A lot of people fantasize about quitting their jobs and working from home. The good news is that more and more people are turning this dream into reality. A lot of people are quitting their 9-5 every day to work from home.
Plus, working from home has become easier than ever before thanks to the innovations in technology that we have seen in recent years.
So, why do people want to quit their job and work from home? Well, some do it out of necessity, for example to become stay at home parents or because of a medical issue or perhaps to take care of elderly parents. Some people do it because they just want to be their own bosses and make their own rules. Others make the switch simply because they can’t take their regular soul-sucking jobs anymore.
However, arguably the biggest reason is the financial freedom that comes with it. Everyone wants to live without having to worry about money. Nobody wants to be anxious about rent, groceries, utility bills, health care, or college funds for their kids. Most 9-5 jobs do not pay well, which means a lot of people cannot comfortably cover their living expenses.
If you want to quit your job and work from home, this article will help you get started. Let’s begin!
HOW TO START
It is important to mention that it would be very irresponsible of you to throw caution to the wind and quit your job without thinking and planning things through. You need to set yourself up for success from the very beginning.
So how can you do that? Well, to make your transition smooth, you need to plan all your moves first before you make them. Here are 3 things you will need before quitting:
1. SAVINGS
No one likes worrying about money. When you quit your job without having anything saved up, you are inviting lots of worry and sleepless nights into your life. You do not want that.
To prepare, start by saving at least 6 months’ worth of your living expenses. If possible, make it a whole year’s worth of savings. This will help you take care of all your monthly expenses without pressure.
If you quit without any savings, it will actually be harder for you to be successful. That added stress will make you less productive, and with all the distractions you will be getting, there is a high likelihood of failing when you start your business at home.
2. START WORKING FROM HOME
One of the best ways to know whether or not you want to work from home is to start working from home. It will give you a feel of how things will be when you quit your job.
Start by carving out an hour every day and start working on a few projects. Increase the number of hours you’re putting in steadily while also doubling your workload on the weekends. Then start asking yourself these questions:
- How do you like it?
- Do you have the discipline to work from home?
- What do you find challenging about working from home?
These questions will refine your vision for working at home. Answer them truthfully to know what you need to do before you quit your job.
3. DEVELOP THE HABITS
Working from home is not a walk in the park. It takes time and effort to be successful. Furthermore, there are certain core habits you need to have if you want to be successful:
- Discipline
This is the most important habit you will have to develop. Sadly, not many people have it naturally. Working from home is quite different from a day job where you have a supervisor and strict deadlines to meet. No one will be pushing you when you work from home, so you need to do it yourself.
Additionally, there are a lot of distractions at home; the TV, social media, food, friends, family. All these can derail your productivity. This is why you need to be disciplined enough before making the move. Train yourself slowly and build on it until you feel you are disciplined enough.
- Confidence and self-belief
You will need to believe in yourself if you want to be successful working from home. In today’s society, those who break from the mold are not encouraged to do so. In some instances, it is actually frowned upon. Since you will not be getting it from anywhere else, you need to build your own confidence and believe that the leap of faith you’ve taken will work.
Your self-confidence will come in handy when you start having self-doubt in your decision to work from home.
TYPE OF JOBS YOU CAN DO AT HOME
1. START WITH WHAT YOU HAVE
One of the easiest ways to transition to working from home is to start with the job you are in.
If your job can be done from home, start from there. For example, if you are a programmer or a software engineer, you can start building your software from home.
A great way to start is by applying for freelance gigs on sites like Toptal and Upwork. Work on a few projects and try to see how much you can make on the side. Your next goal will be to have your side hustle income match that of your job.
When your side income is enough to live comfortably off of, you can quit your job and work from home.
Some other jobs you can transition easily from the office and work at home include: accountant, writer, designer, assistant, data scientist, researcher, and artist.
Besides applying for side gigs in freelancing websites, you can also approach potential clients and pitch your services to them directly.
