In the las five years, unemployment in the United States has raised, some companies have evolved and have started to automate a lot of processes, others, simply have been moved to another countries where operation costs are reduced, that’s why a lot of people began to use internet, social media and other methods as a new income source, if you are already unemployed or looking for one of these side online hustles for unemployed a lot of people are talking about, this post will convince you to start right now and maybe you will make a living from this.
The digital landscape offers a wide range of possibilities to leverage your skills, passions, and expertise to create a successful career, the most important benefit is that you can reach a global audience, work on your own terms, and potentially build a sustainable source of income.
In this short guide, I will guide you on how to kickstart your online business while unemployed, from brainstorming to execution, I will provide valuable insights and practical advice to help you navigate the process of starting an online business, allowing you to choose among the opportunities available in the digital world, please, keep in mind that some of these ideas will need initial investment
Side online hustles for unemployed in the United States
There are several online job opportunities available for unemployed individuals in the United States, please keep in mind that, for some of these jobs, you will need time and sometimes money invested, some side hustles are not to earn money fast, but to start earning a few bucks and scale it over time.
1. Freelancing
Utilize your skills and expertise to work as a freelancer in various fields such as writing, graphic design, web development, digital marketing, translation, and more, if you have some expertise on something, you can use that to start earning some money as sometimes people will pay for experts to do some work, even more, there are websites like Upwork, Freelancer, and Fiverr which are platforms to connect freelancers with clients, you just create an account, and post about you and your work.
2. Virtual Assistant
Many businesses and entrepreneurs hire virtual assistants to handle administrative tasks remotely, that means you can start working in your home doing some easy tasks, some of this can include managing emails, scheduling appointments, conducting research, and providing customer support.
This kind of work can be somewhat repetitive, but is an easy and fast way of earning money, as there are a lot of companies in the US that will hire you to work from home to using their platforms to do all kind of jobs.
3. Online Tutoring
If you have knowledge in a particular subject you have to use it, remember, use what you have at your disposal to give value and earn some money, becoming an online tutor can be a challenge, teaching something, changing the mentality of students and give them some of your knowledge is great, there are platforms to teach too, like VIPKid, Tutor.com, and Chegg Tutors connect tutors with students who need help in various subjects.
4. Content Creation
Writing, blogging, or creating videos can be an ideal business, you only need some creativity or talking about a topic from your point of view, you don’t need to create something new, you can start taking about something you have passion, just remember to give value and try to solve people’s doubts, ask questions or being useful, you can monetize your content through platforms like YouTube, Medium, Patreon, and creating a blog, as your audience grows, you can earn money through advertising, sponsored content, or direct donations.
Content creation is a job that can be scalable, and once you know how to drive your business you can found your own entertainment company, there are a lot of people doing these nowadays, and believe me, creating a blog is still profitable.
5. E-commerce
Start an online store and sell products or services is like a trending topic, you can start by buying and selling some things on facebook market if you have a low budget, later you can invest some money doing drop shiping, but, doing this requires some knowledge about a lot of things, like communication with providers, stock managing, and so on. You can set up your own website using platforms like Shopify or sell through established marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, or Etsy.
6. Remote Customer Service
Many companies hire remote customer service representatives to handle customer inquiries via phone, email, or chat, and nowadays a lot of these jobs are remote, from your home, you just have to be available, Websites like Remote.co and Indeed often list remote customer service job openings, this can be a great opportunity, but remember, sometimes this kind of jobs involve repetitive tasks, so if you get bored easily and don’t like to relate to people, maybe you will want to choose another job.
7. Social Media Management
Managing social media is a very profitable job, and while is not necessary, having some kind of portfolio will bring you a lot of clients willing to pay yo to grow their social media channels, this job consist in creating social media content on a schedule for your clients, twits, facebook posts, short or long videos, even long articles or posts.
You can offer social media packages to your clients, a numer of posts on instagram, facebook or twitter, images, videos and more, done right, you can earn money fast as a social manager, the real strategy and hard part for you here is to get clients, so, be creative, and start marketing your social media manager career.
