You have paid employment, but it’s not paying your bills. You have a side hustle, but it’s not generating income fast enough. You have bills to pay and are unable to have another source of reliable income. But then, there are always businesses that make money right away around you.
These are profitable businesses that will not require any capital outlay or a chunk of your time and that you can do anywhere at your own leisure. Let’s examine 10 businesses that you can do with little or no capital investments, without necessarily leaving your day job, and that you can do from the comfort of your bedroom:
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Online Freelance Writing
If you have a laptop with a good internet connection, you can make money online. One of the fastest ways to make money online is through freelance writing. This entails writing digital content such as web articles, daily news, product reviews, blog posts, and marketing pieces for website owners. All websites on the internet need constant content to stay relevant and profitable, so you can get paid to write articles for clients.
Depending on your subject expertise and language proficiency, you can expect to earn $20 or higher for a 500-word article and $50+ for 1,000-word articles. You get paid daily, weekly, or per article for your written content. You can get private clients to work for, and you can also sign-up with websites such as Upwork, Freelancer, and Fiverr among others.
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Tutoring
The recent experience people had with the COVID-19 lockdown demonstrated that you could make money from home. Schools were locked down and people lost their jobs. Yet students were encouraged to keep on learning and online classes surfaced with various audio-visual teaching/learning tools.
This raised the need for competent online teachers who can teach various subjects such as English, Mathematics, Biology, and Chemistry among others using video-conferencing apps such as Zoom, Google Classroom, and Duo. You can expect to get paid $30-$50 per hour to teach students these subjects using your mobile phone and without leaving your house.
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Makeup Artist
You won’t believe this – but women care more about their physical appearance and won’t mind spending any amount to remain fashionable. You can get a slice of that money if you are a makeup artist. Globally, women spend over $100 million annually to look good. If you are a makeup artist, nail specialist, skincare expert, hair and wig guru, and jewelry marketer, you can hope to make millions every year from taking care of women’s appearances.
In Nigeria, more than 3,000 weddings take place every Saturday and all the women undergo some form of facial makeup; you can charge up to N15,000 for a single makeup that will get completed in one hour.
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Affiliate Marketing
Do you know you can make money from other people’s products? Can you believe you can get paid daily, weekly, or monthly for promoting other people’s services? Yes, it is possible and it is called affiliate marketing. You can sign-up with Amazon Associates, eBay, ShareASale, and Commission Junction among others to earn a commission for driving sales to other people’s products.
With the power of social media and an affiliate website, you can earn up to 75% of the price of a single product. In some products, you earn 50% of the price of the product. And the more products you help to sell through your affiliate marketing efforts online, the more money you make.
Some successful affiliate marketers earn up to $10,000 every month and some upcoming ones earn up to $3,000 monthly if they promote very successful products.
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Online Photography
When someone tells you that you can make money with your mobile phone, you better believe it. There are many online businesses and digital marketers who are looking to pay good money for good photos you can take with your smartphone.
Utilize editing apps if you want to make this a good business with recurring income. This will enable you to edit your photos with enhanced colors, text content, and photo combinations.
You can sell each photo for up to $100 if it is for exclusive and licensed use, and you can sell it for up to $30 if it is for commercial and shared use. Meanwhile, you can also upload your everyday photos to photo websites where you get paid up to $5 every time someone downloads it for use on their websites.
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Room Rental
Are you in the United States or North America, then, you can make money from Airbnb hosting where you rent out an unused room or apartment in your residence to vacationers. The same idea would work fine if you are in Nigeria. Rent out that spare room in your house to NYSC Corp Members; rent out that unused boys-quarter at the back of your residence to newlyweds on a honeymoon; and split your large apartment into two for rental if you need instant money.
The truth is that we have a lot of space in our house that could bring us money if we rent them out on short terms. If you also have a large space close to the road outside your house, why can’t you rent it out to people who need small spaces to set up their goods for sales? You get paid monthly for that extra room or unused space that could have just gone to waste, and you can hope to earn an extra N50, 000 every month from your rooms and space rented out.
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Babysitter/Nanny
Do you know you can earn up to N30, 000 every weekend babysitting children? If your weekends are free and you have enough space in your house where children can play safely, you can get paid to have neighbors drop their babies with you over the weekend. You can charge N2,000 to babysit a child at your daycare residence each weekend, and you can earn N30, 000 every weekend if you babysit up to 15 children in your house.
Going to people’s homes to babysit their children or serve as caregivers to their elderly folks is also another methond of earning extra money. You even charge more if you are caring for aged folks since you have to take care of their feeding, medications, and toiletries. You can do this only on weekends if you have another day job during the weekdays.
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Uber or Lyft
If you have a car that you barely use for anything, you can make instant money with it by driving people around. You can sign up for Uber or Lyft if you are in the United States, and you can sign up with Bolt and Taxify if you are in Nigeria. You can do this only on weekends if you are broke and need instant cash, and you can do this during your vacation or annual leave, or off-days.
People will contact you via the Uber or Bolt app to take them to certain destinations within your city and you get paid handsomely for the service. If all you do is park your car away at weekends, then you are leaving money on the table. You can make money any time you desire if you own a car – so learn to use your car for short transportation services and not only for office shuttles. You can expect to earn up to N60,000 every weekend with your car.
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Music Instructor/Instrumentalist
Most people around you want to learn a musical instrument. People want to learn to play the guitar, organ, trumpet, drums, and violin among others. You can set up an hourly lesson class or a weekend class and make pretty good money. You can earn up to N5, 000 per hour teaching an individual how to play and master these instruments.
Apart from teaching people how to play musical instruments, you can also work side gigs in churches and at local events and nightclubs to earn good money. You don’t need to be a member of a church before you are paid to play their instruments on Sundays, and you can have ready cash waiting for you every weekend from local parties and celebrations in your neighborhood.
Some folks earn up to N100, 000 every month teaching people how to play instruments and playing at major social events.
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Home Cleaning and Interior Decoration
Believe it or not, you can make a killing with home cleaning. You can even earn higher with interior decorations. And you tend to earn greater incomes during weekends, freeing up your weekdays for other engagements. More parties take place on weekends and people want experienced cleaners to clean up the venues after the event.
You can charge up to N20, 000 to clean up after a wedding reception at a particular venue, and you can charge up to N50,000 to clean a bigger venue following a political rally. You are also in luck if you have expertise with interior decorations because people will engage your services every weekend to decorate venues for major events.
The above 10 businesses that make money right away are evergreen and will still work even in the year 2030 just as much as they work in 2022; they are profitable in Sierra Leone just as they are profitable in Nigeria or Pakistan. They do not require any capital outlay and can be done from the comfort of your room.
Try them out today and share your experiences in the comment section below.
Photo by John Guccione