I don't have the knowledge or experience to contribute much to prepping questions, but this is something I can throw out there to maybe help a prepper or two.
I was thrown into the position of being sole provider for a while, and it took a lot of scrambling to find ways to work from home because our local job economy is nonexistent. None of these are scams or schemes and come from my own personal experience and none of them require up front investments - just a computer and Internet.
Search Engine Rating
There are three main companies that contract for the major search engines (Google and Bing). They hire human raters to evaluate web pages for relevancy to a search term. Some have other projects but that's the part I have experience in. They require you to sign a nondisclosure agreement so I can't talk about the work or pay specifically; just point you to their sites where you can apply.
https://www.leapforceathome.com/qrp/public/jobs/list
I worked for Leapforce first, for probably a year or so. There was plentiful work and unless they've changed, they allow you to work full time.
Careers - Lionbridge Technologies
I work for Lionbridge now and am overall fairly satisfied. You can only work part time here, but I find that I enjoy the work far more than I did for LF. When I first applied, I found their job listings confusing and just emailed them - they sent me an application link for the correct job.
Appen Careers - Appen
I have never worked for ABH but have a friend who does and he says they're great at communicating and put a lot of time and effort into training their workers.
If you are familiar with search engines and have a fairly analytical mind, you can do these jobs. They all have very stringent quality standards and it's not unheard of to be let go with no notice. I don't depend on the income but use it while I've got it.
Feel free to PM me for more info, but do look at their websites first to see what they have to say.
Writing
There is
so much money to be made in freelance writing if you're willing to put the time and effort into it. To get started, you can work for content mills that do the marketing for you and pay a small price per word for the work you do. The articles you write at these places are not creatively satisfying really, because they're keyword stuffed for business content sites. Expect to write 100 articles on "bankruptcy attorney los angeles" or some such nonsense. That being said, there is decent money if you can type fast and have high school English proficiency. (I've also hired writers from these places, and I contest that fact, because I've received some really crummy stuff
)
Textbroker
This is my favorite. They have a lot of writer-friendly features that make it easy to grow your own writing business and they have better volume than the others.
The Content Authority
TCA pays terribly to start but you can go up quickly to a livable rate and they also ghostwrite ebooks so you can get some larger jobs.
Content Marketing Software | Writer Marketplace
You can find some incredibly good (for these types of sites) paying gigs here, but they get snapped up very quickly.
There are a ton of content mills but you need to research each one because some are scams. The three I linked are legit. I've never not been paid. TB pays weekly even, so it's not a bad idea to sign up and jump on there any time cash is tight and you need a boost.
I made some decent money writing for clients when I had the time. Once hubs left for work I quit writing because I had no time, but I built a portfolio website with writing samples and then advertised in several cities on Craigslist. I charged far above what the content mills pay and got to pick and choose my projects.
Kindle
I saved the best for last. Really, there are few online business models so easy and instantly successful as writing books for Kindle. I don't market or spend any time -- that is, no time at all, ever -- on my books once they're published and I make a few hundred a month. My smallest books are something like 20 pages and still sell. I don't calculate my income based on monthly but in how much time and cost I've invested in each book. I have one dud but the rest are giving me a return so far of $35-$100/hour for the time I spent writing them, and the income continues. If you can write at all, do some serious looking into Kindle. I'll help if I can.
Anyway, I know there are some folks on here who need some options. They won't necessarily get you rich (except Kindle) but they can add a decent sum to put toward prepping or whatever.
