Work From Home Jobs For Seniors

If you've been searching for work from home jobs for seniors for a while but not looking to do an ordinary offline job such as childcare or dog-sitting, you're already at a great starting point.

We all slow down as we age. If you are still a great communicator, have many friends from all age groups, and are fantastic at negotiations, you should have no problem finding a local job (then you wouldn't be reading this, I guess). Unfortunately, most of us find that we're not as capable of coping with pressure situations as we once were.

The main advantage of working from home is that you can make your own schedule and control the usual work-related stress. Many jobs and business opportunities are available out there, and they are so much more accessible than you think. Because nowadays, barely any technical skills are required.

Some 15-20 years ago, I once quit my website-related job because I started to find things increasingly too technical to follow. I had to seriously consider my future career when I saw some new programming essentials.

That was then, but this is now where internet business models are well-established. Developers develop all the web tools so business owners don't have to worry anything about technical aspects. Just like shop owners in real life; they might take care of decor and display, but they get professionals to create them all.

What Working From Home Will Mean To You

Work from home jobs allow you to maximize your personal potential and fulfill the quality of life that you deserve. There are many advantages such as;

• Flexible working hours: While it may be a good idea to stick to a daily routine to some extent, you don't want your working hours to rule the day. Spend a considerable amount of time getting ready for work, rushing home to do whatever you have to do for yourself day-in, day-out, and your life will soon be over. A work-at-home job allows you to work whenever you want to.
• No need to travel: Commuting is not as easy as it used to be. Instead of rushing to go to work or wasting so much time at the station due to the train delays, you can go out for a walk or to shop whenever you want.
• Connect to people online: Working from home does not mean you are alone. There are plenty of online entrepreneurs communities where you can connect to people with the same interest from all over the world. You don't have to deal with office politics either!
• You can be as creative as you like: Unlike employment, you don't need to ask anyone for permission to pursue a route that you want to take. No one tells you what to / what not to do, means you can expand your imagination and develop your creative personality as much as you like and reflect it to your work.

Blogging

The best starting point is to build your own blogging space and start publishing ideas, news and your opinions. It's a perfect platform where you can be yourself and establish your blogging style as you keep writing. That is whether you're looking to pursue your retirement career as a blogger or consider any other writing jobs in the future, your blog website will come in as status as you go along.

HostingTribunal says there are currently over 500 million blogs worldwide. You'll only be one of them, then why should you care what people think? You might as well be exactly who you are on your webspace. On the other hand, your uniqueness will find readers in time. Remember, those 500 million blogs include free, disposable sites and one-off's that people easily start and quit on a daily basis. Your consistency will appeal to a large number of people.

Affiliate Marketing As A Blogger

So how can you make money from blogging?

Majority of bloggers (including myself) make money as affiliates. They place ads in-article and receive a commission as the readers click the ads (PPC: pay-per-click) and as they purchase products that are advertised (PPA: pay-per-action).

How much you can earn each time depends on the rate that the advertisers offer. PPC can be very low (up to $1 per click) but PPA - when a reader has made a purchase via your website, you can receive a percentage of the product price. Again - it really depends on the rate that's on offer.

• If you're advertising $10 T-shirts and the commission rate is 10%, you'll only receive $1 per sale.
• If you're advertising $100 software and the commission rate is 60%, you know the math - you can receive $60 per sale.

Steps To Blogging Success

Here are the steps to take to create your own blog and monetize your content.

Step 1: Pick A Niche

Although you can write anything you want, it's best to choose one niche (topic to sell) rather than to create a general "life blog". Because a general blog is harder to attract many readers unless your quirkiness stands out from the crowd on its own. Whereas a niche topic will attract people in the same interest. For example, if you have a blog about barbecue equipment, then barbecue lovers of the world will be interested to know what you've got to say.

With all that said, there's a formula to pick the right niche that sells.

Your passion for the niche + Popularity of the niche =Success!

Firstly, the niche should be something you're passionate about. You love it means you know it well and you can write about it well. If you love walking, for example, you can write a lot about it and promote walking gear (shoes, bags, trekking poles) within your blog posts as an affiliate.

