Identifying Obstacles

Identifying obstacles early in working at home is important. Working with an energetic three year old running around is challenging, but not impossible. Luckily, I've noticed a little pattern. After breakfast the kiddo will watch a bit of TV and play with her dolls. There's an hour usually uninterrupted. Then another hour or two for naptime in the afternoon. After that, it seems like everything falls apart.

Working at home takes quite a bit of commitment, and I feel like I'm struggling to maintain. In theory, I should be able to squeeze out about five hours a day to work, but in reality I often fall short.

The biggest road block I seem to encounter is that everybody thinks since I'm WAHM I can drop everything at a moments notice. Frustrating! Sure, a few minutes here and there don't hurt, but getting through to the significant other that I need to focus my time while working has proven challenging. 

All this has just made me more stubborn. Working at home is my best option right now, so I owe it to myself to give it my all.  

When Good Requesters Go Bad on MTurk

Well Summer's here, and as usual not finding a whole lot of time to do MTurk work. But there's some valuable lessons I relearned this week when what was one of my favorite requesters posted a lot of work on MTurk.

It's really important to keep up with reviews on Turkopticon and Turker Nation. Even though I've previously done thousands of HITs for ProdUniverse without any problems, I noticed several forum posts about them rejecting tons of work. As in, the vast majority of work submitted. Most of the posters in the forum had sent emails to both ProdUniverse and MTurk and had heard nothing in return. Something is fishy with this. I did do 11 HITs to test the waters, so far all are still pending. I have enough HITs approved prior that it wouldn't put a ding in my approval rating.

It just goes to show how vigilant a Turker needs to be to protect their best interests. Why put in a bunch of time for nothing? And for those who don't have large amounts of HITs approved already, a big batch all rejected could wreak havoc on their approval rating, limiting what work they can do. I rebounded mostly from my big hit at Christmas, but it was a long hard road to do so. I'm not about to give ProdUniverse a chance to make me do that all over again.

All in all, I do enjoy their HITs. They won't make you rich, but they're easy time killers and the money isn't horribly bad. If ProdUniverse can fix whatever seems to be the problem, I'll be back. If they can't, I'll have to chalk them up to a good requester gone bad and stay away. Life's too short to play with scammers.  

***Edit: The eleven HITs I did yesterday did all approve today. I'm still not confident enough to jump in and do a bunch. Turker Nation is still showing several posters who are getting the vast majority of their work rejected from ProdUniverse. 

Summer Work

Summer is here, and I'm finding it much more difficult to buckle down and work at home. Between playing outside and tending the garden, I've slacked off on online work. However, I do still check in with MTurk early in the morning and late in the evening and still make a few dollars a day.

As with anything in life, you get out of it what you put into it with MTurk. The irregular checking in like I've done misses a lot of good HITs, but there's always transcription work to find. Which is good. Claritrans and Castingwords almost always have transcription work up to do around the clock.

Another thing I do try to do to add up a little here and there is just taking five minutes here and  there throughout the day to work a few HITs. Even if they're penny work. It does add up over time.

All in all, I still plug away with MTurk. So far it's been my favorite way to make money from home. I may not be getting rich from it, but it does give me money for gas and spending money. Plus, I know it pays out so I know it's worth my time. In about a year's time, I've made around $2100, and about half of that time I hardly logged on to work. 

Zazzle

One more way to make money from home that I've found is Zazzle. A little creativity is all that's needed to create your own Zazzle products, which Zazzle will print on their products and give you a commission. I love photography, so I took the leap and signed up. About half of my Zazzle products are nature photography, some geared toward local teams and schools, and others are just funny quotes.

As with any online venture, you get out of it what you put in. Quality and quality are both important, and a little promotion doesn't hurt, either. Keywording and creating products that are in demand should also be taken into consideration.

It's been a couple months since I starting putting up items on Zazzle, and today I made my first sale, yippee! I sold a travel coffee mug that said "I like my coffee like I like my men, tall, dark and rich." I made $1.40, it's a start! I can't wait to make more products now!

MTurk Work

Well it seems working on MTurk is really going well lately. There seems to be tons of good stuff to work on! I'm having trouble working a lot of the Retail Data HITs, it seems there's some kind of glitch in their qualifications, maybe? It's really aggrivating to see all that work posted and no way to do it!

