For many introverts, going into an office and dealing with coworkers is inconvenient and annoying. And for the 15 million Americans with a social anxiety disorder, it’s even harder.
In the past, it was very hard to make money when living with a natural aversion to social interaction. Luckily, in the internet era, it’s getting much easier to find work that aligns with your personality and needs.
If you’re the kind of person who’s interested in working by yourself, you’re in luck. I’ve found 25 of the best jobs where you can work alone.
25 Best Jobs Where You Work Alone
- Flip Items Online
- Drive for a Delivery Service
- Take Online Surveys
- Walk Dogs
- Freelance Writing or Graphic Design
- Work as an Actuary
- Become a Transcriptionist
- Night Shift Security Guard
- Paint Houses
- Review Music
- Fix Computers
- Repair Cars
- Invest in Stocks
- Invest in Real Estate
- Mow Lawns
- Work as a Blogger
- Rent Your Car on Turo
- Livestream Video Games
- Be a Virtual Assistant
- Start a Podcast
- Sell Photos Online
- Perform Data Entry
- Truck Driver
- Bookkeeping
- Proofreading
1. Flip Items on Etsy, Amazon, or eBay
Best for People Who Like to Sell Stuff
There are countless platforms that make it easy to sell items online, and you can earn a decent income doing just that. It all depends on what you have laying around the house or how affordably you can source items to flip.
Etsy and Amazon Handmade are excellent options for selling homemade clothing, wares, and accessories. You can sell anything from T-shirts and hats to hair clips and dog collars.
eBay is arguably the best platform for selling vintage items and secondhand objects. If you don’t have your own cache of items, you can make money by visiting thrift stores, buying cheap items, and selling them for a higher profit.
If you have unwanted electronics, media, and games laying around, Decluttr is a great option. The site even sends you a box, pays for shipping, and gives you cash.
2. Drive for a Delivery Service
Best for People Seeking Flexibility
If you’re seeking flexible work, consider becoming a delivery driver. You can make anywhere from $10 to $20 per hour or more picking up various items and dropping them off to customers.
If this sounds up your alley, consider starting by delivering food to hungry people. DoorDash, GrubHub, and Uber Eats are some of the top food delivery apps on the market right now.
Looking to expand beyond fast food delivery? Check out InstaCart and Shipt. These services pay you to shop for groceries and hand-deliver them to customers.
There’s also Saucey, which is exclusively for alcohol deliveries, and if you want to drive for Amazon using your car, there’s Amazon Flex.
Add it all up, and there’s never been an easier time to make money as a delivery driver.
3. Take Online Surveys
Best for Busy People
Have a packed schedule and simply need to bring in some extra money? Consider taking online surveys for money.
Online surveys only take a few minutes at a time to complete. It’s easy to work them into a busy lifestyle. You can take them from your living room sofa, when you’re waiting for the bus, or when you sit down to gobble down your lunch.
Survey payouts typically range from $2 to $10, and they vary from provider to provider. Swagbucks is a leading survey provider with a stellar reputation. In addition to surveys, Swagbucks also pays you to watch videos, play games, and surf the web. Not bad!
Other sites to check out include Survey Junkie, InboxDollars, and LifePoints.
4. Walk Dogs
Best for Animal Lovers
When you’re a pet sitter, you’ll rarely have a ruff day at the office (ba-dum-tss).
Get this: You can make $15 per hour or more walking, feeding, and spending time with pets. Most of the time, you won’t have to even deal with owners when working as a dog walker. People typically leave a key out for caretakers. So you just have to pop in and out.
If you’re an animal lover looking for extra cash, Rover and Care.com are two great apps that can connect you with pet owners in your area. You can also use Facebook to find potential customers in your network.
If you can find people directly, you won’t have to pay commission fees. Unfortunately, Rover takes 20% of every walk.
5. Freelance Writer or Graphic Designer
Best for Creative Types
There are many types of freelance jobs out there for creative professionals. Think: technical writer, social media manager, web developer, or graphic designer, to name just a few.
Some writing jobs require little to no human interaction, while others require more immersive roles.
Fiverr and Upwork are two leading job apps for freelancing. You can also potentially find work on Craigslist, too.
Freelance writing and graphic design jobs typically enable you to set your own hourly or per-project rate.
As a disclaimer, working as a freelancer is hard work. It’s possible to succeed in this field, but it takes a lot of determination. If you’re persistent and have the right attitude, this home job may be worth exploring!
