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Ask HN: Ways to generate income when you're at home without pay?
One of my friends was working in call center. Now due to stay at home orders, he's been asked to stay home without any pay.
Please suggest some ways to generate income.
- binarymax 6y agoPretty wide open question. I recommend that whatever creative leanings your friend has, to focus on them. Do what you love and produce something of value, then try to sell it.
- projektfu 6y agoAnd make sure you do try to sell it. https://theoatmeal.com/comics/creativity_business https://theoatmeal.com/comics/creativity_business
- yoricm 6y agoThanks, I just discovered a wonderful cartoonist. A joy to read those illustrated thoughts full of creativity and humor. Particularly like his honesty, exposing his vulnerabilities in a way we can only laugh, and reflect on it ourselves. Whether you're an artist, an entrepreneur or aspire to improve yourself, you certainly can relate to his work and self-reflections.
- dbancajas 6y agonot stay at home but donate plasma. upwork probably is another avenue.
- zackmorris 6y agoYou should not be getting downvoted for this. Where I live, our plasma center is offering $450 per month because supply is so low right now. I've heard it can be as high as $600 per month for new donors. I feel that it's maybe morally questionable to donate during the lockdown, but, my city has allowed bars and gyms to reopen. So that sentiment is probably no longer true at this point. I do live in a relatively sparsely populated area though. People in major cities might consider waiting a few more weeks or months.
- HeyLaughingBoy 6y agoWhy would it be "morally questionable" to donate plasma during lockdown?
- thephyber 6y ago> I feel that it's maybe morally questionable to donate during the lockdown The US blood supply system is well regulated and has survived lots of other health risks. The behavior+history+medical questionnaire and health screening go a long way towards mitigating blood-borne contamination (and risks to the donors and donation staff). Then they test a percentage of blood donation specimens before they are distributed to recipients. They demand that you contact the donation organization if you turn up sick after the donation (I ended up donating with a food-sickness late last year and had my donation unit destroyed after I notified the hospital) I personally donate frequently. Only about 10% of eligible people donate. I feel it's "maybe morally questionable" to not donate (so long as you feel healthy and honestly follow the donation guidelines) if you can but never do. If by "morally questionable" you were weighing the desperation of unemployment + the payment for donation, I could maybe agree with that a little bit.
- dehrmann 6y ago> I feel that it's maybe morally questionable to donate during the lockdown There hasn't been much about covid-19 spreading by blood, and I assume places buying plasma use masks and distancing, so it's likely pretty low-risk on both ends. If we do find that covid-19 can spread through blood, the likelihood the donor has an active case is low. Most people who need plasma products don't need them for fun, so even if there's a risk, the benefits probably outweigh it in those cases.
- iso1631 6y agoWhat country, what skills, how desparate
- dewlinedew 6y agoGood at suckin and fuckin?
- Spivak 6y agoDoorDash, GrubHub, Uber Eats, and the like make pretty decent money. About $7 per order before tip and in a busy area you might be able to snag two or three orders going the same direction making the $/hr a little better. It's basically the definition of not great money but it's not very difficult, not physically straining, and you don't have to interview or whatever for it. Grocery stores in my area are also hiring constantly right now. I assume the demand will flatten eventually but for now they're just taking people on with zero fanfare. Again, not good money, the work is physically harder, and you'll have to take shifts but it's a job you can get in a few days.
- djsumdog 6y ago> it's not very difficult, not physically straining eh ... I've never been a driver, but I kinda doubt this right now. A Chicago driver just ran over this women: https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2020/5/16/21261241/ms-ts-fried-chicken-grubhub-hit-and-run-delivery-driver-chicago https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2020/5/16/21261241/ms-ts-... We don't know the full story as the video starts with her blocking his car. He shouldn't have run her over obviously. There's no excuse for that. But if he's operating on very small margins, he may have been frustrated they were moving slowly. He allegedly kicked their door, they wouldn't let him in, and then he was just going to dive off. They then blocked his car waiting for the police. The guy turned himself in, so if we give him the benefit of the doubt, it might have been stress rage. He's probably going to serve several months for assault. People are on edge right now. A lot of companies are profiting and also screwing everyone over they can. You can be a delivery driver, but be aware it might be a very short term gain, and may not cover the cost of maintenance/operation of your vehicle in the long term.
- andreshb 6y agoTeach english, cambly
- Recurecur 6y agoThis is probably excellent, and undervalued, advice. I wonder what fraction of potential English learners can afford $20+ per hour... (Right now that won't beat the unemployment payout here in the States, BTW.)
