Are you looking for the best jobs that pay $26,000 a year without a college degree?
You’re not alone.
These are some of the jobs that can make you up to $26k dollars in one year without the need for you to apply to get them or study for college exams or bag a degree from an educational/academic institute.
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Earning $26,000 dollars a year is not a big deal with these jobs, you could make more.
Or less.
It’s totally dependent on how much passion and determination you pour into the jobs or businesses.
That’s what matters.
Your zeal.
That said, here are 9 best jobs that pay $26,000 a year without a degree.
9 Best Jobs that Pay $26,000 a Year without a College Degree.
1. Niche blogging.
Niche blogging is what almost every successful blogger is into right now.
This is the art of creating a blog and focusing on a niche with that blog.
For example, you could create a blog and just write about anything that flows into your mind.
There’s no focus in this case.
A niche blog has focus.
It could be a gardening blog, a legal blog, a blog about health, pets, parenting, fashion, or any other industry.
Once there’s an industry and people can tell what it is in one word, then there’s a niche.
If you’re looking for self-employed jobs that can generate passive income, niche blogging is on the list.
With that said, you need to love writing if you want to create a niche blog, unless you have the funds to order content from content writing agencies.
If you want to create a successful blog and you don’t know how to, I’ve put everything you need to know right in this guide.
2. Affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is a great online job.
You don’t need to apply with your college credentials to become an affiliate marketer.
Once you have an online leverage like a huge social media page, a highly trafficked blog or popular YouTube channel, you can sign up to promote products for different companies.
Hence, you become an affiliate marketer earning commissions off the sales of affiliate products.
For example, if you’re promoting a product worth $200 dollars with a commission rate of 20%, you get $40 dollars for every sale.
To make more money, you only want to promote high commission rate affiliate products that are also worth a lot of money.
3. Digital marketing.
Digital marketing is the art of marketing anything using digital or online tools.
And strategies.
That said, you can make a ton of money as a digital marketer helping out clients (or businesses) with their online/digital goals.
First of all, you need to become a digital marketer.
Once you’re good at digital marketing, then you can source for digital marketing gigs on places like Craigslist, Fiverr, and even using Google Jobs.
For sure, you’ll be able to generate a lot of money and get paid up to 6 figures in one year.
It’s one of the best self-employed jobs that pay $26,000 a year without a degree.
Actually, it can pay more.
4. Freelancing.
If you’re really good at anything pertaining to digital activities, then you can sell your skills.
Freelancing is free to start with.
You’ll need to be good at what you do to become a freelancer or to sell your skill.
If your question is “can I make $26,000 a year with freelancing”?
Yes, you can.
To get started as a freelancer, simply sign up on any of these freelance marketplaces:
- Upwork
- Fiverr
- Guru
- Peopleperhour
- Freelancer
- Toptal
These are some of the biggest freelance marketplaces in the world wide web.
And you can register for free to get started.
There’s how to do freelancing the right way so that you don’t end up wasting your time on these platforms.
While there are lots of freelancers on these platforms, you can stand out by making your portfolio really captivating.
And charging low fees could scare away potential freelance employers with really complicated but expensive projects.
5. YouTube.
One of the best self-employed jobs that pay $26,000 a year without a degree is YouTube channel monetization.
This is free to get started with, and all you need to do is create a YouTube channel, monetize it and start making money.
That’s simple in theory, but it takes time to actually start making a cent with YouTube.
Free, but you’ll need to create videos and upload frequently on your channel.
First things first, you have to pick a niche for your YouTube channel.
Once that’s done, identify topics that haven’t yet been covered.
Create the best videos and kaboom! With time, you’ll record tremendous success.
Only with time.
On YouTube, there are probably millions of YouTubers already, and you can thrive with the best content consistently being uploaded on your channel.
While there are lots of ways to make money with a YouTube channel, the primary way to make money is with display ads on your channels.
This is only possible after reaching 1k subscribers and having opened your channel for more than 6 months.
There’s also a 4,000 watch hour criteria, meaning that your content must have been watched more than 4,000 hours.
You can sell your products through your YouTube channel, sell courses, and also promote private businesses for money in the form of an intro, outro or brief commercial within the video.
6. Airbnb.
Got an apartment?
Then you can make $29,000 a year leasing out your apartment on Airbnb.
It’s free to get started, you just need to have an apartment of your own.
Depending on the convenience and location of your apartment, you can get paid up to $200 dollars per night by strangers.
Yes, people are in search of places to relax for the night in your city.
Travelers and other visitors.
And you can cash out big time using your own apartment.
It definitely won’t be easy to get clients every single day.
But you’ll get more with a better apartment, and fittings.
7. Amazon FBA.
Amazon FBA on the one hand is one of the self-employed jobs that can make up to $26,000 a year for you.
And you don’t have to go to college to learn to make it happen.
There are lots of tutorials about Amazon FBA already, but the concept is simple.
It’s about buying products from a supplier or ecommerce website and reselling the same products on Amazon at a higher rate.
So you can spend $3,000 to purchase products while you sell them off for $5,000+ on Amazon.
The challenge is surfing through to see what products can be bought for less and sold for more.
And on what other stores these products are.
8. Course sales.
If there’s something you’re really good at, then you can create a simple or complicated course around it to make money.
Thanks to online course sales platforms like Udemy and Coursera, you can upload your course online and make money from sales.
Truth is, you can actually make so much money if your course is a great one.
If it sells for up to $200 dollars, then people better get the best value off it.
Again, don’t just create a course and expect to start recording massive sales.
There’s a right way to create a course that really gets sold.
There’s a swarm of courses on too many topics out there already.
You want to make sure you’re coming into a space that already hasn’t been vastly covered.
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9. Barbering.
Running a barbing salon or a barbershop is one of the best self-employed jobs that pay $26,000 a year without a degree.
Realistically, you could make more money with your barbing business depending on how well you scale it, the design, and location.
When starting out a business or self-employed venture like this, you want to acquire the skill first.
Once you’ve gotten the skill, you can then start thinking about hiring more hands to get more things done.
So, if you cut hair for $50 on average, you’d make $500 a day cutting 10 clients.
And $250 a day cutting 5 clients.
Let’s work with the conservative figure of 5 clients a day.
This means you’ll be earning $1,250 in 5 days.
In a month, you get $6,500 in one month (with 26 working days).
And $78,000 in one year. Excluding a tax of 37% (on the high side), $49,140 would still be yours 100%.
9 Best Jobs that Pay $26,000 a Year without a College Degree – Final Words.
If you want to get paid $26k in a year without having for work with your college degree, then you can start a barbering business, launch your own blog, sell your course online, rent your apartment nightly on Airbnb, start a YouTube channel, do digital marketing for clients online, try out Amazon FBA, freelance your skills, and venture into affiliate marketing.
The truth with these hustles or jobs, or however you want to call them is that they can make you much more than $26,000 in a year.