently say that dropshipping is one of the easiest businesses to start, as it requires so little effort and time to set up.

It’s also incredibly passive once you get everything running, as the only thing you would have to do once you get the ball rolling is to maintain your paid traffic campaigns. 

However, because it is so easy to start, you’ll definitely see some stiff competition in the dropshipping space that are all selling at rock bottom prices. You’re going to have to invest a little more effort in differentiating your store, be it in superior web design, customer service or better product images/descriptions if you want to stand out. 

You’ll also have to deal with some shipping complications if you use many different suppliers for a huge catalog. If your customer orders 3 different products from 3 different suppliers, you have to figure out a way to calculate shipping rates those 3 products.

Fortunately, you can deal with these downsides by using Shopify to set up your store, which allows easy integration with great drop shipping services like Oberlo or Spocket.

i) Oberlo 

Oberlo allows you to import directly from AliExpress, which has the biggest directory of dropshipping suppliers. With Oberlo, you’ll have access to thousands of sellers all in an easy-to-use interface.

Oberlo’s premium feature, called Oberlo Supply vets the best suppliers that are more trustworthy to mitigate risks from shady suppliers.

Chances are, you can find almost anything to drop ship from Oberlo from their huge catalog.

ii) Spocket

If you want to stand out as a drop shipper and sell products made in the US or Europe, then Spocket is the right choice for you. While the cost of items are typically more expensive compared to Oberlo, you can expect much higher quality and shipping times since the suppliers are most likely physically closer to your customers, which means way faster shipping times. 

Like Oberlo, Spocket also has a robust integration with Shopify that takes care of inventory and tracking numbers, freeing up your time from these time consuming tasks.

With that said, Spocket’s network of suppliers is way smaller than Oberlo, and you might find it challenging to source the exact product you want. You also can’t contact the supplier directly, as the only way you can interact with the supplier is through the Spocket interface. 

If you’re planning to sell premium products for a bigger profit margin, definitely give Spocket a try.

Just like private labeling, you definitely want to build a brand around a niche, but the branding only takes place on your website instead of the product itself. It’s far easier to brand a website than a physical product, and you can do this easily with Shopify themes and stock images.

Shopify’s drag and drop features makes it super simple to create a polished website, and you can find great stock images that are free to use on sites such as Shopify Burst, Unsplash, and Pexels.

From there, all there’s left to do is drive traffic to your website and let the sales roll in. The easiest way to drive traffic is definitely using paid options such as Facebook advertising, but you’ll need to be proactive in managing your ad spend to ensure that it doesn’t exceed your profit margin.

If you’re able to maintain a profitable paid advertising campaign, you can easily scale it up to reap more profits! This is easier said than done, as you would surely need to go through some trial and error to optimize your profitability. Your conversion rates might also dip with more traffic, but it’s up to you to see what works and what doesn’t, and go from there.

Dropshipping is by far the easiest business you can start from home, and if you do it right, you can definitely stand to make a ton of money from it. 

4. Become a content creator

Do you have a burning passion about a certain hobby, or is there a topic are you are obsessed over? The pipe dream of making a living from your favorite hobby/interest isn’t that far fetched these days, and you can certainly make a living creating content about cooking, gaming, sports, music, dance, travel, tech, or fitness, or anything that you can think of. 

While it’s very difficult to stand out in a sea of millions of content creators, making content that has a personal touch and stems from a deep passion goes a long way to stand out from the crowd.

Content can come in many forms, be it a YouTube video, a Twitch stream, a podcast, or even a blog. The underlying factor of success as a content creator is the reach your content; the amount of people that consume your content. 

One of the most remarkable features about creating content is that there is no need for fancy equipment, approval or even a big budget.  You can start blogging your bedroom or start shooting videos from your phone.

It’s also one of the very few ways that you can truly make a living by following your passion, as you are in complete control of the content you produce. This unprecedented freedom shouldn’t be taken lightly as it’s actually a bigger privilege than you might think. For example, not every producer gets the chance of producing their dream show or project. 

To truly make a living as a content creator, you’ll need engaging content to build an audience.

There are more people than ever that are searching for relevant, entertaining, educating and inspiring content online. As long as you can create content that people can resonate with, you’ll definitely have the ability to monetize your content in a multitude of ways down the line. 

A great starting point to get started it to narrow down on your niche. If it isn’t obvious enough by now, you should only go for something you are truly passionate about, as this will certainly show in your content. Some niches are more profitable than others, but the quality of your content will be a bigger determining factor of your success.

Choosing to produce content for profit instead of from your passions will not be sustainable in the long run, as it quickly becomes another dreaded job in no time. 

There’s also no need to be super knowledgeable or an expert in your niche of choice, though you should have some basic understanding of whatever topic you’re going to produce content for. After all, your content will come from your perspective, which makes it naturally unique and authentic.

A flick of personality goes a long way to make your content stand out, as you’ll instantly surpass the endless sea of regurgitated, generic content on the internet. Originality is a rare commodity, and use that to your advantage to maximize your chances for success.

