Nowadays, the idea of a dream job seems to have been replaced with people talking about their dream business.  Today, we are living in an entrepreneurial age where entrepreneurs are everywhere… admittedly, they’re not all on the scale of Richard Branson, and for many having a blog will be as far as they take their entrepreneurial career – but consider the contrast to just a decade ago where most people were metaphorically chained to a desk working for someone else.

What people seem to most crave today is a lifestyle business that allows the freedom to live life on their terms, rather than being beholden to someone else.  Indeed, we all seem to crave the freedom to live life on our terms, meaning we have both the time and money to do the things we want to do when we want to do them.

For this reason, a lot of people are interested in setting up a business from home, around the metaphorical kitchen table.  Some people might view their endeavours as a side hustle, whilst others will view their entrepreneurial plans as something with high growth potential… but no matter what your level of ambition, the fact remains that we are all looking for quirky ways to make an additional income that doesn’t take up too much of our precious time!

The general advice is to focus your business on something you are passionate and knowledgeable about, as whilst investing in IHT Coin can be very profitable, some people feel more comfortable investing their time and money into areas they are already knowledgeable about.

That said, not everyone is looking to set up a business; some people are merely looking to make some additional cash to make life a little easier and sweeter.

Here are five quirky ways you can make money from your kitchen table that can offer you more freedom in your life.  The first two don’t require much effort at all, and the final three, do require effort but provide a long term income for short term effort.

1. MATCH BETTING

One of the most interesting ways to make money online is to do something called match betting; this is where you take advantage of free bets that are promoted by betting sites.  

This practice is not technically gambling, as the risk of losing money is eliminated because you are betting both for and against a particular outcome – meaning when one bet inevitably loses the other one will win.  

For instance, in football, let’s say Aston Villa were playing Manchester United, you would bet on Aston Villa to win (on one site) and Manchester United to win (on the other site).  One will inevitably win, and one will inevitably lose, but that doesn’t matter — as the way this generates money is by utilising the free bets that are offered as incentives to sign-up.

2. ONLINE SURVEYS

Filling out online surveys can be done in your spare time, for instance, whilst watching TV and whilst this isn’t going to bring in a huge amount of money, for just a few minutes of your time spent filling out a form, the $5 here and $5 there can really mount up over time.

3. SET UP A BLOG

A blog can be a very profitable and simple way to make money from your kitchen table; particularly if it is combined with affiliate marketing.  Contrary to popular belief you don’t need to be a fantastic writer to have a blog; you just need an interesting angle and to be discussing things in a value-added way that is relevant to your target audience.

4. BUILD AN APP

The great thing about developing an app, is that once it’s done, you can leverage it multiple times and develop a stream of passive income that isn’t contingent on you swapping your time for money; it’s constantly ticking over in the background.

Now you could, of course, spend hundreds if not thousands of hours trying to learn to build your own app, but time has a cost associated with it, and often it’s more efficient to outsource such technical tasks.

5. WRITE A BOOK

Many people dream of writing a book, yet never do it.  The truth is many people do have a book in them, and it’s just about packaging their knowledge in a way that is attractive and digestible to a specific audience.

Again, similar to an app, writing a book can bring in passive income, as each time the book sells you will make a royalty – even if the royalty is just $1, if you sell 100,000 books each year that’s a wonderful amount of passive income to derive.

6. BUYING AND SELLING THINGS ON EBAY

The great thing with sites like eBay are that we can buy and sell things from the comfort of our own home.  Now, once upon a time if you wanted to make an extra income by selling things on the side, people would have to hunt around flea markets and the like to find a bargain… then go to a market themselves in a hope to sell on their item at a higher price; often having upcycled the item or renovated it in some way.

Today, however, eBay makes it so much more convenient to buy and sell items – and there’s a great trick to making money on eBay without having to do anything physical to the item at all.  This trick is to find items that are poorly marketed, and then simply relist them.

For instance, you can find a cheap car that nobody is bidding on due to a lack of photographs or the fact they forgot to mention the excellent service history that comes with the car.  Get it at a steal, and then relist it with fantastic photos and a better written description that makes it more attractive to purchasers.

In summary, you don’t have to have a serious business in order to make money today, there are plenty of opportunities for resourceful people that can all be managed from your kitchen table.