Editor’s note: This article was first published in September 2011, during Spain’s economic crisis, with references to families struggling to pay their mortgages.
If you search online for ideas on how to make money from home, most of the results you’ll find are about affiliate products, forex trading and the like. That’s why, a couple of weeks ago, I set out to find out how some people outside Spain are making money from home, and how others are using their own home to get through the crisis.
Some of the ideas below may not be workable in every country, or they might be; it’s a matter of trying. Others may seem a bit extreme, but given the desperate situation some Spanish families are in, extreme situations call for extreme measures. Let’s get started.
Making money with your home
1. Taking in a lodger
Many families struggling to keep up with their mortgage decide to rent out a room, either to a couple or to a student during the academic year. Obviously, the price you pay is a loss of privacy. In some cases, families have done the building work needed to split the home off completely. At a certain point, it’s a good option when there’s no other way to bring in income.
2. Film shoots and commercials
In the United States, you can lend your house for shooting a commercial or some scenes of a film. Truth be told, the kind of film that most often needs a private home for a shoot is adult films, although they often pay more than $3,000 for a few days of shooting. And if your house is large and luxuriously decorated, with a garden, a pool and so on, you can get up to $10,000 per day of shooting.
3. Renting out your house’s facade for advertising
Another very common practice in some countries is renting out your home for advertising. An advertiser wants their ad to be seen, so if your house is in a central spot where thousands of people and vehicles pass every day, that’s exactly what an ad is looking for.
4. If your house is near an airport and you have a plot of land
If you have a home near an airport with an enclosed plot, that space could be used to park the car of a traveler who has to leave the country for a while. Clearly, this idea won’t make you much money, since the price shouldn’t be higher than the airport’s own parking service, but every little bit helps.
5. If you have an abandoned house or a rural property
In this case, we already shared some ideas for turning your property into a profitable business, such as rural tourism, retreats for breaking bad habits or paintball. You can read the explanation in our article.
Along the same lines, a trend that has caught on in the health space is military-style weight-loss camps.
Ideas for making money from home
To make money from home, as a general rule, all you’ll need is an internet connection, since the possibilities are as endless as your imagination allows.
At the most basic level, you could create an informational blog or a website where you sell some kind of product, although if you don’t have much experience, it would take a bit longer to make this small business profitable.
You can earn money as a virtual assistant or secretary, as this kind of professional is in demand as a freelancer.
Likewise, if you have a university degree, you can give private lessons online.
If you have expertise in a particular subject, you can write for websites or blogs and get paid per article. They don’t usually pay much, but at the end of the month it’s extra money. We also shared some ideas on how to make some quick money from old things around the house that you no longer use.
Since none of the ideas we’ve covered require any investment, if money gets tight, it may be worth considering one of them.
See also: 10 business ideas with no investment
Featured image: Ricardo Diaz, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
