Make $10k/month FROM HOME With These 6 Freelance Jobs!
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(*that’s an affilate link btw - my Margarita fund thanks you kindly in advance!)
Wondering what job you could do online that is ACTUALLY well paid and therefore worth your while?!
If you're like me you're not interested in jobs for $10 an hour, but an income that can genuinely support you and your family living a good life.
This one’s for you friend! I'm going to share with you 6 of the best-paid jobs you can do online, from home, all of which you could make $10k/month or more with!
But before we get started - you’re gonna wanna check this out!
OK let’s get to it…
So we are NOT talking about virtual assistance or completing surveys online or selling handmade items on Etsy where the pay and profit is a pittance.
Now if we haven't met before… 😉 lovely to meet you I'm Paige and I earned my very first dollar online in 2014, so I've been earning an income online for almost 10 years!
Every job I'm going to share with you today I've either done personally or have hired someone to do for my business AND I'm going to rate each job on 3 criteria, as for me these were the three most important factors in choosing what work I wanted to do online!
How hard it is to learn the job & get started
How quickly/slowly it actually takes to make $10k/months
The level of freedom & lifestyle quality,
So without further adieu, let's get into the jobs!
Work from Home Freelance Job One: A Content Creator, also known as an influencer or blogger or vlogger.
This is exactly where I started, I started a travel blog way back in the day.
Now how hard is it to learn to be a content creator and get started exactly?
Well for me I both binged every blog and podcast and free resource I could find online to learn about the field and also took a course on the business of travel blogging specifically and overall it took me a couple months to really piece together how to make content people wanted to consume, AND start earning an income off of it.
Now granted, criteria number 2 is why I didn't continue pursuing this path.
I learned the hard way that making money from content creation was a super long game. The way most blogs are monetized is through brand deals or affiliate links or selling a product you create yourself, sometimes this is a digital product sometimes this is a physical product and in the travel blogging world specifically, selling group tours to your audience was also a monetization strategy!
All of those monetization options however required a fair-sized audience, and after I got into this and tracked my stats I realized that making real money from content creation would take likely years to build the following to the point where I'd have enough followers to make this a really cushy full-time income.
So if you have the luxury of time to build a following through literally years of unpaid hours, being a Content Creator can be incredible pay and really exponential income growth down the line.
I know content creators making way more than $10k/month.
Grace Beverly for example built a fitness following on Instagram and sold 300,000 workout guide PDF's for $35 each while in university.
That's $10 million from a PDF made on Canva!
The biggest travel bloggers in the world, Kara & Nate stated in a podcast episode that they were making over 7 figures from their YouTube channel and their income is a mix of sponsorships and brand deals and YouTube ads revenue!
Granted, both those examples took years building their followings first.
Now these examples are the extremes and I'm not saying these numbers are normal, but it gives you a taste of what's possible when you've build a massive following, and it shows that $10k/month is extremely doable as a content creator!
BUT remember, it's a longggg game of unpaid hours to build the following to make this possible, probably multiple years to get the audience to do $10k months and from there once you've built that audience, income really takes off and is highly scaleable.
In terms of criteria number 3, freedom & lifestyle quality, I'd rate content creation as a 8/10.
Yes you have headlines for brands or sponsors likely in this job, but there's also a ton of freedom in how and when you do your work, so it scores beautifully on the freedom & lifestyle quality category!
Need some inspiration to create irresistible content? Make sure to grab my FREE content creation outlines 👇
Work from home job freelance job two: Web Designer!
Web design is what I chose to do after I scrapped my travel blogging dream.
As a travel blogger I had built my own website and loved redesigning it, so I figured, heck why not build websites for other people and earn an income that way!
After I looked into it, it turns out web design is one of the best-paid freelance jobs around, $3k - $6k per project is pretty standard for newer designers and web designers tend to be able to do a couple projects per month, with myself and a lot of my students doing $9k - $15k projects after a few years.
Wanna know more about that? Check out this video!
In terms of how hard it is to learn the job & get started, I'd say web design is easier than most might initially imagine these days.
Being a web designer no longer requires you to learn how to code, which was always the scary bit that kept people like me from doing a job like this back in the day, instead these days you just need to get really good at working with one web building platform, like Squarespace or WordPress or Showit or Shopify.
With dedication to online tutorials and/or a course (like Square Secrets™ & Square Secrets Business™) or just a lot of trial and error yourself, you could easily learn to become pretty decent at one of the major website-building platforms in a matter of weeks or a couple months.
And potentially like me, if you've tried anything online before, you might have already been developing this skill without even thinking about it!
Next, how quickly/slowly it'll take to make $10k/month, let's start with the important bit, how long does it take to land a paying first web design client.
When I surveyed over 700 web designers, full results of that survey are linked above by the way, 61% of designers landed a paying client before they even officially launched their business, so it's an in-demand service.