6. Work as an Actuary
Best for Number Crunchers
Are you the type of person who is happiest with a calculator, spreadsheet full of numbers, and cold, hard data? If that sounds like you, you might love working as an actuary.
An actuary uses data to help companies conceptualize risk. For example, you may plan and administer a pension or insurance program for your clients.
Actuaries typically work as consultants. You can most likely work from home and provide on-site consultations on an as-needed basis.
You can find great actuary jobs on sites like LinkedIn or Indeed. If you have a statistical background, consider launching your independent consulting firm.
This will require professional certification, but the payout could be worth it.
7. Become a Transcriptionist
Best for People with Great Hearing
You may not enjoy talking with people, but you can still make money listening to them talk by working as an audio transcriptionist.
Audio transcriptionists take audio and video files and turn them into written text.
For example, companies often need to transform podcasts, keynote speeches, customer conversations, and customer interviews into text form. Medical transcriptionists are also in high demand.
Scribie is an app that pays $5 to $25 per audio hour—a decent rate for transcription services! Plus, you can work from your kitchen table or home office.
8. Work the Night Shift as a Security Guard
Best for Night Owls
If you’re trying to avoid working with people, then working as a security guard at night can be the gig of a lifetime.
You can get a job working at a desk where you’ll be free to read books, drink coffee, and monitor cameras.
Or, you can work at a gatehouse, where the only interaction you’ll have to do is check people’s IDs from time to time.
Guard Grabber is a great resource for finding security gigs. Craigslist, Indeed, and ZipRecruiter are all potential sources for security jobs as well.
9. Paint Houses
Best for People Who like Hands-on Work
Not all painting jobs require large crews. You can paint fences, steps, interior, and even exterior surfaces on your own. It just requires the ability to work quickly and efficiently.
You can also launch your own painting company and make a theoretically unlimited amount of money. This doesn’t require any certification, either. The tradeoff is you’ll have to find your own clients, which can be tricky.
Here’s a Pro Tip: Join forces with someone who flips houses in your area and needs a steady painter. This way, you can land recurring gigs.
10. Review Music
Best for Music Lovers
Artists depend on honest feedback when making new music. It’s not always easy to tell how fans will feel about a particular track or album.
Luckily, you can help by listening to music and writing reviews. This is a job that doesn’t require working with people. Simply listen to a track and explain your thoughts to readers. One such site that gives you opportunities is SlicethePie, which pays between $0.02 and $0.20 per track.
Similarly, Playlist Push is a site that rewards you for having Spotify or Apple Music playlists. If you have at least 400 followers, artists will pay you to review music. You can earn up to $12 per song.
Learn More:
11. Fix Computers
Best for Technical People
Great at fixing computer issues? It’s time to put this skill to use.
This home job requires almost no social interaction other than providing basic customer service and listening to people walk you through their problems.
You can either work for a local computer repair company, join a national provider like Geek Squad, or start your own business.
If you work for yourself, you can control pricing and determine the level of customer interaction that you want.
12. Repair Cars
Best for Gearheads
Right now the US has a growing mechanic shortage. By 2024, the US will be short about 642,000 automotive, collision, and diesel specialists.
In other words, if you know how to work with cars, it shouldn’t be hard to find work. For example, you can land gigs through YourMechanic.
On this site, you can earn up to $70 per hour, which is two to three times what shops typically pay. Plus, you can work flexible hours on nights and weekends and be your own boss as a business owner.
Best of all, you’ll work with car engines—not people. And cars can’t talk back.
13. Invest in Stocks
Best for People Who Are Serious About Making Money
Investing is one of the smartest ways to make money—period.
Few other professions can offer the types of gains that you can make in the stock market. And you don’t need to be a financial professional to do it, either.
To begin, open an account through a service like Schwab, TD Ameritrade, and Fidelity.
Consider opening a retirement account like an IRA or Roth IRA to minimize taxes and starting a taxable brokerage account for short- to medium-term investing.
After that, fund your account and consider starting with low-cost index funds and ETFs. This can give you broad market exposure and spread your risk around. Add individual stocks as you research and get more comfortable with the market.
Learn More:
14. Invest in Real Estate
Best for People Who Want to Diversify Their Portfolios
In addition to investing in the stock market, you can also make money by investing in real estate.
