6 Ways to Make $8000 a Month From Home

desk work

If you can achieve an $8000 monthly income working from home, you will be able to have a fairly sweet life.

While you won’t be able to live like Jeff Bezos, you’ll still be earning well above the average monthly US earner, who according to the US Census, earns $41,535 per year or just $3,461.25 per month.

To earn $8000 a month will take some time but there has never been a better time to start given the exponential growth in remote working opportunities.

The last 2 years have brought about a wholesale change in the way people view working from home, with many people now saying they don’t want to return to the office.

However, to make a consistent income of $8000 per month, you will need to set up a fully-fledged business.

Side hustles alone are unlikely to get you there.

With that in mind, we’ve looked at 6 credible business opportunities, all of which have fairly low barriers to entry.

Let’s dive in…


Start a Display Ad Based Website

Following the success of entrepreneurs like Jon Dykstra and Morten Storgaard, there has been a rapid rise in people setting up ad-based passive income websites.

The business model is fairly simple and can be summarized as follows (if you want a more detailed guide – check out our Guide to Blogging):

  1. Set up a website covering topics within a low to moderate competition niche;
  2. Write about underserved topics within that niche that people are searching for on Google (i.e. topics that aren’t well covered by other writers);
  3. Produce hundreds of articles on the basis of these underserved topics;
  4. Place ads on your website and earn around $15 – $40 per 1000 page views or visitors depending on the ad network and niche.

Why Does This Business Model Work?

Traditionally, money-making websites have been built to generate income using an affiliate-based business model.

You write about a product, link to that product being sold on places like Amazon, and earn a commission if a visitor to your website clicks that link and purchases the product.

However, this has left many topics as “underserved” because traditionally bloggers and website creators haven’t concentrated on topics that don’t provide affiliate opportunities.

This is where the ad-based blogging model comes in and shines because:

  • There are a lot more topics to write about that don’t come with an affiliate product meaning these topics are generally less competitive to rank on Google (i.e. get in the top 10 results);
  • There are a lot more niches to go into. For example, the movie review niche doesn’t have many affiliate opportunities but there are tons of things to write about, many of which are underserved;
  • Ad-based websites are easier to maintain. You don’t need to worry about updating your affiliate links, a sudden change in commission rates or the need to review products;
  • It now takes a lot more effort to satisfy Google when it comes to product reviews where most affiliate opportunities are found. If you haven’t physically reviewed the product and can prove you have with unique videos or photographs, you’ll find it much harder to rank;
  • Google actually prefers websites that provide a mixture of affiliate and information-based content (or information-only content) and tends to frown upon websites that are clearly just there to generate affiliate sales.

How to Start an Ad Based Website

If this interests you then there are some key things to think about before you pull the trigger:

  • Niche: Make sure you choose a niche that has plenty of topics to write about and isn’t too competitive. Avoid “Your Money or Your Life” niches (YMYL) such as health, dieting, tax, investing, insurance and banking. These are way too competitive and require real expertise;
  • Keyword research: Learn how to do proper keyword research, ideally before you choose your niche so you can assess the competition before entering a niche. Keyword research is the process of identifying the topics people are searching for on Google. This is arguably the most important aspect of this blogging model and can literally make or break a website. Watch Morten’s YouTube video which provides an awesome introduction to help you;
  • Outsource: Once you have set up your website, have posted some articles, and have display ads running generating some income, you need to scale up your content production by outsourcing. Articles can be purchased for as little as $0.03 a word. This is a content-driven business and to scale, you need to publish regularly which means every day if possible.
  • Use WordPress: You’ll have no doubt heard of Wix, Weebly, and SquareSpace for starting your blog. This is fairly generic advice but forget about those platforms and go with WordPress.org. 60% of the world’s websites are built on it and you will only regret it if you choose one of the other platforms.

How Much Can you Earn?

I have already mentioned two of the main players in this game above, Morten and Jon, who earn $40k+ per month and $100k+ per month respectively on the basis of the earnings figures they’ve disclosed.

I suspect they earn a lot more than that because they sell courses as well.

Obviously, you may not get anywhere near their level of earnings but $8000 a month is very realistic with this particular gig, provided you pump out good content consistently in a niche you can compete in.

If you work on the basis that each article you write will earn you on average $10 per month, which is the equivalent of around 300 page views per article per month, and you have 1000 articles, then you’ll be making $10,000 per month.

These figures aren’t set in stone – you could earn more or less – but they are fairly modest and realistic in my experience. Other bloggers, like those at Income School, work on the basis of 1000 page views per article per month. On that basis, you’d be earning around $30k per month with a thousand articles. However, in my experience this is atypical and 300 page views per article is more realistic for the website owners I have spoken to who operate using this business model.

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Want to Set Up a Website?