2. START A BUSINESS
Entrepreneurship is a good option when you want to quit your job. A great starting point is to research some of the problems you can solve within your community.
For example, if you are an amazing baker, you can start a bakery from home and supply your neighbors with freshly baked goodies.
Other businesses you can start from home include fitness classes, tutoring, daycare, cleaning services, and delivery services. However, don’t let these examples limit you. The sky is the limit!
When starting out, you will need to be quite smart about how you manage your time if you still want to fulfill your regular work obligations. When things pick up, you can finally quit and scale up your business.
3. CALL CENTER REPRESENTATIVE
Today, more businesses than ever before have an online presence. And this number will only keep going up. Inadvertently, most of these businesses need customer support services to assist their customers to place orders, handle inquiries, process orders and deal with returns.
Most of these jobs are outsourced to home-based customer service representatives. That is why this can be a good job when you want to quit your job and work from home.
If you have a nice phone voice and are comfortable and confident over the phone, this job can be a great fit for you. A great personality also doesn’t hurt.
To find job openings for call-center representatives, start your search on sites like Upwork and SimplyHired. However, you can also find listings offered by local businesses in your local newspaper.
4. MEDICAL TRANSCRIPTIONIST
Most medical transcriptionists work in clinics, hospitals, nursing homes, physicians’ offices, home health agencies, and public health agencies. However, some medical transcriptionists work from home under independent contractors or transcription businesses.
Their work entails transcribing, creating reports and other administrative documents from physicians’ dictated recordings.
To get started, there is a simple postsecondary medical transcriptionist program that you will have to take. It covers computer application, basic pathology, English composition and grammar, medical terminology, physiology, anatomy, and medical transcription skills.
The median annual income for medical transcriptionists was $34,770 in 2018, with the highest earners making more than $51,780.
START YOUR OWN ONLINE BUSINESS TODAY
5. TRANSLATOR
Most translators do their work at home, where their only requirements is to deliver the work within certain deadlines. Anyone can do this job as long as they are fluent in at least two languages, although having a degree will give you some advantage over the competition.
The majority of translators are spread among professional, scientific, and technical services. They work in the state, local, and private educational services, hospitals, and government.
Great places to start your search for translator jobs is online are freelance marketplaces like Upwork and Fiverr.
6. TRAVEL AGENT
Do you love traveling? Do you love finding great deals on vacations and travel destinations? If you do, then being a travel agent can be a good fit for you. Here are two ways to get started:
- Working Independently as a Travel Agent
For this option, you will have to start everything from scratch. You will need to have a business name, create a website, market and advertise your business. Additionally, you will need to find your own clients and build relationships with different travel companies.
If done right, you can make quite a lot of money as a travel agent. However, there is a less tedious way to work as a travel agent from home.
- Working as a Travel Agent for a Host Agency
Unlike working independently, working for a host agency is a lot easier. You will essentially be self-employed, but the host agency gives you the full support to grow your business.
It is particularly a good place to start if you have little or no travel experience.
7. AFFILIATE MARKETING
This is another great way to quit the rat race and work from home. Affiliate marketing is a business model that involves recommending other people’s products and services to potential customers and earning a commission from every sale you make. As an affiliate, you do not own any of the products yourself. You are only the middleman, getting people to buy a particular company’s or person’s products and earning your commission in the process.
To get started, you will first have to identify your niche. To do this, all you have to do is a little research which will help you identify a potential audience. Then try to find out what problems this audience has. Your business should try to solve these problems.
The next step is to set up a website. This is how you will get the traffic you need to make the sales that will earn you the sweet commissions.
Once your website is set up, you will need to market the products to your audience. One of the best ways to do this is by offering them valuable content in the form of tutorials, product reviews, blog posts, videos, and e-books. This will establish you as a market leader in your niche.
And that’s all there is to it! Pretty straightforward, right? This is why affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways of making money online.
