It’s considered the norm to work as an employee. You either have set hours where you go to work, or are given a rota ahead of time with your shift details- and you’re responsible for working during those times. While this is something that suits the masses, there are lots of people that struggle with this kind of working pattern. Maybe you suffer with a mental or physical illness, or perhaps you have care commitments such as looking after children or elderly/disabled loved ones. While you’re still willing and capable of work, getting yourself to a workplace and having to work for specific hours might not be something that’s possible. Maybe you have good and bad days and need your working hours to reflect this, or perhaps you simply don’t enjoy structure and don’t work well being micromanaged. Either way, there are many people who suit a more flexible working day, a way to earn money during hours that suit them. Thankfully, the accessibility of the internet has made it easier for more of us than ever to be able to do this- and those that either would have struggled at work or otherwise have been unemployed are able to earn a living on their own term. Here are a few of the ways they’ve been able to do this.

Start a home business

When you run a business, you’re the boss. You can work hours that suit you and run your company around any other commitments you have in your life. There are plenty of business you can start without much money and don’t even require you to leave the house. You could create an online store and either buy and sell items for a profit, or make your own items if you have a skill or passion. You could sell directly from your home- anything from cakes for all occasions to propagated seedlings depending on what you love to do. In many cases, you can turn a hobby into a business so it doesn’t feel like work and is something you genuinely enjoy doing. While it can take time to get established, later down the line it could quite easily be earning you a full time income. There are lots of types of softwares that can completely automate areas of your home business, or you could outsource areas that you’re not confident in.

Write a blog

Do you already write an established blog as a hobby? If so, why not look into ways to monetise? If you’ve only made a limited amount of money from it so far, then there are things you can do to make it more attractive to sponsors and advertisers. First would be to re-think your design, blogging is becoming increasingly professional and sponsors will want to work with the most attractive sites. You could work with a designer, otherwise a premade template from a site like Etsy can be bought cheaply and look really effective. The next would be to improve your domain authority, this is a metric that tells people how much influence your site has online. One of the ways you can improve this is by getting other high quality sites to link back to you. If you have a network of bloggers that you speak to, find out if they would be interested in link swapping, otherwise guest posting (with a link in the post back to your own site) is a great way to go about it.

Freelance

Finally, if you have a skill such as writing or design then you will be in demand. Sign up to a freelancing site and you can take on the work as and when you want it. You could do this around another job, to supplement your business or blogging income or as your main source of income. Since you can choose the work you want to do, you’re in control of your workflow. You just need to make sure you meet deadlines for the work that you choose to do.