tempo
Padawan Learner
Something I've been doing for the past few months when I've been unable to find any work is Amazon Mechanical Turk (mturk.com).
For a bit more info: _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Mechanical_Turk
Basically, it's a service provided by Amazon where "requesters" post microtasks that are often repetitive, but are the type of thing that computers aren't very good at. They often only pay you a few cents per task, but those cents can add up.
With many of the tasks, you only end up averaging $1-$3 / hour, so it's not really ideal for anyone looking for a replacement for actual employment. But, if you're looking to earn a little bit of extra money a month, to buy books or donate to SOTT or FOTCM (or anything else), it can be quite helpful. They pay you through Amazon Payments, so you can easily buy things off of Amazon or transfer any money you make to a bank account.
I've found that doing transcription tasks are often the ones that are most worth it, if you like doing transcription or are good at it. After a while of doing transcriptions for one particular requester, they invited me to work on their separate website, where they do all the editing and other stuff that needs to be done once a transcription is completed. These tasks tend to be more worthwhile in the wage department.
So, for someone who can't find any other work, or needs a little extra money without the time restrictions of an actual part-time job, this might be something to look into. When you first sign up, it takes a couple days for mturk to accept you, then another 10 days before you can transfer any funds you make into your account. After that, you only have to wait until a requester actually pays you for any work you did for them.
I think it's currently limited to US residents only though, but I'm not 100% sure about that. But, there are other online services that offer similar crowd-sourcing work.
For a bit more info: _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Mechanical_Turk
Basically, it's a service provided by Amazon where "requesters" post microtasks that are often repetitive, but are the type of thing that computers aren't very good at. They often only pay you a few cents per task, but those cents can add up.
With many of the tasks, you only end up averaging $1-$3 / hour, so it's not really ideal for anyone looking for a replacement for actual employment. But, if you're looking to earn a little bit of extra money a month, to buy books or donate to SOTT or FOTCM (or anything else), it can be quite helpful. They pay you through Amazon Payments, so you can easily buy things off of Amazon or transfer any money you make to a bank account.
I've found that doing transcription tasks are often the ones that are most worth it, if you like doing transcription or are good at it. After a while of doing transcriptions for one particular requester, they invited me to work on their separate website, where they do all the editing and other stuff that needs to be done once a transcription is completed. These tasks tend to be more worthwhile in the wage department.
So, for someone who can't find any other work, or needs a little extra money without the time restrictions of an actual part-time job, this might be something to look into. When you first sign up, it takes a couple days for mturk to accept you, then another 10 days before you can transfer any funds you make into your account. After that, you only have to wait until a requester actually pays you for any work you did for them.
I think it's currently limited to US residents only though, but I'm not 100% sure about that. But, there are other online services that offer similar crowd-sourcing work.
