If you’re reading this, chances are you have thought about how to ditch your office job in hopes of finding a way to stay home and make money. Well, let me tell ya, me too. I mean, trust me, I have done all of the research, I have looked through everything about surveys, transcribing, virtual assistants, blogging, Pinterest and so on. Here’s the thing, everyone tells you what you CAN make, not what you should actually expect. So, I’m going to go ahead and lay out my honest experiences, so far, and hopefully this allows you to find the right work at home job for you.
Transcribing
Alright, so transcribing seems to be the one that I’ve seen the most that is supposed to make you the most amount of money. Sure, it sounds great, you sit at home, listen to some audio files and retype them. Except it’s not. You get paid around .30 per audio minute, or for beginners some sites will pay you $20 per audio hour. Please remember that this is per minute of audio file, not per minute of you working on that audio file. You’re probably thinking, well, it can’t be that hard to type fast while I’m listening, and you’re right, it’s not. Except most of the transcribing sites have a lot of style formats, you have to know how and when to change speakers, what words you can and cannot include and so fourth. The other thing is that a lot of the times you can’t understand what is being said. It will either be muffled or you may not understand because of the speakers accents.
To be honest, I have read about a lot of people making good money from doing this. But, I have to wonder, how many hours per week do they spend doing this? Would it be better to just have a part time job serving at that point? I’m not saying to stay away from these jobs, I’m only telling you that this was not for me. If you can type fast, if you have the patience to sit and try to comprehend what you’re hearing when it’s hard to understand, and if you think that this is something that will work for you, then by all means. . . try it! It does have the potential to make you some good money. Go ahead and check out some of the following sites for transcribing: REV, TranscribeMe, QuickTate, Tigerfish, and there are many more.
Oh and please be aware that most of these places will want you to take a practice test to ensure that you would be a good transcriber.
Surveys
Surveys. . . this is the one that I thought sounded the best. When I first saw that you could take surveys and make money for doing so, I was ecstatic. Wouldn’t you be? It sounds perfect. . . let me just sit at home, with my cup of coffee in hand and fill out a few surveys, make some money and call it good. Ha, yeah right. Some surveys will pay up to a couple of dollars, but most of the time they are about .10 – .25, and they can take about 15-20 minutes, even though they pay so little.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I was so into the idea of making money completing surveys that I gave it multiple tries, I mean a lot of tries. I tried a bunch of different sites, and different methods and nothing seemed to work. The other thing is that a lot of these surveys want you to enter your personal information, which I don’t know about you, but I just don’t feel comfortable doing. Again, I have heard of people making some decent money doing this, but, I’m just not sure how accurate this is. Sure, if you are sitting at home and have nothing to do, you could fill out a few surveys and possibly make a couple of dollars, but in all honesty, there has to be something better that you can do with your time.
Now, if you’re a person who just LOVES surveys and you think that this would be a good fit for you, here are some places to check out: MySurvey, InboxDollars, SwagBucks, Vindale Research, and PineCone.
If you end up having success, please tell me about your journey with this!
User Testing
This is one of my favorite ways to make a little extra cash. If you haven’t heard of User Testing, it’s when you sign up for this site, take a little test to see if you would fit, and you basically test out other people’s websites. You will talk about loud as you work through the web page, answer their questions and give honest feedback.
They pay about $10 per test, which normally takes me about 10 minutes, and sometimes they pay more. The only problem is that they are sometimes few and far between, because you have to qualify for them, or match what the company is looking for. But, I just keep this open in the background, that way if something pops up, I can stop whatever I’m working on, see if I qualify and then make a quick ten bucks. It’s quite fun, too.
The only problem is that you do have to be able to articulate your thoughts well, and be able to speak the entire time you are doing a test, and you also have to have a quiet background.
I would suggest this one to everyone, it’s by far one of the easiest ways to make a little bit of money. Here are my favorite sites to use: UserTesting, and TryMyUI.
Captioning
Captioning is something that I actually just came across, I can’t really tell you whether or not it actually works yet. I just had to take the application test and then there are three other assessments after. However, from what I can tell it seems fairly easy. you just watch shows and caption them. I don’t truly know how good the money is yet, but this is something that I will keep everyone updated with. So if you haven’t already subscribe to my blog An Urchins Life and follow along. 🙂
Write a Book
Now, I know what you’re probably thinking, I don’t know what to write about, or I don’t have the time to write a book.
Here’s the thing, you don’t have to write anything too crazy, you can literally write a little short story, a self help book or a manual of some sort. Then you publish it on Amazon Kindle and you have the potential to make money. Obviously share it one Facebook, and with your friends and family that way you have more buyers.
This is something that I am currently working on and I am almost finished with, so I will keep you updated, as well!
Blogging
Oh, blogging. The one thing that everyone seems to be jumping on. Why is that exactly? Because it appears to be an easy way to make money. Well, let me tell you, I am new to this, so I haven’t set anything up yet to make money. However, it’s still not as easy as everyone makes it out to be.
So, as you all know by now, I have my own blog (thank you for reading, by the way). On my site, I talk about life and travels and I am just now adding a section to include about working and blogging. The reason being is that I have seen a lot of blogs about how to make your own blog, how to make money from blogging and so on. But, what I don’t usually see is the raw process. Well, that’s what I am going to do. As I blog, and figure out how to make money, if I can make money and, how to expand and so forth, I will take all of my readers along the journey. This is something that I think is important to show, I want you all to be there every step of the way, that way you can create your own blog and make money, or maybe you just learn from my mistakes, either way.
If this is something that interests you, please go ahead and subscribe at the bottom of my site An Urchins Life, to be included in this journey.
Also, please feel free to comment with questions, comments, or any suggestions below!
Thank you,
Victoria