Otherwise, ClariTrans has been posting a lot of work, and as I've said before, I really like their stuff. I can crank it out fairly quickly and haven't had a rejection from them yet. The pay is fairly decent, and they seem to post work quite frequently.

I tried a requester I hadn't seen post work before, Jason Davis. It was to figure out why tags were used for descriptions on a craft website. I did more than I was comfortable with, and a few of them have approved. I was leery to do more until I could see how they were going to approve. I have had six of them approve from the past three days, but many more are just sitting. Kind of makes me nervous, but they were quick and paid well, so we shall see.

I'm still doing some CastingWords transcription work, but not as often as ClariTrans. I like CTs shorter transcription snippets, I never know when the kiddo is going to wake up from a nap or when the phone is going to ring, so I like to zip through and be done with it. Both have posted a lot of transcription work lately, though, so it's easy to switch back and forth between the two.

There's been other odds and ends, but nothing all that notable. I'm hoping Retail Data qualifications get straightened out soon, I'm so picky when doing the HITs I'm fairly confident that I'm doing them correctly. So to then get an email of a qualification revoked is a little irritating.

I'm still not getting rich overnight, haha. But for the ease and comfort of working at home MTurk is working out well for me. 

ClariTrans Transcription on MTurk

So I've stumbled on what seems like a newer requester on MTurk, but so far so good with ClariTrans. Their transcription work is broken down into smaller segments to transcribe, which is nice with a toddler running around. I haven't been able to accurately judge how much money per hour I've been able to make on these, but I'm not unhappy with the results I've seen at all.

Their style guide is a lot different than CastingWords, so that's taking some getting used to. But I do like it, it's simpler, and often just one speaker, so it seems to go quicker.

I aced the first qualification test, and have worked several of their HITs now. All were approved and paid within hours. I did take the qualification testing for the reviewer, and no matter how many times I take it I can't get a 100! Frustrating! On the bright side, I haven't seen a whole lot of the review work come up for grabs. Maybe after doing a little more of their work it will become easier to reach that perfect score.

I had been on a $10 per day streak on MTurk, and was starting to inch above until the snow storms and power loss broke my stride. It's been hard to get back into that grove and hit ten bucks every day. I'm getting there, but I think ClariTrans might very well be able to double my goals in no time at all. Yay!

All in all, I'm happy so far with ClariTrans. There seems to be quite a bit of work posted in various segments of time, batches with as short as 5 second work on up to 35 second work. My only complaint is trying to work transcription at home with a very noisy two year old! But for nap and bed times, it's perfect for making a few dollars each day. I'm definitely happy to find this requester, and I hope they stay around for the long haul.   

A thousand bucks on MTurk!

I finally did it! I hit the one thousand dollar mark on MTurk, woohoo! I won't lie, it took a LONG time to do it, but it was worth it, yay for free money!

Crowdsourcing isn't for everyone, but I have tried to make the most of it. Sure, it doesn't pay that great. But there's no rushour traffic jam, no annoying co-workers, and no paying for a babysitter. Those are the things that keep me pushing on working on MTurk to earn extra money.

Lately, I've been averaging about $12 per day, and that's not too awful bad for my needs. I spend the latter part of the morning, and a couple hours late evening making money online. Those are the times that seem to work best for me. Plus, the work I really like on MTurk is usually posted in those times and gets taken rather quickly.

I have searched around online for other Crowdsourcing sites, and have not had much luck at all outside of MTurk. I registered and took several qualification tests at LiveWork.com, and applied for several jobs on there. I didn't hear squat. I was doing a little work for CrowdCloud, and only made a couple of dollars, plus they had SO many glitches it just wasn't worth it.

I'm still always keeping an eye out for more work, but for now am happy to stick with MTurk. It's definitely not a get rich quick thing, but it does add up here and there for some spending money.

Getting back in the swing of things

I took a little break from everything for a few weeks to clear my head, but I'm back in the saddle and hoping to head in a good direction this year. It's still sometimes a little rough making the transition to SAHM, but now that the holidays are over I'm ready to focus on moving forward.

