How To Work From Home For Seniors

Many seniors find themselves able and eager to work after retirement. Some find it a necessity due to financial reasons. But finding work as a retiree can be hard. Today we’ll talk about how to work from home for seniors!

While many seniors simply enjoy being retired and without the stress of work, you might be in a situation where working might feel like a good idea.

Maybe you could use the extra cash to supplement your retirement paycheck or you are simply bored and want to do something productive with your time.

But maybe you don’t like the idea of leaving the house or are living in the countryside and spending your retirement commuting is out of the question.

No matter what your reason for wanting to work from home is, I have good news for you! Due to the internet and digitalization, the options for working from home are endless.

You literally have the whole world at your reach. The internet allows such things as working as a freelance writer, a virtual assistant, translator, transcriber or simply as an online entrepreneur. The possibilities are endless!

And the best thing you can do this at the comfort of your own home. All you need is a laptop (check out my review for the best laptop for seniors) and an internet connection and you are good to go!

Cumulative income or instant gratification?

There are many services that will simply offer you freelance work online. These can include tasks like translating, graphic design, working as a virtual assistant, writing and producing music, etc.

Almost anything really that either requires a special skill that people are willing to pay for or simply require lots of manual work that they don’t have time to invest themselves.

This kind of work is good if you need money immediately. They usually work on a pay per service principle. Once your service is performed, you get paid. Just like a regular business.

The downside is that that fees tend to be quite small and you have to invest a lot of time efficiently (think 6-10 hours) to earn a significant income. If you are looking to just earn an extra hundred dollars, this can be achieved relatively easily. So, they can definitely be fun part-time jobs for retirees.

I’m not in this business myself and it’s not really what I recommend other people to invest their time in. Instead, my recommendation is to invest in their own business with content creation.

You see, one of the great things about working online is that by working smart you can automate most of your revenue, resulting in passive and cumulative income.

Now hold on! Don’t hit that back button. This stuff is completely legit and honest, not some internet hoax. Hear me out.

For example, writing this post took me a few hours but after I have posted it online, you and thousands of other people can end up reading it for years to come. It’s even possible that you are reading this several years after me posting it.

Now if there was a way of earning some amount of income every now and then when someone read this post, even if just a little bit, it would add over time as more people read this, right?

And while it took me a few hours to write this, I can write a new post the next day. And maybe that post produces a little bit of income over time as well.

Over time the revenue adds up and sometimes a single post can bring in significant revenue. And if you are following my logic here, you will realize that each time a post is created, it will produce possible income almost indefinitely.

They will do that even if you stop producing new content or take a vacation or become sick. That’s the sweet thing about working online, after the initial effort the rewards will drip in for years to come.

I like to think of it like writing a book (but with better odds). When a writer starts a new project, they can never know if or when it will be a success.

They might never get compensated for their work or the book might end up selling millions as a bestseller immediately. Sometimes the success comes after the writer has perished, but hey, that’s just life. I don’t know about you but I’d still like to get compensated during my lifetime for my work.

When creating content online, your chances of getting compensation are much greater than your average book, especially without any prior fame.

This is because you always start the process with research, it’s only worthwhile to write about something people are looking for. For example, I know there are seniors looking for work from home opportunities because I did the research.

So this is not for someone looking for instant gratification. But I’m sure that age has provided you with wisdom to know that instant gratification is not something to strive for in life. All things in life that are worthwhile require effort and time.

Interested? Great. Let’s look at the best options to get started. In the end, I will also list a few trustworthy services with the best earning potential if you are just looking to work online for someone else.

IMPORTANT: I want to be completely upfront with the fact that the links to the services I recommend are affiliate links, meaning that if you click them and decide to buy, I will earn a small commission.

This doesn’t cause any additional costs for you what so ever but If you think for any reason that  I don’t deserve a commission and want to buy anyhow, just type the root address of the service on your browser navigation bar.

