If you have decided you want to work from home and also do it for free, the first thing you need to consider is whether you want to work for somebody else or have your own online home based business.
Having your own online home based business can bring greater rewards in the long term but it can mean a lot of hard work at the start with little or no income coming in for at least a few months up to a year, or longer. In fact, many new online business owners find that their business actually costs them money, because there is a certain amount that you typically have to invest in order to get the knowledge, tools, and resources necessary to succeed.
It is hard to work from home for free if you are trying to set up a new online home business. You will probably find yourself spending money on all sorts of different expenses that you never thought about before you actually got started. Furthermore, it is estimated that somewhere around 95% of new home businesses fail in the first three years. Probably even more when it comes to online business because the low barriers to entry makes it much easier for people to “give it a shot” without really being serious about it, and they end up failing. So you are certainly not guaranteed a return on your investment of time and money by any means.
Because of this situation, many people who want to work from home for free decide to work for somebody else instead. When you do this, you are not likely to have extra expenses other than what you would have been paying for anyway; such as internet, telephone, printer and so on. Sure, the company is making money from your work and you are simply paid for your time, but you do not have the risk of the business failing and you are almost guaranteed to get paid for the work you do.
Plus the business owner has the task of finding customers and marketing the business. This is one of the most important tasks in setting up a small business or home based business. Many people hate doing it and most people have no training in it. In fact, this is probably the main reason for such a high failure rate in business.
But you can cut all this out by working for others. A lot of businesses are run entirely online these days, and business owners will hire you without caring where you live. You have no commute and you are usually free to do the work at times that suit you, although of course there will be deadlines for delivery.
The skills that are needed by online businesses are often associated with the internet, of course. However, you do not necessarily have to know a lot about computers. If you are a good graphic designer you may find work designing websites or simply designing the graphics. If you can do the technical work of coding a site or setting up a blog, you will find many people happy to pay you for doing that.
For example, you could set up a few sample sites and then visit local businesses in your area and show them the sites that you designed. If you can do some SEO work so that the sites rank well in Google, local businesses will often employ you to design or tweak their own site to get them better rankings. Most restaurant owners, builders, etc could benefit from having a well designed website but do not have the time or the wish to work on it themselves.
Of course if you do not have these skills there are other opportunities. Writing articles for website owners can be a steady way to make money. For this you need to be able to write good English. It helps if you can also quickly pick up a subject by reading about it. You will need to be able to research the topic and then write in your own words so that the article is original and does not break any copyrights. Craigslist and upwork are good places to start if you want to look for writing work from home for free.
There are many options available to you if you want to work from home for free. It is true that starting your own online home business and investing some money in your future is the better route in the long run (in my opinion) — but you don’t HAVE to spend money in order to make money. You can take advantages of the numerous free ways to earn money at home that are available on the internet. Get started right away!