- throwawayresp1 6y agoLooking into Affiliate Marketing. There are tons of programs to choose from. You just need to learn how to drive some traffic. Check some Youtube videos on how to drive both free and paid traffic. Affiliate can earn anywhere between $300/month to up to $10,000/month if you're good. There are of course some Super Affiliates that do $30,0000-$100,000/month but their methods are a secret.
- tobyhinloopen 6y agoOh right yes. Be sure to buy their aggressively advertised book and tutorial videos!
- rorykoehler 6y agoYou gave away the secret method!
- ceejayoz 6y ago> Affiliate can earn anywhere between $300/month to up to $10,000/month if you're good. No, the bottom bound is $0. Actually, worse than that, as a lot of these programs are scammy "buy my guide to making money" bullshit that'll leave you in the red.
- armenarmen 6y agoGet rid of old stuff on ebay/cl/fb marketplace. Or buy stuff from ebay/cl/fb marketplace and sell on Amazon. and plugging a friend: https://www.flipmine.com/ https://www.flipmine.com/ scrapes arbitrage opportunities b/w ebay and amazon.
- saeedjabbar 6y agoFlipmine is an incredible tool our mutual friend has built!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- TrackerFF 6y agoWord of warning on Ebay tho, and this comes from someone who's been flipping stuff there for 20 years: There's a hold on your funds for around 21 days, depending on how fast the item is shipped out, and registered as delivered (hint: Always use tracked shipping) Second, there's a limit on how much you can list / sell as a beginner. So don't count on being able to liquidate collections or extra stuff in a flash. And third, Ebay is incredibly biased towards buyers - so if you're looking to sell something very expensive, try local first - where you can get cash in hand. I've lost thousands of dollars on Ebay as a seller, even though I've followed every step to secure myself. But other than that - it's a very hard place to beat if you're looking to sell something. I'm selling on a TON of channels, but it's really hard to beat Ebay for actually getting stuff sold.
- jjoonathan 6y agoAlso: Ebay takes 10%, paypal takes 4%. Shipping and tax aren't free either. If you sell something expensive, ebay will usually give you a "5 listings with halved or waived final value fees" a few weeks later. Strategize accordingly.
- mdszy 6y agoFurthermore, that ebay 10% cut is not taken off the top, it's applied to a monthly invoice, so that's important to remember.
- Recurecur 6y agoHas your friend applied for unemployment? He should be eligible...
- masona 6y agoThe best way to start generating income is to change your mindset. Instead of asking other people, all of whom have found their own specialized niche that will never be applicable to anyone else, step away from the computer and look around. Just in the past week I have heard from so many friends that are looking for good people. They never post stuff on job sites - it's way more trouble than its worth. They ask around. Get outside and talk to people in your community. Call friends, call relatives. Volunteer your time. There's an abundance of opportunity right now in this churn - make it happen!
- bigbob2 6y ago> Get outside and talk to people in your community. Not sure if that's the best advice given the present situation...
- koheripbal 6y agoNetwork within a field you're interested in. That is much more efficient than talking to random people. ... by probably two orders of magnitude.
- gk1 6y agoAsking on HN is the same (or better, given audience size) as looking around and talking to people. It’s also not helpful to say “there’s an abundance of opportunity” without any examples.
- icebraining 6y agoIt's not the same, because HN users don't have local knowledge. People here mention landscaping, but that wouldn't make much sense where I live, for example (lawns are relatively rare). Locality is a crucial factor in the labour market.
- enz 6y agoIf he or she has good sewing skills, making masks and selling them on Etsy.
- napolux 6y agoLike 10000000000 other people there.
- xoxoy 6y agoDay trading
- maest 6y agoPlease don't.
- xoxoy 6y agoIt’s in all seriousness is a day trading market right now
- snazz 6y agoIt might be a good time for day trading, but it's probably not the kind of stable, safe income that an unemployed person needs.
- ge96 6y agoyou have to have $25K right to be able to do this? (day trade)
- quickthrowman 6y agoYou can day trade futures with any account size as long as you can meet the margin requirements of your broker. It is a really bad suggestion for this thread, futures trading is hard and emotionally taxing and most people lose money.
- boudin 6y agoDepending what he was doing in call center and if he wants to keep his current job or is open to find a new job, he might be able to find a job for a company that hire people remotely. He can even look for this kind of job internationally. Some industries have been hit quite hard, but some others have seen increase of activity (i'm thinking in the saas world, mainly tools that are being use for remote working, but i'm sure there's other industries as well)
- partingshots 6y agoLearn programming while doing something like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, etc. delivery in the mean time. Then start applying for roles.
- koheripbal 6y agoUnless you really need the money, your best investment is putting 100% of your time into learning new skills.
- rmoriz 6y agoThis but keep in mind that "selling our skills" is also a skill of its own.
