According to American Community Survey, “3.7 million employees now work from home at least half the time.” There are tons of benefits – for both employers and employees – in working remotely. It is especially a blessing for spoonies like us who have a few challenges in working in a traditional office.
Since there are days that you won’t be feeling well or days that you’re in treatment, you want to choose a job that has a flexible schedule and that is less demanding.
In this post, we’ve listed a few ideas to get your online job hunting started! It would be helpful if you already have the skill set for each job. But don’t worry if you don’t have them yet; everything can be learned.
Get paid to blog.
You don’t have to be a prolific or published author in order to get paid to blog. If you love writing essays for your college classes or just love writing in general, there’s a huge opportunity to earn a decent extra income each month from blogging.
Businesses maintain a blog in order to provide valuable content for their community and grow it. They would regularly publish blog posts about their products, trends in the industry, and other interesting subjects for their readers (just like this one).
Worried that you don’t have blogging experience? That’s okay! You can build your writing portfolio by starting your own personal blog. Pick an industry or niche that you’ve always been interested in and understand well. For example, I bet you know a lot about PICC line covers or the different types of vascular access devices. You can actually write about these topics. You know the topics well and you have a first-hand experience to write a comprehensive and engaging blog post.
Next, set up a blog. You can use free platforms such as WordPress.com and Medium. Start writing and publishing your posts!
That’s what I did when I wanted to start my career as a freelance writer. I chose consumer technology as my niche and started writing about apps. Eventually, I got hired by an Israeli startup to write blogs for them after seeing the posts I published on my blog.
Proofread, edit, or translate documents.
If you’re fond of the written word but don’t actually want to write blogs or articles online, a good option for you is to proofread or edit documents. Freelancing sites such as Upwork or Airtasker offer these jobs all the time. Or you can simply start offering your services for people you know. College students write papers all the time and need a second set of eyes to look at their work. You can build your experience this way.
If you’re an expert in another language, you can also earn extra income by translating documents online. Yes, translation jobs might be rare compared to editing and proofreading, but they usually pay much higher.
Manage social media accounts for small businesses.
Whether it’s a Fortune 500 company or the bakery in your block, every business needs a social media presence. Most businesses outsource social media management to remote workers for many reasons. First off, owners and their team already have their hands full and don’t have the bandwidth (not to mention the skills) to create content for Facebook, Twitter, and other social media channels. Plus, hiring a full-time social media manager is costly.
The solution that makes more sense to them is to hire a freelance social media manager. They’re getting quality work without having to worry about managing another employee.
You don’t need to be a social media expert with years of experience to get this job. But it would be good to gain some experience.
You can take free online courses in sites like Udemy or Coursera. Some free courses on Coursera even let you connect a certificate of completion to your LinkedIn profile.
Do you have friends who own a business? Try offering your services for free for a couple of months to gain some experience.
Working as a social media manager has a lot of perks, especially for spoonies:
-
- You can do it at the comfort of your own home.
-
- Your schedule is flexible. With all the social media tools available such as Buffer and Hootsuite, you can even schedule content ahead of time.
- The more you do it and the longer you are in the social media business, you can consistently increase your value and you can eventually charge more!
Become a virtual assistant.
A virtual assistant has many responsibilities, and the job can vary depending on the client. It can be as simple as writing emails or as complicated as researching complex topics.
Most of the time, the tasks you’ll be performing, you’re already doing them for yourself. Your client is also going to train you if there are tasks that you’re not familiar with. The important thing is that you have basic computer skills, and you’re trustworthy.
Create and manage simple websites.
Again, you don’t have to be a genius to start a website. For instance, you can invest your time in learning how to build simple WordPress sites, or platforms that make it very easy to design and create websites, like Wix.com. WordPress is an extremely common content management system that’s free and easy to use.
Once you learn the basics, you’ll be able to build a simple website for businesses with a few pages. As an upsell, you can also charge more to manage and maintain the website every month.
What’s great about this online job is that it’s very flexible. You don’t have to commit to a specific daily work schedule. You just commit to a deadline. More importantly, you can charge more as you gain more experience.
These five jobs are just the tip of the iceberg! There are more depending on your interest and skills.
Join us on our Facebook Group, Friends in the Fight, to get in touch with fellow spoonies. This post was inspired by a discussion in the group.
2 comments
Thanks so much for all of your job ideas. Have you heard any suggestions from anyone in regards to work that can be completed whilst experiencing ‘brain fog’ or low energy and pain? This is my specific struggle. I am highly trained and qualified and an Intensive Care Nurse and Bachelor Degree Paramedic but am not able to function on that level. I have considered tutoring and also emergency communications operations (telephony/radio) but am worried about my physical and cognitive capacity to function. Please let me know if you can think of anything that people in my situation might be good at. I could certainly write a guide on Port management or other areas of care, but am not sure of my ability to be consistent. I guess this is my greatest concern. Never knowing what each day might hold and how many spoons I may wake up with.
Hello Jessica — sorry for the late reply! I have some ideas, having been there myself. I will reach out via email.