How We Make Money From Home During the Lockdown
While most of the world shelters in place many people are unable to make an income while stuck at home. Many people have been laid of or are simply unable to go to work because their businesses have closed. Luckily, as an entrepreneur with several income streams, we have been able to adapt and continue to make money from home during the lockdown.
Below I’ll go over the actual ways my husband and I, as a self employed couple, have been able to earn an income from home during quarantine.
Reselling on Ebay and Poshmark
Because we were full time resellers before the pandemic, we already had a good amount of inventory for reselling online. So, while we couldn’t go out and source fresh inventory, we were able to list items that we already had and continued to sell the items that were already listed.
Since we had a limited amount of items that weren’t listed yet and couldn’t continuously list fresh items, which is one of the best ways to have good sales on both Ebay and Poshmark, our sales were quite a bit lower than usual.
One thing to keep in mind, however, was that while our sales were lower, we also weren’t out spending more money so other than shipping our costs were staying very low.
Selling on Amazon
Though this has been a very small part of our making money during the lockdown, it’s a viable option for many people! As we were doing inventory in our garage I came across a box of items with barcodes. While we sell mostly secondhand clothing and shoes, we do have some other items for sale.
This box that I found had all brand new items that I could easily scan with the Amazon Seller app. So I took about 20 minutes to list about 7 items on Amazon via the app. Within 24 hours I had sold two boxes of coffee for $49.99. This coffee had been sitting in my inventory, unlisted for some reason, for months!
So if you have items in your home that you can scan, you can download the Amazon Seller app and get to scanning. Books, items that are new in the box, etc. are all good things to start.
Digital Downloads
I’ve been selling digital downloads for years. A while back I was selling printables over on Etsy. But these days my digital downloads are all available in my shop and are all reseller related.
My best seller, the Reseller Dashboard, sells almost daily without me having to do much because I have done all the work upfront.
Because I’ve already created the product and listed it for sale, I simply include it in blog posts, YouTube videos and mention it on social media. From there people find it and are able to purchase it.
Course Sales
A newer source of income for me that is still in the very beginning stages is course sales. At the beginning of 2020 I released my course, Reseller Roadmap, which is a step by step guide to starting and growing a successful resale business.
Because the course is new and I haven’t officially launched it other than dropping links here and there, I don’t get a ton of sales. But because I do link to it within blog posts and youtube videos, I do get a sale here and there which is always a nice surprise.
It’s actually at the top of my list this year to get this course in front of more people so that I can help them start their own resale businesses.
Want to learn more about the Reseller Roadmap? Click here.
Local Sales
Since we were planning on moving before the pandemic was declared, we were already in declutter mode and posting a ton of stuff to sell locally. But once the stay at home orders were in place, we simply started listing even more knowing that we would be unable to have the yard sale we had planned anytime soon.
So we listed larger items or anything that we could sell for over $20 on Facebook Marketplace and would schedule porch pick ups to keep things safe. The buyer would simply slip the money under our mat and take their item. We have never had an issue with this, but you could also meet in a public area and take the proper precautions (mask, gloves, hand washing, whatever you’re comfortable with).
YouTube
Even though I went a full two months without posting anything on YouTube, I was able to continue collecting payments from them each month from videos that I had previously uploaded.
While YouTube is a lot of work, it can also be a great passive form of income for a short amount of time if you need to take a break. I bet if I had continued posting I would have been able to earn even more.
If you look at this list it really showcases the importance of having several streams of income, or even one side hustle, in place in case of emergency. Because I have spent years building up different ways to earn money we have luckily been able to stay afloat even though we are in the middle of stay at home orders.
It’s never too late to start making money from home! What steps will you take today to start your own home business?
