Money, as t'were.

[demiurgent]

I'm better off, financially, than a lot of people I know. But things get tight. We all know that. And they've been getting tight more often, lately. Nothing to scream or panic about, mind (and this is not a funding/call for help drive or anything.)

My New England spirit says "I should get a second job." But my day job provides me with many benefits that require the flexibility of going in and working on machines when it's needed, which makes taking alternate work unfeasible. (I can't very well work a convenience store job only to have to leave it to bring the mail server back to life.)

So. Is there a reputable part time online job out there that people can recommend? The kind of thing I can do in spare hours just to pad income a bit, without abrogating my responsibility to my school (and maintaining the flexibility I need to, oh, drive to Ottawa every couple of weeks and make kissy noises with Weds). Obviously, I've seen all the scams you have. And tee shirts beat me savagely, so I'm not looking at doing that again any time soon. So I will harness the power of the internet for help, and junk.

Comments

[gwox.livejournal.com]

Something I've been doing these past few months is freelance article writing. I've been working with a website owner I hooked up with via GetAFreelancer.com, getting about $4 an article. Which, for the time I'm able to devote to it, adds up to about $100 a week.

The upside is that I can do this side work from home, and can be pretty flexible in my schedule. The downside is that it is still work, and takes time from things I'd rather be doing. Such as editing novelage, or just plain writing, or spending time with significant others.

Anyway, GetAFreelancer.com is what I wanted to point you towards. The bulk of it is set up to cater to programmer types, which is what I initially thought I'd be doing. But it turned out that most of the programming jobs I could theoretically do required more skills than I had, or would have required mega-hours for micro-pay. But they also have proofreading and copyediting sections, which is where I found the freelance article writing work.

Fortunately, I'm now in a position where I think I can step away from freelance article writing. The money came in handy, but the work was kind of crappy. But, bucks is bucks.

[demiurgent.livejournal.com]

DUDE. Thank you.

[gwox.livejournal.com]

Y'welcome!

Just a note to add to that. Joining GAF is free, of course, but they get their cut once you've put in a bid, and that bid wins a given freelance job. Say, if you put in a bid of $80 to do x number of articles, and your bid gets selected by the guy who wants the work done, you end up paying $8 to GAF via PayPal. Of course, you end up ahead at the end of the job when the $80 gets released to you from escrow through PayPal.

Of course, there are some providers that just use GAF as an entry point to attract freelancers to longer-term work that doesn't go through GAF at all. The work I just finished up with one guy being a case in point -- I wasn't even the winning bidder on that job, but he contacted me and we worked out a direct paypal arrangement.