5 Low-Cost Business Ideas Anyone Can Work from Home

Working from home is indeed increasing in popularity for many and varied reasons, not least of which is the absolute freedom working from home confers. If you work from home, you do your things your own way. You work when you like and if you like and at any time of your choosing. You have the liberty to take full advantage of and leverage on Internet technology when you work from home. This is in addition to the extremely low cost of starting and working many home businesses on the Internet. Once you have access to a computer and the Internet, with the requisite skills, you can be in business working from home in no time at all. 

Find below some 5 low-cost business ideas that can be very lucrative to make it worthwhile for you to work from home.

1. Affiliate Marketing

Anyone can get involved in affiliate marketing right from the comfort of their homes. Right there and through computer and Internet technology, you can promote products for product merchants and you earn commissions for your efforts. The key to being successful in affiliate marketing lies with your networking capabilities. Even if you are not a skilled blogger or freelance writer, you can be a great affiliate marketer if you follow the rules. You may not even have your own e-commerce store to do affiliate marketing successfully. By registering and working with reputable and popular affiliate programs like Strong Future International, SFI, you can succeed in the business. What really matters is to promote products in as many online channels and social media platforms as possible. The more purchases are made through these efforts, the more commissions you earn.

2. Blogging/Freelance Writing

Good blogging is a great skill and so is freelance writing. If you are a good blogger or a good freelance writer, there are many ways that you can monetize your website. Selling your products/services out of your website is one of these ways.  You can also sell ads spaces on your blog to earn money. As a blogger or freelance writer, you can write about anything under the sun, provided it is something others want to read and know about. Freelance writers/bloggers get paid to provide written content for businesses. Both require a very low-cost start-up because you only need a computer and internet connection to get started. Both require purposeful networking and getting your name out there in the industry and on the Internet.

3. Dropshipping

Dropshipping is yet another low cost business to work from home. With your internet connections, you can promote products, get buyers and get your linked product merchant to supply the products. Simple! And you earn your commission as soon as the products are paid for. With dropshipping, you can simply sell products this way without the burden of manufacturing costs, delivery costs, warehousing and handling costs, customer service costs and so on. All these costs are passed on to the product merchants. However, there are a few vital steps you must take before you get involved in dropshipping profitably.
1.    Carefully select a niche you want to market in.
2.    Based on this niche, you can determine who your product merchant is.
3.    Next is to sign a contract with your chosen merchant.
4.    Then, you design your online store and
5.    Promote the online store widely.
Online, Shopify, Magento, and PinnacleCart are just a few of the eCommerce online stores you can link up with for dropshipping services. Once you integrate your e-commerce store with these popular websites, you can commence your business of dropshipping in earnest. It helps if you have your blog linked to your e-commerce store. That on its own helps to boost your promotional opportunities. However, you must be really careful to choose the right niche that relates to something many people need and are willing to buy. You can then leverage this need on your blog by offering the right product/service as the right solution to people’s problems.

 
4. Hosting a Podcast

Broadcasting your voice and marketing messages to a large online audience is what podcasting is all about. Usually, marketers approach podcasting as they would blogging. Getting an interested and loyal audience is what is common to both. In podcasting, picking the right niche is hugely important because you want to draw in an interested audience and win more competitors. If you are quite knowledgeable about your subject matter, it helps to boost your podcasting activities. 

The start-up costs for podcasting are relatively low. All you really need are a good computer and a solid microphone and you are on to your online audience. You make money from podcasting through increased sponsorship and affiliate marketing. Transistor, Buzzsprout, and Podbean are some of the best podcasting hosts out there, and it is best to choose your host based on your niche for obvious reasons. Once you’ve chosen your host, you need to choose the right platform based on your chosen niche from popular platforms like, Apple, Google, Audible, Spotify and others.

5. Virtual Assistant

Virtual Assistant is one more low cost business idea you can work from home. Aside the millions of businesses already online, there are hundreds of thousands of new business start-ups every year. Many of these businesses usually need the help of Virtual Assistants to get things going. Virtual Assistants usually handle routine but hugely important jobs for companies and very busy executives. Many available job schedules for Virtual Assistants include but not limited to social media scheduling, scheduling of meetings and travels, booking travel schedules and hotel accommodations, managing emails, receiving and transporting company visitors from airports, making and taking phone calls, essential administrative duties and any other special assignments as may be given from time to time. In fact, as a Virtual Assistant, you have the advantage of a good number of job opportunities available across a very broad spectrum of human endeavors and you get paid handsomely for your services.

