When people think of working online from home they often wonder if it can really be done. They fear they are getting involved in some kind of scam or not really making any money, at least not as much as a real job.
People looking for legitimate ways to make some extra money online have a lot of choices to choose from and some people have created careers from what started as a small, side income.
With a focused imagination, one can achieve many things. A little over a year ago I decided to make most or all of my income from online sources.
There's a certain appeal to having multiple income sources streaming in that are location and time independent; meaning where and when the work gets done is irrelevant.
Not having to answer to a boss or juggle office politics frees one to choose where and when they spend their time.
There are more ways to make money online today than ever but before you start thinking that I'm going to talk about some get rich quick scheme let me reassure that you I'm not.
These are jobs that need to be filled where you can get paid to do the online work. Honest work and honest money just like a real job. The only difference is you can do these jobs online, wherever and where ever you want.
One other difference is no one can fire you, no one complains you're late to work, and you don't have to ask for time off.
Sounds like a dream job, right? So, what's the catch?
The catch is if you expect to be paid you must do the work. Again, it doesn't matter where or when but you must discipline yourself to do enough work to cover the expenses of your lifestyle.
For some that will be a breeze and for others a struggle but that depends entirely on you. Some of you may have a job but are looking for additional income sources to supplement your current income and some of you may be looking for full-time online work. Again. that depends on you.
The work required will be suitable for some of you and for others it may not but these are some of the most reliable places to find work you can do online.
NOTE: There are no affiliate links in this post whatsoever and I'm not sponsoring or being sponsored by any of these companies.
Here are some of the best places to find work online.
3PlayMedia
These are jobs available at 3PLayMedia for video transcribers.
Video transcription is the process of translating your video's audio into text. This is done with automatic speech recognition technology, human transcriptionists, or a combination of the two.
The three main reasons people need their videos transcribed into text is to get better SEO (Search Engine Optimization) rankings on their webiste. Search engines cannot crawl videos. Transcribing the video provides valuable text that can be indexed and ranked by search engines making the video more searchable across the web.
The second reason video transcribers are need is a transcribed video can give a better user experience (UX) on a website. I mentioned transcripts make your videos searchable by search engines but you can also implement search capabilities within the site.
An entire video library can be searched for the mention of specific words and a user can hop to the moment in a video where that word is spoken saving hours of time for researchers.
And finally, deaf people or people with limited hearing capabilities cannot consume videos unless they are transcribed.
Some videos are required by law to be transcribed. All federal agencies that produce video must transcribe them by law and many museums, universities, and libraries are mandated to transcribe many of the videos they produce as are any video for broadcast.
There is plenty of work available with the explosion of video production from a wide range of sources. If you can write in another language you can also get paid to transcribe videos into other languages.
This overview of how 3PlayMedia works contains everything you would need to get started and some great video tutorials on how to do the work.
You need to commit to at least 15-hours per week as an employee but they also have contract work available without that time commitment.
Fancy Hands
If you're good on the phone and great at internet research this could be the perfect job for you. FancyHands are hiring people to be virtual assistants to do a wide range of tasks.
Their clients hire virtual assistants to do tasks as simple as booking a hotel or finding a vegan restaurant in Chicago, to more complicated tasks like booking appointments, doing research, or creating a spreadsheet for a business.
They provide tools like templates and scripts to use so you can respond to the needs of their business clients in a professional, consistent manner streamlining the process to providing good service.
Some requests could take as little as 20-minutes to complete and others would require days and pay more. Fancy hands are usually always hiring virtual assistants and are very flexible as far as time requirements.
If you like helping people and are good at finding things on the internet you can actually get paid assisting people.
Most tasks are pretty simple and easy to do for anyone fairly intelligent who's good on the phone and can get things done.
Here are some more examples of the types of tasks virtual assistants get paid to do for people.
Tasks pay anywhere from $3.00 to $7 per task and go up from there. You need to have an audio headset (with a microphone), good communication skills, and a fast internet connection to do this job.
It helps if you're a self-starter but you can define your own hours. Ideally, they want people around 24 hours a day, so if you've got time at 4 am, great! If you want to work 9-5, perfect! They let you decide when and how long you want to work.
Oh, and did I mention they offer full benefits and manager positions for those who want to work more?
LiveOps
Liveops are hiring people to work in customer service as an at-home virtual call center agent.
As a call center agent, you get to choose clients that excite you and are a good match for your skills, your schedule, and your goals.
They do require some basic requirements to get started and a dedicated landline phone in place with no loud background noises making this business more suited to working at home as opposed to on the road.