Admittedly, it may still sound a little daunting when you want to quit your job and work from home. Fortunately, there is a great solution for this, too! Wealthy Affiliate is a product that teaches you the ins and outs of affiliate marketing to make sure that you are ready to join the big leagues in no time.
It has a free and a paid membership plan. The free membership gives you 7 days of live help, access to 2 websites with backup, access to the beginner training course, a personal affiliate blog, phase one of the affiliate bootcamp training, 2 classroom training sessions, access to the affiliate program, and 7 days of coaching.
JOIN WEALTHY AFFILIATE NOW – FOR FREE!
Clearly, the free membership is enough to help you get the ball rolling in your affiliate marketing business. However, to accelerate its growth, you will need the paid membership plan. Please note that you can stay a free member for as long as you like. There is no pressure to upgrade (in fact, they don’t even ask for a credit card number!)
With the paid membership, you will get unlimited live help with private messaging, access to 50 websites with website security package and backup, full access to the beginner training course, live video classes, training classrooms, 2 times higher payout on the affiliate program, and unlimited access to help from seasoned and proven affiliate marketers.
Wealthy Affiliate stands out because it is one of the best-reviewed affiliate marketing products out there. Plus, it also has one of the most comprehensive such, so if you are stuck on anything or if you stumble upon something that’s not covered by the course, you can always ask the experts and get help.
FINAL THOUGHTS
A stable well-paying job is harder and harder to come by these days. A lot of people can’t get hired at all, and those who do get hired hate their jobs every day. Which is why it is no surprise that more and more people are looking for ways to quit their jobs and work from home.
However, most of them get stuck trying to ditch their day jobs. You do not have to be part of this statistic. With a little planning and foresight, you can quit your job and earn a good income from home.
If you choose to take my recommendation and decide to join Wealthy Affiliate, I will be on the other side ready to assist you in any way I can. I would love to help you kick start your own side business so that you can have the flexibility to quit your job and work from home.
JOIN WEALTHY AFFILIATE NOW – IT IS FREE TO TRY
To your success,
Mike Aha
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I think that the hardest thing when working from home is the discipline. It is so easy to get caught up with other jobs around the house and before you know it your day is gone.
I find that if I don’t write a list of things I need to complete by the end of the day, I am doomed and I don’t get enough done. Unfortunately, you need to set your priorities straight if working for yourself and train yourself to do income-producing activities rather than non-income producing ones like checking email every two minutes.
You have certainly given us a wide choice of professions to choose from if we want to work for ourselves, and it was interesting to see just how much one can actually do from home.
Hi Michel,
Discipline is the key! As you stated, it is very easy to get side tracked when working from home. I am glad you found my post helpful. I hope you found one or two of my suggestions to be actionable. To your success,
Mike
Hi Mike,
This was a great article to read Mike, I have been told on many times why would I want to work home and that I should get a proper job like everyone else.
But the idea of working at home appeals as I like the benefits you have mentioned, especially the freedom part and how you can become your own boss.
I do have a question though, I know you have stated a few ways to make money but If I created an online business from home how long will I need to wait to see results. I want to quit my current day time job but I am guessing it will take time to build a business up.
If you could shed a light on an average time period for success then that would be great.
Thanks,
Josh
Hi Joshua,
Thanks for the kind words! I agree that working from home provides many benefits and is worth pursuing. As far as how long it takes to make money, that is a tough question to answer. It really depends on what you decide to do. If you pick call center representative, you can make money fairly quickly because you can get hired by a company in no time. Translations and travel agents can either contract to a company and make money right away, or choose to build their business and look for their own clients. That could take months.
Affiliate marketing success can happen very quickly. The truht though is that most of experience success after 3 to 6 months of hard work and perseverance. Don’t let that discourage you! The results are worth the effort.
I hope this helped!