And secondly, the niche should be popular enough to have high search volume levels. The evergreen top 4 niches are;

• (a) wealth, make money
• (b) health, weight loss and beauty
• (c) love and relationships
• (d) self-improvement 

Most of these 4 niches tend to be advantageous for a senior person to consider. Health issues are all-time discussion topics. Exercise tips that fellow seniors are seeking are not heavy weightlifting that many young fitness bloggers promote, but more age-appropriate advice. Many of us are experienced enough to give advice on love, relationship and self-improvement areas.

Keep these two elements in mind when deciding your niche, and that'll be the start of your successful blogging/affiliate marketing career.

Step 2: Set Up Your Website

Now you need to have your own website. WordPress is the most popular website builder, and one of the easiest to navigate, so you should definitely use it. I'm referring to WordPress.org, and this is not to be confused with WordPress.com.

WordPress.com will allow you to sign up within minutes and blog for free, but I don't recommend you to use it from the monetizing point of view. Don't use free tools such s WordPress.com, Blogger.com or Medium.com. Because they only allow you to use 'their web space', and your blog site is never going to be your own.

Your website should be your property where you can promote any affiliate products that you want. And it's going to be a significantly valuable asset. If, in the future, you decide to let go of your blogging business, your website can be sold for tens of thousands of dollars, if not more.

So the first thing you should do is to get a domain name (www.yoursitename.com) and have your website hosted by WordPress hosting company - it's not as technical as you think. The best way I would recommend is to join Wealthy Affiliate - it includes a free web hosting first of all while providing comprehensive training. It means you can start building your site without deciding a domain name, and whenever you feel ready, you can name it, and own it.

If you'd like to give it a try, join free and see how you feel from the link below;

Step 3: Join Affiliate Programs

Once you start blogging about your niche topics, you can join some affiliate programs, find products that you want to product (or vice versa - if you have some products that you recommend in mind, you can join the affiliate program), and start promoting on your website.

There are many affiliate networks, and almost all of them are free to join. Amazon and ClickBank are two that you might want to consider because;

Amazon is where you can find almost any product that you can promote. Affiliate commission rates are not great (1% - 12%) but the retail giant offers many things for everyone.
ClickBank is an affiliate network. Many products that are on offer are by individual sellers, in all-around categories. Affiliate commission rates can be as high as 70%, and the payment systems are managed by ClickBank.

Other Writing Jobs

Blogging is certainly one of the best work-from-home-jobs for seniors, but generally, freelance work that's available online often involves writing. If you consider yourself as an amateur writer, by all means, you can try writing an ebook and publish it via Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing.

Otherwise there's always a continuous demand for jobs mainly by companies who need to present their ideas in a professionally, such as;

• Ghostwriting - ebooks, blog posts, press releases.
• Transcripts / audio typing.
• Proofreading, editing, summarizing.
• Business plans and proposals.

Also if you are specialized in a particular field, then jobs are available accordingly, such as;

• Specialty - legal writing, scriptwriting, technical writing.
• Copywriting - sales copy, slogans, email copy.

Your name may or may not be credited with the finished work. You can advertise yourself on sites such as Freelancer.com, Upwork.com and Fiverr.com.

Use Grammarly

Grammarly is a handy tool that checks critical grammar and misspelling for free. It can be installed on your computer or on your browser. The browser version is particularly useful because not only does it work as a word processing document on your browser (Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.) but it automatically works on any sites where you type. For example, Facebook post and when leaving a comment on a website...it will warn you a mis-spelt word and grammatical issue with a suggested word/phrase as you write.

The premium version of Grammarly provides enhanced suggestions and genre-specific writing style checks, plus plagiarism detector. I personally find that the plagiarism detector does an excellent job. $29.95 per month if you pay monthly, or $11.66 per month if you pay 12 months in advance ($139.95 annually.)

Open An Online Shop

Starting your own online shop - suggested by many internet marketers as if it's another "great option", but it's not as easy as you think, in my opinion. Unless you have goods to sell, and you already have some level of e-commerce experience, there may be too much to learn for a senior citizen, and too many things to worry about in the beginning.

