Top 12 Part-Time Remote Jobs That Are Actually Good
By: Lauren Haas
Tags: Digital Nomads, Remote Working, Side Hustle, Remote Work, Income

This is a reprint of a post on Indie Travel Guru

This list is limited to realistic part-time remote jobs that are worth your time.

It doesn’t contain any scams, get-rich-quick schemes, or MLMs. Unlike many side-hustle lists, this one doesn’t assume that you can become a successful photographer, novelist, or graphic designer overnight. A few items on this list require special skills, but there are options here for everyone.

Most hustles require a little up-front effort before you make money. Search the internet and read about other peoples’ experiences before you sign up with a gig-sourcing company. If you’re signing up with a website where reviews are critical, try to get a few friends to hire you and leave their honest (glowing) feedback.

If you’re looking for extra income so you can Travel the World on a Shoestring Budget, one of these side hustles could be perfect for you. And if you’re looking for a flexible career as a digital nomad, you may be able to parlay a few of these into a full-time gig.

Part-time Remote Jobs are for Anyone

Home-based hustles are not just for nomads. They’re also a good option for people who are disabled, live in rural or depressed areas, or move a lot due to their spouse’s job.

Top 12 Part-Time Remote Jobs

1) Teach English (or your native language) online

Teaching English through your phone is one of the most popular part-time remote jobs that digital nomads are using to earn a living. If you have a bachelor’s degree and you’re a native English speaker, you can earn $20/hour teaching English for VIPKid.

If you don’t have a degree or your native language isn’t English, you can still be a language tutor. Justlearn and Verbalplanet accept non-degreed tutors in all languages. iTalki has opportunities for both professional teachers and tutors in many languages. Indeed has a current list of remote tutoring jobs, too.

Plan to market yourself a little through any of these platforms. Reach out to your network and ask your friends to help you spread your profile and get your first few clients. Once you have a few positive reviews, it’ll get easier to find work.

2) Test websites

Website developers need human beings to try out their designs, so they’re willing to pay. Sites like UserTesting.com, Userlytics, TryMyUI, and Userfeel will pay you to try out a website and report on your experience. TestingTime is a similar site for people outside the U.S.

Companies are often looking for specific qualities like frequent online shoppers or gamers, so you’ll be screened for each opportunity. If you’re selected, you’ll spend about 15–20 minutes on the site. You’ll usually earn about $10 per test(although the rate can vary0.

Some testers report that they’re earning about $300 a month just from one site , making this a healthy side-gig. Sign up with multiple sites to earn more.

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3) Transcribe audio

If you’re a fast typist with good hearing, consider transcribing audio recordings as a side hustle. Most services pay $15–30 per hour — more if you have training in legal or medical transcription. Sites to check out for part-time remote jobs as a transcriber include TranscribeAnywhere, TranscribeMe, Quicktate, Rev, Tigerfish, and Crowdsurf.

4) Become a virtual assistant

Entrepreneurs hire virtual assistants to help them with tasks like bookkeeping, social media, inbox management, booking travel.

If you’re organized, work well independently, and have strong office skills, this might be the right field for you. To get started, read a few articles to get a good overview of the job. Then put together a simple website describing your service, and start looking for customers. Word of mouth is the best way to get clients, but you can try online marketplaces like Upwork, PeoplePerHour, or the VA specific VanNetworking site.

5) Write content for websites

This is much easier than breaking into writing for magazines because it’s less competitive — but it’s also less creative. The client gives you a headline, some sources, and strict guidelines to follow and you create original blog posts for them. If you enjoyed writing research papers and book reports in school, you’re probably well-suited for content creation.

A reasonable starting rate is 6¢ word, which means you’ll earn about $36 for a 600-word post that takes about an hour to write (once you get past the initial learning curve). As you become more experienced, you can easily earn more.

This was my primary remote part-time job for the first several years I was a nomad. My article about how to get started as a content creator includes agencies that will hire you without experience and training tools.

6) Take User Surveys

The internet is full of user survey opportunities that pay pennies, but genuine earning opportunities also exist in this realm.

On sites like Respondent and UserInterviews, companies pay as much as $40-$120 for input from their target audiences. First, register on the site. Then you can apply for opportunities by taking a screening quiz to see if you’re a good fit for the brand. Giving your input is more involved than filling out an online form, usually. Recent opportunities included interacting with the interviewer on a video call, sharing your screen to show them how you use an app, or logging your food intake for five days.