I've still been plugging along with MTurk, and at just shy of $1,000 earned so far. I've been trying to make $10 per day on there, sometimes it's easy to make double that, and other days I can only squeeze out enough time for a couple bucks. When I get enough routines down pretty well, I want to up my daily goal to $15 per day. 

I've been trying out a couple different strategies for working on MTurk, and they seem to be paying off. I spend two hours each  morning working on MTurk, another in the afternoon when time allows, and another around midnight. The mornings seem to be when I'm making the bulk of my money, the other times I've found it hard to focus well enough to really make a lot. 

Another thing I've been doing is to request any and all qualifications I come across that look even remotely useful. I've noticed the HITs available seem much more this way. The Retail Data HITs are usually pretty plentiful, so I've requested and received most of their qualifications. They may be penny work, but they're easy and they pay in a reasonable amount of time. Plus, when nothing better is going on there, you can almost always find Retail Data HITs. 

eHow's earnings are still doing okay for me, I wrote a few articles in Nov and Dec, and they seem to be holding their own. I consider my eHow earnings my bread and butter, they may not always be consistent, but I know they are there waiting for me once a month. I just need to up that residual income a little more and I'll be doing just fine.

So all in all, I'm really thankful the holidays are over! I'm getting over the winter slump and working hard to up that WAHM income. It hasn't been easy, but I'm learning new tips and tricks every day. 

MTurk Money

I'm not quite sure what's up, but MTurk has tons of work posted!! The past few days it's been unreal, I saw as many as 853,000 HITS posted a couple days ago. It's like Santa Claus made an early arrival, yippee!!

I've been working on the Retail Data HITS a lot, that seems to be the bulk of what's posted. They're penny HITS, but they go quickly and are easy. I really liked working on the Baby products ones, but they're already gone. So, I've also been working on the Sports and Outdoor ones lately, too.

I found a real gem on there yesterday, I found 75 cent HITS that only took a few minutes to finish, and there was a big batch of them. If they all approve, I think I made $20 pretty quickly. I was in the middle of making dinner, or I would have stayed til the very end!

MTurk is really helping to make a little Christmas money, I've been averaging a little over $10 a day, with the occasional bonus day with a few more dollars. Not bad for an hour or two of easy work from home. If I just had a little more time to spend on it, it could add up even more.

Just a little update, back to the grind at MTurk. My favorite time to work there is late morning to early afternoon. It seems to be when I have the most time and can find the work I like to do.

Been a Little Busy

I've been a little busy lately, and haven't had much time to update. I can't believe I ever found time to go to work before! Although it's looking like I'm going to have to go back to work, working online just isn't cutting it for me. Maybe if I had a little more time, or would get off my butt and write more eHow articles...

November earnings on eHow have been tallied, and it was my best month ever, by far. I made just shy of $150, and managed to write four more articles. Of course, I lost four in the latest sweep, so I'm still at 160 articles posted. 

Still chipping away at MTurk, and I made around $80 this month there. My earnings have totalled $616 there since starting. I have been trying some different techniques to make more money with MTurk--I filter the results to show most recently posted and just refresh away until something comes up. I check first off for my favorite requesters, of course. But if there's nothing else going on with them, the most recent is a decent way to add a few bucks here and there to the pot.

I'm kind of irritated that I'm going to have to go back to work. I really thought I could swing it, but it's just too soon. I've got to get a couple more bills paid down, and then it's SAHM time. Keeping up with cleaning and cooking, spending time with the family, etc, just doesn't leave any time. I don't know how I ever pulled it off before! But if I find a part time job in town, I think I'll be able to get ahead a little.

I'm still scouting around for different ways to make money online, but not finding a lot of luck just yet. I signed up with LiveWork, and applied for a couple jobs there, but didn't hear anything back. According to the WAHM.com forum, I need to fill out my profile there a little more. I scored great on all the job skills tests I took, so I'm hoping if I get that filled out it will lead to something. 

I tried shetoldme.com, using my Adsense ID and Chitika, and I'm just not seeing a whole lot of money come out of it at all. 