You can start a blog with BlueHost for the cost of a beer with my special link. BlueHost will not only host your website but also provide a simple step-by-step guide to setting up WordPress and also a free domain (i.e. the name of your blog).


Start Writing

Because of the increased reliance on the abovementioned display ads blogging model, there’s now a huge increase in the demand for freelance writers.

To scale an informational blog, you need to churn out many articles per month, and so most bloggers outsource their content writing to writers who they discover on websites like Fivver and UpWork.

upwork website
fivver

If English is your first language or you’re fairly proficient at it, then you can easily become a freelance writer. You don’t need to be William Shakespeare or George Orwell to succeed.

Put it this way, a lot of the writers on Fivver are from countries like India and Pakistan where their first language isn’t necessarily English but yet they’re still able to generate an income writing English blog articles.

The truth is that most bloggers don’t require articles to be written by English literature professors. They just require the content to be decent and passable – perhaps a little better than average. This means that even mediocre writers can still succeed and make money.

How Much Can Writers Make?

It’s quite typical for an average writer to charge between $50 and $100 per 1000 words.

I can normally churn out about three 1000 word articles a day working at a relatively modest pace, so on that basis, my earnings would be around $150 – $300 per day.

If I pushed myself, I could probably write 5000 words which would be the equivalent of $250 – $500 a day (working on the $50 – $100 per 1000 word model).

If we take a midpoint of those two figures at $375 per 5000-word article and we do that five times a week, then we’ve generated $7500 in one month. You wouldn’t need to do much more than that to get to your $8000 per month target.

Realistically, when you get started you will first need to build up a portfolio of clients to ensure you have work to do every day.

This means you probably won’t start out earning $375 a day to begin with.

You will also need to take into consideration the fee websites like Fivver take for advertising on their platform. This is currently 20% of your sale fee on Fivver.

However, by building up your seller rating and experience, you will probably be able to charge more than $375 per 5000 words as time goes on and your reputation improves.

Take this guy for example:

He’s a level 2 seller with 55 five-star ratings and he’s charging $130 per 1500 words.

If he does 3 of those 1500 word articles a day, which is probably easy enough for an experienced writer, then he’s made close to $400 in one day.

Ok, there is Fivver’s fee to deduct but you will find that with experience, most bloggers will approach you outside of Fivver so you can avoid their annoying 20% charge.

How to Get Started

As I set out at the beginning of this article, most of my suggestions come with low barriers to entry – freelance writing included.

You can get set up with as little as a laptop and a Google docs account.

However, I would probably invest in the following if I was going to start writing freelance for blogs:

  • Pro Grammarly – Just to tighten up my spelling, grammar, and writing structure;
  • A course in search engine optimization (SEO) – Most bloggers want their writers to understand on-page SEO. This means an understanding of how Google likes website articles to be formatted (i.e. with appropriate headings, paragraphs, bullet points etc..) to rank well;
  • A decent laptop or PC/Mac with a good keyboard. I use a mechanical keyboard on a desktop PC with lots of RAM and a decent processor. My mechanical keyboard makes typing a dream.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is still one of the best ways to make passive income today.

If you don’t know what it is, I will quickly explain.

Essentially, affiliate marketing is where you promote a company’s or person’s product or service in return for a commission.

For example, Amazon has its own affiliate program that anyone can sign up to.

You are given affiliate links (i.e. a link to a product on Amazon), you share that link on, say, a blog or other website, someone clicks that link, purchases the product and you get a commission for helping to generate that sale.

How to Start?

The key to affiliate marketing is having an audience to promote the product to.

If no one sees your links, then no one is going to click them and you’re not going to generate any sales.

Here are a few places where you can share and promote affiliate products:

  • A blog like this one. I have made thousands of dollars referring people to various products on this blog. If you check my disclosure policy you can see the products I promote;
  • On social media. You can promote affiliate products on Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, and all the main social media websites. Read about how I made over $3000 promoting affiliate links on Facebook;
  • Using an email list. This works by gathering emails and sending out a periodic newsletter where you can promote affiliate products;
  • Selling a course. If you create and sell a course you can promote affiliate products within your course. For example, if you made a course on photographs you could include links to a camera hardware shop.

How Much Can You Make?

The sky really is the limit with affiliate marketing.

Here is a list of very successful affiliate marketers who I know of:

Top Affiliate Marketers

Adam Enfroy who runs adamenfroy.com – over $200k per month

Michelle Gardner who runs makingsenseofcents.com – $100k+ per month

Ryan Robson who runs ryrob.com – $50k+ per month


make money

As you can see, you can make some serious money as an affiliate and the best part about it is that it’s made passively once you have built up your audience and start making regular conversions.

You can make money while you sleep.

One good tip is to try and target affiliate programs that offer recurring commissions.

Essentially, this type of affiliate program pays you continuously as long as the customer you have referred to it is signed up for the product/service.