I’m telling you this because I genuinely want you to check the services out because I think they are great, not because I want to make a quick buck. I don’t want you to miss on the life-changing opportunities.

My number 1 recommendation: Wealthy Affiliate

My number one recommendation for starting an online business, that I use myself and swear by, is Wealthy Affiliate. It’s hard to describe what Wealthy Affiliate is with one sentence but I’ll do my best.

Wealthy Affiliate (WA for short)  is an online community, a training platform and a hosting service with all the tools you need to build a successful online business.

Wealthy Affiliate essentially teaches you all the skills you need to create a successful online business. I’ve been part of the community for about 16 months as of writing this. This website is one of my sites I’ve created through using the tools and education from wealthy affiliate.

 

 

To get started with Wealthy Affiliate you don’t need the following things:

• Prior online technical skills (although they help your progress)
• Boatloads of money (you can get started for free and the premium subscription is very affordable)
• Professional writing skills

What you will need if you want to succeed:

• Consistent work ethic
• Decent writing skills (this can be learned, I did)
• Few bucks a month to invest (I pay $25/month for the yearly plan)
• Knowledge (or willingness to research) about some subject you are interested in

The business model they teach at WA is based around creating a website with search engine optimized (SEO for short) content that is monetized with affiliate marketing.

So essentially it’s blogging with the occasional affiliate link (I’ll explain this more in a minute) for making money. This, of course, means you will be creating content that people want to read.

Affiliate marketing means advertising someone else’s products for an affiliate commission. How this is typically done is by providing an affiliate link to your readers for a service or a product you recommend. If they click that link and decide to make a purchase, you get a commission. Anything from 1% to 80% of the sale depending on the service and the product.

So it’s essentially a win-win situation. You refer a customer and earn a commission. Like I explained previously, it’s possible to automate this process online by creating content with affiliate links.

Another great thing about affiliate marketing is pure simplicity. Sure, you might get a slightly higher profit selling your own products but as an affiliate, you don’t have to worry about things like customer support, reclamations, inventory, shipping, premises, storage, etc. You simply refer the customer and that’s it.

One of the great things about WA is that you can get started completely free. The free starter membership includes two free websites, the first block of the training and 30 keyword searches per month on the Jaaxy lite keyword research tool.

While the starter membership is great for evaluating the product, I sincerely think you need to go Premium if you want real results. This is because you will need a real domain and not one of the free SiteRubix domains they offer as well as the whole training.

With the premium membership, you will get hosting for 25 of your own domains (websites), all the training, unlimited searches on the keyword tool and complete access to the great community of WA.

The community is one of the most useful features of Wealthy Affiliate. You can ask literally anything about online business and there is always someone who can help you out. The community created training are also exceptionally useful for diving deeper into affiliate marketing

 

Anyone can succeed with Wealthy Affiliate. All it really takes is the willingness to learn and work consistently. No matter what your background is, you can turn your knowledge into a successful online business. As I like to say: If I can do it, so can you!

You don’t even have to take my word for it: Check out these success stories!

Tools included in your premium subscription:

• Two pieces of training: One aimed at creating a successful affiliate website in ANY Niche, the other is geared towards working as an affiliate marketer for Wealthy Affiliate to spread the word.
• State of the art website hosting: If you run a website, you need a hosting service. Wealthy Affiliate comes with a top-notch hosting service that doesn’t require any technical skills from your end.
• Website and email creation tools: You can buy a domain (real domains cost a registration fee of around $10/year) with one click and create a WordPress website with another click. Same with emails. No technical skills required.
• Content creation tools: You can create
• Keyword research tool: To create a successful business you need to target profitable keywords (search terms) that aren’t too competitive. Your membership includes Jaaxy, an excellent keyword research tool
• Full community support: The community will help you out anytime you feel stuck or have questions.
• Full technical support: Anytime you have technical issues with your site, you can contact their 24/7 technical support. I’ve contacted them at least a dozen times and they’ve resolved any problems in a matter of minutes. A+ service!
• Comment and feedback services: You can get comments on your blog posts through the service, this is important for SEO. You can also request feedback on your site from the community.

