Wouldn’t it be great to have an extra ₹50,000 added to the household income each month? Housewives all over India are doing that very thing through home based jobs.

Opportunities for home based jobs are almost limitless.

Selling handmade products through social marketing sites, tailoring services, blogging, tutoring and even making YouTube videos are just some of the options to explore.

Housewives are finding that home based jobs enable them to earn extra money and maintain a balanced homelife.

To start working in the world of home based jobs, the basic tools needed are a high-speed internet connection and a laptop computer.

What kind of work can be done with home based jobs?

You can take advantage of the vast number of opportunities that exist for home base jobs.

The only limit is your imagination.

Let’s take a look at some of the top home based jobs.

Selling handmade products online

Selling products online (or eCommerce) has grown in the last several years with companies like Etsy leading the way. 

Do you have a flair for painting? You could paint still-life, abstract or scenic paintings.

You could also try your hand at making wall decor with pallet painting.

Perhaps you excel at sewing. Tote bags, fabric backpacks, sarees, tunics and fabric book covers are just a few ideas of what you can make and sell.

Handcrafted items are a perfect fit for home based jobs.

If crafts are more your style, making beverage coasters or mosaic wall decorations from ceramic tiles could bring in extra income each month.

Handmade jewellery would also fall into this category.

There are any number of handmade products you create and sell through websites such as ArtFire, Craftsvilla, ArtyOwl, eBay and, as mentioned earlier, Etsy.

Home based jobs selling handmade items provide an outlet for creativity and bring in extra money each month.

Selling products on Amazon

Selling products on Amazon is one of the hottest home based jobs at the moment.

Amazon Marketplace is a great way to get started.

You do not need to produce a product yourself to set up a home business.

Many people on Amazon Marketplace are “third-party” sellers, meaning they are sourcing their items from other places.

The steps to get set up as a seller on Amazon Marketplace are simple.

• Determine what product or products you want to sell.
• Register as a Marketplace seller on Amazon. You will need a GST number, PAN and
  a bank account.
• Source/order your products. Marketplace sellers stock their own inventory.

You can also choose to drop ship to your customers directly from the wholesaler.

Marketing is easy.

Use your social media accounts to advertise your product.

You can also advertise on Amazon as a Sponsored Product.

This enables you to target the people most interested in what you are selling.

Your advantage of selling on Amazon is the customers come to you. 

It is a great way for housewives and moms to establish a profitable business from the comfort of home.

Baking and cooking

Cakes

You receive all kinds of compliments on your cooking and baking.

Why not turn your kitchen skills into extra income each month?

Decorated cakes of all kinds are a tasty choice for home based jobs.

Children of all ages get excited about birthday cakes.

Whether a sheet cake or layered, iced or topped with whipped cream, a cake is a mouthwatering welcome addition to any birthday party.

Feeling brave with your decorating skills?

How about taking on wedding cakes! 

Couples are making a statement with a beautifully decorated multi-layer cake taking the place of traditional sweets at their weddings. 

The wedding cake market is growing. Housewives who excel at baking and decorating can use those talents to add to the family income.

Home Cooked Meals

Home cooking. Who doesn’t like a delicious home cooked meal?

You can turn your passion for cooking into cash in the bank.

Catering for events and parties is another of the wide range of home based jobs.

Good food makes for an enjoyable event, great food makes an event memorable.

An alternative to catering is hosting small and large groups at your place for a home cooked meal.

This trend is becoming more popular in larger cities as well as areas that are tech centers where people are relocating to work and are missing the tastes of home. 

Online platforms, such as Authenticook, are enlisting home cooks from Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi and other cities to share their heritage and passion for cooking with people who are looking for a unique dining experience.

From traditional meals to regional cuisine, home cooks are establishing home based jobs one meal at a time.

Translation

The internet has changed the way business is done.

We are now in a global economy.

Because of the international marketplace, documents need to be translated from one language to another.

If you speak more than one language, home based jobs translating English to Hindi, Hindi to English, Tamil to English and English to Tamil are prime opportunities to earn extra money.

