Weekly Discussion- Tell Me Your WAH Beginning to End Story

Anna

November 10, 2011 at 2:33 pm

I actually got started earning money from home about five years ago but wasn’t really making what you could call an income until about 2008. It was just extra cash up to then.

Before I got married, I worked in the office of an Ace Hardware/Do it Best hardware chain owned by my aunt’s in-laws. I did that pretty much from the time I got out of high school until 2004 when I finally quit. I got married that same year and at the time my husband was earning enough that I didn’t really need to earn much, so I just helped my mom out with her business some just for some extra money. Found out I was expecting my first little boy in ’05, the same year we also bought a house and got a newer car. So money became tight and I figured I’d have to go back to work at some point. But my little boy was born and I couldn’t stand the thoughts of leaving him, so I started doing things here and there to help make ends meet.

I kept helping out my mom part-time but I also started looking for ways to earn at home. For most of 2006-2007, I didn’t do much besides take surveys for cash (I think I was signed up with every survey company in existence!) product tests, and also I got into the hobby of entering sweepstakes, which actually paid off OK.

I became a ChaCha guide in 2008 (back when ChaCha was awesome and you could actually make decent money per hour doing it) and started earning enough, at least for several months, to be comparable to having a job outside the home. But that sort of tanked as most former ChaCha guides know and the questions disappeared and the pay rate shot down to maybe $5 per hour if you’re lucky.

At that point, I did some more searching around and found out about Textbroker. I had always liked to write and so this seemed perfect, especially since they took on beginners. I did that for a long time and absolutely loved it. I still did ChaCha here and there but most of my money came from Textbroker for a long time. I ended up writing for Demand in 2010 not long after that and actually earned a good bit of money for my articles, more than what I was used to at TB. Sometime around then, I started my website, Real Ways to Earn Money Onine, that also now earns me good supplemental income. But at that time it was in the beginning stages. I applied to several other writing sites and got accepted, but wiseGEEK was the one I really started focusing on the most because you can get paid multiple times per week. There were weeks there were I got paid as much as three to five times. I could easily crank out five 400 word articles per day for them with no worries about them being returned for edits (unlike with Demand) and it was marvelous, but still a strain on my brain.

and then I got invited to do dupe checking with Demand and started doing that more because it was more mindless work which left me more time to focus writing energy on my blog. and then I started doing TQA too, which paid even more. Somewhere in there I also worked for about a month and a half doing search engine evaluation for Leapforce and there are currently still dozens of little things I do, like Key for Cash and Swagbucks, just for extra money.

I am sitting here now wondering if I am going to get fired from titling today like so many others have last week and this week. If I have, I guess that will be the beginning of the next “Work at Home” chapter for me. I expect I’ll probably go back to writing full time.

Great post idea, Miranda! You know we all like talking about ourselves 🙂 Sorry I wrote you a book!

Leisa Good

November 11, 2011 at 9:37 am

I started three years ago too. Originally, I worked at LiveOps and ACD Direct while adding private clients to my virtual assistant practice. I also sold vintage toys, books, and handmade jewelry on Amazon and eBay to clear out my growing home office!

I still have private clients, but am also using bidding sites as well to add variety of clientel. I am now learning to do teleseminars and am venturing into coaching freelancers and VAs, which I absolutely love.