Making ends meet on a homestead can be challenging. If you live in a remote area, you may not have access to many job opportunities. You may need to be home most of the time to tend to your crops and prevent livestock from running amok. Luckily, many of the ways to make extra money at home require little more than an Internet connection and a little bit of time.
Your ideal homestead “side hustle” will depend on your specific skills and the time you have to devote to a given task, but there are options across the board for all different levels of skill and commitment. Here are 9 different ways to make extra money at home.
Sell your crafts
If you are talented with a glue gun or a loom, consider selling your creations for a little extra cash. Set up an online shop on a platform like Etsy, or search for a local craft or artisan market near you. Here are some tips for creating crafts that make money.
Take part in free survey websites
Companies will pay you to take consumer surveys in order to better serve their corporate clients. Harris Poll Online, Global Test Market and SurveyClub are popular online platforms that award users points after they complete short online surveys that they can redeem for gift cards at select retailers. Swagbucks even offers cash back through PayPal. Be wary of other sites offering you money to take surveys, though, as they could be scams.
Sell your produce
If your garden is so bountiful that you hardly have enough space to freeze and can your leftover produce, consider selling your fruits, vegetables and herbs. Admittedly, if you are a small-scale grower, it can be difficult to find a market for your crops. To get started, try growing a specialty crop and selling to a farm-to-table restaurant or specialty food store.
Evaluate websites
The best way for website owners to figure out if their websites are confusing or difficult to navigate is by asking people — like you — to evaluate them. If you have a computer with a microphone and an Internet connection, you can sign up for a site like UserTesting, Enroll or TryMyUI to evaluate websites from the comfort of your couch. Depending on the platform, you may have to take a user test or fill out a questionnaire so the site can match you with the demographic profile of a given website’s target audience.
Sell your clutter
One homesteader’s trash is another homesteader’s treasure. Before heading to the thrift store to donate your unwanted objects, try selling your items online. National buy-and-sell sites like eBay will give you the broadest reach of potential buyers, but you may have better luck (and wrangle less with shipping and handling) by selling locally on sites like Facebook Marketplace, LetGo and Offer Up. Some sites are catered to specific categories of objects you want to sell. You can use thredUP and Poshmark, for example, to sell clothes and makeup, and BookFinder to unload used textbooks.
Tutor online
If you homeschool your kids, you may already have experience teaching from home. Sign on with an online tutoring company to make extra money tutoring students in your favorite subjects online. Tutor.com is a popular option, though you must be available to tutor at least five hours a week and have a college degree to tutor certain subjects.
Sell stock photos
Turn your best photos into cash by selling them to stock image sites like Adobe Stock, Alamy, iStock, Dreamstime and Stocksy. The payment and submission structure depends on the site, but generally either photographers or specific photos are vetted for quality and then photographs are paid either a percentage of the photos’ sales or a specific amount per photo download for subscription-based stock photo services. On Shutterstock, for example, contributors start by earning about 25 cents every time a Shutterstock subscriber downloads their photo.
Conduct freelance work
Magazines and corporate offices alike are always on the lookout for talented writers, editors and designers to create and improve their content. If you have any of those skills, you can register with sites like Textbroker, Freelancer, FreelanceWriting or Mediabistro’s freelance marketplace to find jobs that you can do from home.
Start a blog
If Hello Homestead has inspired you, start your own blog on a topic that you are passionate about. Once you start to develop a devoted audience, you can make money by joining an ad network that will sell advertising on your site. You can also write sponsored posts, where companies will pay for you to write about their products (though make sure you are following the Federal Trade Commission’s rules on disclosing such sponsorships), or participate in affiliate marketing through networks like CJ Affiliate or ShareASale that will offer you a commission whenever someone clicks on an ad on your site and purchases a product.
Have you found creative ways to make extra money at home? Add your favorite tips in the comments below.