- jklein11 6y agoThat can't be true. If you spent all of your time developing new skills you wouldn't have any time to capitalize on them. You are likely better off conquering a niche.
- koheripbal 6y agoI mean temporarily during this lockdown - not indefinitely.
- rmoriz 6y agoThis wont generate income now. It's super hard to invest your time on learning things when your budget is tied and your job perspective is "vague".
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 6y agoWhat do you think the market is right now for totally green engineers?
- economicslol 6y ago"Learn to program" People are still repeating this meme? But seriously while Uber and other companies are laying off thousands it's probably one of the worst times to try to enter the market as a new SWE.
- thrower123 6y agoIt seems that a lot of people are starting OnlyFans accounts...
- ge96 6y agothat's interesting right, so much free stuff what compels you to pay, idk. there's that psychology too of being "closer" knowing someone eg. watching twitch or whatever... oh well glad I did not get sucked into that, though I'm not a social success myself
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jefftk 6y agoWith daycares closed, there are a lot of people working from home and trying to watch their kids at the same time. You'd need to sort out with them (and any housemates) about what level of contact to have outside your (now expanded) bubble, but people need childcare badly.
- IgorPartola 6y agoOutschool does something similar and seems like it can make you some money.
- jurassic 6y agoMy wife, who is out of work, is providing emergency childcare to some friends of ours for $20/hr. People are really desperate for this and I'm sure she could make more if she wasn't just doing it as a favor for our friends.
- posix_me_less 6y agoIf you do something for a friend ... and take money, is it really fair to call it a favour?
- cpach 6y agoIf it’s below market rate; sure, why not?
- posix_me_less 6y agoIs $20/hour below the market rate in U.S.?
- madcaptenor 6y agoIt feels above-market to me, but it probably depends on the number of kids and where you are. We're paying $17/hour for daytime child care for one two-year-old in the north Atlanta suburbs. We've historically paid evening "date night" babysitters $60 for 4-5 hours, so $12-15 an hour, but that's an easier job because the kid's asleep a big portion of the time.
- influx 6y agoLearn a skill that can be used to get a higher paying job once a vaccine is found.
- smarri 6y agoIf you can buy and sell bikes over the next few months I think you'll make some extra money. Right now they are becoming really hard to get with orders taking 2 - 3 months where I'm based.
- talmr 6y agoI had my bike stolen recently so this hits me hard.
- smarri 6y agoDang sorry to hear that. It's rampant in some places, where I live it's not uncommon to see thiefs brazenly using an angle grinder, in the middle of the day in a crowded place, to remove bike locks.
- jl2718 6y agoAny idea why this is?
- smarri 6y agoI think demand is up as people are planning to travel by bike rather than public transport.
- coopsmgoops 6y agoI find this to be bizarre since bikes don't really go bad or wear out, from over the last 40 years there should be thousands of surplus bikes on the market.
- smarri 6y agoYes I think it may only be new bike that are harder to get right now. The second hand market may be better.
- marban 6y agoDay trading futures (and developing the required mindset).
- rmoriz 6y agoNo. Seriously not. Daytrading is not a job for 99% of all. Even if you survive the first years, your risk management will also affect your "income". If you get greedy, your losses will break your neck. It's not something you can quantify like a "real" income you can count on. I trade S&P500 futures sometimes. It's fun when the markets go slowly up all the time or if there is a sharp drop. In all other times you'll probably lose a lot of money.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- thrownaway954 6y agocontent generation. you have no idea how many marketing companies need content writers for their clients. typically you can make between $5-$25 an article with an article being 300-2000. most articles don't have to be great, they just want articles written for a specific keyword.
- qz_ 6y agoDo you have a company name?
- thrownaway954 6y agojust look for any SEO company online or in your area and either call or email them. btw, thehoth is hiring https://the-hoth.breezy.hr/p/0d5643348f96 https://the-hoth.breezy.hr/p/0d5643348f96
- snazz 6y agoI started a little economics experiment on Fiverr a few months ago (to try to figure out how much the market is willing to pay for a native English speaker with technical knowledge) and I've had a surprising amount of success at the $0.05/word pricepoint. When you charge a little more, the worst of the worst buyers are scared away by the price.
- mapleshamrock 6y agoWhat keywords should I search for on Fiverr to see examples/how this service is marketed?
- larrywright 6y agoI don’t need this myself, but know someone who does. Do you have any pointers to companies or how to get started?