BUT to get to $10k months requires landing consistent clients and taking into account web designers could typically complete 2 projects per month, you'd need command rates of $5,000 per project to reach the $10k.
After chatting with a number of my students who have hit $10k months, it took most of them a full year, sometimes a bit more to reach their first $10k/month.
And finally criteria 3, freedom & lifestyle quality. I'd give this a 6/10.
It's about as free of a freelance job as you'll get because you don't have ongoing clients you serve year-round who therefore need you year-round, it's more project-based, so as a web designer myself when I took off on vacation for a few weeks, I had no clients who needed me which I loved!
Granted, web design is still 1:1 service provision, meaning you'll likely do a call or meeting with a client in a project and have deadlines every week.
Interested in this one? Don’t scroll on by before you’ve grabbed this!
Work from home job freelance job three: An Online Business Manager aka an OBM.
A few years back I was looking for someone to be able to manage the day-to-day of my business for me, so to manage my team and projects and launches and admin and all the rest of that stuff, so I hunted for an OBM and interviewed probably 15 of them!
If you're more familiar with the corporate world, an OBM is kind of the online equivalent of a project manager or for bigger businesses, a Chief Operating Officer.
In terms of how hard this job is to learn, I do need to state a potentially unpopular opinion, a lot of people calling themselves OBM's actually have no clue how to do this job properly.
A lot of Virtual Assistants who want higher pay change their title to OBM without really up-levelling their skills much, and I know of a few business friends who had to let go their OBM pretty quickly when it became clear that they didn't have the skills to do this job well.
So in terms of how hard it is to learn the job & get started, I'd say you'd either want a background in project management OR a good few years as a VA where you've really grown in independence and decision-making ability and definitely have taken an online course on how to do this job with someone legit!
Oh and also be sure to read the book Rocket Fuel by Gino Wickman* and pay attention to everything he says about what Integrators do as that's basically what an OBM does!
(*that’s an affilate link btw - my Margarita fund thanks you kindly in advance!)
In terms of how quickly/slowly it'll take to make $10k/month, we first need to talk about typical OBM rates.
OBM's typically take on multiple clients at a time and are on retainer, so they're hired by the business month in and month out, as opposed to doing one-off projects, and OBM's charge about $40 - $60 an hour. Working 40 hours a week, you'd make $6,700 a month charging $40 per hour or just break the $10k/month by charging $60 an hour.
To get to the point you're commanding $60 per hour I'd say it'd be a few years of gaining experience to get there.
The really good thing I need to mention about being an OBM is that as I said, you typically keep the same clients month to month, meaning once you land the clients and keep them happy, it isn't super necessary to keep marketing and finding new clients!
Which brings me to freedom & lifestyle quality of being an OBM.
When it comes to freedom, being an OBM is one of the worst of all I'll talk about, of course I'd say all these jobs are better than a 9-5 by far, but in comparison to the others we'll speak about this one isn't the best.
Being an OBM is 1:1 service provision and because the clients are consistent, that's great as you don't need to always be finding new clients, but that also means the business owner is probably going to be hiring you and expecting you to be the one running the day to day of the business while they're away living life, so I wouldn't expect to be able to take any really long periods of vacation from this job.
I'd give being an OBM a 4/10 in terms of freedom.
Work from home job freelance job four: Ads manager
So that could be Facebook and Instagram ads mangers, Google ads, YouTube ads, or Pinterest ads, these tend to be the main ones.
Granted, I wouldn't recommend learning them all, you just really need to get good at ads platforms and they're pretty different so the learning curve will be a lot shorter if you choose to learn one rather than them all.
In terms of length of time to learn, I'd say this is similar to web design, with a dedication to online tutorials and/or a course, you could easily learn to become pretty decent at ads management in a couple of weeks or months.
Of course, trial and error isn't quite as possible with this job as that would require pouring your own money into ads to do the learning, so either taking a course or doing a few clients for free while you learn with their money or working for another ads management agency where they look over your work and give feedback would be recommended to learn.
In terms of pay, ads managers tend to take on a few clients at a time, maybe 3-5 and charge anywhere from $1,500/month to $5,000/month.
To get to $10k months, I think you'd be looking at a few months of learning, maybe working for an agency where you'd make a portion of what the client pays to really hone your skills with oversight or doing a few clients for free and using their money to learn while running the ads and then potentially striking out on your own.
So I'd say probably 1-2 years to get to those $10k months as an ads manager.
And in terms criteria number 3, freedom & lifestyle quality, I'd rate this the same as being an OBM 4/10.
Some clients will be spending tens of thousands per week on ads, and they're going to want someone overseeing that ad spend at all times, so if you want to take time off, you're likely going to need to train someone to take over for you while you're away and build a team.
Granted, in terms of the day-to-day work, being an OBM doesn't require a ton of client calls and is pretty flexible in when you do the work in a week, so that'a a major positive!
