Ways to make income besides a job

Post Reply New Topic

It has been mentioned on this forum a few days ago, but I am unsure if it was this topic or not, so I will repeat it. Elance and Odesk, two places where you can register and go into business on your own. I have only researched Elance up until now, and not yet fully registered, because it requires them to make a phonecall to me(and I hate talking on the phone) before I can try out all their functions. But since I feel giving them my phonenumber and answering the phone is such a big commitment, I am currently reading all the terms of agreement and all the little details that might affect me.

To me, it seems like they have a wast network of both clients and contractors, were each contractor can rate and comment any client he has had, and each client can rate and comment each contractor he has had. They have skilltests were you can prove how much of a said topic you know, and you can opt to show the result on your profile or not. They will take 20% of your wage though, because of the network they are connecting you to, but you can set your own hourrate, so its just a matter of compensating for it.

My point is this; If you have some special interests were you have awesome skills, make use of them and go into business yourself. I am lucky, I have a special interest in webdesign/computer programming, thats why I am checking out Elance atm, but they have lots of areas of expertise, so just take a look and see if some of it fits you.
(disclaimer; I have not yet tried the service, so I cant vouch for it. And I do not get paid to promote it.)

If anyone have any good/bad experience with any of these two companies/sites, please do tell (especially if its bad).

Edit: I just manned up and did the phonecall verification. It was just an automated call, and I just had to read a code. No conversation needed. I was reliefed.

At the moment I'm attempting to develop apps for mac, ipad, iphone?

In the past, before I knew I was on the ASS, I tried to work as a sort of freelance code monkey but I just couldn't deal with the stress, my communication skills where not great and I had a very poor executive function.

Now with Ritalin my EF has much improved.

I am just really hoping trying to find a little bit of income won't be a factor in the government denying my disability application.

certains websites can get you online money its not much

but its something i go to swagbucks a great website that has you win something called swagbucks with you can trade in for prizes (including online gift cards for amazon, barnesnoble, paypal ect.) you get the swagbucks by just using there search engine and you randomly win swagbucks. there is also games on the site to play that you ccasionally win swagbucks from. also there is the poll of the day where you win 1 swagbuck each day for participating. theres also a charity each month so its a way to donate to charity

ive gotten a whole bunch of books from amazon.com through swagbucks. if you want pm me and i will send you a referal code (or you can join on your own iknow there are also other sites similar to swagbucks but i dont know the names because its too confusing for me to sign up to multiple sites (a freind of mine is actually on a whole bunch of these sites)

either way i wish you luck

This may be a completely useless idea, but have you considered freelance writing?

Obviously this is not something you can turn into a bill paying job over night, but I've noticed you write reasonably well and if you were to work out a strategy for making a career of it, I could see you successfully writing non-fiction articles for web sites and magazines.

Some advantages are that you can do the bulk of the work at home. With sufficient research, you can find markets that actually pay and if you have a few particular areas where you can specialize, you can set yourself up as a expert in a few areas. (Specialization is good because editors know what they are going to get when they hire you.) Often your interaction with clients will be through e-mail or occasional brief phone calls.

Disadvantages are sometimes you have to talk to people. The pay can be low and there are a lot of markets that think you ought to work for free.

I've written for one magazine and photographed for a few others. I don't have a huge amount of experience, but I did pretty well in creating a strategy that got me work. If this is of interest to you and you'd like details of what worked for me, I'm happy to give you the details.

Consider selling on ebay. You can start small and there is very little risk. You can research products that you think you might like to sell. See what they are selling for on ebay and find a few suppliers who trade in smaller quantities. This is good if you like the detail of research and calculating profitability as this is key to making good buying decisions which is when you expect to make a profit. It is also a really quick way to turn your efforts into actual money. I find that more elaboarate or far-fetched ideas have a long stage in between starting and generating cash. I think you want something you can just start and get some sort of income from as soon as and as easily as possible.