In fact, authenticity is so valued that it far supersedes expert knowledge when it comes to making engaging content. Even the most valuable content can be made dry and boring when you present it in a generic way, as you wouldn’t be the only one with that information.

Narrow down your niche of choice and think about what you can offer in terms of your perspective on that topic. Once again, it doesn’t matter too much if you’re not a total expert in the subject so long as you’re not giving information on sensitive matters such as legal advice. 

Once you’ve narrowed down your niche and topic, you’ll need to come up with a content strategy before you actually start producing content. Think of this as a planning out a road trip to plan out the best route instead of start driving right away.

While some of your content might be spontaneous, such as covering the latest news, a content strategy will ensure that you have an actionable plan to creating content, and help streamline your production process significantly, which will ultimately help you churn out more high quality content. 

The first thing you need to do when coming up with a content strategy is to put yourself in your audience’s shoes, and determine what are their biggest pain points, motivations, or interests. Your content should directly address an underlying need among from existing content, so that when your target audience discovers you, you’ll be able to offer something new to their eyes. 

Always strive to deliver value with your content; your audience should be informed, entertained or enlightened every time they consume your content. If you can achieve this consistently, you’ll be able to easily build a loyal audience that comes back to you all the time. 

Here’re a few questions that you can ask yourself to decide the direction of your blog content:

• What is their biggest interest?

• What is their deepest gripe/motivation?

• What do they want to know more about your perspective?

You’ll also need to make sure there is a sizable demand for your content to begin with. After all, even the most amazing content in the world would go to waste if nobody is searching for it in the first place.

A great way to do this would be to come up with keywords for your topic ideas. 

Keywords are essentially the bread and butter of any content. Most of the content you see online is discovered using keywords, which tells search engines such as Google on what your content is about, and is the key to building an audience.

While it’s most definitely true that you can make content for just about anything, it certainly helps if the content you produce has high search volume with relatively low demand.

With that said, keyword volume shouldn’t hinder your original ideas for your content. It’s up to you to find the optimum influence that SEO performance has in the topics and message of your content. 

The right way to approach this is to utilize your knowledge or persona to produce the best possible content for a keyword opportunity, not the other way around. 

Once you got that nailed down, you can then start thinking about the type of content you want to produce. You don’t necessarily have to limit yourself to one content form, but rather choose one as your focus to begin with. You can easily transmute your content into different formats down the line, but you should have a designated format that serves as the core of your content. 

i) Videos

If you are open to the idea with being on camera, or have decent video editing skills, producing videos might be for you. Depending on your content, you might have to invest in a decent recording setup such as a mid-range camera and microphone to produce high quality videos. If you plan on creating content that involves screen recordings, a decent mic and screen recording software would suffice. 

You should know by now the best place to discover new videos is YouTube, and that’s where you’ll be uploading your videos. Building a channel on YouTube warrants an entire guide on it’s own, but producing great content always comes first, and that’s exactly where you should start. 

ii) Podcast

The podcasting market is seeing a huge boom in the recent years, with more than 30 million episodes uploaded as of June 2019. If you love diving deep in a conversation about a certain topic, you should give podcasting a try, as it’s still a huge untapped market for content. Podcasting is also far more intimate than videos, where the audience is engaging with your content in a more contained environment with fewer distractions. It’s a great form of content that’s still underrated, and I would even go as far as saying you’ll be able to stand out much easier on podcasts than YouTube videos.

iii) Blog

By reading this article, you already know what blog content looks like. Blogging is perfect if you don’t fancy the idea of putting your face or voice out there and prefer to get your thoughts out there by writing instead. Starting a blog in 2019 has never been easier, and is one of the cheapest forms of content to produce.

By now, you’ll have everything you need to start actually producing content, and it’s up to you to put in the grind to record videos, write blog posts or start podcasting. With a robust content strategy, keyword research and originality, you should be able to build up and audience over time, and when the time is right, monetize your following.

As you can probably imagine by now, having your income directly tied to your audience reach isn’t the most reliable source of income, but it’s also one of the most rewarding ways to make money from home. 

There’s a multitude of ways to start monetizing your audience, but here are some of the more common ones that you can easily get started with.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is when you (the content creator) promote a product or service and when someone makes a purchase with your affiliate link, you receive a commission for referring that sale.

This is one of the most common ways to monetize your content, and by far the easiest one to get started on. Keep in mind that it’s super important to only recommend products relevant to the blog topic that you genuinely tried and enjoyed. Choosing to promote an inferior product (or one that doesn’t align with your viewpoint) just to earn more money would severely harm your integrity.

Here are some examples of things you can be an affiliate for:

• Physical products
Almost anything can be bought on Amazon these days, and if you recommend a certain product in your content, you can sign up for the Amazon Associates program and get a kickback whenever someone buys something from your link. You can easily do this by hyperlinking products in blogs or placing your Amazon affiliate link in the description of your YouTube video.

• Digital products
Is there an eBook or course related to your niche that you can stand by? Most digital products usually come with an affiliate program, where you can sign up to get a cut of the sale.

It’s also vital for you to understand the big mistakes that affiliate marketers must not make before jumping in.