- thrownaway954 6y agothehoth.com
- MattGaiser 6y ago1. Teach English by video to children overseas. 2. Get a remote call centre job. 3. The DoorDashes and Uber Eats of the world are doing tremendous business right now, as is Amazon (and they have the Flex delivery service). Instacart was also hiring some 300,000 people. 4. If your friend is the creative or innovative type, there are a ton of competitions being hosted by various companies. You enter enough and the income can be somewhat reliable. This is my own personal niche. 5. Freelance writing. Even with the downturn, there seems to be a decent number of businesses with blogs wanting guest articles.
- truckerbill 6y agoWhat kind of competitions?
- MattGaiser 6y agoIdeation, graphic design with innovation, and engineering are the ones I do. Check out Mindsumo.com, Eyeka.com and herox.com
- MaxBarraclough 6y agoIsn't freelance writing a saturated market even at the best of times?
- MattGaiser 6y agoI have only done a bit of it in technology and innovation, so not sure beyond those categories.
- dmcy22 6y agoAny sites you'd recommend for connecting with students/parents overseas looking to learn English?
- rsanek 6y agohttps://www.italki.com/ https://www.italki.com/
- koheripbal 6y agoUnless you're desperate for cash, the most effective way to raise your income level is to learn a new skill while updating your resume and networking in that field. Position yourself for the post-pandemic economy. ie. tech.
- hurxnid 6y agoAny recommendations for someone with a background in logic controls and light IT (industrial background)? What is actually worth investing your time in?
- buttersbrian 6y agoiOT, networking, cisco certified anything (resume builder).
- r0b05 6y agoData science and AI/Machine Learning. Your background would help you get into the field.
- notabee 6y agoJust offhand, that sounds like a good start to being a datacenter tech. Learn how to handle all the power equipment, HVAC, racking and stacking, cabling, etc.
- TrackerFF 6y agoCheck out sites like Lionbridge or whatever, where you can do online tasks (registering maps, transcribing stuff, etc.) - they do pay a legit salary, even though the work can be really boring. It's basically like a bit more exciting and better paying version of Mechanical Turk. Other than that...help out HS and College kids with homework? I'm on a lot of homework help forums, as I like teaching math, and there's been an explosion in demand for skype teachers etc.
- jboogie77 6y agoCant beat online "tutoring". Schoolsolver.com, chegg.com, etc. These sites are booming right now.
- longtermd 6y agoUpWork, Fiverr, ...
- econcon 6y agoThere is shortage of 3D printing filament because of virus, so I've been creating filament and selling it. https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-home-for-cheap-6c908bb09922 https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-ho... This activity also help recycle waste plastic. Production cost of filament is $7.5 per 5kg and filament roll has 850 gram filament and can be sold for $20-30 per spool It's trivial to get the quality right. You can sell rolls on Amazon, eBay and Etsy or your own Shopify store and use Facebook ads/Google Ads to advertise your website.
- pat_space 6y agoThanks for the link. Where are you selling your finished product?
- econcon 6y agoAmazon for now
- soared 6y agoI don’t think someone working at a call center has the technical aptitude and financial resources to source and build there own extrusion machine.
- xeromal 6y agoHard times can make hard people. You don't know what someone is capable of until they're backed against a wall. I was a computer repair man until my parent's divorce and the 2008 market collapse which forced me into a CS degree.
- soared 6y agoComputer repair -> computer science. Call center -> building machines from scratch based on a medium post. Sure it’s possible but I don’t think the suggestion really makes sense. You can be blind to the fact that hn is in the 1% of intellect/ability, but it should be obvious that effectively no one can honestly take that suggestion. Unemployed, low on cash, and then in a low-skill industry it doesn’t make sense to risk $500 to $1000 on a project that you likely won’t be able to build.
- todotask 6y agoSwabber assistant if your country or county is opening to it.
- pkiv 6y agoHave they considered teaching their skills online for money? If they worked in a call center, they probably know how to deal with some really hard things. I'd love to learn how they have patience when dealing with angry customers. At http://joinstream.io http://joinstream.io, we're building a super easy way to host a monetized livestream using Zoom. We generate a marketing page for you, handle billing, attendee management, and notifications. All you have to do is focus on selling your unique skills.
- hckr_news 6y agoThis is cool
- pkiv 6y agoThank you!
- erikig 6y agoYou can also create courses on https://udemy.com https://udemy.com and on https://youtube.com https://youtube.com. A great way to identify good targets is explaining newly launched platforms and how they worked for you and what you learned. There's no guarantee that they'll make you a living wage immediately but they have a decent residual value.
- cgh 6y agoLet's say, just hypothetically, that someone was burned out from working for ValleyBigCo Inc, has no need or desire to work full time+ and wanted to transition into teaching something to do with the creation of software - design, actual programming, whatever. What's the best path for this? Do your Udemy/YouTube suggestions still hold or is there something specific for this use case?
