What are your skills ? $500 a month is very achievable with a remote job since starting a business is a whole different ball game. If you are skilled enough, finding a $500 a month job/project is much easier.
I'm an accountant. Have been programming for years, paid college by hacking games and selling bots. Covid19 quarantine gave me the time to dive back in and actually relearning programming correctly, and rekindled my passion for it.
It's actually harder to find a remote job because if I work full time for someone else I will not settle for 500 and probably will not accept anything paying less that my job now.