4:03am May 10, 2014

Spoonie Work From Home Master Post!

Hello my dear friends,

If you’re anything like me you’ve come to realize that working full-time is just not possible anymore, health-wise. Or maybe you’re just looking for a little extra income. I’ve been hunting down ways to make ends meet from home in the event that I have to leave my job. Here are some of the sites that I’ve found and what I think about them.

Please note: I haven’t tried any positions yet where you are an employee working from home, such as various websites that have call center workers working from home. If I end up trying those out, I’ll update this with that information. For now, I’ve been doing mostly independent contractor work.

SMARTPHONE APPS

Let me make this clear…you’re not going to get rich off of iPhone apps. But there are several ones out there that can help you get a dollar here and there, which we all know can make a difference in your life.

FEATUREPOINTS

I’ve been using FeaturePoints the longest of any of these apps, and I love it. You don’t make that much off of it, but it’s so easy and I do it so absent-mindedly that I appreciate the pennies I’m able to earn from it. So far, I’ve gotten about $15 by using it for about 5 minutes a day for the last couple of weeks. You can redeem it in gift cards or have it sent to your PayPal.

Essentially, you sign up for FeaturePoints and then get points every time you download one of their suggested apps. The apps are free and you can delete them after you use them for 1-2 minutes. They also have a great referral program. If you sign up, please use my referral code! The code is EGF7MX if you look it up by hand, or you can go to this link on your phone: http://featu.re/EGF7MX

FIELDAGENT

We’re working off of a ton of “things I just started tonight” right now, so bare with me. FieldAgent is an app where you are offered tasks based on where you live. Reportedly, most of the jobs can be done from home, but occasionally involve going to different stores to take pictures of certain items or displays. Each task pays between $2-$8!

1Q

This is one you’re never going to make much off of, but it’s so simple it may be worth it. In this app, you literally just answer a question and then receive a dollar. The trick is that you don’t get offered questions that often — I haven’t gotten one yet after downloading it a couple hours ago, and I saw a blog post where someone said they had one question for the first several days they had the app. However, the money goes directly to your PayPal account and each question takes about a minute to answer. Even if it’s infrequent…it’s practically free money.

KIIP KUDOS

This app runs itself. I haven’t quite figured out how it works yet, but read blog articles where others have reported slowly but surely getting gift cards. You connect it to your social media sites (the options are Twitter, Foursquare, Linkedin, Facebook and Instagram) and you get rewards for different actions on social media. You don’t even have to touch the app after connecting your profiles. Like I said…haven’t figured this one out yet. But I’ve been reassured by several work-from-homers I’ve found on the Internet that they have received mp3 credits, little gift cards, etc. Seems worth it to me!

SHOPKICK

Another one I haven’t quite figured out, but I’m assured is legit. You download the app and get “kicks” for walking into certain stores. I’m told pretty much anywhere you regularly do shopping will be on the app. You can also earn extra points for scanning certain items at the stores (you don’t have to buy them, just record them in the app). Once you earn enough kicks, you can get rewarded in gift cards. Seems easy enough to me.

FREELANCING

Freelance writing is difficult, but if you’re a strong, relatively fast writer, you can make a little chunk of money from various freelance websites. I’m just getting into this, so I will have to update this post later with how it turns out for me.

BLOGMUTT.COM

BlogMutt is a unique freelancing website for blogs. You sign up and are “screened” (it’s an incredibly quick approval process — I was approved within a couple of hours). Companies post keywords they’d like to blog about, with some much more specific than others. You can write a blog post, and the company can either accept or reject it. If it’s accepted, you earn $8 per article. The majority of the articles that are accepted tend to be between 300-500 words, so it is not a bad pay rate. If your article is rejected, you can repurpose it and try to sell it to another requester. They brag an 90% overall eventual acceptance rate of articles.

Like I said, I just started on this one, but I’ve pounded out eight articles over the last two days, which would get me a nice $64 if everything was accepted. I haven’t heard back yet about acceptances. As long as I choose topics I already have some basic knowledge about, it takes 45 minutes to an hour for me to research and write an article.

At this point, my longterm goal is to make $200 a month off this site, or 25 accepted articles a month. Let’s see if I can make it happen.

HIREWRITERS.COM

HireWriters is another freelance website with a similar concept to BlogMutt. The difference with this one is that they have four different levels (Beginner, Average, Skilled and Expert), and you get paid depending on what level you are. As you write more articles, requesters can review what you’ve written and you can advance through the levels accordingly.

I have not yet been accepted to this site, but I applied tonight. I’ll let you know my findings.

TEXTBROKER.COM

TextBroker seems very similar to HireWriters. I’m actually not quite clear on the difference but that may be because I have already taken my sleeping pills and I’m fading a little. Like HireWriters, you get a quality rating and are paid per word accordingly.

SURVEYS

MTURK

I’ve been using MTurk for a couple years now, and have made $400 off of it just by using it casually every couple of days. I go through phases where I’ll do it more intensely for a week or two, and phases where I don’t touch it. It’s done through amazon, so you know it’s legitimate. Sign up at mturk.com and then go to the most valuable Mturk resource there is: reddit.com/r/hitsworthturkingfor - people post links to hits that are actually worth your time, because they pay >$0.10 per minute.

There are other sites similar to MTurk, but they’ve never been as profitable for me. The reddit site makes MTurk allllll worthwhile for me.

TRANSCRIBING

SPEECHPAD

There are a variety of transcribing websites out there, but from what I’ve heard, Speechpad is the best. It’s a little slow going at first because you have to get rated for submissions and take qualification tests to get to the better paid jobs. However, I hear it turns out.

I learned from this website that my attention span is far too short for transcribing and my arms hurt far too much when I have to type for long periods of time, so it’s not that worth it for me. However, if transcribing is your thing, you can quickly turn Speechpad into a profitable site.

Phew…that’s all I’ve got for now.

Anyone else have any tips or tricks to earning money from home? Let me know and I’ll try them out and add them to this post!