Here Goes Nothing...

Today's the big day! Okay, not really although it is quite important. Today I am officially launching my home career!

Since my job ended on February 9th, I have really thought about what I want in life. I mean, I know what I want in life, but how early should I start really going for it, you know? Well, I made the decision to start really going after it today! I'll be in working Monday through Friday on several different things. I'm going to work on getting myself on a schedule as well. This is the schedule I'm going to attempt to follow everyday:

7:00AM - Alarm goes off
7:30AM - Morning workout
9:00AM - Get in the studio for some work on my art
11:00AM - Plan out social media posts for the day
1:00PM - Work on Finding The Boy Within
3:00PM - Write a submission piece for one different Cricket Media publication each day
5:00PM - Work day is over

So essentially I'm trying to make sure I do a little bit of everything each day in order to maximize both my time and my income. The more art I make, the higher chance there is of it selling. If I write one submission piece for Cricket Media's magazines each day, there will be a better chance of them being accepted and me getting paid. If I set aside a certain amount of time each day to focus on regularly updating my social media sites, there's a better chance of my followers increasing.  If I set aside time each day to work on my book, it will actually get finished. I am really hoping this works out because it could really be the start of something really good for me!

Right now I'm working on figuring out some problems surrounding why I keep losing weight to the point where I might need to see a nutritionist. There are some other things going on as well that may require me to see another specialist. Basically one of the reasons I would love for working from home to take off is because I would have the flexibility to keep up with all of my appointments. I spend more time as a non-critically ill patient at DHMC than anyone else I know, so it would be nice to be able to have that flexibility.

My dreams are taking over my brain, and I can't sit around and wonder "what if" anymore. I'm taking the reigns, starting at 7:30AM, and I'm starting my life. If shit hits the fan, I will suffer through being employed by someone (my wife thinks she may be able to get me a summer job if need be.) Maybe I'm crazy. Scratch that, I know I'm crazy, but anyone who starts a business has to be at least a little crazy, right? I mean, my Etsy shop could expand offline in the form of having a booth at the local Farmer's Market and even some other town Farmer's Markets. I'm hoping to have my book finished by June so I can bring some copies down to the Philadelphia Trans Health Conference for exposure. I have such an amazing feeling about this, so I need all the support I can get so that my dreams can really start coming true!

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.