The downside? Competition can be fierce for some of the better-paying opportunities. You’ll spend a lot of time taking brief surveys to see if you qualify for new opportunities each day, and it might take a while to land paying gigs.

7) Sign up for cashback

This isn’t exactly a part-time remote job, but you can easily earn hundreds of dollars a year with cashback programs.

My favorite is the Rakuten shopping plug-in (formerly Ebates), which gives you cashback for shopping at your own favorite sites. It sounds too good to be true, but it is real.

How does it work? Rakuten has signed up for affiliate income with thousands of websites. When you use their app, they split the affiliate earnings with you. After you add the plug-in to your browser, Rakuten will let you know when you visit a site where cashback is available. Click a button to activate the affiliate link and shop as usual. Your payout comes by check or Paypal, your choice.

If you pay off your credit card balances every month, you could also earn hundreds of dollars a year using a cashback card for all your purchases. Look for a card with no annual fee and 1.5–2% cashback on all purchases.

Use that one card for all your expenses — groceries, paying bills online, gas — and pay the balance in full every month. That last part is super important — interest charges are as much as 20X your cashback rate, so if you carry a balance even one month it could wipe out your earnings.

You’ll rack up as much as $50 a month in cashback if you use your card for everything and never fail to pay it off in full. I earn enough most years to pay for a weekend trip to the Caribbean.

8) Become a Field Agent

If you have a phone and live in a major city, you could be earning money with the FieldAgent app.

First, download the app to your phone. Then check for tasks when you’re in local stores and businesses. Most tasks involve photographing product displays or comparison shopping. You earn a few dollars for each job.

iPhone users give the app great reviews, while Android users report a glitchier experience.

9) Sell handcrafted items (or vintage items) on Etsy

Etsy is a popular outlet for creators and crafters to sell jewelry, clothing designs, and art objects. Most Etsy sellers don’t make a lot of money. Mostly they’re expressing their creativity and offsetting their costs by selling what they make.

However, an Etsy store can be profitable if you approach it as a business. Aim to create simple, appealing products that you can sell through your existing networks. Above all, be honest with yourself about your costs, know what your time is worth.

10) Answer professional questions

If you’re a doctor, lawyer, mechanic, or veterinarian, JustAnswer will pay you to answer questions. The approval process is lengthy (you have to establish your expertise) and the amount you earn for each answer isn’t much — you get only 20–50% of the $2–5 customers pay.

But answering questions doesn’t take much time. One doctor claims to have earned over $5,000 in 22 days, working just 90 minutes a day on the platform. If you’re currently answering questions for free on Facebook or Quora, you might consider switching over and giving JustAnswer a try.

11) Become a tutor

If you’re an academic, a teacher, or a college student — or if you can teach business or computer skills — consider tutoring online through Chegg. The pay is $20/hour, and many people hold this gig for years. Other websites for tutoring include Classgap, Preply, TutorMe, and Tutor.com.

12) Find a remote part-time job with one company

Most of the “jobs” in this list are really business opportunities. They’re not jobs in the traditional sense of working for an employer who covers your payroll taxes as an employee.

Genuine remote jobs let you combine the stability of employment with the flexibility of working from home. The problem is that a lot of scams, get-rich-quick schemes, and MLM ripoffs are advertised as “work from home” jobs.

When you look at these opportunities, remember that if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. A genuine employment ad won’t read like a sales pitch. A real opportunity will be competitive — you’ll need to apply and prove that you’re the right person for the job.

Also, some of the “jobs” listed on these sites are still independent contractor opportunities — which is fine, if you’re comfortable with that.

Make sure it’s clear whether you’ll be an employee, with payroll taxes withheld from your checks, or if you’ll be an independent contractor. If you’re a contractor, you’ll be responsible for paying your own social security taxes and providing your own software updates and office supplies. That’s why a contractor’s pay should be roughly triple what you’d earn as an employee.

There are lots of remote job websites, but FlexJobs is the one with the best reputation. Job seekers have to pay $15 a month to access the listings, but in return, you get access to well-vetted opportunities instead of a lot of scams and nonsense. Remote.co, ZipRecruiter, Careerbuilder, and SkipTheDrive also have lists of remote jobs.