Next let's talk about two more super-scaleable jobs, these next two aren't 1:1 service provision but are more passive-income style jobs.
Work from home job freelance job five: selling digital templates!
Think social media templates, website templates, powerpoint slide templates, legal templates, calendar templates, etc.
First, how hard is it to learn this job and get started?
Honestly, I'd say this one is fairly easy compared to the others, a lot of people kind of fall into this one because they've done it themselves and love it. If you find yourself loving designing slides on Canva or making websites on Squarespace, you've probably been teaching yourself this without even thinking about it!
A few weeks to learn how to make really well-created, styled and branded templates and you're off to the races!
Now the thing with this job which will take longer than learning to create the templates however is learning to sell them.
You have three options with selling strategies,
Become obsessed with learning what it takes to raise to the top on the rankings of sites like Etsy & Creative market
Build an audience and sell these templates on your own site to your own people
Getting affiliates to promote them for you.
Coming back to content creator, our option 1, as I said, it'll take a good few months or a year or more to build a sufficient audience to sell digital products like templates en masse so it actually hits $10k/month!
Alternatively, you could crack the code on getting your template to rank at the top of creative marketplaces OR a lot of template shops I know, the Creative Law Shop (Grab 10% off with code: PAIGE10!) which sells legal templates or Tonic Site Shop & Go Live HQ & Big Cat Creative which sell website templates all use affiliates and this could take just a matter of weeks or months to build an affiliate program and onboard some affiliates with audiences who need what you're selling.
So between learning to create the templates, creating them and setting up a sales strategy, I think a few months, maybe 6 months to a year to get this built to the point it could make $10k months is realistic.
Now in terms of income of course we need to talk price of templates as some of these cost more than others!
People aren't likely to pay $400 for an Instagram image template or powerpoint slide template but are super likely to buy a $400 website template or a legal template.
And of course the higher the template cost, the smaller the audience you need to have to make $10k months, so to hit $10k months faster, I'd choose to create something higher-priced as it'll probably take years to make $10k/month selling $5 printables.
In terms of freedom & lifestyle quality, I'd put this right up there at a 9.5/10, it pretty much doesn't get better than this.
You can batch your work, take off however long you want for vacation, you have no 1:1 clients. You will probably get questions and need to do customer service for these templates and since the internet functions 365 days a year, you'll probably want to outsource customer service in order to get the complete 10/10 freedom you're looking for, but until then I'd give this a 9.5/10.
Now this option can be fabulous if you’ve already worked as a web designer - you know how to design great sites, and you know your people and you just want a more flexible way to structure your services! That’s exactly what my friend Erica, from Big Cat Creative, did… and worked her way to over $1,000,000 in passive income!
Check out this video for her story…
Work from home job freelance job six: Online course sales!
In order to sell an online course, you're going to want to be an expert at something. Now you might think "it'll take me AGES to become an expert at something" but honestly I think probablyyy there's something you're already an expert at.
For example I had moved to Germany as an expat, and just by nature of having done that thing, I was kinda an expert at moving to Germany as an expat!
Granted I never actually created a course on moving to Germany, I wasn't thattt passionate about the topic, but I did start a course on how to be a web designer after I had successfully run that business myself for a good while!
So the length of time to learn the thing to teach could very well be nothing as mostly course creators teach on something they're already an expert on.
In terms of the length of time to build a course, this can be as long or as short as you'd like! Some people pre-record the whole course, others deliver the content live which means no upfront work.
If you want to make money by selling courses, the thing which will take the most time is preparing the marketing materials like the sales page and sales emails and posts AND of course, the audience.
Audience building will take the most time for this one, the rest is actually the easier and faster bit. In terms of how quickly/slowly it'll take to make $10k/month, courses tend to range in price from a few hundred to a few thousand, so depending on your course price, it could take selling 20 $500 courses or 5 $2,000 courses per month to hit 10k.
In order to do that, I think honestly if you focused your efforts on audience building for a few months, you could build the audience to make those course sales possible in a few months of concentrated effort.
Wanna see if your course idea has potential? Take my FREE quiz to find out! 👇
I sold my first course after 1 year of consistent blogging and email list building and on the first launch made $19k.
In terms of freedom & lifestyle quality, this is almost the exact same as template sales, I'd put it right up there at a 9.5/10.
As a course creator myself, I take weeks off for vacation, my work is batched, I have almost no calls and meetings, so this is really the freedom business dream and if you have a team to manage the customer service, I'd give it actually a 10/10.
Now getting to $10k/month is really just the beginning, over the years I've built out 7 income streams which make $62,500/month in my business and I learned a LOT in the process of building those income streams!
I detailed it all in this video, so watch it next to get a peek at what's possible for you a few years down the line in online business and the big lessons I learned when building out so many income streams!