Last Line

The foregoing are typical examples of business ideas with very low start-up costs you can work from home. There are many others out there but these here are fairly more common in terms of popularity. The business opportunities may be limitless, but these here five ideas are highly recommended for anyone who wants to start working from home with very low start-up and running costs.

5 Quick Ways to Make Money Online

With covid-19 pandemic still ravaging the world and restrictions are still very rampart, making money online is becoming increasingly attractive by the day. Many people have learned to be innovative and creative to survive in today’s tough world. Many are looking for how to quickly make money online as part of their own survival strategies. Doing so via the internet is hugely attractive. The Internet through its own versatility has managed to make things easy for those who dare to try. The Internet has thus become one of the greatest resources available to the human race in this age and time. It provides you with unlimited quick and easy opportunities to make money 24/7 and from your home/office in your own little corner of the woods to boot. However, first you must be creative and innovative enough to survive making money on the Internet.

Here are 5 tried and tested quick ways anyone who is Internet savvy can use to make money online.

1. Paid Virtual Assistant

A virtual assistant is exactly an assistant helping very busy executives carry out routine administrative duties for a fee. If you are educated, diligent and smart, you can start making money today by becoming a virtual assistant to busy executives. Virtual assistant jobs require most of the skills you need to be effective in many other businesses and jobs as well. The demand for virtual assistants is high as they help to free some good quality time for very busy executives to tackle other tasks that are more demanding. The pay is good and virtual assistants are in very high demand to perform suchlike administrative assistant tasks as bookkeeping, scheduling, setting up and managing virtual meetings, setting up business appointments, all these through computer networking.

2. Websites and Apps Testing

Webmasters and apps developers like to test new websites and apps for effectiveness, functionality and efficiency. They pay to have their newly designed websites and apps tested fully to avoid disappointing and even alienating their customers with poor products. If you are internet savvy and you have the requisite skills to test out new websites for webmasters and apps developers, you can make quick money as a website or apps tester. You can look online at various websites for available options, opportunities and pay packages.

3. Taking Online Surveys

Do you know you can get paid and earn quick money by simply sharing your opinion on brands and products online? There and many survey sites online that will pay you simply for giving honest feedback about products and items they are interested in. These sites make available to marketers customers answers and feedback to enable them know what their customers really want. Marketers need such important information to help them design better campaign strategies and fine-tune their marketing campaigns with a view to serving consumers better. If you want to make money from taking surveys, all you need do is to sign up and fill out a profile questionnaire in any survey websites that are willing to pay you for taking surveys. Once you complete your profile, you can take surveys the sites send your way, earn valuable points, and cash out down the road.

4. Talent Freelancing

It is generally true that most humans have at least one natural talent they are endowed with. Others can acquire very valuable skills as well which they can depend on to make money online. Such people can sell their services and talents as freelancers. Freelancers are private businesspersons who work for themselves by contracting out their services/talents. Many teachers, educators, linguists, food and drinks connoisseurs, writers, programmers, and musicians do freelance their work to make some extra money. You can earn quick money by starting your own freelancing career by looking out on online job sites or signing up for freelance sites.
 
5. Transcribing

To earn money as a transcriber, you must have practical shorthand and typing skills. Transcribing is simply when you type or write out what is being said in an audio recording or video. Some websites offer transcribing services as a package to virtual assistant services. Skillful and talented transcribers are on demand and many make quick money online. If you have transcribing skills particularly if you type very fast, you can make quick money online even if you work out of your home or office.

Final Thoughts and Tips

You can find hiring and matching agencies online to help link you to these jobs on a token agency fees. If you can directly advertise your talents online yourself and get patronage, that is fine. You can work on that and add agency services as well if you want to make a quick start. Just get on with it right now that the pandemic is still severely restricting nearly everyone.

How to Make Money on Pinterest

It is increasingly becoming clear to social media marketers that just like in some other social media platforms, they can also make money on Pinterest. It is not a complicated process at all. It takes just a bit of discerning to know that what many people are doing for fun on Pinterest, some others are making money with it. Here are some of the things you do on Pinterest to make money.

Monetize your Pinterest Knowledge

Knowledge is a very valuable asset for marketers. If you really understand how Pinterest works, you can leverage on that knowledge to create marketing campaigns for brands and you get paid for your efforts. When you become really good at what you do on Pinterest, you can package that knowledge in form of courses and ebooks for sale. Webinars and Coaching activities can also earn money for you if you are good at using virtual space to your advantage. 