Ads/sponsored posts

Ads or sponsored posts can pay very lucratively if you have a huge audience as that’s the key metric that your payouts will be based on. They both work in similar ways where you get paid for integrating an ad in your content or on your website.

Ads can also be directly integrated in your content, like host read ads on a podcast or a short ad segment in your videos. These often appear less intrusive and yields better conversions.

That’s all there is to becoming a content creator! It’s one of the more unconventional ways to make money from home, but can be extremely rewarding as you’ll essentially get paid for doing what you love. 

5. Become a freelance creative professional

Are you a creative person and enjoy doing creative work? Being a creative professional can pay handsomely if you’re able to demonstrate quality in your work, and just like copywriting, the more you build up your portfolio and build a name for yourself, the more you’ll be able to charge for your work.

Being a creative professional can come in many forms, be it in graphic design, video editing, animation, and many more. What you choose to pursue obviously depends on your preference, and it certainly helps if you have been educated in any of those fields. The key here is to scale up your earnings via freelance work, and the ability to work remotely means that you can make this income from home.

You can also definitely become a creative professional with self learning, so long as you’re dedicated to constantly upskill yourself to continuously improve your creative abilities. You’d be surprised at the sheer amount of tutorials available on YouTube for any of the aforementioned creative fields, and most of them offer affordable courses that will accelerate your learning.

Picking up skills in the creative space isn’t easy, as most of them often have a steep, non-linear learning curve; which means that your competence might not directly correlate with the sheer amount of hours that you practice your skills. After all, being a creative requires you to be versatile to your client’s needs; a skill you can only develop by actually working with clients on real projects. 

When you’re just starting out, you should not expect to be earning top dollar right away, and be prepared to work for less than ideal rates or even for free. Your portfolio will be your greatest asset, and building that up will be far more valuable that earning a few more dollars, especially at the beginning of your freelance creative career. 

Here are a few great options for you build your portfolio on to showcase your work:

• Behance

• Wix

• Squarespace

• Weebly

• Fabrik

To promote your services, you’ll need to be proactive in getting the word out, be it from following job boards, signing up to freelancing sites, or network with other creatives in your field. To truly make a sustainable living off freelancing work, you’re going to need every chance to possibly can to get more projects under your belt to be on your portfolio.

By now, you probably already know that you can post your services on Fiverr or Upwork, but here’s a list of some sites that you might not have heard of:

• Guru

• Art Wanted

• 99 Designs

• Smashing Jobs 

• If You Could

Being active on social media also helps a ton in getting leads, be it on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. I’ve personally hired several writers just from posting on LinkedIn, and I can say it’s by far my preferred way to hire new writers. As a freelancer, you’ll want to connect to people in your field as you never know when they’ll make a post for gigs down the line. 

When working with clients, you’ll usually get paid on an hourly rate or by project basis. When deciding on how much you want to charge, be realistic on the worth of your work and do some market research to get a ballpark figure on what the market rate is. Again, this is all dependant on your credibility, and you can expect your pay to reflect your competence.

While your pay will vary vastly based on the type of work and the scale of the project, there are some tips to ensure that you get paid fairly for your work.

i) Vet the company beforehand

While this option won’t be applicable to all clients, you can use a service like Companies House or Company Check to determine the legitimacy of a business before working with them. The last thing you want to do is to work for a company that doesn’t pay you on time or not pay at all.

ii) Establish expectations

To avoid misunderstandings down the line, you should discuss what the client can expect from the get-go. Let the client know on how you operate, such as how you charge for your time, and go into as much detail as possible. For example, if your billable hours include time spent on phone calls, emails, or meetings, stipulate all of the details clearly in a contract and have your client sign it before beginning the project.

Also be clear on how much additional work will be charged, as revisions are usually hard to define and determine at the beginning of a project. These steps might seem tedious for now, but it’ll save you from some massive headaches down the line.

iii) Track your work

If you’re billing the client by time, tracking what you do with your billable hours goes a long way in proving that you’re actually doing real work with those hours. Again, be as detailed and specific as possible so that the client can see exactly how you’ve spent your time.

iv) Invoice your clients properly

Getting paid late as a freelancer is one of the biggest problems in the freelancing world, and a proper invoice will alleviate this issue to a great extent. Your invoice should include clear, descriptive details of your work, and the prices that you’ve agreed upon before signing the contract.

Setting payment terms is also very important, but this unfortunately can’t be in your control all the time. Some clients will insist on their own payment regulations, and while it may not be favorable to you, it’s important that you have this clearly stated on your invoice if you agreed to it.

As with any form of side income, being a freelancer entails a certain degree of uncertainty at the beginning, but this risk comes with a huge reward if you’re able to deliver quality work consistently. Doing something you love from home and getting paid a living wage from it can be the most life-changing endeavor ever, especially in the creative space.

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Conclusion

The joy of working from home can never be paralleled by a brick-and-mortar office, as it allows you to channel wasted time and energy towards the things that truly matter in your life, be it spending more time with loved ones or having more flexibility to take time off.

This guide presents to you 5 legitimate opportunities which you can make a living from home, and it’s up to you to pursue them to escape the dreaded 9-5 day job.

Happy hustling!