- pkiv 6y agoThose are great platforms if you have experience with video editing. This nice part about http://joinstream.io http://joinstream.io is the time commitment and barrier to entry is much lower to create live content.
- hnrodey 6y agoGood ole fashion yard work. Despite the unemployment rate, many people are still working and spring is here. Grass is growing, mulch needs spread, etc.
- brandonmenc 6y agoMy parents just paid a kid $250 to lay mulch for a day. Found him on Nextdoor. He doesn't even have to bring the mulch - homeowner purchases it and has it delivered, and he just shows up to lay it. I guess he does this a few times a week - that's a cool thousand bucks on a good week.
- Scoundreller 6y agoProbably anything involving "I'll plant your tomato/vegetable garden for you" would do very well right now in the right places.
- goatherders 6y agoThere are some truly awful suggestions here. The question isnt about changing his life by learning to code or setting up a plastics machine (which is pretty cool but takes investment) or starting an affiliate site and then generating traffic, it's about generating income during a global pandemic. 1. Fiverr 2. Mechanical Turk 3. Craigslist Gigs 4. UpWork Can generate $50 by dinner time if you're willing to focus and put in the time.
- fred_is_fred 6y agoI think it's disingenuous to suggest that you can setup an account on these sites and have $50 by the end of the day "if you are willing to focus". With the exception of Mechanical Turk, which pays pennies, the others require you have a skill that people are willing to pay for.
- tiborsaas 6y agoOP didn't really help by not sharing any details about his friend. It's friendly to assume that some skills might be monetized on these platforms.
- ge96 6y agoI think the competition is nuts too, when I've been on the other side(hiring) it's overwhelming how many people you get to respond/hard to tell if the person is competent/trustworthy(with regard to allowing access to your tech to work on it). Starting from 0 is really hard(people with former work look more trustworthy).
- fred_is_fred 6y agoExcellent point. This is the modern version of the oft ridiculed Boomer idea to "just go door to door until you get a job like I did back in 1967".
- cosmodisk 6y agoI've got a feeling that it'd probably be even easier nowadays. I remember when I came to London about 10 years ago: no money,no connections, nothing.Went online to check some jobs just to see some ads with 200+ applications.. Printed my crappy CV,a list of a few agencies and started going from one to another. Managed to get a job 4 hours later..
- tstegart 6y agoI run an affiliate blog, and they're definitely easy to get up and running. However, they're not "only 1 or two hours a day" type things as they are often claimed. But they can be fun and rewarding. I usually make around $200 a month with about 500 page views a day.
- ilSignorCarlo 6y agowould you mind expanding a bit on what you do and how did you start?
- tstegart 6y agoSure, I run https://basicbands.com/ https://basicbands.com/. It's a website about watch strap fashion. Most of my income comes from Amazon. I don't make money off the sale of watchbands very much, they're very cheap, so I write posts about watches. This is an example of a money post: https://basicbands.com/the-complete-guide-to-the-seiko-presage-cocktail-time-line-of-watches/ https://basicbands.com/the-complete-guide-to-the-seiko-presa... I either write the content myself, or ask watch strap companies to send me pictures. I then link back to their website and mention what watch is featured and use an affiliate link. Most companies are happy to send me pictures. I also interview custom leather watch strap makers. Most sell on Etsy and they're happy to be featured. I send them a form to fill out and they provide the content and pictures. This is an example: https://basicbands.com/small-brand-spotlight-choice-cuts-industries/ https://basicbands.com/small-brand-spotlight-choice-cuts-ind... I make almost zero money off featuring the watch strap makers, but they fill out the blog with interesting and fun content that bring it a step above the usual affiliate blog (I hope). Its also the most fun part and it keeps me going, because the artists are fun to talk with. Otherwise I think I would have stopped by now from boredom. Most of my traffic is search engine, Pinterest & Reddit. I got my start by reading the case studies on this subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/juststart/ https://www.reddit.com/r/juststart/ They're getting less useful now, but the early ones were a big help. Basically, just start something and see how it does. Affiliate marketing gets a bad rap, which I totally understand, but its also very easy to get into, basically a WordPress theme and some cheap hosting, so its very accessible for people at home.
- dclusin 6y agoAmazon's Mechanical Turk market place (https://worker.mturk.com https://worker.mturk.com). Also google around for the forum and find insight and tools to help snipe higher value tasks.
- iphone_elegance 6y agoonlyfans
- rbrtdrmpc- 6y agothis is the only thing that i saw working during this pandemic, too bad it is a niche for a specific gender
- throw98226 6y agoIf you are in the suburbs, there are always lawns to cut. Make a simple sign outside your home. "Most lawns $25. Cut, trim, edge blow. 555-555-5555 No contact payment by eTransfer" This works very well, and will generate a small side income, get you outside of the house, fresh air and exercise. From here, it's just letting you imagination run wild... Hire and train some young adults, grow from a single person to multi person team, etc.