You can expand your earning potential if you are also fluent in Spanish, German and French.

Tutoring/Teaching

Do you have expertise in a given field?

You may have a background in music, business, IT, photography or design and have a natural gift for teaching others.

Tutoring or teaching is another option for home based jobs that can help provide a financial cushion for the family budget.

Music

If you play violin, guitar, flute or a traditional instrument such as the tanpura, sarod, sitar or mridangam, you could teach students as well as adults to play, experience and enjoy music.

Teaching a class

You could opt for one of the online platforms for teaching.

One of the top online destinations for learning is Udemy.

To say that Udemy is tremendously popular would be an understatement. 50 million students, 42,000 instructors, and 150,000 course offerings in 50 different languages are statistics that cannot be ignored.

Anyone can create a course on any subject on Udemy.

No degree required.

All you need is a passion to teach and expertise on the subject matter.

Do you love to cook?

Are you great at photography?

Then you have the experience you need to put together a course to instruct others.

From web design, finance and accounting to fitness and meditation as well as beauty and make up, the choices of what you could teach are almost limitless.

To teach a class on Udemy, you create the content on video.

You decide the value of the class or determine how much you think people will pay for the course.

Submit the content to Udemy and you are on your way. 

Udemy uploads the class to their site. Students sign up for the class and watch your videos.

It doesn’t get much easier than that.

Students pay $19-$199 depending on the course.

Side Income Jobs reports that an instructor on Udemy can bank ₹76,501 – ₹382,505 ($1000 – $5000 USD) per month.

Freelance Writer/Blog Content Provider

If you have a way with words that sparks the imagination and captures the attention of the reader, the world of freelance writing is one of the home based jobs that would fit you like a glove.

Children’s stories, short stories, how-to articles, beauty tips, advertising copy, travel blog content and product reviews are just a few examples of the work done by freelance writers.

There are a number of freelance sites offering work for writers.

Graphic Design

You have an eye for how images and text need to be laid out on a page.

You have a knack for always selecting the right font to add an artistic touch to a flyer or handout. 

If this describes you, then how about earning extra income with one of the home based jobs in graphic design?

Graphic designers play an important role in the branding of companies and organizations through the creation of logos, business cards and marketing materials.

Wedding invitations and baby announcements are also the domain of graphic designers.

A working knowledge of the design products from Adobe, such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign along with possibly CorelDRAW and MS Publisher can set you on the path to a successful work-from-home job.

Virtual Assistant

Before getting married, having children and becoming a caregiver, you may have been working as an administrative or executive assistant.

Becoming a virtual assistant is one of the home based jobs that will put you back in the business world when the children are napping or are away at school.

As a virtual assistant, you will be taking care of scheduling meetings, making travel arrangements, putting together PowerPoint presentations, updating CRM’s and answering emails for companies around the world right from your own home. 

No morning commute or afternoon traffic congestion.

No need to take a bus where everyone is packed in like a tin of sardines. 

You can find work as a virtual assistant on freelance sites such as Fiverr, Upwork, and Zirtual. 

Online employment agencies like MonsterIndia, and Naukri are excellent resources to land a virtual assistant job.

Required equipment would be a high-speed internet connection, a laptop, a bluetooth headset, mobile phone, and possibly a combination printer/fax/scanner.

 Knowing how to use Microsoft Office products like Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint is an important skill to have in order to secure that job as a virtual assistant.

Social Media Manager

You may very well have an important skill that small to medium size companies need.

That important skill is the ability to navigate the various social media platforms with ease.

The owners of smaller companies are so busy with the day-to-day activities of working in the business that they have no time to work on marketing their business through social media. 

Having a strong online presence is critical in today’s digital marketplace.

e-Commerce in India is expected to reach $1.2 trillion USD…yes, that is $1.2 trillion…by 2021.

Companies that do not have a strong social media presence will simply be left behind.

A savvy social media manager can provide a competitive edge for a business to reach the next level.

As a social media manager, you would be taking care of the online brand for the company by taking care of posts on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and other platforms.