8. Online Transcription
If you have good listening and typing skills, you can work as an online transcriptionist, this can be a good job, the pay is not that good and you may end feeling you are not making that much money, but its a good start if you want some fast money. Platforms like Rev, Fiverr and TranscribeMe offer transcription jobs where you transcribe audio or video files into written text.
I highly recommend creating an account in Upwork and Fiverr, personalize your account and create your gigs, you can offer transcriptions, translations and a lot of extra things, put the prize.
9. Digital Marketing
Content creation, promoting on serps, social media and another channels, thats what digital marketing is, creating something to generate views and leads to earn money, so, this may be a difficult task and you will need to learn all the necessary skills needed to get people’s eyes on your content, you can offer your services to businesses looking to improve their online presence.
Digital marketing may include managing social media accounts, creating content for every social media platform you want to focus to start growing fast, running ad campaigns, optimizing websites for search engines, and creating content.
10. Graphic Design
Graphic design can be great and sometimes people can’t simply see how they can earn money from this, you can offer your services to businesses or individuals who need logos, banners, brochures, or other design work, of course if you are not an expert, you will need an investment on your graphic design programs or apps.
Nowadays as a graphic designer, you can find a lot of things to do, a good example about this is, the highly demand of graphic assets for indie videogames, unity and unreal engine have asset stores where you can sell and buy videogame assets tou have made in 2D or 3D, you can create an account and start selling these, but not just graphics, you can sell music, backgrounds and codes.
11. Virtual Tech Support
As a virtual tech support agent your objective will be to assist clients to use a product or service the right way, sometimes people pays for a service they don’t know how to use, like hosting or email services, even streaming services, so, this job can be great to start.
Many companies hire remote workers to provide technical assistance to customers over the phone, through chat, or via email, your work will be key for this company as a satisfied client will be paying for their service for a longer time, of course to do these you will need to get some training on how people can use the services, but if you have alredy some experience, give it a try!
12. Online Market Research
Companies often require market research to understand consumer behavior and market trends. You can join online market research panels or sign up on platforms like Respondent and UserTesting to participate in market research studies and provide feedback to these companies, this information is very useful and most companies will pay an expert to give insights that help convert, of course, you will need some experience for this kind of job, but you will earn faster.
If you have some knowledge about markets, consumer behavior, buyer persona and so on, you can start an affiliate program business, you can learn more about this here, you can create a website about a specific niche or just create a social media profile and try to sell affiliate products, this last option of course requires you to be some kind of influencer.
13. Online Coaching or Consulting
Having expertise in a particular field or industry is great if you want to start a coaching or consulting business, this can be a great opportunity to make money faster than another kind of business, but only if you have a way to demonstrate your expertise on the subject or topic you are coaching, the determining factor to earn money here is of course, getting eyeballs on you, having an audience you can create the need to learn about what you know and is ready to learn.
You can offer coaching or consulting services online to people or an entire team for a company. This can include career coaching, business consulting, life coaching, fitness coaching, sales and more, you can market your services through your own website or platforms like Coach.me or Fiverr.
14. Online Researcher
Conducting research is a great job too, there are a lot of people looking for good researchers for hire and even if it sounds easy, of course, there are a lot of experienced researchers here and there that make great money working like this, you can work as an online researcher in many platforms like Upwork, Fiverr and more, businesses often need assistance with market research, competitor analysis, data collection, and other research tasks.
Keyword research has become one of the most wanted gigs at Fiverr, and maybe it’s like this because of the growth digital marketing got recently, so, it’s up to you, the most recommended right now is to start creating an account on these platforms and make money.
15. Translating and Interpretation
Do yo speak two or more languages?, then you can work as an online translator or interpreter, believe me, there are a lot of people who pay for translating texts or audio. websites like ProZ and Gengo connect translators with clients who need documents or content translated.
As with another kind of jobs like this one, you will end up with burn out syndrome as sometimes you will get a lot of work, so your strategy here, is to sell your work at a fair price, you should charge for your services a price that’s good for you and of course, your clients, getting too high is going to cost you less customers, but going too cheap is gonna get you a lot of work and you will end losing motivation.