- kube-system 6y agoI'd give someone $30 to cut my tiny lawn right now.
- jsamuel 6y agoIf you have even a little experience with Linux or are looking to learn, we've built https://hostlaunch.io/ https://hostlaunch.io/ to make it very easy to start a managed cloud hosting company. Just drop in your DigitalOcean, ServerPilot, SendGrid, and Stripe API keys, set your prices, and you've got a hosting company.
- ornornor 6y agoHonest question: why would anyone want to buy from a reseller rather than DO directly? Are DO’s tools so bad?
- jsamuel 6y agoThere's a huge market of people who want to purchase managed hosting, not be responsible for their own servers. Think of the customers (such as WordPress developers) of any traditional hosting company like DreamHost. The purpose of HostLaunch is to make it extremely easy to start your own managed hosting business to sell web hosting services in that same market.
- ornornor 6y agoI don’t get it. What’s your edge? You basically have no control over anything. Why would the customer go with jsamuel hosting rather than ornornor hosting if we’re Both reselling exactly the same thing? Or why not stay with dreamhost for that matter? What’s the reseller’s edge in that case? Anything goes wrong you have to wait on DO to sort it out. And price wise you can’t do anything that anyone else can’t get from DO too. I’m probably missing the point but I’d really like to understand.
- stagas 6y agoManaged hosting is much more than what DO does, I suppose. They offer services like setting up a Wordpress, emails, nameservers, etc. for people who don't want or don't know how to. You sell customer service basically, you talk to people on the phone, usually works better within your local community. Edit: and I suppose HostLaunch's edge is to get all the hassle of setting up that business out of the way so you can focus on customer service instead of plumbing servers together.
- aantix 6y agoI don’t know of anything that is instant in generating income. I remember flexjobs.com having a pretty diverse curated catalog of jobs you can do from home. Not the typical remote engineer postings we see around here.
- erwincaco 6y agoDepending on his state, he could apply for a job as a Contact Tracer. These are essentially WFH contact center roles.
- chvid 6y agoWhere is this? Would your friend not qualify for some sort of government payment?
- metabagel 6y agoFile for unemployment. The federal government is increasing the weekly payment. Additionally, I believe this is not limited to California, unemployment compensation starts from day 1 rather than the second week. Edit: Also unemployment compensation is being extended to job types which previously weren’t covered, like hairdressers and massage therapists. Having been told to stay home from work for Covid should be sufficient to at least get the federal compensation.
- 3001 6y agoThis is the best route in my opinion. Upskill while collecting unemployment.
- tlapinsk 6y agoCompletely agree. That's all I've been doing while furloughed and it's actually given me a lot of time to dive deep into things I didn't previously have the time for (AWS CSA Associate studying via Linux Academy and a Coursera Product Management course). As long as your basic necessities are covered (food, shelter, etc.), this is a great way to go.
- minhazm423 6y agoWhats your current career and how do you expect the cert and the coursera course to help?
- tlapinsk 6y agoCurrently a PM (although furloughed unfortunately), so the Coursera course has helped me have greater breadth/understanding and so many more tools to bring back to the office if/when business picks up. If my role is cut, I'll jump into the PM job search more actively and have been preparing for that possibility too. In my previous role I was a Software Engineer, and made some great contacts that have some DevOps consulting opportunities. I'd like to take on some of this work and the AWS CSA Associate cert will definitely help. I'm about halfway through Linux Academy training and it has already been invaluable for my overall systems architecture and design thinking. If you have any other thoughts/advice/questions, happy to chat more! Contact info is in my bio TLDR: Currently a furloughed PM (Coursera) and have some cloud consulting opportunities (AWS CSA Associate cert)
- bayesian_horse 6y agoNot applicable to most people, but: Breeding Fish. Especially with the air travel situation what it is right now, fish stores have trouble restocking. So, if you already have some equipment but the market was always too lousy, you might be able to pick up a few bucks. Hard to scale up to a significant income, though.
- botwriter 6y agoaquaculture specialist here. the big money fish are still big money (I'm looking at you Zebra Plecos) but you won't make any money breeding your everyday stuff most stores will just give you store credit.
- vinnyp 6y agoI made a gdoc with a list of work from home opportunities back in April. Hope this helps! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nF8FH-5f-51-Q_Hzt06jhYMN5JCiy3bj7_5aElEQECw/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nF8FH-5f-51-Q_Hzt06jhYMN...
- ManoSinkosika 6y agothankyou!