 

My tips for succeeding with WA:

• Choose a profitable niche. Not all niches are as profitable as others. Do some market research or choose an evergreen niche like online marketing or fat loss.
• Go premium and get a real domain with a catchy name. Branding is important these days and you need a real domain to rank well in Google.
• Write every day even if it feels hard, you will improve overtime and content quality and amount are the most important things. Writing is a skill just like any, the more you do it, the better you get. Just like strength training.
• Be active in the community when you need help, but don’t focus on improving your rank or blogging at WA, it’s addictive but it’s important you use your time creating your own content, not theirs.
• Don’t limit your education to WA. There other great resources too, free ones too.

What to do in addition to WA?

Even though Wealthy Affiliate is absolutely great for the money, they don’t teach you everything about online affiliate marketing and search engine optimization.

I think many beginners make a huge mistake by simply relying on the teachings of Wealthy Affiliate. They do show you the basics in a very actionable format and give you all the tools you need to build a profitable business.

This doesn’t mean however that simply following their teachings is optimal. I always recommend you learn about especially SEO from additional sources. There are things like backlinks, site speed optimization, email marketing, copywriting, social media marketing, etc. they don’t go in-depth really.

But (and this is a huge but)! If you are just getting started, you don’t need to or even shouldn’t worry about the additional stuff. This is because trying to comprehend too much information and accomplish too many things at once will end up with you spinning your wheels.

Learn one thing, master it, apply it and only then move on to the next thing. I just want to share knowledge with you because I’ve gotten some great results with following additional teachings to WA and using third-party tools. But these were useful only once I understood the basics and knew what they are for.

So what I want you to do to improve your odds in earning an income online is to follow the training at Wealthy Affiliate and bookmark this site for future reference once you have completed the training and have your website set up with some great targeted content.

Once you are at that point, here are my recommended resources and tools for improving your success:

Resources:

• NeilPatel.com, Neil Patel is an SEO guru that shares loads of useful and actionable tips for improving your search engine rankings. He also has a free SEO tool for evaluating your competition and ranking potential called UberSuggest
• Backlinko.com, An SEO oriented blog run by Brian Dean, another SEO guru that really knows his stuff. Just like Neil he shares absolutely incredible tips for free.
• YourOnlineRevenue.com A website run by my fellow countryman Roope Kiuttu. Roope has had extreme success with Wealthy Affiliate and e-mail marketing. He shares very actionable tips and examples of how he has succeeded in making money online.

Tools:

• Thrive Membership, excellent and affordable service for building
• AWeber, the industry-standard autoresponder
• WP Rocket, A WordPress plugin that makes your site load super fast.
• GTMetrix.com, A service for testing your site speed. Site load speed is one of the top priorities for on-site SEO.
• LSIGraph, a free tool for searching latent semantic indexing keywords (phrases associated with your targeted keyword). Important for SEO.

I’ll add tools to this list over time so check back every now and then!

Best freelance online opportunities for seniors

If you are simply looking to earn an income by doing freelance work, I have gathered some services I have used myself and can recommend for you.

Fiverr: One of the best known freelance platforms. Originally the idea was to produce simple tasks for $5 per service but these days many pros can charge anything from $5 to $200. Great things about Fiverr are that the platform makes sure you get paid and there’s an evaluation system for both service providers and buyers to avoid misuse.

You can earn up to $100 with few hours of work in Fiverr IF you have some useful skills in niches like graphic design, music or video creation. You can also do things like voice-overs, produce English audio for foreign content creators, etc.

Flexjobs: Flexjobs is a very popular (over 12 million users) platform for actual legit remote jobs. This means you can look for freelance employment from companies and individuals, either pay by the hour or by the project.

While Fiverr is more about simple chores and short projects, Flexjobs is about actual jobs that can be done remotely. So this can range from copywriting to mechanical engineering to singing lessons. The opportunities are almost endless and chances are there is something in your profession as well.

