These days, there are limitless ways that you can make money with a passive income or side hustle. Many opportunities have no startup costs, low overhead, and do not require experience or education.
But the massive opportunities for work from home jobs that pay money means that there is also a ton of competition. Finding the right work from home job can take trial and error. Knowing your strengths and talents is the best way to discover your WFH career.
The weirder the job, the less competition and often the higher the pay. Start your journey with these ten best unusual work from home jobs.
Making Money at Home with Side Hustles
The internet has made it a breeze to have anything you want at the stroke of a finger. From online shopping like Amazon to food and grocery delivery like UberEats and Instacart, you have all the time in the world to work at home.
Once the world shut down in 2020, online job searches blew up, as many people struggled to figure out how to make money by working at home. In Q3 alone, there were 1.5 million business applications filed.
There are plenty of traditional work from home jobs and small business opportunities. Blogging, influencing, online classes, dropshipping, website design, freelancing, and owning an online ecommerce store are some of the most popular and reliable ways to earn an income at home.
But because these jobs are so known and profitable, you can end up with a lot of competition. If you’re just breaking out in the niche – genre or industry – getting enough attention to make money can be challenging.
Finding underserved opportunities to earn an income is one of the best ways to avoid the pitfalls of large competition. It’s also useful when you have limited or no experience with standard WFH startups.
7 Best Unusual Ways to Make Money At Home
A lot of people have an interest in finding a small business opportunity to do from home without the hassles of competing with established brands and over-served industries.
The good news is that there are a ton of things that you can do at home to make money without the hassles of too much traffic. Here are 7 unorthodox, low-competition ways to make money at home.
Stack Cash for Standing in Line
If you have the patience of a Buddha monk and lots of time to kill, offer your services to folks who don’t for things like long lines.
There are plenty of fanatics out there who are willing to sacrifice their hard-earned money to be one of the first to get soemthing. But to be able to afford this vanity, many of us prefer to use our time more wisely.
So while most of us work our fingers to the bone at regular jobs, a few smart people make money by doing what we don’t – or can’t – do.
Wait!
There are freelance sites where you can set up a profile to offer your professional patience talents, like Upwork or Fiverr. Other sites include TaskRabbit or Craigslist (file locally).
Make Money with Man’s Best Friend
Do you have a way with animals? Are you good with dogs and love to spend more time with them than people? It may surprise you to know that there is a huge market for making money as a pet care giver.
Many people love their furbabies but often don’t have the time or opportunity to do the regular pet care obligations. Busy work schedules, vacations, and frequent extracurricular activities can make it challenging to give your pooches the attention and care they need.
Online sites like Rover and GoodPup make it easy to make money from your love of dogs. Whether it’s doing simple tasks like taking dogs for their daily walks or giving them baths or full grooming, there are plenty of ways for dog lovers to make money with someone else’s furry best friend.
Fix Your Fees for Friendship
Do you have an easy nature that makes you a great people person? Are you friendly and fascinated with spending time with people and going places?
You might have the makings to be a professional friend. That’s right. You can get paid to become friends with a person. Fiverr is a great place to offer your services.
Being a professional friend can look different depending on your job preferences.
Some people may prefer to have someone that they can talk to over the phone to help them through a hard day.
Others may do better behind a keyboard and would rather have online chats. And some others may need the intimacy of seeing a friendly face through a screen.
If you do good with face to face contact, you might be a suitable candidate for in-person meetings.
Sell Pictures of Your Feet
Fetishes are alive and well inside the minds of every person – whether it’s a well-kept secret or a proud freak flag display.
And one of the most surprising – and underserved – fetishes is an obsession with feet. While I can’t get behind the idea of an interest in the gross creepy very useful things attached to our legs, I’m not one to shame anyone for their personal tastes.
To each their own. KORN says it best.
If the process of making money off your feet sounds intriguing, two of the best sites are Instafeet, Fun with Feet, Feet Lovers Only, and Feetify. Find out how one woman made 70K from “footboys” (men with a foot fetish that are willing to pay for feet footage).
Decluttering and Consignment
Clutter is an inevitable part of life, whether it’s the stack of mail you haven’t sorted through yet, the unidentified leftovers hiding in your fridge, or your unchecked shopping habit that results in overstuffed closets full of unworn shoes, clothes, and bags.
But surprisingly, there is a market for making money with your clutter. While you won’t make cash from your unedible dinner remains – unless it’s grown a new undiscovered strain of fungi that can be the next medical breakthrough – there are plenty of other options for making money from decluttering.
Some of the most popular things to sell with consignment are:
- Clothing
- Books
- Artwork
- Accessories
- Furniture
- Appliances
- Electronics
Rent Out Your Vehicle for Revenue
Do you have a vehicle that you rarely drive or a spare that just sits in the same spot and never gets drove?
There is a market for people that want to rent a ride to use for a short term use. Whether someone needs a vehicle to move a heavy load, to use for a single day trip in a different town, or a special occassion, there are plenty of reasons why someone may want to rent a car for a few hours or days.
Renting out your ride is a weird yet successful passive income opportunity. A great place to start is a peer-to-peer car rental for HyreCar.
Get Paid to Play Video Games
Do you consider yourself a professional slacker that devotes your free time to gaming? If so, congratulations on having a skill that can actually make you money!
Despite what your parents, teachers, and significant others say, you CAN make money by playing video games. YouTube is full of videos of random people recording themselves while they play games. Most of the time, they have audio commentary too.
My kids are obsessed with several professonial YouTubers, who apparently bring in thousands a month. Not a bad way to make a living. The highest paid YouTuber is Daniel Middleton – who goes by DanTD. This British gamer makes $16.5 mil yearly from videos he records while playing Minecraft.
Seriously? I’m definitely in the wrong business!
To monetize your YouTube account to make money from your gaming sessions, you can upload video walk-throughs on your personal account. For your videos to be profitable, your account must be set up for displaying ads.
To be eligible to display ads for money, you must have an AdSense account. And you need the minimal requirements of 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watched content in 12 months. Then you can make $7.60 for every 1,000 views – 130k is needed to earn $1,000.
Is an Unorthodox WFH Job Right for You?
When you’re wanting to make money from working at home, you’re really only limited by your imagination and your personal limitations. Be sure you’re following me to keep getting tips and suggestions on ways to work from home. And follow me on social to make sure you’re getting daily entertainment and free stuff. Joining my email list gets you lots of free tools and resources that you can use to start a business at home.
