How to Start Working Remotely – Remote Jobs for Everyone

Many people want to start working remotely but are unsure if they have the skills that are needed. If there is a job they could do remotely.

Let me assure you – Yes, chances are VERY good that there is the right remote job out there for you. Have a look at the following article and learn what skills you need and what your potential source of remote income could look like.

 

What Are The Benefits of Remote Work?

Since you are interested in how to start working remotely, I assume you are already aware of the many advantages of remote work. Therefore, let’s just quickly recap the most popular ones:

1. No more commutes to work: If you work from home, you don’t need to spend hours in traffics jams or be stuck in public transport twice a day. That means you also save a lot of money on gas bills or bus tickets and nerves.
2. More time for yourself and your family: You can use that time to spend it with your friends or family. Since many remote workers get to set their own schedules, you are also more flexible and can plan private appointments during the day or join your child’s afternoon school event.
3. Healthier lifestyle: Studies have shown that your sleep improves if you work from home. You are not stressed out by a busy office environment anymore and don’t have to rush from one meeting room to another. You can prepare fresh food and don’t need to rely on unhealthy cafeteria options. And since you have more time, you can exercise more and schedule your day according to personal needs and preferences.
4. Productivity increases: Working from home means you don’t have to face the usual office environment distractions, such as chatty coworkers. You can also work during those times of the day when you feel most motivated and energetic. On top of that, you can set up your home office in a way that works best for you.

Who Can Work Remotely?

Anyone who can use a computer and/or smartphone can work remotely. There are many different kinds of people with different reasons why they prefer a remote job. Here are just a few common examples:

• Stay-at-home-moms and –dads
• People with chronic physical or mental illness
• People living in rural areas
• Caregivers
• Retirees
• Students
• Super commuters
• Environmentalists
• Introverts
• Pet owners
• Digital Nomads
• Freelancers
• Entrepreneurs

What Skills Do You Need to Work Remotely?

The following skills are usually needed if you want to be successful with your remote job and enjoy working from home.

1. You Must Be a Self-Starter.

Without self-discipline, working remotely will not work and only result in more effort than actually needed. You must be able to get things done without somebody reminding or urging you to do so.

2. You Must Have Outstanding Organizational Skills.

Depending on the type of job you will be doing, you may have to set your own working schedule. This is great news for everyone who loves this type of flexibility.

The more organized you are, the easier it is for you to get your job done.

3. You Must Be a Good Communicator

Communication is always important, no matter where you work. But when you work remotely, it is absolutely essential. You can’t only rely on verbal communication. Your written communication skills need to be on point, too.

Get comfortable with using all the technologies you can get: Email, Messenger software, phone calls, and video calls.

4. You Must Be Content with Being Alone.

There are people out there who love being alone or at least love working without too many people around. That’s one of the main reasons why they like remote work.

However, there are plenty of others who chose a work-from-home job for other reasons and who struggle with the lack of constant personal contact with others.

There are ways how you can minimize this impact if you want to, e.g. coworking spaces or online co-break sessions. But you need to come to terms with the idea that you won’t have the same level of interaction with your colleagues when you work from home as when you work from an office.

5. You Must Be Comfortable with Technology.

Although your job might not be tech-related, you still need to be tech-savvy to a certain degree. Since you are working online all day and with all kinds of different software, issues can occur every once in a while.

You should have a basic understanding of how things work you are using every day. If you don’t you should at least have the patience and be willing to google for potential solutions.

Of course, you can still get help from others. But being able to fix small issues on your own will make your life much easier.

What Are Popular Remote Job Examples?

Now let’s go to the nitty-gritty: What type of online jobs can you do if you want to start working remotely.  Depending on your skills there are several options:

• Remote jobs that require IT skills
• Turn your office job into a remote job
• Turn your non-office job into a remote job
• Change career and start with an entry-level remote job
• Turn your hobbies and passion into a remote income

 

Remote Jobs that Require IT Skills

These are the most obvious jobs that come to our minds when we think about remote work. If you have a background in computer science or information technology, chances are very good that you can use your knowledge to find a remote job.

Just think of typical jobs such as software development, website programming, or graphic design. While you surely need to have some sort of interaction with your team members or clients, most of this can be done online.

 

Turn Your Office Job into a Remote Job

If you are a management assistant, accountant, marketing specialist, lawyer, or anything else similar to that, chances are good that you can do your job remotely.

Check what kind of tasks you have that require you to be physically in the office:

• Is there any way to digitalize these tasks?
• Can you join meetings via video calls?
• Can you get access to all necessary systems from home or anywhere in the world?

Speak to your supervisor and explain your situation. Maybe he or she is willing to keep you on a remote basis rather than having to replace you.

If there is no way to simply switch your exciting office job to a remote one, see if you can find your position somewhere else on a remote basis. Maybe your company doesn’t allow you to work from home but others do. Check out these remote-friendly companies to start your search.

 

Turn Your Non-Office Job into a Remote Job

People who work in an office and sit in front of a computer might have a tiny advantage over blue-collar workers. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t make a remote income with their skills and experience.

