

Ask HN: Make Money From Home....? - staunch

I know this is somewhat off-topic here, but I think this is the best community to ask.<p>I know some people that need to earn a living. They're not picky, and anything over $8/hr full-time would be worth their time. They have no specialized skills, but are willing to spend the first few months learning (not making much, if any, money).<p>Are there good/consistent/reliable/simple ways they can trade their hard work and minds for a minimum of $8/hr? Is there too much competition from the third world driving down prices on human capital?<p>My guess is MTurk pays too little. Anything porn related or ethically questionable is out.<p>So, what ideas does the collective HN brain have?<p>Thanks in advance.
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jacquesm
\- Specialty search That's a job worth doing, basically a very extended search
results set filtering out all the nonsense and sending out an abstract of the
status of a certain subject

    
    
      A typical query would not be a few keywords but a full
      description to guide the searcher.
    
      For instance: the number of tourists that have visited
      the United States over the last 3 decades and the impact
      of security measures on the tourist industry.
    
      Alotted time for something like that could be several
      days and a really good report would probably be worth
      good money.
    

\- competitive analysis Use all the online tools available to compile a report
on how well a business is doing compared to the competition Bonus if you can
sell the same report to the competitors

\- patent search assist research if prior art exists for a patent application
That one is harder because you'd have to be under an NDA with a patent
attorney but it's definitely something that would pay the bills and can be
done without ever leaving your house. And you'd learn a lot to boot.

That's all I can come up with right of the bat, I'm sure there are tons of
other opportunities.

Good luck !

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turtle4
Transcription is still necessary, particularly in fields where accuracy is
important, ie medical and legal. Automatic dictation just doesn't cut it quite
yet.

Most legal offices have their own internal talent, but a fair amount of
medical transcription still gets farmed out to what amount to temp agencies.
If someone signs up with one of those agencies as a transcriber, they can
generally take delivery of dictation via download, and upload the results.
Barrier to entry is typically a certification course that can be wrapped up in
a couple semesters.

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patio11
Freelance writing for content creation mills like Demand Media or TextBroker
will work out to about $8 an hour for fluent speakers of American English who
work efficiently. I do not think that full-time is in the cards for the
overwhelming majority of users on those sites.

Additionally, the variation in income may be problematic.

(If $320 a week means you make your rent and $260 a week means you do not,
then you will probably have crises caused by fairly frequent minor variations
in results.)