Agents are independent contractors who can choose to work in a variety of capacities from customer service, inbound sales, insurance claims, insurance sales, food order taking, patient support, payroll support, and roadside assistance.
LiveOps focuses on finding a good fit between the company's goals and their agent's goals. Agents become more than just an outsourced service provider and actually become part of the business team.
Agents can choose to work in customer service for a company and in some cases, such as inbound sales and insurance sales, can be additionally compensated from sales commissions and fun contests. If you're not good at sales there are opportunities that do not require you to sell anything.
Some people work part-time or during peak seasons like the holidays when a company may need extra help with their customer service and others work on an ongoing basis for a company.
How much you want to work is completely up to you but the more you work and the better your ratings are, the more you'll earn. More experienced agents receive more calls. Backgrounds in insurance and health care may qualify for specialized call types.
When signing up as an agent for LiveOps you do need to have $65 ready to pay for a credit and background check and you need to have a headset.
Here are some stories from real LiveOps agents.
Scribie
Scribie is hiring people to transcribe audio and video files into text and pays $5 to $20 USD per audio hour transcribed with the average video length of about 6-minutes.
The work involves listening to the audio files and typing or dictating it as accurately as possible. You have to go through a simple test process and get certified as a transcriber.
Once certified you will be paid for the files you transcribe on an audio hour basis. For each submission, your account will be credited with the appropriate dollar amount and as your earnings will accumulate and you can transfer it to your PayPal account anytime.
From PayPal, the funds can be transferred to your bank account. There are no monthly commitments or minimum withdrawal limits. Payments are made once a day once your submission is reviewed and accumulates in your account until you choose to withdraw it to your PayPal account.
They pay by the audio hour and not the actual time spent working on it and pay a monthly bonus of $5 for every 3 hours completed each month. Bonuses are paid on the 1st of each month for the month prior but you still get paid each day for each 6-minute file you transcribe.
In addition to earning money for transcriptions completed, they also pay for reviews, proofreading and quality control.
Here is a list of their FAQ for further answers to your questions about Scriblie.
There are 59 applicants on the waiting list currently and the estimated waiting period is 2 days.
According to them:
Scriblie has transcribed more than 2,415,765.30 minutes of audio since 2008 and has paid around $1,115,129.93 to our certified transcribers. Around 18192 home-based freelancers from all around the world have successfully cleared our transcription test till date.
Once you're certified you just go to their site and pick any available file to transcribe on a first-come-first-served basis, transcribe it within a 2-hour period, with an extra hour extension if needed, submit it for review and once approved you get paid.
Each file submitted has a review-by date that shows you when the reviewed process will be completed by so you know when it will payout after you submit it for review and there are no penalties or charges if you don't complete a file transcription.
You can also increase your earnings by referring customers and transcribers to them. Again, none of these links in this post are affiliate links.
If you send them business they pay a 5% affiliate commission to you for each transcript order placed by a referred customer. For referred transcribers, they will pay a 2.5% referral commission on their direct earnings. There is no limit on the amount you can earn from referral or affiliate commissions.
Reasoning Mind
Reasoning Mind is a non-profit organization hiring online tutors to help students in a variety of subjects with a focus on math.
In the 2014-2015 school year, over 100,000 students in grades 2-6 are enrolled in Reasoning Mind's courses. Most of the students are in Texas, but many students in other states (such as West Virginia, California, New York, and Oklahoma) also participate in the program.
To work for Reasoning Mind you will need to be knowledgeable in the subject you choose to help students with so it is a perfect online job for teachers. You'll be using Skype to tutor students online and you'll need a good webcam.
As a tutor working for Reasoning Mind you will be working with individual students one-on-one to help them learn the assignments already provided in the curriculum giving them the tools and understanding they need to excel in the classroom.
If you like teaching and are good at math and have the patience to teach children this could be a really good job to do online from your home.
Here is a 1-minute video overview for Reasoning Mind.
ProBlogger
If you're a good writer you can get paid to write blog posts on a one-time or long-term basis. ProBlogger is a place to find online work for a wide variety of writers.
They have listings for every kind of paid writing offers from writers for product reviews to content writers for high-traffic websites.
Everything from sales pages, authority content writers, entertainment writers, health and wellness writers, video game writers, celebrity news writers, women's empowerment writers, parenting writers, and a host of other topics can be found there.
Each job at ProBlogger pays differently. You can see the listings, choose the ones that interest you, find out how much the job pays, and what is required of you on each job posting. Some listing will give you the topic to write about and some will require you to do some research before writing about the topic.