For now, I'm browsing the help wanted section in the local newspaper, and religiously reading WAHM.com forums to get that one lead that will make it all work out. I think my #1 enemy is TIME. There's just never enough of that when you're a SAHM!

 

Make $25 Online Quick!

I just finished up an opportunity I stumbled upon on WAHM.com to make a quick $25! It's through a Facebook app, and can be found here. Several members on the WAHM forum have already been paid, so I thought "why not?" I signed up on the above page last night, and received the email from them this morning.

All you are doing is reviewing local businesses, ten of them. It's for AroundMe. It's that easy. It took me a minute to figure out how to submit a review, but you find one of the businesses listed and you'll see "submit review" listed beside the name of the biz. 

The lady who sent that first email was very prompt and helpful with answering my questions, and it took less than an hour to write them all up. They ask for them to not be all restaurants, so I did a couple banks, an insurance agent, and a dentist along with some restaurants and hotels I am familiar with.

They ask the reviews be between 60 and 150 words, which wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. 

All in all, it was probably the easiest 25 bucks I've ever earned in my life! Check it out!

eHow update, I've made a thousand bucks!

I finally did it! Today I broke a thousand dollars on eHow, that's total overall earnings. I started with one article in late July 08, so in 16 months with 158 articles (after sweeps) I've finally hit a big milestone, yay!

My earnings per month just keep going up, even though I haven't written very many  new articles in the past several months. This month I'm projecting I'll make around $140, my best month yet.

Now if I could only get the creative juices flowing and churn out 158 more articles, I'd be sitting pretty. I keep saying I'm going to, and I have a huge list of article ideas I'd like to dig in on. But really, I think I'm going to write some recipes before diving in bigger topics.

Recipe articles don't earn that great on eHow, but they're pretty consistent. Especially around the holidays. But if you have enough written, it does add up to a nice little profit each month. 

That's the greatest part about residual income. You write it once, and it just keeps on earning. I need to tweak some of the lower earning articles, most of those were from when I was still new to online writing, and didn't have a great keyword or SEO strategy.

I just had to share my milestone, I'm so happy!

Trying to Maintain My Sanity

Well, I'm trying to maintain my sanity. It may or may not be working out so well! You know, when I took the leap and became a SAHM, I thought everything would just magically fall into place, that the house would somehow become sparkling clean, and I wouldn't miss the adult interaction I got from working. HA!

Apparently, I need more structure. Without time constraints, a lot of things are not getting done. Egads, this house is still a disaster!

So, the only solution I think that might help is a pretty strict schedule. I've been falling into a natural pattern with housework, like laundry is usually done Mondays and Thursdays, with a small load over the weekend. Dishes tend to get done in the late afternoon. Things like that.

It's just not enough. I'll be thinking it through and coming up with a better plan of attack on housework. I'm seriously open to suggestions!

Some WAHM opportunities seem to be fizzling out. My favorite job poster on MTurk is taking a break. I'd say about three quarters of the work I've done on MTurk came from that one job alone! I've been researching some others, I signed up at LiveWork and applied for an ad reviewer there. I impressed myself by doing really well on some of the skills testing. 

Another opportunity I'm looking into, but somewhat leery of, is dropshipping. It just almost sounds too easy. From what I've read, you just really REALLY have to research the dropshipping company you order from. Basically, you're buying things straight from the warehouse at wholesale prices, selling them on eBay, and they ship for you. You don't even buy it until your auction has ended and has been paid for. It sounds like it could become an excellent addition to making money at home.

All in all, it's been hectic around here. I swear, I felt less stressed when I was working. I never dreamed I'd say that!

eHow update!

I figured it's probably a good time to throw in an eHow update, too. Earnings for October have been calculated, and I made $119.91 on 158 articles. Around 76 cents each! It keeps going up, last month it was around 74 cents, and the month before 67. 

I finally wrote another eHow article, finally! It had been six months since I actually wrote anything there! I've got to put some time and effort into eHow, the residual income can't be beat. 

I enjoy writing eHow articles, and really they don't take long to do well. A half hour to an hour, depending on how familiar I am with the subject matter is about all it takes.

One word of advice. eHow's site is often buggy. I strongly suggest writing articles first in a Word Processor document, then cutting and pasting into the site submission form. This way you have a back-up should it not go through, or if an article is deleted. 

