10 Ways to Make Money in a Small Town (or anywhere!)

Brainstorming Ways to Make Money in a Small Town

Anywhere with a good internet connection (or even a marginally decent one) is a great place to begin your search into ways to make money in a small town or rural area. Digital nomading is trending among millennials for good reason: for the first time ever, that and a trustworthy laptop is all you need to develop a lucrative career. It can be done without a boss, office, company, or even walls. With enough battery, you could go to work every day on the beach of a Caribbean island.

I should know. I’ve done it.

OK. So not every day. To be clear, I did it one day on a five day vacation in St. John when I had a hard deadline, but still the feeling was unreal…even if my kids were fighting the whole time and asking me every 45 seconds if I was “done yet” so I could play with them in the ocean.

Technically I’m not “there” yet, but I do plan to be someday.

Working From Anywhere in the World (really!)

This is the dream of the digital nomadder. Making enough money by laptop (or phone) alone to be able to drift around the globe, catching a plane to Nepal on a whim because you heard their vegan momo was to die for like some kind of elitist gypsy…or something decidedly less hipster.

This stereotypical work from home lifestyle is what most of us picture when we think of a digital nomad.

But did you know you have the same opportunity as a stay at home mom living in the sticks? Living in a rural area does not rule out the opportunity to make money from home.

I was surprised to find that an old high school acquaintance I recently ran into mentioned she was a freelance writer living in rural Nebraska. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that as being something people “out there” did.

And then I thought, if I didn’t when I actually have a “work from anywhere” career, maybe there’s a whole lot of other people to whom this option had not occurred either.

That’s why I’ve decided to bring you 10 ways to make a living from home in the boonies. Here we go…

10 Ways to Work from Home When Home in the Middle of Nowhere

If you can think of other ways, please share in the comment section below. I know that I would love to hear your ideas and I am sure other readers and visitors would too!

IDEA 1. Have a farm or a big garden? Sell Your Produce Online!

Whether you’ve got a brood of chickens laying more eggs than you can use or have a whole menagerie of dairy products and a serious produce hall, there are currently several sites that specialize in the logistics of this new and booming business. Individual sites may differ, but generally, they feature user-friendly software and walk you through every step of the process so you can create an account, and they can help you create or elevate your farm’s website, set up a checkout and payment system, post your products, and set up a schedule for pick-up.

I don’t know how you feel about it, but for me, this beats the heck out of sitting at a farmer’s market all day every Saturday.

Check out Barn 2 Door or Food 4 All for specifics.

IDEA 2. Create or Elevate Your “Brand”

Use your natural skill set and personality to make money. Successful brands look for up-and-coming or trending niche markets and build upon an existing niche, adding their own special twist.

Find the most popular social media influencers in your chosen niche market and examine their branding efforts. Examine their content and watch their videos to figure out what the target audience likes. Don’t forget to be authentic. Don’t pick a niche just because it’s popular.

If successful, this creates a platform for being paid to endorse products and eventually creating and selling your own once you gain a following.

IDEA 3. Develop Your Blog

Anyone can start a blog, but not all blogs are created equal. The time you put into it, as well as the general quality of writing, will determine its success. Blogging in itself will not generate income. Just about anyone can start a blog, but not all blogs will generate significant income, if any at all.

As with your brand, and life, in general, the time and effort put into it directly correlates to profitability. Blogging in and of itself will not automatically and immediately generate income. It takes time and effort to turn it into a money-making entity, but it can be done.

IDEA 4. Use Your Website to Generate Leads

All your brand offerings can be accessed through your website, such as courses, blogs, links, videos, social media pages, and affiliations.

Lead generation refers fans to products or services. Ask your followers to contact you to learn more about a specific idea, product, or service. Once they do, companies pay you for referring individuals to them. For instance, there is a program I promote called BookScouter. I think it's an awesome program and recommend it to my readers and visitors. It actually pays people for their textbooks. Yep… people can earn cash for their used textbooks. And I think this is awesome.

So it's win-win. I earn $1 for everyone that signs up through my affiliate link for BookScouter and they, in turn, can earn cash for their textbooks, instead of having the darn things laying around collecting dust!

