These Are the Best Part-Time Jobs You Can Do From Home
A good part-time job that you can do from home and still make money? Sounds like a come-on from an Internet scammer. But such gigs do, in fact, exist.
When online telecommuting jobs resource FlexJobs surveyed almost 1,100 parents, it found high demand for part-time and home-based work. Good jobs that meet those requirements are hard to come by—and so appealing that they’ve been used for years as bait for work-from-home scams. (You can find a list of the most common ones here.)
With FlexJobs’ help, we identified eight legitimate options for people who want to work from home on a part-time or occasional basis. To determine pay ranges for each job, FlexJobs incorporated salary data from Payscale.com and Glassdoor.com.
The list that follows consists of established employers and legitimate open (or recently open) positions on FlexJobs, for a look at the best opportunities now in the part-time, work-from-home market. Of course, as with any job, applicants for these gigs should thoroughly vet any company before signing on.
Writer
Hourly rate from Payscale: $10.17 - $57.49
Writers with specialized knowledge can use their expertise to write columns, blog, and perform other regular work. One company hiring such writers is About.com, which educates readers about more than 70,000 topics. In April 2016, About was hiring guides (writers with professional background or expertise in a subject) for celebrity gossip, dairy-free cooking, and Virginia Beach and Norfolk.
Another is GolfLink, which pays for articles about golf articles ($40 - 65+ per article).
Technical, grant, and curriculum writing, advertised on the education website Schmoop, calls for more experience and training. However, there’s also writing work out there for generalists with less experience and less specialized training.
Editor
Hourly rate from Payscale: $10.75 - $43.26
As with writing, editing jobs run the gamut from demanding specialized knowledge to simply needing general knowledge. Editing work may involve exclusively editorial editing, management of writers or content, copy editing, or proofreading -- or a combination of those. The language services company Cactus Communications is hiring editors for academic manuscripts, paying $1,200 monthly. Other recent part-time work-from-home editor listings include everything from technical editing and news editing to a social media editor responsible for managing social accounts and writing press releases.
Tutor
Hourly rate from Payscale: $9.69 - $40.32
Tutoring is another skill that people with specialized knowledge can parlay into part-time work. The option to do it online from home makes it much more convenient than traditional in-person tutoring. Online tutoring jobs can be found in SAT/ACT testing, English, nursing and calculus.
Companies hiring tutors include Kaplan (which offers up to $600 per tutoring assignment), Achieve Test Prep, and Rosetta Stone.
Bookkeeper
Hourly rate from Payscale: $11.05 - $24.49
Workers with accounting experience (and Quickbooks, and Microsoft Office products) can take it to the bank by helping clients or employers with payroll, accounts payable and receivable, monthly reporting, or closing at the end of the year.
Companies hiring bookkeepers include the specialized staffing services provider Robert Half, which is hiring a remote part-time bookkeeper for a telecommunications company paying $13.46 - $17 per hour. Another virtual employer in this category is the church accounting services provider MAG Bookkeeping, which was hiring a contracted remote part-time bookkeeper in April 2016.
Research Interviewer
Hourly Rate from Payscale: $8.69 - $20.54
Here’s one of interest to people who like talking on the phone, and have a reliable phone connection and quiet workspace at home. Research interviewers help companies gauge customer experience and their interactions so they can improve their business.
Companies hiring research interviewers include industry giant Nielsen as well as Maritz CX, which starts customer experience employees at their state minimum wage, then offers a .50 cent increase after 30 days of perfect (from home) attendance, with more raises at review times (2 months/6months/1 year) -- and offers paid time off.
Customer Service Representative
Hourly rate from Payscale: $9.31 - $17.89
Customer service workers may find themselves selling, providing tech support, tracking down answers or lost orders, and taking complaints or product orders, or a combination of those roles. To do so from home, they will need their best phone manners as well as good phone service and a headset, a quiet workspace, and computers that meet their employers’ processing and Internet requirements.
Companies hiring customer service representatives include the upscale cookware retailer Williams-Sonoma, which is hiring care center associates for all shifts and paying $10.75 per hour, the call center outsourcers Working Solutions, Sitel and TeleTech.
Data Entry
Hourly rate from Payscale: $9.18 - $15.76
Speed, accuracy, typing skills, and a tolerance for what can be dull work are required for data entry positions. Data entry applicants must have a computer up to the employer’s specs as well.
Companies hiring for data entry positions include SportsDirect, which has an evenings and weekends gig inputting scores, as well as the tech startup Ibotta, and the healthcare diagnostic company Alere.
Stylist
Hourly rate from Glassdoor: $15.03 - $15.24
Fashionable folks can enjoy a little glamour and profit, while providing fashion advice and personal shopping services for people who go out a lot. It works via online platforms like Stitch Fix, RocksBox, and Bombfell, which is hiring a part-time men’s online stylist with a 30% employee discount.