I shouldn't really be too negative right from the start, so I'll list up the positives first. The advantages of running an e-commerce business are;

• If you have goods to sell, it's a great way to make your brand known via your online commerce website, possibly on a worldwide scale.
• If you already have a shop but thinking about closing it down for retirement, you can still continue your business as an online-only shop.
• If you don't have goods to sell - drop-shipping is another option (see below).

Drop-shipping

Drop-shipping is an automatic fulfillment system, where your online store works as an intermediary, and you don't have to take care of inventory stock management or product shipping.

To start with, you don't how to worry about what to sell. Software that's installed on your e-commerce website will list up a wide range of products from a range of suppliers. You choose whatever you want to sell from the list. As soon a customer visits your site, places an order and makes a payment to you, the software on your site will place an order and makes a payment to the supplier of that particular product. The supplier ships the product directly to your customer.

You can either build your online store manually using WordPress and a free e-commerce plugin called WooCommerce, or you can use a ready-made online store builder Shopify. Plus Oberlo is the automatic software that you can integrate your store site with the suppliers.

Also Read: How To Make Money Online Blueprints

The Negatives

Why I wouldn't offhandedly recommend it as one of the work from home jobs for seniors - because running an online store is hard work that involves marketing skills, site maintenance, customer service, AND blogging. Things that you have to do to survive in the very competitive e-commerce industry include;

• Make your online store known - sharing products on social media here & there will barely help. You may have to use paid advertisement spaces wisely.
• Make your online store attractive - Why would anyone buy from you when they find almost everything from Amazon and eBay? Differentiating is a challenge.
• Listing up products on your site is a pain - placing an attractive image and coming up with effective descriptions (you can use a tool such as Title Builder). http://title-builder.com
• Even with drop-shipping, you have to provide good customer service. When your online store starts to sell, you will receive a lot of queries, and you need to handle all the returns & refunds.
• Blogging is the only way to drive organic traffic (i.e. people will find your website on Google by searching), so inevitably you'll need to regularly publish your blog anyway.

The reason I quit my drop-shipping business was that I got too busy (!) Don't get me wrong, it is good to busy, but I wasn't ambitious enough to expand my brand with no product of my own. And my days were ruled by answering all sorts of email queries from my customers.

But that was how I personally felt. If you are great at customer service, willing to learn the marketing skills and truly enjoy it, by all means it may be a perfect job opportunity for you.

Opportunities Using Your Existing Skills

Other work from home jobs for seniors include opportunities that take advantage of your existing skills. Either by;

• Providing a service as a sole trader or
• Teaching your skills.

The former option depends on the type of jobs you've done. For example, I was an accountant for many years before I semi-retired to become a full-time online marketer. I continued to provide an accountancy service privately for a while but soon quit for two reasons;

1. Juggling two different types of jobs was not exactly ideal, and 
2. I wanted to learn new internet marketing skills more, rather than to stay in my comfort zone and sell what I know best.

That was my personal decision at the time, but if you have a special skill and continue to use it fully, you can advertise yourself online and work on a self-employment basis. A lot of specialty jobs can be possible such as;

• Legal/financial advice
• Market research
• Virtual assistant
• Translator
• Data entry

The latter option is to teach what you know via online. Again, accountancy, consultancy, career advice, any kind of "how-to's" are possible to sell however, it's not as easy as you think, mainly for two reasons;

1. To set it all up - have the curriculum and all your materials ready and ideally, you want to create a members-only platform where your students can log in at any time to learn.
2. To let people know that your teaching service has a quality value - for example, people Google search to find career advice for free. You need a level of marketing skill to tell the audience that your service is professional, therefore it's worth maying money for.

Work From Home Jobs For Seniors

These opportunities online will allow you to work on your own terms and on your own schedule if you set up your goals that way. Even if you choose to run a dropshipping store, by promoting affiliate products on the same site, you can expect passive income in years to come.

Your new online business can remind you that you shouldn't hang on to what you think you know. And the best part is that you get paid to learn new things. Just because you are a little older than others, doesn't mean you can't try new possibilities. New social trends, technologies, and algorithms come in one after another - you just get to learn to keep up with some of them. If you can push yourself out of your comfort zone just a little bit, then that's the most wonderful thing.