Earning a six-figure income from home might sound too good to be true, but to make this dream a reality, you might just need a strong internet connection and the right skill set.
The widespread adoption of remote working has created more opportunities for people to find flexible, high-paying side hustles they can do online.
Some 44% of Americans are dabbling in a side hustle, up from 12% of Americans who had one in 2020, according to a December 2022 LendingTree survey of 2,100 U.S. adults.
More side hustlers are pivoting from the in-person jobs that defined the gig economy of the mid-2000s — driving for Uber, delivering food for Grubhub — and pursuing high-end opportunities in “professional services” instead, such as computer programming, IT, marketing, and business consulting.
To help people interested in pursuing a side hustle find the best remote opportunities, Freelancer.com has identified 5 in-demand side hustles that can be done from home, based on more than 300,000 listings posted on their database between October and December 2022. The earnings information comes from this sample of projects.
These jobs have dozens of active listings and offer remote, part-time opportunities.
Here are five of the highest-paid, most in-demand side hustles that can be done from home, according to Freelancer.com:
The online market for freelance tech talent, in particular, has “exploded” over the last 12 months even though mass job cuts have continued to plague the tech sector, Sebastián Siseles, international vice president at Freelancer.com, tells CNBC Make It.
Reliance on contractors surged during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, especially in tech, as more companies had to shift to online business models and keep pace with the rapid onslaught of new technologies, from crypto to AI, per a November 2022 report from HR platform Gusto.
While coding, programming, and other tech specialties have always been sought-after side hustles, the recent spate of tech layoffs has prompted “unprecedented fluctuations” in demand for niche tech skills like Android app development and different programming languages as companies lean on freelancers to reduce costs, Matt Barrie, the CEO and founder of Freelancer.com says.
If you’re interested in picking up a tech side hustle, you’ll need to build your expertise through online courses, coding boot camps, and programming podcasts.
Next, create a digital portfolio of work samples to share with prospective clients. To find out where the jobs are and list your own services, consider creating a profile on Upwork, Freelancer.com, Fiverr, TaskRabbit, or a different website advertising freelance jobs.
Ultimately, however, you don’t need to be a tech wiz to build a successful side hustle. Other jobs that offer part-time, remote opportunities, including tutoring, blog writing, and business consulting, have also seen growing demand on Freelancer.com, Siseles adds — and some of these gigs can pay up to $100 per hour.