Mike Aha
Thank you so much for sharing with us such a beautiful article .I have been in a job for five years but now I am leaving it and thinking of doing something at home with my family. I was looking for an article like this online and your article has brought me a lot of good news. Because I couldn’t figure out what to do. Because I wanted to have a financial independence as a girl .And I believe I can do anything from home and I have some money as well as a laptop .And gave you some tips on how to do it with laptop money, which I like very much. Since I have a laptop, I want to work as a freelancing and travel agent, and this job attracts me a lot. I have some knowledge about Hey and I’ll take the rest from your article .Hopefully I can do a lot of good things in the future but if I want to do something else, how much money will it be good to start with? If you know a little .Now I think if I change my job and do it, it will be very good for me and your advice is really awesome.
Hi Shanta,
Travel agency can be a lucrative work from home opportunity. As long as you have a laptop and a good internet connection, you can make money online. I am not sure I can answer your question about how much money is needed to start. It all depends on what you want to do, what your expenses are and your existing skillset. I don’t want to lead you wrong!
To your success,
Mike Aha
Hi Mike. An extraordinary post. Many people hate their job. That is why he quit to work from home. But it’s a big mistake to quit your job until you start getting decent income online. WA is a great site but does not promise immediate income. It takes discipline, hard work and patience. You gave excellent tips to the beginners of online work.
Hi Carmen,
It is not a good idea to quit your job without a plan B. If you spend time building your business on the side and build it up to where it can sustain you, then you can choose to leave on your own terms. Wealthy Affiliate is an excellent training community with a ton of amazing resources. It has everything you need to succeed. But you are absolutely right. There is no guarantee! You need to work hard and be patient but if you stick to it, the opportunities are endless!
Thanks
It’s definitely very important to get prepare for what will come. Working from home requires a lot of self discipline and clear goals in mind. Saving shouldn’t be money to get retired (as we expect you to be productive by other means). But you should keep in mind that real and sustainable mechanisms of work from home requiere time to be successfully implemented.
Among the proposed list, Affiliate Marketing and working as a Travel agent are the ones that I like the most. What would be a good host agency to work with?
I can see that your recommended affiliate platform has a trial period, that’s great!
Hi Juan,
As you said, It is extremely important to be focused and discipline d in order to successfully work from home. I also agree that it is not necessary to have gobs of money saved. You just need to have 3 or 6 months of expenses covered (more if it makes you comfortable). This is just a safety mechanism in case your work from home takes longer to generate $$$.
Wealthy affiliate has a free trial period, but even after it ends, the value is excellent. And there is never a push to upgrade. You can stay a free trial member as long as you like!
As far as travel agent hosts, World Travel Holdings and Vail Resorts are good places to start. They are large companies that are well known. Full disclosure, I have not worked for either of them, but did some research prior to answering your question and found that they are worth looking into.
Mike
Hey Mike,
I have always wondered if the option to quit my job and work from home was valid and actually doable. I actually hate my 9 to 5 job as I feel I am limited by trading my hours for a low income and usually enslaved by the owner or bosses involved.
Unfortunately, that’s the case for most employees today.
I advise all to follow your advice on wealthy affiliate and join now, because fortunately for us, WA has created the most comprehensive step by step training for all to follow whether a beginner or intermediate level.
I do agree with you, discipline is key and start out to work at home will give anyone the feeling of doing it from home and if the idea looks appealing invest more time in the business until decent income starts flowing in.
Thanks,
Jordan.
Hi Jordan,
You are not alone in being unhappy with your current 9 to 5. That is why I created this blog 🙂
I highly recommend wealthy affiliate because it is truly the best and most comprehensive training out there today. The content is fresh, relevant and highly actionable. You can build your own business, at your pace. Before long, you could have a life altering, income replacing business!
Hang in there!