Conclusion

I hope you found these tips for how to work from home for seniors useful. Now I know this all might seem intimidating or too good to be true or there might simply be a lot of questions in your mind right now.

As a conclusion, I’ll try to answer the most common questions and misconceptions people have when first learning about affiliate marketing and earning money online:

If it’s that simple why isn’t everybody doing it?

Well, it really isn’t that simple. You need to get many things right to succeed in this business. Most people are also very reserved about the concept of making money online due to all the hoaxes and pyramid schemes out there.

That said there are plenty of people earning a full-time income and even fortunes online. And not just large businesses, I’m talking about individuals here. What they all have common is that they gave it a chance, learned the skill and worked consistently until they got results.

This sounds like a pyramid scheme! / I’ve heard about these online hoaxes!

The internet is definitely full of all sorts of schemes designed to take your money. Affiliate marketing, fortunately, isn’t one of these. If it helps, you can think of this as a regular customer referral that businesses have paid for decades. You just do it online.

That said I always recommend products, both physical and digital, that I have either used myself or have researched enough to buy myself.  

Is this really honest work?

Look at the previous. As long as you produce value to your readers, whatever your niche is, I believe this is very honest work that can benefit both your readers, yourself and third parties you are affiliated with. Just like a regular business.

Choose your niche correctly and you can even have a positive impact on the world. I created ElderStrength because I want to help more seniors to improve their life quality and health through exercise. Even though I aim to help individuals, senior health is extremely important from a socio-economic point of view as well. I’ll let you to decide if this is honest work or not.

I can’t succeed with this, I know nothing about computers!

Not true. You are reading this, even if it’s with your phone. That means you have enough skill to use a web browser and understand the written word. I’m sure you can write as well? You’ve got everything you need to get started. Don’t let your fears and insecurities stop you.

Creating the website and all that stuff is the easy part. You will get through that with the training in WA. Creating content is the hard part and it requires you to write a lot. But this can be learned as well even if it feels hard at first.

I don’t have any useful knowledge to share

Not true. Every one. I mean absolutely everyone, has a unique perspective on life and all the endless nuances of it. It doesn’t matter if you are a senior that was a stay at home mom for most of their life or a young IT engineer.

While the young engineer likely has a better skill set for setting up a website, he might lack the life experience and wisdom people really like to read about. The retired mother might know everything about running a household efficiently to home remedies for every single illness or maybe something completely different.

What I’m trying to tell you here is that you don’t likely realize how much knowledge you possess. Things you take as given might be just the things people are looking to get help in. 

Do people really buy products through online links?

Yes, they do. In growing numbers too. Currently, there are over 4 Billion internet users. That’s 4 thousand million people. That’s a larger number than you or I can comprehend other than mathematically. It’s also over half of the whole world’s population.

People buy stuff online all the time. Before they buy something, they do research online. The compare products, they check if the product they are interested in has good reviews, they look if a product is trustworthy, etc. They look for the best products in the category they are interested in.

You can be the middle-man (or woman) to provide them this information, with affiliate links of course. Just be honest and provide value and everyone benefits. 

This industry must be way too competitive for beginners to succeed alone

While the competition is definitely tougher these days than it was a decade ago, it’s still totally possible to succeed. You just have to provide actual value, produce high-quality content and be consistent with your work.

New markets are opening up constantly. People are moving more and more online as online services are getting better. There is also a constantly growing demand for different kinds of digital services.

I think this is the industry of the future. The competition will likely grow but at least for now it seems the market is growing faster so there is definitely a possibility for success if you get on it now.

Do you have any other questions? Don’t hesitate to leave them in the comments section below and I’ll be happy to answer you to the best of my knowledge.

I would also love to hear if you found this piece interesting and would like to see more this kind of content as it’s quite a bit different from the regular exercise-related content I produce.

As always, see you next time!