When investing in real estate, you can control how much human interaction you want. If you don’t want to deal with other people at all, then put your money into real estate investment trusts (REITs). You can buy these funds through a brokerage or platforms like CrowdStreet and Fundrise.
By law, REITs have to pay at least 90% of taxable income to shareholders through dividends. So it’s a great way to earn a steady cash flow (as long as the REIT does well, that is!).
If you have enough cash and don’t mind dealing with people when buying, renting, and repairing homes, then you may want to look into purchasing physical real estate investment properties.
15. Mow Lawns
Best for People Who Don’t Have Allergies
I can see it now: You’re sitting on top of a John Deere tractor. Blades of freshly cut grass are blowing in your wake. Mowing lawns may seem like a summer job for high schoolers, but people who mow lawns can earn some serious money.
If you’re interested, all you need to do is find a few steady customers with nice lawns and you could be on your way to making a steady income.
People always need to cut their lawns, regardless of the economy. Learn how to mow a great lawn, make some local connections in your neighborhood, and pretty soon you’ll be chopping your way to profits.
Here’s an easy way to start: Knock on a neighbor’s door, introduce yourself, and ask how much they pay for lawn care. Then offer to beat the price.
Chances are you’ll get the job—or at least give the homeowner an option when they grow tired of their current solution.
16. Work as a Blogger
Best for Subject Matter Experts and Creatives
Think about something you know better than anyone else. Maybe it’s comic books or kitchen supplies. Maybe you know how to maintain a great beard. Or, you know how to distill bourbon.
Take that knowledge and try your hand at blogging. You can earn money blogging in two different ways:
First, you can try affiliate marketing. Simply embed an affiliate link that goes to product pages (e.g., on Amazon). If someone clicks on a link and buys something, you’ll get a kickback.
One easy way to find affiliates is to work with a provider like Impact. This company links brands with affiliate marketers.
Second, you can also make money through Google AdSense. Google will essentially place targeted ads on your website and give you a cut of the proceeds when people click your links or view your ads.
17. Rent Your Car on Turo
Best for At-Home Workers with Cars
If you’re at home working alone, you probably don’t need your car during the day. You’re in luck. This is an opportunity to make money.
The Turo app turns your car into a money-making machine when it’s not in use. This app lets you list your vehicle so that others can find and rent it.
Using Turo, you can set the hourly rate and set your own rules. And if you use a lockbox, you don’t even have to meet the renter.
Turo provides insurance, so you won’t be liable if someone does something reckless. It’s a safe and efficient way to start making money with your vehicle when you’re not driving it.
18. Livestream Video Games
Best for Gamers
Like cruising around causing mayhem in Grand Theft Auto V or besting n00bs in League of Legends?
Open up a Twitch account and start broadcasting your content. If your content is entertaining, or you’re just plain great at video games, you could wind up piling up subscribers. Get enough subscribers, and you could be on a pathway to profits before you know it.
First, focus on becoming a Twitch Affiliate by racking up 500 minutes of broadcasted gameplay. You’ll also need 50 followers. Once that’s done, you can get subscribers to your channel to receive recurring payments. You’ll receive a 5% revenue share for purchases that originate from your page.
If you’re successful enough, you can also make money by becoming a Twitch partner. Who knows? This could lead to advertising and sponsorship opportunities.
19. Be a Virtual Assistant
Best for People Who Don’t Mind Interacting
When working as a virtual assistant, you’ll have to interact with people from time to time, setting up meetings and possibly taking calls.
That said, you can work from the comfort of your own home. The work is usually pretty flexible and mostly involves performing simple administrative tasks.
ZipRecruiter is a great place to find virtual assistant jobs where you can work alone. You can expect to make $18 to $20 in this line of work.
20. Start a Podcast
Best for People with Large Social Audiences
There’s no getting around it: Starting a podcast is no easy feat.
That said, launching a podcast is a lot easier if you’re already well-known in your industry or social group. You will likely be able to attract followers based on your name and content alone.
For example, maybe you are a well-known teacher or personality in your community. Or maybe you’re a musician or artist with a passion for the craft and a lot of knowledge to share.
If you’re thinking about launching a podcast, Podbean has a great primer on how to get started. With a computer, microphone, and some audio equipment, you can make a podcast and start producing your material.
Once you get a few episodes down and build up some subscribers, you can attract advertising and potentially start raking in cash from your program.
