Like most of the world, I spent yesterday at home. I slept in, actually made my bed and then cracked open my laptop. The first thing I looked at was my website traffic on google analytics. I was shocked. Organic traffic on my website increased by 145% without any increase in marketing efforts.
The Pandemic has driven the world to spend more time online. While retail and service industries struggle, other businesses have seen a significant increase in performance. Now may be the perfect time to finally start that side hustle.
Significant change always causes disruption — and opportunity.
Over the past few days I have began to research industries that are thriving in the wake of this global tragedy. I have began to compile a list of opportunities for people working at home. The uncertain job market has flooded the hiring world with new applications. Competition for jobs and prolonged social distancing makes it increasingly more difficult to find traditional work. There are however, a number of ways to turn change into opportunity.
Here are five ways to create alternative revenue streams during the global quarantine.
1. Become a Remote Personal Trainer (Specialize in workouts you can do from home)
There is an entire community of regular gym-goers that are now forced to remain home. They are actively looking for ways to continue a healthy workout routine without the luxury of the gym. In fact, it is estimated that there are 62 million people that attend the gym on a regular basis. That is 62 million people that are now searching the internet for alternative options.
Over the past 30 days here is the volume of people searching for ‘home workouts’:
Becoming a personal trainer could help these people stay motivated to workout without having to go to the gym.
Many have also cancelled their gym membership and may be willing to spend that money elsewhere. The huge influx in people looking for alternative workout opportunities leaves room for a lot of creativity in the personal health space. Creating any sort of content geared to this market could see impressive results as demand for content outgrows the amount content that is currently available.
Becoming a remote trainer is not the only way to engage the home gym market. Recording home workout videos, writing blogs and creating courses are just some of the ways to help people be better at working out from home.
2. Start a Cooking Channel or Recipe Blog
The world is not visiting restaurants. Millions of people are currently learning (some for the first time) how to cook great meals at home. Although the market is already saturated with cooking tutorials, there are now millions of new beginners looking for content. This creates a gap in the current available content and what people are now actually looking for.
There has not been a better time in the last ten years to create a cooking or recipe blog or home chef content.
Most of the current cooking content has been consumed by the same demographic for a long time. Now that millions more are cooking from home, it creates a unique opportunity to reach new people with cooking/baking content. There are people looking for home food preparation content that have never previously been interested in the world of home meal preparation.
Here is the increase in volume for people searching ‘easy home recipes’ in the last 30 days:
In contrast, here are the results for ‘restaurants near me’ in the last 30 days:
Blogs and content about, ‘how to create restaurant quality meals at home’ and, ‘cooking for beginners’ will fair very well in this changing social landscape.
3. Create and Sell Online Courses
The one thing people have in abundance during the pandemic — is time. Many have begun to seek out new skills and hobbies as a way to fill the hours. This is an opportunity to use sites like,
to create and teach courses about things that others may want to know.
The current market for online courses is robust but most are surrounded by making money. Many people during the social distancing period may be looking for ways to simply pass the time. This creates a larger market for courses that teach less profitable hobbies or skills.
Courses that teach things that people will enjoy learning will surge.
4. Become a Digital Communication Consultant
There are currently tens of thousands of companies and individuals struggling to learn how to effectively communicate online. Organizations that have never before had to work remotely are now scrambling to find the best tools, systems and processes to communicate well from their homes.
Digital communication consultants will be hired by the thousands.
In the past three days, I have received four unsolicited calls asking for the best practices to run a business remotely. This mentality will only increase in the coming days as poor digital communication begins to take chunks out of companies revenue.
Teaching companies how to effectively use tools like,
will become more than a part time job. Teaching digital communication has the potential to become one of the most important and high demand jobs during this period of remote work.
Here is the search trend for ‘how to work remotely’ in the last 12 months:
The insanely high increase in the amount of people looking for this kind of content creates a huge opportunity to fill the demand.
For the world to keep working, it will need people to help educate on the best ways to run a business without anyone on the team being in the same room. Meetings are no longer in-person affairs. This will create a huge need for digitally savvy people to step in and help out.
5. Become a Freelance Writer/Start a Blog
The amount of content the world is consuming is skyrocketing during the age of social distancing. Bloggers and freelancers that were previously unnoticed are getting traction as more people search for things to read.
Although ad revenue will most likely continue to fall, the demand for good content has not been this high for years
Now is the time to get your name out there as a writer. If you have started a blog or tried to freelance write before, I am sure you can relate to the struggle of getting your work noticed and building a readership. As the habits of the world begin to change, so will people’s reading habits.
Due to higher consumption rates, your writing now has a much higher rate of getting noticed. Building a readership is never easy, but in the wake of global quarantine, it has become much more attainable.
The coronavirus will change the world. Anxiety, stress and fear are becoming more and more real for many during the uncertain times.
Things will normalize in the coming months but they will never be completely the same. If the virus will impact the world is no longer the question. How we respond to the pandemic however, is still up to us.
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