I have been writing for eHow since July 08, and in that time I have made almost $900. If you divide that by the time I have spent writing there, it comes out to about $11.32 per hour. Not bad! Even if I never write there again, that hourly wage will just go up as the residual income trickles in. 

This is one of my favorite ways to make money being a stay at home mom! Now if I could just buckle down and write a bunch more....

Another MTurk update

Now that I'm a full time stay at home mom, I'm focusing a lot more time on working with MTurk. I'm up about $510 earned through MTurk! The work has seemed to dry up a tad bit, but there's still plenty of stuff for stay at home moms to piddle around on and make a little cash.

I haven't done much more work with CastingWords transcription through MTurk yet, but my first two assignments I did with them got good reviews and I liked the work. I need just a little more quiet time around here to do that. My plan is once a week or so to take Gracie to her aunt's house and spend the day on those jobs. The rest I can do when she's here, as they're shorter and don't require as much hands-on work. It would be easier, sure, but I can still definitely find enough time and attention to do the work on MTurk with Gracie here.

My goal is to make $80 per week with MTurk, and that is definitely reachable. I have to focus my time on this for now, as I'm still getting the hang of being a stay at home mom! One of my biggest time drainers if my favorite Mom message board. Now that I have the time, it's hard to peel myself away from there and get to work! 

I'm hoping to find a perfect balance between stay at home work, housework, and a little bit of me time. I'm sure that will come in time. But for the time being, MTurk is where much of my focus is going to be. 

CloudCrowd, is it worth it?

So I finally had a not so good experience with CloudCrowd. I got a rejection on work I am confident was done correctly. Actually, I would go so far as to say I'm positive it was done correctly. The part of that I'm upset about is that because I haven't found a lot of work on there, it put a serious ding in my credibility rating, which put me on probation. If I had done a lot of work, the ding wouldn't have been so bad. 

The approval system needs some serious work. There are reports on a few forums about CrowdCloud of similar complaints. A LOT of them. This is the way the work is reviewed: The work is open to several workers, so say a few people are zipping through and not paying enough attention and one person was. Majority rules. So, there ARE people who are getting their work rejected on CloudCrowd that didn't deserve to be. 

Being on probation means I can keep on working, and the approved work will raise my credibility score. BUT if I get another false rejection I'll be permanently suspended. There is at this time no way to appeal or fix this. I wouldn't mind so much if it could be looked at and someone with CloudCrowd could say "Why yes, you are correct. Let me fix this for you!" But that system is not in place.

I think for the time being I'm just going to sit back and wait it out. They say they're still working out the bugs in the system. Yeah, yeah. Well, I'll be back when they do. Maybe. The probation thing just left a bad taste in my mouth. There's too many other work at home sites I could focus my time on in the meantime. For now, this stay at home mom is taking a break from CC.

Another CloudCrowd update

So I have managed to find a tiny bit of work on CloudCrowd so far, but it's been few and far between. I have read on several forums they're working the bugs out and new work should be available in the near future. I've checked back several times, sometimes work is listed for just a couple minutes at a time. BUT. It does show up, and it is paid the next day.

I think CloudCrowd will be a great addition to my stay at home mom work routine. I like that they seem to be listening to worker feedback so far. CloudCrowd workers have been active on many message boards working with workers to ensure bugs are being worked out, as well as communicating issues they are working on.

Although the work has been spotty, it is there. Little bits at a time. It all adds up in the long run. And it's great to KNOW they truly pay for work completed. Rumor has it on message boards we'll be seeing much more work posted next week. I would think when it is, it will go fast.

To sign up with CloudCrowd, follow this link. It does require a Facebook account, and will ask for access to your profile. I have found NO issues with granting this. I was really skeptical at first, but many Facebook apps ask for the same thing. So far, my experience with them has been a positive one!

Taking a Leap of Faith

Yesterday, I had enough. I couldn't balance working outside the home and all the work in the home any longer. I turned in my two week notice! It's a giant leap of faith, I would have rather paid down my bills a little more before becoming a stay at home mom. But no more talking, it's time to just do it.