Your website can also generate income from advertisements if you take advantage of SEO capabilities to make your site more visible. For me, this all became much easier once I started using SEMRush. I had taken HashtagJeff's SEO course and he uses SEMRush, so I took the plunge and have never looked back. My site gets over 250,000 page views a month. So, by using SEMRush I was able to tackle so many SEO tasks that I was either oblivious too or just didn't understand.

For instance, the site audit opened my eyes to several issues like broken links, slow loading pages, bad internal linking and more. Normally, I'm pretty frugal with business expenses, but SEMRush pays for itself month after month. They offer a free 7 Day Trial if you're interested in seeing just how amazing it is.

If it becomes successful enough, companies will pay you to advertise for them by recommending or reviewing their products or services.

IDEA 5. Grow a YouTube Channel

Videos are one of the most effective ways to sell anything, whether it’s a product, service, company, or yourself. Remember to plug your other brand offerings to generate more traffic.

SalesVideoCreator is a popular selling program that allows everyday people like you and I tap into video marketing. It's a groundbreaking app, which allows you to make lead generating, full-length sales videos 17 times faster just from a text script!

SalesVideoCreator also offers 100 impactful music tracks you can use, HD background videos and over a dozen cool transitions to make your videos flow naturally.

IDEA 6. Become an Affiliate

Once you have a website, signing up to be an affiliate for a company is a great way to make passive income, because it’s getting paid for little to no effort. Make sure your affiliates fit your brand.

You’ll receive a commission every time a follower clicks on an affiliate link from your site. To get started, simply go to your favorite store or company websites and look up their affiliate programs. Most businesses have a program, but specific rates and perks vary.

Affiliate programs to be sure to check out:

-Better for beginner sites (…but I still use them because the earnings are awesome!)

Media.net – I personally still use Media.net and earn over $500 a month with minimal ads. You can customize the colors, fonts and styles that fit your site best.
MaxBounty – They offer a variety of products and services to promote. Their interface is super easy to use as well.

-Sites with more traffic

Adsense – Google's Adsense is extremely popular as a way to monetize for bloggers and websites. You'll need to review their qualifications in order to see if you can apply.
Adthrive – Ad management. They are an approved Google partner and part of Cafe Media. They have qualifications as well, including 100,000 monthly pageviews.
Mediavine – Ad management. Their pageview per month qualifications is lower, around 25,000. So, a good fit for newer sites.

IDEA 7. Create an Online Course

You don’t need to be highly educated to teach an online class. Everyone is qualified to teach something. Teaching lessons on something as simple as how to sew or play the guitar is a skill people will pay to learn. This is a great way to make money in a small town because your students can be anywhere in the world. Your classroom is right there online.

Make sure to link to it on your other outlets and recommend and mentioning it often to create interest and increase traffic flow to your course. Here is free step-by-step advice on how to get started.

Or maybe don't re-create the wheel… I know two people that quit their teaching jobs and now make a full-time income with VIPKid. The create their own class schedule and teach children English. Both have told me that they love it and that VIPKid offers a “team” atmosphere and lots of support even though it's completely virtual.

IDEA 8. Open a High-Yield Savings Account

Did you know that companies like Aspiration or CIT pay anywhere from 10 to 100 times the interest rate of traditional banks? This provides a reliable and significant way to earn interest on the money you save. Aspiration even provides a refund on incurred ATM fees to their clients.

IDEA 9. Become a Freelancer

What is your talent? Are you a gifted writer, talented marketer, brilliant singer, or genius social media hack? There are many platforms such as Upwork and Freelancer for you to create a profile and get started today.

IDEA 10. Are You Crafty? Create or Repurpose Physical Products to Sell Online

Whether you were blessed with a creative flair and have flair for upscaling flea-market bargains for a profit, or enjoy making your own household or beauty products such as cleaners, soaps, and even luxury spa gifts. Spending a few hours on Pinterest for homemade recipes can have a big payoff if you package and market your products right. (Or do you just love Pinterest? Because you could become a Pinterest Virtual Assistant and work from home playing on Pinterest all day!)

If you develop a large following, it increases the chances of a major company offering to buy your product line.

Making Money from Anywhere Is Possible

More ways to make money from anywhere are cropping up every day. At Money Making Mommy, we’ve got our finger on the pulse, so keep in touch to learn about all the latest opportunities as they drop.