16. Podcasting
You can start your own podcast if you have passion for a certain kind of topic, there are a lot of people listening to podcasts every day, they just simpy go from one place to another, listening a good podcast, keep in mind there are a lot of competition in some niches.
You can monetize your podcast through sponsorships, advertising, or listener donations. Platforms like Anchor and Libsyn can help you get started, once you get a bigger audience then you can upload your podcast to bigger platforms like spotify.
17. Online Course Creation
So, you have some expertise as a teacher, maybe you can create and sell online courses, there are a wide variety of online platforms where you can upload and start selling your courses asap, your course can be available in different formats, but, i recommend creating videos for every single lesson or course chapter, videos with your face in it, talking and giving personal opinions about your topic.
There’s a lot of people creating online courses, so, if you are on a competitive niche, your personality, expertise and the way you give value to your students will be the key to get your courses selling, start by creating an outline for your course and make the videos using images or slides while filming you talking about the information in the slides, there are platforms like Udemy and Teachable that allow you to create and market your courses to a wide audience.
To maximize earnings and avoid the annoying “customer support” that these platforms force you to do on your own, you can create a course and host it on your own website, it’s not easy, but not impossible for you to learn how to create a website and host your own course.
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18. Buy and resell online
Social media platforms like facebook have markets now, and some people are having a great time selling there, you can post and sell or buy whatever you want, that’s a great way for people to start using an online market that is generally a local market, of course, you have to be careful, as this is not regulated by any law, so you can get scammed, but, once you get used to, it becomes easier to sell things in the market.
Websites has ebay and Amazon can be used to sell every kind of item, you can buy something you don’t already use if it’s in good shape, it doens’t matter if it’s not new, there’s always market for everything, so dont waste time, and start looking on your home for things yous can sell.
19. Self publisher
Small publishers and brand new writers have a great choice now to publish their work, Amazon kdp and another companies can publish your books on thei website, you only have to follow their guidelines on how to format your book, to create a great cover with the right size and that’s it, of course, you have to write your book first, and then upload it to Amazon.
You don’t even have to write a book to start uploading books at amazon, there’s this kind of books called no content or low content publishing, you can create notebooks, journals with templates that you ca get on the internet, coloring books for adults or children, and another kind of low or medium content books.
This last option can be great, but in the last 10 years, competition has grown almost exponentially, so you have to dive in amazon queries searching for a good sub niche where you can fit some of your books if you want them to make some sales.
20. Streamer
There’s a lot of things you can do with a stable internet conection, and one of these things are, a streamer, people tend to follow streamers with a good personality, you can even turn your camera on and start a chat with some of your mates on twitch, and some people will follow, of course, interaction here is key, but believe me, the most watched channels on twitch are just people talking.
If you want to start a game streaming career, it can be a great opportunity, of course, this is an everyday job, people is not going to watch your channel even if you are playing a great game and you are doing it as a real pro, it takes time, sometimes people get lucky, but you have to be prepared to be at 0 audience for some time, after some time if you are consistent you can get your channel growing and earning a substantial amount of money.
21. Online trading
Last but not least, online trading is a good way to get money, not as fast as some of the above options, but you can get decents amount of money if you know what you are doing, if you still don’t know about this, here it goes, there are online websites and apps like eToro, eTrade where you can invest some money and start stock trading.
Beware, as this is a more sophisticated way to earn money and you have to learn at least, the basics of trading, that’s where the trading apps comes into place, some of these broker apps have the option to make a beginner account, here you can start learning the basics of trading, my advice here is, start learning, read about this, and once you have some funds to invest, start trading, keep in mind, every dollar invested may be lost if you are not well prepared.
Conclusion
I hope you find this side online hustles for unemployed people list, at least interesting, some of these jobs can be great and you can get money faster, but may be quite repetitive and boring, while another will need knowledge, and sometimes a substantial amount of money to invest, as always, I recommend you to start with your bare hands and mind as your initial investment, once you start earning money, then you can get these money working for the next hustle or to scale your actual business.
