Whether you’re looking to supplement your income with extra cash or have a complete change of lifestyle, there are genuine working from home jobs available in the UK.
Home working jobs UK
- Freelance Jobs From Home – includes ProBlogger, Fiverr, PeoplePerHour
- Data Entry & Typing Jobs – including Working Mums, Clickworker
- Creative Jobs from Home – includes Canva, PicMonkey
- Amazon Virtual Jobs
- Crafting Jobs
- Customer Service Jobs from Home
- Childminding Jobs
- Dog Walking or Pet Sitting Jobs
- Laundry/Ironing Services
- Baking from Home to Sell
- T-shirt and On-Demand Printing
- Self Publishing Kindle Books
- Create Your Own YouTube Channel
- Start An Affiliate Marketing Business
Working at home can offer you the flexibility to work around your family.
You may well save money and time not commuting to an office. And of course, there’s the added bonus of working in your PJs every now and then.
Here we have compiled a list of legit work from home jobs for you to get your teeth into.
Freelance Websites
From typing and data entry jobs to designing websites, creating and selling your crafts, tutoring, and freelance writing work. Freelance websites offer the chance to get a legitimate work from home job.
Look for work at reputable freelance sites such as ProBlogger, Fiverr or PeoplePerHour.
To get work on sites such as these, you will have to bid for jobs.
Contractors post them daily, and it’s up to you to pitch for the job. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box when making your pitch.
I hired someone who had gone to the bother of creating a promotional video of themselves.
It wasn’t complicated, but it did put a face and a voice to the pitch. And they won the pitch.
When bidding for work, don’t make the mistake of underpricing yourself.
You could end up doing a lot of work for little pay. And beware of the commission that the websites take from your funds.
>> Find out how to make money.
MLM – Multi-Level Marketing Jobs
Avon, Kleeneze, Usbourne Books and more – the classic Multi-Level Marketing jobs – are all work at home jobs that offer flexibility and the chance to earn some extra money.
You may have to invest a little initially (around £30-£100) for a starter kit to begin with and then you can start earning 20%-30% on your sales.
Some of these companies run special offers where you can join and receive a kit and pay for the kit out of your commission.
It won’t make you rich but may help bring in some extra cash and keep you busy and get you out meeting people.
Be prepared to go out in all weather and be organised with your paperwork.
Be aware of other MLM jobs that are not what they seem. After all, these are selling jobs, and the big bosses make money from new recruits.
Work at Home Jobs Involving a Computer
What is the best best online work from home jobs? The internet offers easier than ever ways to make some cash from genuine online jobs.
Data Entry and Typing Jobs
If you are fairly nifty with your keyboard, there are genuine home-based jobs for data entry and typing. You’ll need to be fast, accurate and have good broadband speed. Jobs may be paid by the hour or for the actual job.
Be sure to have the job requirements clearly defined before you start.
If you know your Instagram from your Snapchat, you may grab a social media job-creating posts from the comfort of your own home.
Great places to look for this sort of work include WorkingMums, Clickworker and PeoplePerHour – you will find plenty of typing working from home jobs in the UK on these sites. You could earn anything from £10-£40 per hour depending on the job.
Creative Work From Home Jobs
Creative types looking for real work from home jobs can hone their skills by offering web design, illustration or even creating and selling digital templates.
This fairly new concept involves the design and development of templates so often used on Pinterest.
The templates can also be used for digital CV’s, stationery and mood boards.
Canva and PicMonkey are great places to start. Canva is relatively simple to learn, there are tutorials online, and you can start picking up small jobs to produce design work for other people.
Amazon Virtual Jobs
Did you know that Amazon has a virtual job section on their website?
With over 600,000 employees, there is sure to be a home-based job on this site that suits your needs.
Keep reading to find out more about other flexible work at home jobs include taking part in paid surveys, selling your photos, dog walking or childminding.
If you have a strong skill set you can also offer tutoring too at Superprof.
Crafting jobs to work from home UK
Crafting your own unique products could be a highly rewarding business to get into. Sites such as Etsy have exploded in popularity in recent years and many creatives are enjoying selling their work, making these great legitimate work at home jobs.
