How To Make Money From Home During The Pandemic – Forbes

Many Americans are interested in legitimate work-from-home job opportunities.
Common reasons include job loss, pay cuts, quarantines and stay-at-home orders. Your kids may be home from school and you can’t find safe and healthy childcare. Even if you still have a job, you might want to earn some extra spending money or some cash to pay down debt. Maybe you just want something to do in your spare time.
Working from home provides many benefits. You can save time and frustration by avoiding the daily commute. You can work from anywhere in the country. You can work flexible hours. You can run errands in the middle of the day.
But, beware of work-from-home job scams. Never, ever pay money to get a job or to get a list of job opportunities. If you have to pay money to get money, it’s probably a scam. Try Googling the name of the company and the word “scam” to see if there are complaints about the company.
Nevertheless, there are many good opportunities for part-time jobs and side gigs.
Interest in legitimate work-from-home jobs has grown during the pandemic.
You can earn some quick cash by selling your stuff. Consider selling anything you haven’t used in over a year.
You can also create new stuff – like crafts, jewelry and even origami – to sell online.
Popular marketplaces include ebay, craigslist, Etsy and OfferUp. Etsy is well known for selling crafts. OfferUp was previously known as LetGo.
You can sell gently used clothing through Poshmark, TheRealReal and ThredUP.
You can sell used mobile phones through Gazelle.
You can sell unused gift cards through CardCash and Cardpool.
Before selling stuff online, check whether similar items sell well. Ebay EBAY , for example, lets you search for recently sold items to see how much they’ve sold for.
Tasks are simple jobs that anybody can do. But, working a task job can be tedious and repetitive and, frankly, boring. Careful attention to detail is often necessary.
Remember those Captcha images of cars, mountains and trees that are designed to distinguish real people from bots? Well, somebody has to label those images. That’s an example of a task.
Sources of task work include Amazon Mechanical Turk, Appen, Clickworker, EasyShift and TaskRabbit.
If you are able-bodied, you can get a job delivering and moving stuff. It can be a good way of earning money and working out at the same time. Schedules can be flexible.
Options include delivering for Amazon, Dolly, DoorDash, Grubhub GRUB , Postmates and Uber Eats. Instacart and Shipt will pay you to shop (and deliver) on behalf of their members.
You can also get a job delivering for FedEx FDX and UPS. Opportunities include part-time and seasonal jobs, in addition to full-time jobs.
Freelance jobs tend to involve larger jobs than just tasks, and may require a particular skill like coding or graphic design.
Popular sites include Fiverr, FlexJobs and Upwork.
You can also get paid to test products and web sites through UserTesting.com and TryMyUI.
See “Working with Words” below for information about freelance writing.
Masters of computer keyboards can get jobs involving freelance writing (Contenta), editing (Gramlee), transcription (Scribie and Quicktate) and translation (Gengo, LionBridge, Unbabel and UpWork). Sell study notes with Stuvia.
If you have subject matter expertise, you can get paid to answer questions in your field of expertise through JustAnswer.
Blogging might be another option, if you can build a large following. You can carry advertising from Google Adsense or Commission Junction on your blog. If you become a social media sensation, with millions of followers, you might actually earn real money.
Perhaps you’ve got time to write the great American novel? If so, you can self-publish an ebook through Amazon KDP. But, unless you already have a following, you might not sell many copies of your book.
Completing surveys can earn you a little money, if you match the survey’s target audience.
Some surveys, however, are just disguised advertising. Do not spend time on any surveys that require you to sign up for an email list or to buy a product or service.
Popular paid survey sites include American Consumer Opinion, Inbox Dollars, Survey Junkie, Swagbucks and YouGov.
Are you a people person or pet person? Then, these part-time jobs might be an option for you.
Rover.com offers dog-sitting and Wag! offers dog-walking jobs. Note that dogs do not practice social distancing.
You can also get a job babysitting, tutoring, housekeeping and pet sitting through Care.com and Sittercity. Tutoring jobs are also available through Tutor.com and TutorMe. You can teach English to Chinese students through GoGoKid and VIPKid.
Become a virtual assistant through Zirtual.

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