Earn with a Learned-Skill from Pinterest

Many marketers now use Pinterest as a huge learning library. As a marketer, no matter what random stuff you pin on Pinterest, you’ll discover that someone somewhere has pinned something about same stuff. That is what makes Pinterest an inestimable knowledge resource. There is hardly any skill you are interested in which you cannot learn on Pinterest. You can learn such very useful/marketable skills like, hand crafts, knitting, calligraphy, photography, baking and decorating cakes, sign writing, etc, etc, etc. As for learned skills like photography which are in great demand you can hone up the skill professionally, promote your skill on Pinterest then start selling photos to stock photo sites to make money. You can also make money by hiring out your services to do photo shoots at weddings, ceremonies, anniversaries and remembrances. You can studiously collect and organize these several skills then start a podcast with them which you can monetize to earn income. Pinterest is also handy to help you promote and market these several skills successfully to make money.

Earn as Pinterest Virtual Assistant

Yes indeed, Virtual Assistant Services are in very high demand in virtual space. Pinterest Virtual Assistants help Celebrities, Social Media influencers, very busy Executives, Bloggers, and Online Business owners optimize their Pinterest accounts. They help their Pinterest clients to do research work, create pins, sales funnels, opt-ins, automating the pinning process and such sundry other Pinterest services the clients assign to them. Many Pinterest Virtual Assistants can work for several clients at very flexible hours. They perform different kinds of Pinterest management tasks for each one and they get paid handsomely for their efforts.

Grow Your Blog Readership with Pinterest

For bloggers, their main concern in their content marketing business revolves around, traffic, traffic and more traffic. The money you make as a blogger is in direct proportion to the amount of traffic your blog receives. This is why many bloggers have learned to use Pinterest to send traffic to their websites. When a blogger publishes a new article and shares it with his Pinterest community, that article attracts traffic from Pinterest back to the blog. That is good traffic which the blog really needs to grow and be profitable. By bringing traffic to your website from Pinterest, you are directly increasing your ability to make money with affiliate links, display advertising, and selling your own products real good.

Earn as Affiliate Marketer on Pinterest

Affiliate marketing requires that you partner with brands to help them promote their products and/or services and you earn commissions for your efforts. It works well when the brands/product merchants make available to you, special and unique affiliate links which you insert in your posts or pins. Anytime someone clicks on that link and makes a purchase, you get paid a commission in pre-agreed percentage terms of the value of the purchase. It is easy to set up but you must be careful to find out what your affiliate partners allow you to post elsewhere particularly on Pinterest, otherwise you may fall foul of their affiliate agreements and be penalized. You can easily search online to find credible and reputable affiliate partners through networks like ShareASale, FlexOffers, and more. Once you have settled for affiliates to work with, you then create pins on your Pinterest account imputing the unique affiliate links in the text and boom you’re in affiliate marketing business to make money.

Drive Traffic to your Ecommerce Site with Pinterest

If you own an online shop and you have products to sell, you can do so on Pinterest just like Bloggers. The aim is to drive traffic to your ecommerce site. You can create pins to promote new products, putting together boards for different styles or themes, doing keyword research, etc. etc, just the exact same way Bloggers do it. With 80-90% of users admitting that Pinterest helps them decide what to buy, marketers can easily leverage on Pinterest’s powerful search engine to drive traffic to their ecommerce sites. Pinterest brings in 33% more traffic to shopping sites than Facebook does inspite of the huge size of Facebook. This may be as a result of the use of special Promoted Pins on Pinterest. These pins can be optimized to meet different goals of your promotional efforts, the reason they are real “traffic magnets.” The more the traffic that comes to your ecommerce shop, the more hits, leads and sales you get.



Earn by Helping People Shop your Look

Some kind of modelling outfit if you ask me! If you are a Celebrity or Social Media Influencer or someone with a huge following on your Pinterest account, you can earn money by promoting products you are literally wearing or using by way of helping people Shop your Look. That is one way of influencing someone to buy a product because they have seen someone they admire or adore wearing or using the product. Once you set up your account as a business account on Pinterest, you can create “shop the look” pins and tag separate items on separate pins. When a click is made on these pins and a purchase is made, you earn a commission.

Earn from Joint Promotions with Popular Brands

To make money on Pinterest through joint promotions, you’ll need a successful account and be able to create really awesome pins to promote. Your chances of making money are greatly enhanced if you elect to work with very popular brands to do joint promotions. The promo can really be awesome and profitable if you give special and particular attention to the concept of your promo pins, the photography, brand placement and the design of the pins.

Curate a Shared Board with a Popular Brand

Curating a shared board with a brand simply means you work with popular brand by creating a board for them on Pinterest. You get paid a negotiated fee for sharing that board. It works really well when you have a large following on Pinterest though. You not only get paid, you end up gaining some followers and views from people who are looking at brands that align with your personal brand and niche. Popular brands make that possible and they help to grow your Pinterest Account as well.