There Are Actually Some Legitimate Ways to Make Money Online

If you have been keeping up with my posts, you've read about how I've always wanted to work from home. I'm socially awkward which makes it very anxiety provoking to deal with people (usually customers rather than co-workers just for clarification.) Because of this, and my love of working on the computer, I have been heavily seeking out legitimate ways to make money from home, online. So far I have come up with three main sites that I plan on making an income off of.

The first site is TextBroker. TextBroker is a straight up freelance writing site where you take on as much or as little work as you would like. Clients post their needs on the site with a specific definition of what needs to be written, the preferred length in number of words, and any key words that must be used in the article. So far, just to try it out, I've completed three assignments. I have earned $8.41 for a little less than an hours worth of work (which equates higher than the national and NH's minimum wage of $7.25/hr!) One of the three assignments was just coming up with a slogan for a website. It took me all of 15 minutes to check out the website and come up with something, and it was accepted. That one only garnered me about $0.20, but the pay rate is set at a certain price per word (usually a few cents.)

The second site is Amazon's Mechanical Turk. This site offers HITs (human intelligence tasks) which can be anything from surveys to being a secret telephone shopper. The pay isn't great, but I've made $11.96 so far and still have one pending HIT that needs to be approved or rejected. The clients for the HITS approve or reject your hit, but the approval rate is pretty high. I have had 1 out of 16 HITs rejected, and it was because I took their survey "too fast." The money can be withdrawn to PayPal 10 days after completing your first HIT. This site is better as something to do to pass time rather than a full time job, but you can make some money none the less. The trick for me has been to ignore anything under $0.50 as it will most likely be a waste of time (like some pay $0.01. I'm not wasting my time for a penny.) When I was really bored, and there were no HITs $0.50 or higher that I qualified for, I took on a $0.40 and a $0.33. It's really all up to you.

The third site, and the one that is so far the most fun, is Rev. For Rev you can apply to be a translator, transcriptionist, or a video captioner. I signed up to do video captioning as it seemed like a really fun task. I have completed my base application, which includes a test video that's under 2 minutes long you have to caption. Since I "passed" my first caption test, I now have two more videos to caption before I can start getting paid. There has been a bit of a setback today though. I went on to complete my second test video, and Quill, the sight Rev directs and uses for their caption software, had no record of my account. I was confused but decided to try and create an account with all the same credentials. Some text popped up saying that there was already an active account with that username. So I emailed them and am waiting for a response. I need to have the videos completed by midnight tomorrow, so I am a bit worried at the moment. This job would be a lot of fun though, has steady pay (every Monday right to PayPal,) and does provide the opportunity to grow a little bit and become a grader. There have been very mixed reviews for the site, but I figure there's nothing to lose trying.

There are also a few other sites I've tried out. ProductReportCard is a survey site where you can make $8.25 just for signing up and completing your profile. The only problem is there has only been one survey available so far. It was worth $2.50 though so I'm up to $10.75. You can cash out right to PayPal when you hit $25.

MintVine is another survey site. I'm still not 100% sure how it works, but you get points for your surveys that can then be turned in for rewards. Be careful though as some of the points from Points Place will not post to the account (I've been shorted 140.) You're better off taking the regular surveys. 

With all these options, I should be able to make a pretty decent income from home, one that should actually be able to help pay the bills! With Rev alone you can make anywhere from $250/month to well over $1,500/month which equates to roughly $8.30/hr working 40 hours a week. My goal is to be able to spend more time with my wife, start really working on my book, and just be less stressed. My prospects are good. Now I just wait to see if everything pulls through.

Our Last Shred Of Fun For A While: Our Honeymoon

Last week my wife and I finally went on our much anticipated honeymoon. With the job loss, it was a little more stressful than I wanted it to be, but we had fun. The hardest part was feeling guilty sharing what we went out and did the whole time because of the job loss. All the "maybe you shouldn't be going out all the time if you don't have any money" business got real old. What everyone doesn't understand is that last week was paid for and was possible because of wedding gifts. It was 100% paid for before I lost my job. We didn't use anything from our bank accounts. It was all gifts! Are we not allowed to have fun? I just wish people would stop judging others when they don't know the whole story...

Anyway, our trip started late on Sunday (August 2) after my softball game. Our first leg of the trip was in Connecticut. We stayed with my wife's grandfather (because despite what everyone believes, we are money conscious...) On Monday we went to New York City which was a surreal experience for me! It was my first time, and I enjoyed it a lot. I never thought I would ever make it to NYC with my anxiety. As a photographer though it was overwhelming. I felt as though I was missing a lot of photo opportunities. The best part was Madame Tussauds! We took a train from CT right into Grand Central Station (which was surreal in itself since it's in like every movie.) I remembered to get a real NY bagel too (which definitely lived up to the hype!) 

After our time in CT we headed to Hampton Beach which is where I proposed two years ago. It's one of our favorite spots, but after the past few days I think we both agree that it's a place that is better with more people. It was also too cold to actually go swimming in the ocean which made that leg of the trip a bit of a bummer (but what are you gonna do?) We went and sat on the beach twice and took a few strolls down at the water. We ate a lot of good food and discovered a lot of new places that we didn't know about the last time we were there which was cool. And of course we spent a lot of time at Coffee Cann which has the best coffee ever! It's Green Mountain Coffee but it's the only place we've ever seen Brownie Toffee Crunch! 

To round out our honeymoon we went to see Andy Grammer and American Authors at the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom (the tickets of which I got for my birthday, and actually ended up being the entire reason we spent part of our honeymoon in Hampton.) It was an awesome concert! We got pictures with Andy's guitarist and bassist and also with Zac (lead singer) and Dave (bassist) of American Authors which was super cool! We just missed Andy after the concert though. My wife also found one of the guitar picks that American Authors threw at the end of the concert on the floor after the majority of the people cleared out, so that was our souvenir. 

So overall it was a fun week, but now we're home and I am in full "job search" mode which is really getting me down. The bills aren't going to be able to be paid with just my wife's income which is why I set up a GoFundMe page. I also have my unemployment orientation coming up. I haven't heard yet whether or not I qualify for unemployment benefits, but I really hope I do! I don't monetarily qualify for anything close to what I was making before, but it will definitely help! So if I'm not around the Blogger world for a while it's because I'm hardcore job searching and working on ways to make money.