Best FREE (And Cheap) Work From Home Courses: Start Making Money at Home!

A new year is the perfect time to think about your goals.

Do you think this could be the year you learn how to make money online?

Are you planning to make 2024 the year you start a side hustle to bring in some extra cash each month?

Or maybe you’re hoping to quit your job and work from home full time?

A few years ago, I started the new year with the same ambition. And in October 2018, I achieved my dream and quit my job to become a full time blogger!

If you’re also hoping to find ways to work at home, I’ve put together this list of FREE work from home courses and resources to help you kick start your new career. I have worked through all these myself, and they are some of the best courses for work from home opportunities that I’ve come across.

These are all introductory level courses, perfect to give you a taster of many different ways to make money from home.

Why not sign up for as many as catch your interest. You never know – your new work from home job could be just a few clicks away!

Wishing you lots of luck in finding your new venture!

Free proofreading workshop

If you have an eagle eye for spelling, punctuation and grammar mistakes, perhaps proofreading is a career option for you!

Proofreading is one of the best work from home jobs for someone with a high command of the English language. Most work is freelance, which means you can pick the hours you want to work and the projects that interest you.

You could start out as a general proofreader, who proofreads texts such as book drafts and blog posts. You might also choose to go into a specialist field such as proofreading court transcripts.

Whether you just need an extra few hundred each month or a full time career, proofreading can be a great way to make money from home.

Top proofreaders, such as Caitlin Pyle from Proofread Anywhere, make up to $40,000 per year proofreading from home!

Interested to know more? Caitlin is offering a free 45 minute online workshop so you can learn the basics of proofreading and see if it’s for you.

Caitlin shares tips to get your own proofreading business up and running within 30 days. The workshop even covers places to find online proofreading jobs and freelance clients.

Free workshop on selling printables on Etsy

Selling printables on Etsy is an amazing way to build an online business with little or no experience and start-up costs.

‘Printables’ are digital files that you sell online for your customer to print out themselves. The options are endless, but just a few popular examples are:

• Journals and planners
• Kids’ activities
• Checklists
• Colouring pages
• Party games
• Invitations
• Wall art
• You can also sell other digital products such as spreadsheets, design templates, social media graphics, etc etc.

The amazing benefit of selling printables is that you only design the product once, but you can sell it hundreds or thousands of times over!

This means you can build up a giant catalogue of products making money for you, and your income just snowballs over time without your workload growing.

Imagine having a simple daily planner or checklist printable that sells for just $1. Imagine selling just 3 or 4 per day. That’s $100 per month! Now imagine creating 10 of those products… or 100….

It’s also a fabulous source of passive income! Since Etsy handles the payments and digital delivery, it is totally hand-free once you’ve designed and uploaded your items. This means you can step away from your business for weeks or even months and continue to make sales!

Julie at Gold City Ventures has a free online workshop to introduce you to the basics of selling printables on Etsy. If it appeals to you, they also have a full (paid) course. I have taken this course myself and let me tell you, it is very thorough and covers literally everything you need to know to start a successful Etsy business.

I have been in their private coaching group and there were many students making several $1,000s per month, just as a side hustle! This is a business model I truly recommend if you are serious about making money online.

Sign up for the free workshop here:

Free coding courses

Coding is such an awesome and profitable skill to have in 2024. There are so many different directions you can go in. There are plenty of full time work from home jobs in software development, or you can also freelance as a side hustle.

There are a whole heap of different coding courses out there but if you want to get started for free, I would recommend Free Code Camp.

It is run as a non-profit and every resource on there is 100% free! You can learn everything you need to know to become a professional software engineer, without paying a penny.

There is a suggested curriculum you can follow as a beginner, but you can also skip around and take whichever courses interest you. It’s all self-paced and self-taught.

You can also earn free verified certifications for completing various courses.

Free Code Camp graduates have gone on to have careers with tech giants such as Apple, Google and Microsoft.

Free course on starting a profitable blog

I am a full time blogger and I can’t even describe how much love my job!

To me, blogging is the ultimate work at home job because it gives you such freedom. You can work when you like, where you like, and write about whatever topic you like.

Blogging is not really a ‘job’ in the same way as most of the other ideas on this list, because you are not directly trading time for money. In fact, in the beginning you should be prepared to work for many hours without seeing any return.

