Im an ex cop and I went to college on a baseball scholarship. The combination of those and other adventures has taken a toll on my body. Im 47 Years old but I feel like Im 80. Im far from lazy and Im willing to work hard at whatever I can. Is it possible to make money from home on the internet. I mean something legit, not one these rip-offs that want money to “give you the secret”.
Is there anything I can do from home? Just something I can do to supplement my income. Thank you
Advice threads are best suited to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Yes, of course it is possible to make money through a job you do at home via the Internet. The question is, are you qualified for those jobs? What skills do you have? What kind of work are you expecting to do? What kind of pay do you expect?
Like any job – actually, even more so – nobody is going to point out a guaranteed position to you, except possibly the ones that really suck. You need to go out and beat the bushes to find a position, even a part time one. Keep in mind you’re competing not only nationally but with people who are in other countries as well. If the work can be done online, it can be done anywhere that someone has a computer. This means that the really low-skill gruntwork like copying and pasting into a form ends up paying very little; say, $1 an hour, because someone in Bulgaria or Thailand will do it for that much. Also, keep in mind that very few online jobs are actually employer/employee situations; most are contractual, which means few protections for you. It probably is not too surprising that the economic downturn has made opportunities scarce, since a lot more people are looking for ways of earning side money (or just any money at all), so it’s a bit rough out there right now.
Good places to start looking are forums – I’ve had luck especially with work-at-home-parent forums and online content creation forums (Digital Point, especially). You can also start looking at freelance sites where you get hired on a per-project basis, like Elance and oDesk.
In my own case, over the years, I’ve done a ton of different things, from writing articles, to mystery shopping, to working for search engines, to being a paid community moderator. I’ve also seen a good number of opportunities in doing customer service work as well, though I haven’t done it myself. It’s not easy or quick and requires you to market yourself a lot, and to constantly watch for opportunities. Unless you can arrange a long-term position - which is, again, fairly rare - it’s more like having your own business, with you as the product you’re selling.
All warnings aside, freelance work I do via the Internet has made up a significant portion of my income over the past few years. Right now I’d estimate it at around 15%.
Can you clarify what you are looking for, as far as work online?
Are you looking for job style work where you log in, do work by the hour, and get paid, or would you like to start up a small online business and make money that way?
As for work-at-home type jobs, there are some legitimate ones, but also alot of scams. Clark Howard is a syndicated consumer advocate radio host, and has a good list of opportunities here. Most of the jobs are call center type work, but there are some other types out there. For example, I worked for a while for a site kgbanswers.com (similar to chacha.com) researching answers to questions, but my net hourly rate was pathetic ($2-2.50) so it didn’t last long.
As for starting your own thing, you could always build your own site or blog to either sell things online, or just make it popular enough that you could get enough revenue from selling advertising space. You just have to have a good idea, and possibly a little startup cash if you’re not familiar with making content on the web.
Freelance writing and editing…there’s a lot of poorly-paid gigs but you can make serious bank with some. I’ve never done this: but I know someone who makes very good money being a medical transcriptionist. Someone else I know supplements her income by taking calls for QVC. If you have a good niche product, you can do well on eBay.
And all the questions fluiddruid asked. There’s a plethora of legit forums and sites that post or discuss work-at-home/online gigs. For a while I subscribed to a service that delivered dozens of job ads to my inbox every day - google virtual vocations. Rat Race Rebellion is free and a pretty good site as well.
While there are a lot of scams, common sense is really enough to get by. If the ad doesn’t really tell you about the type of work or emphasizes huge gains, it’s a scam. If you’re expected to pay up-front to work, it’s generally a scam. Real opportunities tend to look like real work ads - a description of the skills needed, some description of the work. If it sounds like a sales pitch, it’s a scam.