Let’s take a carpenter for example. Of course, this is physical work and you are usually tied to a certain location to be able to get your work done.

But think further than that. A carpenter surely has some valuable knowledge he can share with others. Maybe he knows some great tricks on how to keep his tools clean, how to choose the right material, or how to do after-treatments.

Using that knowledge, you could make money online with the following methods:

• Work as an online tutor and teach others your skills.
• Start a mentoring program where you, for instance, guide a few selected participants through the first steps of their new career.
• Create and sell online courses where students can learn at their own pace from your skills and knowledge.
• Work as a consultant and advise companies with certain strategical or operational issues that they may have.

Be a bit creative and see what type of demand there is for your knowledge.

Change Career and Start with an Entry-Level Remote Job

If the just mentioned methods won’t work for you, you could also go for a remote job, that doesn’t require any specific background and that you could do on an entry-level basis.

You could look for these types of jobs on freelance platforms such as Upwork or Fiverr. If you prefer permanent employment, you could head over to the popular website FlexJobs where you can find thousands of part-time and full-time jobs with reputable companies, e.g. Apple or the American Red Cross.

Let’s look at a few examples of popular entry-level remote jobs:

 

Virtual Assistance

One of the first jobs that I did when I started my remote career was being a virtual assistant. I worked for an entrepreneur and helped him with both his business and private life. Typical tasks would be the scheduling of appointments, booking flights, research, controlling, or administrative work.

Some employers want you to be experienced. But often the tasks are not rocket science and can be done by most people. You need skills like being organized, reliable, patient, efficient, being able to work independently, and be a problem-solver.

What can you earn? Well, I have seen people, especially in Asian countries, that charge as low as 4 USD per hour. I started at 20 USD, but I have also seen assistants who work for 50 USD per hour and are successful with it.

 

Customer Service

Begin a customer service representative is another great job you can do online while working from home.  Pretty much any company needs someone who takes care of customer inquiries. That can be either via phone, email, or live chat.

While some require you to have experience with certain ticket tools or systems, others want you to have knowledge about their products, e.g. mobile devices.

However, most established companies usually have their processes and key customer requests well documented for you to learn. So as long as you are super friendly, willing to learn, and have a professional writing style, you can do most of these positions.

 

Content Writing

Yes, there are tons of open content writing positions out there that require you to have years of experience, published articles, and knowledge in a particular area. But some companies and clients are also happy to employ a beginner.

Of course, you won’t get rich with that kind of entry remote job. It will, however, be enough to get by and gain more experience so you can apply for bigger gigs soon.

Some of the most important places to find entry-level content writing jobs are Textbroker, Blogging Pro, Online Writing Jobs, or ProBlogger.

 

Social Media Management

Yes, there are many senior positions in social media management. But many companies are also happy to employ a beginner to take care of their daily social media activities.

For example, some people specialize in Pinterest. They work full time as Pinterest assistants and create appealing pins, prettify Pinterest profiles, and make sure that their clients get much traffic through this channel. Others focus on Instagram and make sure a profile grows in followers, likes, and comments.

Since hardly any company can get around social media today, there is much potential.

 

Turn Your Hobbies and Passion into a Remote Income

A fifth and completely different way of making money remotely is by turning your hobby or passion into an online income. Here are a few examples to show you what I mean by that:

 

Start a Blog

You could start a blog and write about the things you are an expert in. There are so many things to write about:

• Maybe you are into classic cars, birdwatching, or wine?
• Maybe you have a disease and want to show other patients how to live with it?
• Or you want to adopt a child from South America and document your experiences for others with the same plans?

If you manage to get a lot of people reading your blog, you can use affiliate marketing or Google AdWords to monetarize it.

But please note that it usually takes quite a bit of time and effort to be able to make a full income with a blog.

 

Produce Videos

If you are not so much into writing, make videos. Again, your opportunities are endless:

• 10-minute workouts for your lunch break.
• Do-it-yourself ideas for first-time moms.
• MS Office hacks for dummies.

Whatever you chose, you can either sell the videos in a video course or make a YouTube channel and get paid for ads or product placements.

 

Write Books or EBooks

You could also write books or eBooks in the field of your expertise. That could be short guides on a specific issue or longer books that cover a whole niche.

You don’t even need to find a publishing company to start your writing career. Services, such as Amazon KDP, allow you to upload your book as a pdf and they print it on-demand or convert it into an ebook.

You could also promote your book on your social media channels or combine this digital product with a blog or YouTube channel, that you might have.

 

Get Training to Start Working Remotely

If you are still a bit unsure of how you can start working remotely, don’t give up! I’m convinced that remote work is the future and the earlier you start learning more about your options, the better.

If you need help with that, I’ve created an online course that teaches you step-by-step how you can find the right remote job for your needs.

You will also learn, how you can find high-paying clients or companies that are willing to employ you on a remote basis. On top of that, you learn my favorite strategies to stay super productive and healthy while working from home.

If you don’t want to waste any more time, check out “Zero to Remote Work Success” and kick start your remote career today! I’m happy to guide you on your way.