The cool thing about freelance writing on ProBlogger is there are so many offers that you really can pick and choose what really interests you and there is a good mix of topics. There's also a good balance of full-time writer positions offered and one post jobs for those with less time on their hands.
There are a lot of high-traffic websites that will give you credit for the piece adding to your credibility as a writer where you can get a lot of exposure in your niche and there are some sites where you will be a ghostwriter and only get paid for the content but cannot put your name to it. Which jobs you choose are entirely up to you.
Here are a few of today's listing on ProBlogger:
If you click on the lists you get all the details for the specific writing job listing.
There is a very helpful page on their website that explains how to apply for a blog job and lists all the details.
Most blog employers are looking for someone with at least some experience in blogging and even a basic personal one (like your Steemit blog) that you can show as an example of how you can maintain a blog.
They have a lot of posts and videos that go into even greater detail on how to write and make money writing for blogs that are helpful for Steemians even if you don't want to write for anyone but Steemit.
Some jobs want exclusive content and other will allow you to post what you have written on other websites after you post on theirs first, so, in some cases, you could get paid to write a non-exclusive, published post on a blog that gives you credit for the content and later post it on Steemit and can get paid again.
ModSquad
ModSquad is a site where you can get paid to moderate forums and social media accounts for companies providing digital services to top brands in media, technology, and organizations of every type, from agencies to Fortune 500 companies. They are digital management experts for some of the worlds coolest brands.
As a paid moderator you can work from any country in a wide range of industries. The work basically entails interacting with customers of a product or business in social media platforms to deal with complaints or comments before the online chatter turns into a problem for the business.
Think about the best experience you had with an agent, community manager or moderator. They do that, and they do it for the world's coolest brands.
Moderators protect these brands by addressing any complaints posted online about the brand in a timely fashion adding a human touch to the situation before it can spread into a tsunami of unsatisfied customers.
Many companies are outsourcing this work so they can stay focused on their core business and are willing to pay to have an army of moderators in multiple languages act as online watchdogs ready to address any complaint posted by their customers.
Essentially, they have discovered that it is cost-effective to nip these complaints in the bud before they have a chance to do lasting or irreversible damage to their brand.
This job is perfect if you are really into the product or service you choose to be a moderator for as they make it a point to staff teams of Mods who have a passion for the company or brand. That's right, the ideal moderator is also a customer of these companies.
You can watch this video overview of what ModSquad is and does here.
As a Mod, you’ll perform all your digital engagement services as an independent contractor. You have the freedom to choose the projects and the schedule that works best for you.
How much you can make generally depends on the market’s demand for your experience and skills, how much you’re able to work, and how well you perform.
Mods with hard-to-find native language abilities or mad tech skills can demand higher hourly rates. Your revenue is completely dependent on your schedule, performance and the type of projects on which you choose to work. The payment structure varies from client to client due to the length of the project, skill set desired and services needed.
Rev
Rev provides freelance jobs for transcribers, captioners, and translators that allows you to work as little or as much as you want on your own schedule and pays weekly payouts via PayPal for all work completed.
Here are the three online jobs you can do at Rev and what they pay.
To work as a transcriptionist you have to take a grammar test and you'll get approved within 48-hours. Once you're approved you can begin working immediately converting spoken English audio into a written document.
There are hundreds of jobs to choose from with average earnings of about $248 per month and top earners making around $1,495 a month.
You'll have access to a constantly updated list of audio files that need to be transcribed. You can claim one audio file to work on at a time.
Your job will be transcribing the audio file you've claimed using their online transcription editor. The audio content, job subject, pay, and deadline are all listed upfront so you can decide if it's a good fit for you and your schedule. You choose what files you want to transcribe and are not required to work specific hours.
You get paid out every Monday based on all the audio files you transcribed and completed in the prior week.
They provide transcription tutorials, practice jobs, and constructive feedback from experienced transcriptionists after you complete a job. They have an active forum and support team ready to help and answer questions.
Their new captions service has a ton of content by top-tier video producers and they are looking to add captioners to their team.
You can earn $0.40-$0.75 per video minute and get paid weekly with average monthly earnings of $240 with their top producers earning $1570 monthly.
Translators translate documents or captions from one language to another and get paid .05 to .07 cents per word.
Here are a couple videos introductions with some really good reviews from people making money working for Rev.
Whether you're looking to work online as a career or just want to supplement your current income, these work-from-home online opportunities offer the flexibility to fit into your life and good compensation for your time.
