My husband lost his job a few years ago. He found another one but it did not pay much. The advantage was he was working from home so no gas costs. They just cut his pay by 1/3 so he started looking again and just found another job but it's temp to hire so there goes our insurance again and I'm in the middle of some medical testing. It also means we have to pay for gas and we do NOT have a gas efficient car and can't afford to buy one. So, I need to make at least $500 a month from somewhere, either mturk or go out and find a job. Then, of course, I'd have to pay for gas too. I've been reading some of the threads here and seeing many who make over $500 a mo easily and I'm wondering how you do it. Batch work was mentioned. What is batch work and what kind are you doing? I have done some transcription but those take me a LOT of time and I don't think they're worth it. I have been doing surveys and finally talked my husband into joining and doing some stuff on here to supplement his pay. Some of those are really easy. I have also done some 25 sec clip transcriptions. I like those because I can do a few and leave them if I need to. The longer transcriptions usually take me close to the time allotted so I don't take breaks or anything. I have to stop and start a lot because I have critters to care for and my dad. I make him a big lunch every day or he wouldn't eat much. We lost my mom last year and he doesn't cook. . . at all. Linda
$500 a month is easy, thats only $16 a day. You could make that much a day just doing surveys, even on the weekend (the slowest time) The trick is to do everything, and don't get discouraged.
set a dollar amount goal for yourself. i try to knock off 5-10 bucks worth of surveys in the morning, usually a couple hours. i hit it 9-11 after the kids are at school. then any time i come back to the comp during the day, knock off another dollar, couple 50 cent surveys whatever. later in the evening i'll do batch work. those are hits that pay low individually, but you can do a ton of them in a short period of time, like eyeapps rating pictures, or extracting items from receipts, or checking google results, running searches, all sorts of stuff. also, short transcription tasks, if you look for mid to high priority batches of 25-35 second audio clips, you can burn those out relatively fast. play with the different sort options, i try to take one day a week looking for new batch work and quals, and always always watch what's said in the greatest hits thread, if someone refers to a requestor that sounds interesting, monitor that page, take a look around, email them a request for whatever qualifications they offer. you're an independant contractor, sometimes, you've got to hunt for the money
I have kinda set $10 as my dollar amount goal but I keep falling short. There just aren't enough hours in the day. I've been doing the 25 to 35 sec transcription clips. I like those because I can do some and go do other things do more and go to other stuff. I have looked for surveys paying at lest 50 cents. They usually take 15 min so that's about $2 an hour. Every now and then I find one that only takes a few min or the $1 ones take 30 min so same same $2 an hour. The searches I've found really long and time consuming especially for the pay. Maybe I'm not doing them right and I do do some business card HITs now and then because I can do those pretty quickly but they are pretty low paying at like 2 cents each. The receipts I look for the 1 - 2 item ones otherwise they can be really really long and take me forever to do for what they pay. If I'm having trouble finding something to do I'll resort to the cuny speech transcriptions for 70 cents. They can be pretty easy and don't take too long but they take forever to pay. I am learning, here, on the forum. I just found this. I'm also thinking about live opps as a possibility but I have dogs and you just never know when they're going to decide to bark. I don't have a sound proof room in my house so anywhere I am, if they started in, you'd be able to hear them.
search by stuff you qual worth at least a dollar, then sort by least time alloted. that'll get you surveys worth more that take less time, if you've got over a hundred approved in you'll qual for the majority of them, even if you don't you'll qual for a lot. after you've caught up all the surveys out of it you can just sort by "newest" and catch a lot that don't get posted here. I like to monitor things i qual for worth over 2.00 as well, there's not very many of those, and the majority you can't actually do, but you'll also occasionally catch really interesting or well paying bits- 5.00 surveys, better than average transcriptions. i don't normally need to touch surveys under a dollar, except for awful slow days like saturday.
Hi Linda. I feel you on the dogs thing. I work at home (I've got lupus and severe heat & light sensitivity) and also have a big dog. He's not barky, but he does light up when someone comes up my stairs, or when he hears people yelling outside. MAYBE you could get one of the dogs certified as a service dog. Then how could anyone say "must have quiet, pet-free environment"? Just a thought.