To keep your podcast fresh, you may want to bring in guests from time to time for different perspectives.
21. Sell Photos Online
Best for Photography Lovers
Many of the pictures that you see on professional websites come from everyday photographers. Examples may include pictures of flowers, beaches, animals, or parks.
All you need is a decent camera and an eye for detail to start making money from photographs as a freelance photographer.
If this sounds interesting to you, go out and take some photos, and submit them to a site like Shutterstock. If the website accepts your work, it’s possible to earn a royalty every time a person or company downloads your images. This can lead to passive income.
Shutterstock pays 25 to 38 cents per download. Over time, this can add up—especially if you successfully apply to multiple sites. In addition to Shutterstock, check out Adobe Stock, Alamy, and iStockphoto to get a better idea of your options.
22. Perform Data Entry
Best for Patient People
Companies need data entry specialists to enter and update databases. For example, a healthcare company may need you to enter patient data into their system.
This position involves taking data from paper and entering it into a computer manually. The work is tedious, but if you can enter data without making mistakes, then you may be a good fit for this line of work.
This is usually a solo job that you can do in your spare time.
23. Become a Truck Driver
Best for People Who Love the Open Road
Trucks play a vital role in the economy. Without trucks, products wouldn’t be able to get from distribution centers to stores and customers.
There are many types of trucks on the road today, including tankers, dry vans, flatbeds, and reefers, to name just a few.
One thing to keep in mind is that truck driving is tougher than it looks. It requires long hours and possibly spending time away from family and friends. You’ll also need a commercial driver’s license.
But if you land the right gig, you can get steady pay and benefits. Interested in learning more? Head over to AllTruckJobs to browse openings.
24. Work as a Bookkeeper
Best for People with Financial Experience
Companies depend on bookkeepers to record daily financial transactions. Bookkeepers feed information to accountants, who use the information to compile financial reports and keep the company in a strong monetary position.
This is ideal for people with financial backgrounds who are meticulous about record keeping. If you’re interested, it pays to have financial training and experience.
25. Be a Proofreader
Best for People with Editorial Experience
When publishing digital content, companies need to be very careful about their messaging. Marketing, sales, and web copy need to be grammatically correct and in line with company messaging and standards.
This is where proofreaders come into the equation. Proofreaders edit copy and make sure that it’s clean before it goes live.
If this sounds interesting to you, check out the best proofreading jobs online.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should Introverts Work as Software or Web Developers?
On one hand, working as a programmer or web developer can be a great job or side hustle for introverts. It requires long hours in front of the computer, and the work is highly technical.
At the same time, working in web or software development can require a fair amount of teamwork and collaboration. Most companies making software are now trying to make programmers work more closely together.
As such, this line of work may require communication and teamwork.
Can You Teach English Online without Students?
Unless you set up a video course on a site like YouTube, you’ll have to work with other people when teaching English online.
Online courses are immersive and engaging. So, if you’re thinking about this line of work, just know that you’ll have to talk to a bunch of people.
Do Social Media Managers Work by Themselves?
It largely depends on the size of the company. Social media managers that work with small businesses often work on their own. On the other hand, big companies tend to have dedicated social teams for their social media platforms..
Every company is unique, and you need to adjust your expectations accordingly.
Would You Prefer to Work Alone?
If you aren’t a people person or have a disability that makes social interaction tricky, then you shouldn’t have to put up with a challenging work environment. It’s that simple.
Instead of just resigning to the fact that you have to work with people, look for a job that matches your personality or needs.
Believe it or not, it’s possible to make a full-time income—and even a six-figure income—working an online job from home. Many of my good friends have done just that.
Making money online is possible whether you have a high school diploma, a bachelor’s degree, or an even higher level of education.
Who knows? Your next side hustle could lead to a steady part-time or full-time job where you can work alone.
Poke around and see what opportunities you can uncover. Take my word for it: It’s amazing what you can find on the internet and the kind of connections that you can make.
Never forget to keep your eyes on the prize. After all, your ultimate goal is financial independence. By eliminating a distracting or difficult work environment, you’ll be happier and more productive—which means you’ll be bringing in more money.
With all this in mind, there’s only one thing left to do: Find the best job that lets you work alone. Once you’ve done that, find another and another. Sooner or later, you’ll have a bona fide business and you’ll be well on your way to financial independence.
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