It’s pointless me working atm

[Stackys]

I hate my job. Because of travel costs I basically only make around £200 a week. Surely there is a way I can make that at home doing something else? But what? I’m desperate now, my job is making me physically ill with arthritis, back is in bits, mental health is shit ... if I could make £200 (or even £150) a week at home my problems could be solved!!! So frustrating.

What do you do OP? and what are you good at/interested in?

Yes it’s possible, I did something similar. Prepare for a massive hustle while you figure things out and get things started though.

What would you like to do? What skills do you have? How can you market yourself?

I’m a nurse. I’m terrible at it as I’m really not a people person at all. I should never have gone into nursing. I don’t even know how it happened really.

I’m interested in dogs (could do some dog walking but lots of competition in my area) and I’m interested in writing.

If you're a nurse, you could become a medical assessor for one of the companies that does medical assessments for the DWP. You'd still be dealing with people, but only for 60-90 minutes at a time and in a very structured way.

And it's bloody good money - £40k or more.

If you’ve got a talent for writing you could become a copywriter? I’ve been doing it for a few years now - I work from home and select my own hours, in a good month I can make around £3-4K with not a huge amount of workload

Write and sell on Amazon - I did this for a while and made about £700 a month. Engage with social media and whatnot and it could be a lot more but I didn't have that commitment.

I stopped when I had a baby and may go back!

FIL does this and makes quite a lot more, his is genre fiction with a certain market.

Write something people will read lots of. Romance etc not some terribly earnest novel that takes forever and no one will read.

Something you can 'churn' out.

@PileofToss that sounds ideal, how do you get into copywriting? I’m at work at the min so can’t look it up 😂 £1000 a month would be more than enough for me so anything extra is a massive bonus

Because of travel costs I basically only make around £200 a week.

Don’t forget about the “behind the scenes” money. You’ll need to earn more than £200 a week as you’ll need to cover your own Nationals Insurance contributions, and you’ll also need to earn enough to put the equivalent of your and your employers pension contributions into a private pension. Assuming you work for the NHS, they will be quite significant. Check your payslip to see how much you and your employer are putting in.

I do copy writing in my job but would be happy to do it independently. How do o get into it?

I'm not sure if to work as a copywriter you need a course?...

Hos do you do that neverevereveragain? I have written a book but how do you get it to be a physical product that you can send out to customers?

Could you do cosmetic injections?

@Royalbloo my friend self-published on Amazon. She's on her fourth book now...SAHM and writes historical romance novels. She's doing ok actually 🥰

I'm not sure about the actual publishing process, but she said it was fairly straightforward, and she's got quite a big fan base now both here and in the US. She blogs a lot using her 'pen name' and had some fabulous professional headshots done, but apart from that, nothing very 'literary' or otherwise financially bank breaking!

Very, very few self-publishers make anywhere near £700 a month. Most make a loss if they pay for editing and/or a cover. The vast majority of self-published novels sell fewer than 100 copies.

What branch of nursing?

PileofToss do you mind me asking how you got into that? I do copywriting/copy editing and proofreading as part of my job for a large company at the moment, and I love it, but I would love to do this on a more freelance flexible basis, but don’t have any idea where to start!

[quote Stackys]@PileofToss that sounds ideal, how do you get into copywriting? I’m at work at the min so can’t look it up 😂 £1000 a month would be more than enough for me so anything extra is a massive bonus[/quote]
I’d been doing it in various job roles beforehand and decided to make it into my own business, but the first place to start really is to do some free work for any friends and family you know who have businesses. Writing their email comms, rewriting their website, writing a brochure - anything you can do which you can then use to build your portfolio.

Alternatively you can do “spec ads” which are just copy examples that you create with a designer (if you can find one to work with!)

Once you have a few pieces you can build your website and start directing people to it, emailing companies asking if they need work etc.

The more you talk about what you do, the more people will come to you for help!

Good luck

Consider working in a laboratory that takes bloods etc or as a PP mentioned, what about becoming a cosmetic Botox injector-type person.

@neverevereveragain do you have to write a book a month?

As someone said earlier cosmetic injections I feel like that is where the money is I feel like it's the norm to get lips and Botox n fillers

I do dog-walking and can make £300+ a week working 16 hours.

Today I made about £60 and I worked three hours. It's a great job but the downside is you do have to go out in all weathers - it can feel utterly grim in the wind and driving rain, believe me

You also need to be alert and pay attention to your dogs - you can make good money doing groups or multi-dog households but that does mean you need to have your wits about you and you need to be able to stay in control all the time. It's not as easy as it looks and it can be quite stressful.

The Occupational Health company that my ex employer uses had ex nurses working from home who did the assessments. We basically referred someone, OH would call them, have a phone conversation about the issues and send us a report. That might be something you could do.

Presumably you have insurance too, @vanillandhoney? I’d expect anyone walking my dog to have public liability insurance as a minimum. It’s not an overhead-free business, @Stackys.