- tbran 6y agoI just started working on a list of gigs/side hustles - you can see it here: https://goofy-swartz-25f1b7.netlify.app/ https://goofy-swartz-25f1b7.netlify.app/ or here in a day or two: https://www.lotsofopps.com https://www.lotsofopps.com Filter by skills, physical level, time to get paid, and things you have. It has some rough edges, but I'm fixing things and adding new listings every day. Finding some of the data is difficult - many companies bury their commissions and fees and very few companies tell you what you'll earn. Most payouts take several days to reach you, but if it's your first ever payout, it may be an additional 1-2 weeks.
- bizzleDawg 6y agoThis is great!
- HeyLaughingBoy 6y agoCall center for what kind of company? Can he reach out to similar (possibly local) companies and offer to do similar work for them? Years ago, when my first job folded, I did customer support for them for a couple months on a fixed rate with a minimum time. e.g., $75/hour, minimum bill of 0.2 hours -- those are examples, I don't recall what I actually charged. The point is, he's used to talking to customer all day and negotiating issues and frustrations. That is really valuable experience to a small company that may not be able to afford a full-time customer support person. Besides that, being a Virtual Assistant might be a good transition for him: https://horkeyhandbook.com/how-to-become-a-virtual-assistant/ https://horkeyhandbook.com/how-to-become-a-virtual-assistant...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kojeovo 6y agoGig economy jobs
- zackmorris 6y agoI'd recommend joining the local tech Slack channel(s) for your city or state. I've seen several decent job openings and gigs where I live. The nice thing is, you can chat with the poster if needed and get an idea of what the work entails before you apply. I'm not searching anymore because I believe that tech has lost its way and won't be a rewarding field until it allows for ~20 hour per week part time jobs that let us make on our own time. Because I've been surviving in tech for 20 years and have basically gotten nowhere with my life goals. Always feast or famine. But I do know how to survive.
- rcakebread 6y agoThis is a recent curated list of online jobs, 'Modern Day Jobs': https://moderndayjobs.com/ https://moderndayjobs.com/
- sergiotapia 6y agoYou can do Virtual Visits at Papa. https://www.joinpapa.com/papa-pal-qualified-application https://www.joinpapa.com/papa-pal-qualified-application Help out senior adults through the aging journey.
- pjfin123 6y agoIf you're a North American native English speaker with a college degree you can pretty easily get certified to teach English online to Chinese children with VipKid
- robk 6y agoAnd preply
- mcook08 6y agoI’ve been working on a project to allow anyone to get paid for their time. It requires they have some knowledge that someone else is willing to pay for but it might help. Free for hosts. BuyTime.co Hope your friend finds success!
- pryelluw 6y agoIt all depends on his health condition, abilities, equipment owned, and place of residence. These are required to produce an actionable suggestion.
- sinatra 6y agoMaybe become a Guided Project instructor at Coursera and share your expertise with learners? I'm sharing some details from a previous post: Access an instructor community and support team that will give you all the tools and resources needed to create a high-quality project. Earn income remotely on a per-project basis as soon as your project is reviewed and approved. Impact lives of learners around the world by sharing skills they can apply immediately to their careers. What is a Guided Project? Guided Projects on Coursera are interactive projects that enable learners to gain a job-relevant skill in under two hours. A side-by-side interface allows learners to watch visual instructions on one side of the screen while following-along on the other side of the screen. Guided Projects are for anyone who is looking to get hands-on learning and get practice applying a skill or using a tool in a real-world scenario. Every Guided Project includes everything learners need directly in their browser and step-by-step visual instructions so they can get started without any software installation or prior experience. Guided Projects are focused on enabling learners to practice and apply skills in computer science, data science, and business software using a broad variety of real-world tools such as TensorFlow, Google Spreadsheets, Tableau, Canva, etc. If you’re excited to create hands-on, Guided Projects and want to become a project instructor on Coursera, please apply at https://teach.coursera.org/ https://teach.coursera.org/
- tpae 6y agoCan you actually make a decent income?
- pascalxus 6y agoStart selling anything and everything that has any monetary value on platforms like: Craigslist, Ebay, Facebook marketplace, nextDoor, close5 (if they're still around), letgo, etc. I mean, literally, just go through every last item in your house. If you haven't used it in the last 3 months, what's the point of holding on to it? It's labor intensive, but at when you're done, you'll have a much cleaner house and a little bit of money too. I do this on the weekends.
- consultutah 6y agoWhile is isn't a continued source of cashflow, it IS the very first thing that anyone needing money quickly should look it. It's relatively easy and op mentioned, you can clean out the garage too!