But always remember that you are building up your own business. If you put in consistent effort, you will start to see big results six months to one year down the line.

There are lots of blogging courses out there. To avoid overwhelm, I recommend choosing one ‘guru’ and sticking with them – at least until you’ve mastered the basics!

My personal blogging guru is Carly Campbell. I 100% credit her Pinterest course with boosting my traffic enough to get me into Mediavine (the advertising network), which in turn lead my blog income to surpass my job income, so I could quit my job!

Carly has a free course on Starting a Profitable Blog for beginners here. It is very thorough for a free resource, and covers everything from setting up your blog hosting and other technical things to writing and promoting profitable content.

Learn more: How I became a full time blogger in two years

MOOCs: free university level courses in hundreds of subjects!

MOOCs stands for Massive Open Online Courses. They are free online courses open to anyone to enroll in.

On Mooc.org you will find literally thousands of online courses uploaded for free by leading universities such as Harvard, Oxford, MIT, etc.

There are too many courses to explore here, but whatever your personal/professional interests are, I’m sure you will find a relevant course. They cover all subject areas from computer science to business to literature.

You don’t get an actual degree or certification, but you get the knowledge. It’s a great way of building your skills and exploring new areas.

Learn more: How to Get a Degree for FREE (or Not a Lot!)

Affordable TEFL certification to teach English online

Teaching English online is an amazing side hustle or work at home job. Think about it – literally millions of people all around the world want to learn English, so you will never be short of clients!

You might choose to get a permanent job with an online English school with fixed hours, or you can go self employed and find your own students on sites such as iTalki. I have a list of companies hiring in this post.

While there are many companies that hire ‘English conversation’ tutors who do not require qualifications, having a TEFL or TESOL certificate can open the door to much higher earnings.

The International Open Academy has an affordable (but professional) 120 hour online TEFL course which will qualify you to teach English online or in person. It is pretty cheap to start with, but there should be a hefty discount automatically applied when you use my link.

Learn more: How to Make Money Teaching English Online 

Free transcription course

A transcriptionist turns audio recordings into text. If you have a good ear and type fast, this could be a great side hustle or even full time work from home job idea.

Transcriptionists transcribe for many different types of client, including academics, writers and podcasters. If you have experience in a field such as law or medicine, you can develop a specialism, which can be extra profitable!

Work is available through transcription agencies, or you can go freelance and advertise your services on sites such as Fiverr and People Per Hour.

Janet from Transcribe Anywhere offers a free 7 lesson mini course so you can explore whether transcription might be the right fit for you.

Here are some of the things you’ll learn in the free course:

• What it takes to become a transcriptionist
• The two keys to success as a transcriptionist
• The biggest myth about transcription, busted
• How much can you earn as a transcriptionist?
• Where does transcription work come from?
• Equipment you need to get started

Free resource for Virtual Assistants

Virtual Assistant (VA for short) is an awesome online job for anyone interested in online business.

A VA is someone who offers online services to support bloggers, entrepreneurs or small businesses. Some of the many different services offered by VAs include:

• Social media management
• Creating Pinterest graphics or other images
• Moderating Facebook groups
• Replying to emails
• Writing and/or editing blog posts
• Outreach
• and pretty much anything else!

The great thing about being a VA is that you could choose to offer all of these services, or focus on one service that best suits your skills.

If you’re not sure which area to focus on as a VA, Gina Horkey offers a free ebook of 270+ services you can offer as a VA. I was really surprised by some of the ideas on this list. Even if you don’t think you have many skills, you will be bound to find some service you can offer on this list!

Free 6 day freelance writing course

Freelance writing is another great way to make money online. It works well for anyone who needs a flexible online job, such as stay at home parents, students or digital nomads.

Now that more and more businesses are realising the importance of having their own content online, there is plenty of demand for freelance writers and content creators.

Blogger and writer Elna Cain started writing after having her children so she wouldn’t have to work outside the house. And even though she started with zero experience, within a few months she was able to earn over $1000 per month from writing.

Elna has a free 6 day freelance writing course called Get Paid To Write. Here’s some of the topics covered by the course:

• How to find a niche
• How to create writing samples
• Where to find your first freelance job
• How to pitch clients
• And more

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