You would also run social media marketing campaigns, moderate comments on posts, respond to comments, put together the social media strategy as well as track analytics to measure the engagement and conversion to sales for each platform.

Home based jobs for social media managers are vital to the survival of small to medium business.

Jobs can be found on the freelance sites as well as the online employment sites mentioned earlier in this article.

Transcriptionist

Are you a fast and accurate typist? Are you fluent in English? Do you use excellent grammar?

Transcription is an excellent choice for home based jobs.

Transcription jobs can be found on Guru, Upwork, WorknHire, Truelancer and other freelance sites as well as online employment agencies.

What does a transcriptionist do?

In its simplest form, a transcriptionist is someone who listens to audio files of voice notes and converts them into typed documents or forms using a word processing program such as Microsoft Word or Google Docs.

Are there requirements for skills?

A fast typing speed is a must for transcription work.

The amount of money you can make

is dependent on the volume of work you produce.

The faster you can type, the more you will be paid.

It goes without saying that accuracy is essential as well.

The fewer times you have to hit the backspace key, the more words per minute you will be able to type.

Accuracy is also important because of the nature of the documents you will be typing.

Some of the projects could involve typing out dictated contracts, court documents and healthcare documents.

Fluency in English is an important skill for this job. 

Much of the transcription work is outsourced to India from the United States.

Being familiar with medical terms, having attentive listening skills and understanding the rules of grammar are additional skills you will need.

A missed comma is the difference between “let’s eat grandma” and “let’s eat, grandma”.

What equipment is needed?

You will need a laptop computer, a high-speed internet connection, a mobile phone, a transcription headset, a USB or Bluetooth foot pedal and transcription software. 

The headset, foot pedal and software can be purchased as a kit.

What types of transcription work are available?

Transcription work crosses almost all market segments.

The most prevalent are medical transcription and legal transcription.

People specialize in one or the other.

Medical transcription typically has the better rate of pay. 

Medical Transcription

For medical transcription, you will be listening to audio files of notes that doctors, physician assistants and surgeons dictate into their voice recorder and then you will type content of those audio files as MS Word documents or Google Docs.

The typed notes can be used for patient files, case studies, clinical trials and insurance claims.

You will need to have a rock-solid reputation of honesty, discretion and integrity.

The documents you will be typing contain sensitive patient information and there are laws surrounding how that information is to be protected.

Legal Transcription

The skills you will need for legal transcription are the same as the skill set for medical transcription with the addition of being familiar with legal terms.

Your work as a legal transcriptionist will be to listen to the audio files of the recorded voice notes of lawyers, judges, paralegals, clerks of court as well as other legal professionals and convert those recorded notes to text for a wide variety of legal correspondence which could include legal briefs, memos, pleadings, letters, summaries and other legal communication.

YouTube Videos

You, yes you, can use your smartphone to produce videos for YouTube which in turn can produce extra money for the household each month.

As crazy as this sounds, making YouTube videos is truly one of the most innovative home based jobs.

Okay, I’m listening. What kind of videos?

There are as many ideas of videos for YouTube as there are people producing them. 

The 2020 numbers are not yet available.

However, in 2019 there were 500 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute.

Did you catch that? 500 hours of video uploaded every minute. 

Also in 2019, there were two billion logged-in viewers each month.

Here are some examples of the videos you can post.

• Product reviews/product unboxing.
• Cooking tutorials. (Using your favourite recipes, perhaps?)
• Hair and make-up how-to’s.
• Yoga lessons.

There are multiple strategies for how to start and monetize a YouTube channel, and it can be a lucrative venture for doing something as simple as cooking videos. 

No special equipment needed

You do not need fancy cameras and equipment to get started.

You can begin your YouTube career by using your smartphone.

An abundance of options

We have barely scratched the surface of the number of home based jobs for housewives that will help you to earn ₹50,000 or more per month.

There is an abundance of options and opportunities.

You can start the process of bringing in that extra income today.

Determine the home based job you want to do.

Take the time to visit the freelance sites and online employment agencies to see what is available.

Do a Google search of the jobs covered in this article.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.

Take that first step today.