This will force me to start treating working at home as a real job. A "work" schedule will become very necessary in this quest. I think it is within reach, I just have to get off my tooshie and make it happen!

The plan for now is to work 10am to 2pm, about half of that time Gracie naps. The rest she's winding down for her nap and it should be easy enough to work from home during that time. Housework can come afterward. Then once Gracie is in bed at night, I can probably crank out another hour or two. Doing this five days a week should give about 15 hours per week.

The first month I will need to step up the residual income work, mostly eHow and Infobarrel. I still don't have my first article up at IB yet, but there's no time like the present! I need to clean up the two I wrote for my Suite 101 application and submit them. I hope to write more during the day, and use MTurk and CloudCrowd at night.

It's a huge relief to quit that job. HUGE!

CloudCrowd update

So one day into CloudCrowd my work, all three jobs, was approved and paid. Yay! I checked into the work available section several times throughout the day and night, and work was spotty. Keeping in mind, they DID say work would be light as they were rolling out new features and guidelines. So I wasn't too disappointed, but would have rather had more opportunity to earn from home.

I think as CloudCrowd grows a little more, there will be more work available. I do know now, from first hand experience, that they DO pay, they do NOT spam your Facebook profile, and the work is easy to do from home. These are always my biggest three concerns for work from home jobs. 

I was a little busy yesterday, so I probably didn't check the CloudCrowd site as much as I'd have liked, but there was bits of work here and there. To be fair, about three quarters of the time I looked, there was no work available. You did have the option of clicking the type of work and seeing if it is something that would interest you or not, and the instructions on how to do that type of job. I liked having the option of a sneak preview of the work, so to speak. On MTurk, you don't necessarily have the option unless the job is actively open.

All in all, I think CloudCrowd will be a great tool to use in the journey to become a stay at home mom.  I especially like that you can work on it as you please, for as long as you like, when you like. When chasing a busy toddler around the house, having the option of stopping work when needed is extremely important! 

Each task can be completed fairly quickly, and is easy work. As far as I could tell, there was no time limit for the jobs. On MTurk, each task is alloted a certain amount of time after you accept the job, and if not completed by that limit it counts as an abandoned hit, which hurts your score. Some jobs have to have a certain approval rating, often very high, and that could hinder future work. There is a rating system at CloudCrowd along the same premise, but without time limits, it shouldn't be hard to keep the rating high. I've had to abandon a few hits on MTurk because of a sick baby, boo-boos, or phone calls.

To sign up for CloudCrowd, follow this link and sign up in my crowd. I'm looking forward to hearing any and all success stories or complaints about CC, so feel free to let me know what you think so far! 

CloudCloud

So I finally did my first two tasks at CloudCrowd, finding Chinese websites whose English could use some polishing. I only did two so far, to get a feel for what to expect. It was fairly easy, and I am awaiting approval. One tip for this I picked up on a forum was to go through Alibaba.com and click the country of origin. You then have to go to the company's website from their profile on Alibaba, and check out if their English needs improved. Then you submit the site's URL, and a contact e-mail address. It only took a few minutes and pays 16 cents apiece at the moment.

The work is pretty scarce today as they implement some changes. It seems CloudCrowd exploded with growth and they are having some growing pains. I was encouraged to see some work listed today, but running short on time to do more work. I wanted to get a feel for the site before spending a lot of time, plus I want to see exactly how quickly they do approve and pay. I have heard from several CloudCrowd users that I know and trust that they have been approved very quickly and paid the next day. 

They do have a message on the work available page, with only the one listed as open, that there will be more projects listed in the near future. I think CloudCrowd is going to help me quite a bit in my journey to become a stay at home mom. If it pans out, this could add a lot of income from home. 

I can't wait to compare this with what I make from MTurk. It would be nice to have both to draw on, when one is slow I could do the other. I'm hearing over and over people making on average $10 to $15 per hour on CloudCrowd. This is encouraging! Plus the page load time is much less than MTurk, so I can see once I'm more familiar with this how I can zip through and get a lot more work done. 

I'll update again when I get a little more experience with them, and approved or denied for my work done, and most importantly, paid! If you are interested in signing up, you can use my referral link here. So far, so good. I'll keep everyone posted as soon as possible!