Mike
Hi Mike, these are some really great options for escaping your dead end job. I was forced to start working from home because of medical issues. I’m thankful that I found Wealthy Affiliate because I know now that I am on the road to financial freedom. I wish I had know about it years ago. I hope people read your article and take your advice, having a little something in savings is a must before you quit your regular job. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Tracy,
I am sorry to hear about your medical condition and I hope all is well with you. Wealthy affiliate has been an excellent resource for me over the years. I have been a member for over 10 years and I can’t tell you how much value I get from the program each and every day…Even after 10 years!
I wish you luck and success!
Thank you so much for sharing with us such a beautiful article. I am glad to see your article. After reading your article, I known How To Quit our Job And Work From Home! For those of us who are thinking of leaving work and working at home, I think it would be good to do Wealthy Affiliate Marketing. I think Wealthy Affiliate is one of the more popular affiliate marketplaces that can help you earn a Legitimate Online Income. I have a Question. What skills do I need to be a successful Wealthy Affiliate Member? A very good article with useful information, one of the best I have read, I will certainly try those methods. Again thank you.
Hi Sabrinamou,
I am glad you found this post helpful! Wealthy affiliate is definitely an amazing resource, and as long as you are patient and put in the hard work, there should be no reason why you can’t make a good income. Your question is a good one so let me try to answer as best as I can.
To be successful with wealthy affiliate and affiliate marketing in general you need the following (IMHO):
– Strong Work Ethic: You will need to dedicate time to your business in a consistent manner over a long period of time. I still wake up everyday at 5 am and dedicate 2 hours during the weekday. I dedicate 6 to 8 hours to my business on weekends
– Patience: You will need to be patient and resilient because chances are you will not experience success in a few days. It took me over 6 months to make my first commission. I could have quit many times in those 6 months, but I didn’t. The first commission is usually the hardest one, they get much easier after that!
– Ability to create good content: Whether it is articles or videos, you have to be able to put out helpful content that brings in readers or viewers.
– True Caring for Your Audience: If all you care about is making the biggest commission I believe your success will be limited. I am a true believer in putting your readers/viewers first. Worry about their interests first and your income second! That is the way to longevity and success!
I hope this helped!
Mike Aha
Hi Mike – Great post on how to work from home. It certainly requires discipline. But if one really wants to make money, that should be a strong incentive. Regarding your list of jobs you can do from home, how long do you feel it would take for an affiliate marketer to achieve a substantial income putting in an average of 38 quality hours weekly?
Hi Nathaniel,
Discipline is absolutely key!!!! As far as your last question, the answer is: “It Depends”. I don’t mean to sound wishy washy but I hate hype and don’t want to set unreasonable expectations. It also depends on how much money you need to pay your bills and where you live. So someone living in a region of the world where incomes are generally low, may be able to get there in a matter of a few months. Someone that needs $100K to maintain their living standard might take a year or more to get there.
If you are interested in building your affiliate marketing business, the best advice I can give you is to start now!
How long it takes to “make it” depends on too many factors. Control what you can and put in the work. Success will come……..but only if you start and don’t quit!
Mike
Thanks for your writing, because this article gives me a new knowledge about how to get out of 9 to 5 job that I have now. Sometimes, I feel like I really want to resign today because of the job that I really hate. However, because of your article I became aware of an important point I must have, “Saving”.
Before, I never thought about this. And it’s true as you wrote that I have to have at least 6 months of savings to ensure what I do in the future, can cover monthly fees such as installments and rental fees. Therefore, I am very grateful to find this article.
By the way, if I want to have an income by work from home job ( affiliate marketing), do you think, should I start it as side hustle or focusing it after resigned?
Thanks
Hi Kylie, I am glad that you are considering having some savings before quitting! It will make things a lot easier if you can sustain your lifestyle for a few months without any income coming in. As far as your last question, I highly advise that you start affiliate marketing on the side first. In my experience it takes 6 to 12 months to start making what I consider a “significant” amount of money. “Significant” is highly subjective and means different things to different people. I suggest you start it as a side hustle first but make sure you treat it like a legitimate business. Otherwise it will not take off.
My 2 cents!
Mike