- Scoundreller 6y agoAnd if you have the time, look into parting it out for max value. Often the parts are worth more than the complete unit. And we probably all have spare bubble envelopes and boxes from delivery services. Plus you get to learn how it's assembled. And people will pay more for parts from a 100% functional unit than a scrapped unit of unknown provenance.
- mattgibson 6y agoA friend used to have a great ebay sideline in reselling poorly listed items at a higher price. He'd search for reasonably high value items that had been listed with spelling mistakes in the name so that they didn't show up in searches, or showed up too far down the results to be noticed. He'd then buy them and immediately on winning the auction, re-list the same item but without the spelling mistakes. His secret trick was using a copy/paste of the text and images from the historically highest priced listing that had sold for that same item, which ebay made it easy to search for. By the time it arrived in the post, he'd already sold it on at a higher price to someone else. He just relabelled the packages, sent them on and pocketed the difference.
- chupaolo 6y agoThat's a great trick! Any idea how profitable this was?
- tathougies 6y agotextbroker.com
- analog31 6y agoFix bikes. There is presently a bike shortage, but probably a vast inventory almost-working bikes hanging in garages. Offer for a fee, a "no parts" bike tune-up, meaning you do what you can without access to spare parts, and quickly let them know if the bike is beyond your help. A bit more adventuresome: Offer to buy klunkers and then use them as a parts supply for fixing the bikes that can be fixed, or combine parts to create working bikes that you can sell. Many bikes are purchased with the best of intentions and then set aside for whatever reason. Later, the owner isn't sure what's needed, if anything, to get the bike in riding shape. They might even throw you a nominal fee just to be reassured that their bike is OK to ride.
- abfan1127 6y agoDomino's Pizza is overloaded. They need cooks, drivers, etc. Probably the best money you can get now without an investment in learning something.
- throwawayinter3 6y agoPerhaps not for call centers, but for recently laid off engineers you could do mock interviews on sites like PracticeCodingInterview.com, Gainlo.co, and interview.io.
- rodolphoarruda 6y agoThis thread is so important. At times of crisis like this we need to know about demand. Demand is king. All of the sudden we have resources like knowledge, materials and even money, but not much clarity about how to employ them for the greater good. In my head, still in a very abstract way, we need something like LinkedIN exposing demand and not only job openings.
- billme 6y agoYour friend should check with the state to see if they are eligible for unemployment, food, or any other benefits as soon as possible; regardless of what their employers says. For more information, Google: [corona laid off benefits]
- _bxg1 6y agoI'm pretty sure (from people I know that this happened to) you can apply for unemployment even if you're furloughed and "still employed".
- terrycody 6y agohey some options for your friend: 1)if he has hardcore skills like programming, or any techy-related, try upwork.com and find a niche for himself, but a new comer will have a difficult time to get sales first, you need start with a very low price rate, get some orders then raise your hourly rate. 2)he can also choose Fiverr.com, one can provide many services there, typically $5 per case, small cash. 3)start a youtube channel: post videos that he is good at and can attract enough visitors. This is pretty much a long term endeavor as you need 4000 hours watch and 1K subscribers to get monetization enabled, but if he can find the right niche and get the hang of it, this thing is legit and can earn enough for living. seems there are no very quick ways to make some money, but he could still try: 4) provide some quick local services for quick money 5) regard 3), he can post CPA offers under the subscription section below the Youtube video, you can earn money at very 1st day via doing CPA affiliate marketing, just post right videos, attract visitors, put offers. Good luck
- itsmeamario 6y agoI tried upwork 4 different times with no luck. It doesn't matter how low I offered my job for or how many offers I sent. It's almost impossible to get started there as a developer.
- terrycody 6y agoYou are right somehow, there are highly severely competitions as this is the best known freelancing platform in the world, but totally worth it, just gradually build your portfolio, you will get sales sooner or later. There are a lot people make good money on the platform for side cash. Meanwhile, you can browser producthut, indiehackers, for some quick ideas for your own products, SaaS, websites, etc.
- alexmingoia 6y agoStart a remote call center company.
- cko 6y agoBuy office chairs from offices that are closing and resell to people who are setting up home offices.
- livealife 6y agoNow that kids can't go to school because of lockdown, the demand for online teaching is proliferating. You can start coaching students online or just kids in your neighborhood.
- tickerticker 6y agoGo to suburban neighborhood. Offer to clean the garbage roll out barrels. Tether yourself and go up on customer's roof and blow off the leaves and debris. Weed the flower beds. Wash windows. Detail cars. Play with kids outdoors. Clean and polish the brass fixture exterior lights. Use customer mower to cut the lawn. My friend does Concierge errand services and he makes $50 a day.
- st1ck 6y agoIf he is a call center operator, I don't get why he can't work from home. If his current employer can't allow this, maybe he can find a more technically competent company?