Party boxes, beauty boxes and self-care boxes have seen a huge rise in demand over the recent year, with the despatch boxes being ‘letterbox’ friendly so can be posted out to be people without any hassle.
Self-care boxes can include anything you want such as chocolate, face masks, tea-light holders, stationery and pens. Candles are also a very popular product and if you do your sums right, it could be possible to Make Money Selling Candles from Home, as this very thorough guide details.
Customer Service Jobs From Home
If you are at home and enjoy working on a telephone there are often working at home customer service jobs available – this is where a company redirect their phone lines to staff at home.
You may have to be reactive to taking calls from customers or the job may involve you being proactive and calling people to set appointments or undertake a customer aftersales call. Try Reed for part-time work-at-home positions.
Working jobs from home without a computer
There are still plenty of jobs you can from home that don’t involve a PC. These include
Childminding Jobs
Once you are registered you can offer childminding services in your home. You would obviously need to meet certain guidelines and requirements, but you could look at earning around £60 per day for this and still be at home. Average rates for childminders are around £5 per child per hour, so if you have a couple of children you can soon start earning a fairly good wage.
Dog Walking or Pet Sitting Jobs
Whilst other people are out at work, they may need someone to look after their pet dog. You would have the dog(s) in your own home, so would need to be comfortable with the smell and potential mess. There is potential for charging around £20 per day per dog. You would need to be licensed and take out your own insurance. Sitting five dogs a day could soon see you earning around £100 a day.
Laundry/Ironing Services
Some people love ironing and find it quite therapeutic. So why not get paid for doing someone else’s laundry. You will be amazed at the number of people who are so busy with work and children that they would willingly pass on their ironing to someone else. You can expect to earn around £15-£20 per load of ironing. Some people charge by the weight of the clothes and some also offer to pick up and delivery of the clothes afterwards.
Baking jobs you can do from home uK
You will need to meet certain health and safety requirements but there is certainly a market for making cakes and sweet treats at the moment – especially if you can deliver them into the bargain.
With Mother’s Day, Easter and Summer Fairs a regular in the calendar there are plenty of opportunities for you to make some extra money by baking. A decent wedding cake could cost a couple of hundred pounds. We used a local baker to buy six fancy cupcakes for £10, not a huge amount of money but if you enjoy baking this could be a nice way of earning some extra money.
More Creative home-based jobs uK
T-shirt and On-Demand Printing
This relatively new idea is a print-on-demand custom made products – not just t-shirts, but socks, caps and mugs with your artwork on. All you need is an iPhone and access to a website such as TeeSpring. If you have an eye for a trend, your design will be printed by TeeSpring and even distributed. It’s great if you pick up on a trend or a saying that people are using, perhaps for an upcoming football game, a trend or election. You will need to make sure you are not taking anyone’s designs for copyright, but TeeSpring will have details to help you on your journey.
Self Publishing Kindle Books
If you have knowledge in a particular field, industry or a passion for storytelling, you could try your hand at writing and self-publishing a Kindle Book. There is tons of helpful information on Amazon which help you through the process – they say to write about what you know – it could be cooking, family budgeting, caravan holidays, dog training – anything you know about and is worth sharing.
The process is relatively simple and there aren’t any start-up costs – you will start earning commission once your Kindle books start selling. You don’t even need a designer to help you as the Amazon Kindle website has plenty of templates for free to start you off. This is a great marketing tool to promote your business too – for example if you are a Personal Fitness Trainer you might want to put a short book together about fitness and link it to your business.
YouTube Channel
This is more of a long-term goal and not for everyone but there are channels and content out there for everyone. You make money through the advertising and views your channel has. You need to have at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of viewing racked up before you start making any money. Not keen on being on camera? Don’t worry – you don’t necessarily need to. You can screen record tutorials, or use your hands to showcase your work (perhaps you have an arts and craft business that you can showcase).