This means that you only have to make one referral to potentially keep earning from that customer for many months or even years.

Clearly, if you have, say, 50 customers referred to an affiliate product with a recurring commission structure, then you keep earning every month for each of those 50 referrals for as long as they’re signed up to the product/service.

This allows your earnings to grow exponentially!


Start an Online Shop

With over 2.1 billion online shoppers in 2021, it’s clear to see that e-commerce present a huge opportunity for any budding entrepreneur.

The best thing about building an online retail business is that you can get started extremely quickly without needing hardly any web-building experience.

With options like:

You can get an online store up and running within hours and can start earning almost straight away by using a drop-shipping model.

Drop-shipping is where a third party stores and stocks your inventory and ships it out when you make a sale from your online store. They even deal with returns.

Here are some examples of successful e-commerce entrepreneurs:

Successful E-Commerce Entrepreneurs

John Yoon made $100,000 in sales on Shopify in month

Jonah made over $13,500 per month selling watches

Mike Vistel Grosses $1.5m per month from a Shopify store


make money

Work as a Proofreader

As a freelance proofreader, you can build up a regular client base and create a thriving business where $8000 a month is a realistic target.

Proofreaders are employed by all manner of publishers as a way of outsourcing their document checking needs.

You’ll be looking for spelling, grammar, phrasing, and paragraphing errors to make sure the document is in tip-top condition before it is published.

This is one of my favorite work-from-home opportunities as the barrier to entry is so low.

While a college degree can help, it’s certainly not essential and most people find that can succeed without any higher education at all.

Where Can I Get Work?

The internet can provide a myriad of opportunities to generate work as a proofreader.

Here are some of my favorite websites for proofreading work:

  • Fivver
  • UpWork
  • ProofreadingServices.com
  • EditFast
  • EditorWorld.com

We have prepared a full list of proofreading jobs for beginners.

How Much Can I Earn?

Making $8000 a month is going to be fairly tough but it is doable.

For example, Caitlin Pyle who runs the course “Proofread Anywhere” made over $40,000 in her first year but she was only working part-time.

So to get to $8000 a month ($96,000pa) you would have to do slightly better than Caitlin and work full-time on your business.

Saying that, she now makes over $1m per year with her Proofreading business.

Check out her course which will teach you:

Proofread Anywhere

✔ How to set up and scale a proofreading business
✔ How to proofread like a pro
✔ Free 76 minute workshop included


proofread anywhere logo

Is $8000 Per Month a Good Salary?

$8000 per month is an excellent salary and well above the $41,535pa salary set out within the US census stats.

How Much is $8000 Per Month as a Yearly Salary?

$8000 per month equates to a yearly income of $96,000.

With an income on that level, you’ll be able to enjoy a fairly good quality of life pretty much anywhere in the USA.

What’s the Quickest Way to Make $8000 Per Month Investing?

If wanted to make $8000 a month from investing, then I would look at investing in a crypto node.

I covered this in my article on how to make $6000 a month (see about three-quarters of the way down the page).

For this, you will need a fairly large capital investment (probably around $80k) but a good friend of mine makes $4000 a month with this method like clockwork each month.

How Can I Get $8000 Instantly or Quickly?

Here are some ways you can generate $8000 rapidly:

  • Take out a second mortgage against your house
  • Take out a short term loan
  • Borrow the money from a friend or relative
  • Rent out a room in your home on a long term lease with payment upfront

Final Thoughts

Without capital, it will probably take you at least 12-24 months to get an income of $8000 per month.

With investment, you can probably scale that up much quicker but it’s very easy to waste money unless you have a tried and tested business plan so I wouldn’t look to go all-in on a completely new venture unless I was absolutely sure that I could make it work.

In any event, the above-mentioned methods do not require a huge capital investment, it’s just it might take you longer to get to that $8000 per month target.

If I was going to set up a business today to make $8000, then I would set up my own website/blog/niche site as I know firsthand that this business model can generate $8000 per month and well beyond.

You can read our Guide to Blogging which will take you through every nuance of setting up a blog to make a profit and hitting that $8000 per month target.

Want to Set Up a Website?

As a quick reminder, you can start a blog with BlueHost for only $3.95 per month with special link.

About the author

Oliver graduated from law school in 2008 and has practiced exclusively in the field of civil litigation for the last 10 years. He has a wealth of experience and expertise in litigation involving large financial losses and a special interest in consumer law. He has achieved numerous 7 figure settlements and has been involved in multi-billion dollar class-action consumer lawsuits against companies such as the Volkswagen Group. Away from the law, he is a consumer information and personal finance writer, having been featured in key publications such as Yahoo Finance, GO Banking Rates, NewsBreak, MEL Magazine, and many more.



-Chief Editor and Founder

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