Job ideas for remote working

CAREER OPTIONS

In spite of the economic instability provoked by the coronavirus, there are still many in-demand jobs out there that let you work from home, or wherever you want to make your office for the day. Here are some job ideas for remote working.

Language teacher

If you’re already fluent in a foreign language, teaching it to others is an easy way to connect with people from across the world, while also being able to work flexibly and remotely. Lessons can easily take place over Zoom, and you can send learning materials using email.

Italki is a good platform to share your skills with others, letting you offer foreign language classes to students from the comfort of your own home, whether you want to provide formal lessons or just casual conversation.

Personal tutor

With the jobs market contracting, but higher education numbers remaining steady, many young workers are currently overqualified for their current role. If you feel like you’d like to put your academic knowledge to good use – and avoid the rush hour for good measure – online tutoring could be a great way to work.

Websites like Tutorful offer £20-30 an hour to tutors, while sites like Gumtree are also perfect for advertising your services, whether you want to teach school kids or university students.

Screenwriter

Online video content was experiencing an exponential boom even before lockdown turned us all into Normal People aficionados. Screenwriters need never leave their home office, and there’s now huge demand for good writers to match the global clamour for video content.

Even better – you can start to remotely build up a portfolio of writing work without ever having to set foot on set. BBC has a good directory of opportunities for new writers.

Photography and videography

If you’re interested in photography or have lots of photographs on your hard drive, why not try selling them online? Businesses are creating a lot more online content at the moment, so the right images and themes could help you earn some money. Rather than uploading a lot of landscapes and only selling what you have, take a look at the kinds of images that business websites, news websites, and blogs have been using over the last few weeks. Try to shoot images around those themes and stay on top of what’s in demand at the moment.

Stock photography sites like Shutterstock, Alamy, Getty, and iStock take a commission from sales and allow people to find your images based on keyword searches.

Social media manager

If you’re known as the resident meme-maker or social-sharer in your group of friends, have you thought about bossing social media for a living?

One of the advantages of working with social media is that as long as you have access to a phone and a laptop, you’re ready for work. Social media managers and executives all start with a passion for creating online content, and their roles let them work remotely from anywhere in the world.

Computer programmer

When you work with computers, your office is wherever your home laptop is. Development is one of the best jobs for remote working, with web and software engineering roles featuring highly on LinkedIn’s recent list of ‘Most Promising Jobs’.

A lot of MOOCs offer some perfect series of courses designed to give you introductory development and coding skills. You can learn the basics of computer programming or learn to code for the web – training that could set you on the path to a successful remote programming career.

Podcaster

Podcasting is one of the fastest-growing areas of entertainment in terms of listenership – and ad revenue.

For anyone with the gift of the gab – or an obscure passion you want to share – it could be an easier way to start a media career from home than the more competitive and image-focused world of YouTube and vlogging.

Copywriting

Copywriting is a truly remote job – all you need, after all, is a laptop and a love of language. Even in offices, copywriters are often ‘hot desking’ – moving from place to place to write depending on who they’re working with – so working completely remotely is the next logical step.

Taken for FutureLearn