Affiliate Marketing Business
This is where you plug other people’s products on your site website or social media channels, once other people buy that product through your link, you earn a commission on this product. This is a long term plan. You do need a good online audience who are going to buy through your sites to make this viable. There is lots of information online or you could take an online course in Affiliate Marketing with Udemy.com.
What Do I Need To Be Aware Of?
Although there are many genuine home-based jobs out there, sadly there are many scams. If the opportunity seems to be too good to be true, it normally is. And don’t even go near a job that asks for money upfront unless it is a totally legitimate and well-known company such as Avon.
But do be aware of Multi-Level Marketing opportunities (Avon, candle parties) as they can pile on the pressure for you to recruit more reps, as this is where the top-level make their money – which is why it’s called Multi-Level Marketing. And avoid packing from home jobs which can often be scams. Here are some tips to help you:
Check the email address for the company and address, if it doesn’t look genuine – stop. A reputable company would have their own email address. Have a search on Google for their company name and for any reviews. A few minutes doing this could save you £££’s.
OK, I’m Hooked – What Do I Need To Think Of?
Carefully consider your rates of pay – some jobs are per hour, others by commission. Although genuine, some freelance websites take a cut in any jobs you secure, so you may want to re-adjust your rate accordingly.
Set up a PayPal account to help receive payments. Do consider the downside of working for yourself, is not having any sick pay or holiday entitlement (though you do have the freedom to choose when you want to book that holiday in Spain). You may also need to think about costs associated with business insurance, utilities and putting aside tax money if you are registering as self-employed.
Also be aware that the more software, apps or websites you use, the more fees you may incur. For example, a PayPal account is free to open, but you will be charged transaction fees.
An alternative to ‘gigging’ could be starting your own blog or side hustle. By doing this, you could get paid for placing ads on your site. One such service is AdSense from Google which I have used myself.
It’s also worth being aware of your time management. It’s important your family respect your working hours by creating boundaries and have a space to work at home. You don’t want to get distracted by the housework. And although we joked about wearing your PJ’s all day, we do advise getting dressed for the day, making time to have a break, getting out for a walk or meeting other homeworkers, be it on the school run or a network meeting.
Home Based Jobs Essentials for UK Workers
Here are a couple of really important points that you will have to cover if you are starting out with home-based working.
Check Your Insurance Policy
Your home insurance policy may already cover you for home-based work involving a PC or laptop. But it may not – it’s crucial that you should check your policy wording. Call your home insurer if necessary. Working full time from home could invalidate your insurance which could be extremely costly. Call them before you start or as soon as possible.
Register For Self Assessment
If you are working for yourself on a freelance basis or invoicing clients at the end of the month you will need to register as self-employed so you can pay tax.
This is what I had to do for running my blog. It’s fairly straightforward and you will have to fill out an online form at the end of every tax year to declare how much money you have made.
It’s really important to document all your earnings and all your relevant expenses so these can be declared against your earnings.
If you are still in a 9 to 5 job and are earning money from home as a side job, you will also need to input your full-time job earnings from the previous year. All this information will be in your P60 form which is issued by your employer at the end of every tax year (in April).
So it is vitally important that you keep your P60 safe and do not discard or destroy it.
Register for Self Employment here.
Genuine Home Based Jobs Pros and Cons
Before you think about getting started with genuine home-based jobs, you should think carefully about how it may impact you and your family’s life. Whilst it is true that this type of work can bring in some very good extra money, it is not always easy to get started. For some people, the money may come thick and fast but for others, it’s not so easy.
Below is a range of advantages and disadvantages that you should consider. But everyone’s circumstances are different. You need to think about what works for your individual family, your lifestyle and the expenses you have at present.
Advantages of legitimate jobs working from home:
- Flexible work hours
- Great if you have a young family
- You can choose how much you want to work and what hours
- Ability to set your own schedule
- No commuting time or costs
- Work when you want, where you want
- Make your own lunch
Disadvantages of legitimate work-from-home side jobs:
- Lack of interaction with colleagues
- Harder to earn promotions or salary increases
- Easy to eat more and do less exercise
- The lines between home and work can become blurred