Online Income Challenge: Slowly Does It...

So October has kicked in and so has my online challenge: shift from lower-end online income opportunities to higher-end ones and see what the world brings me.

Well, so far the world hasn't brought me a whole lot... The good thing about dwelling in the low-end world is that there's very often a lot to go around. Yes, those bits may be scraps rather than caviar, but they are bits nonetheless.

Principle tools for online income

And so I've got to really wean myself off the false economy of earning pennies here and there. Or rather, wean myself off of focusing only on this space at the expense of better opportunities. It's all too easy to take the path of least resistance.

The thing is, we'd all like to have prime quality steak served up to us on a platter but sometimes you just have to accept that there's only Burger King on offer. In small doses that's fine. It's a guilty pleasure.

The trouble comes when you start looking at a Whooper in the same light as you would a rib eye. That's why I'm doing this exercise. And to stretch this metaphor just a little further, hopefully some of the freelance work that I'm viewing as rib eye right now will feel like Whoppers to me further down the road and I'll be ready to move up another level...

So this last week I've been pitching proposals on PeoplePerHour, Elance and Freelancer. They're not Vogue or Harpers and Queens but they're a start. Some of the proposals relate to article writing, others relate to CV/resume reformatting.

While I think I have a reasonable chance of winning one or two of the writing bids (I'd like to think), a couple of the others are pretty fanciful. For example, I think I might have bitten off more than I can chew with the gig asking to write up someone's Finance PhD dissertation...Let's see, shall we?!

But until I pick up traction on any of these sites (i.e. get accepted for jobs and get decent ratings for people to want to work with me again) I'm just going to have to keep putting myself out there. It's a pretty competitive world so it may take time. Ultimately, though, I simply see it as an investment now for greater returns later (hopefully). And it's all about having the right perspective.

The joys of the freelance world... 

Online Progress Report

So my journey into the online earnings space continues.

This week has been fairly mixed in terms of successes. Having signed up for the writing site Scripted a few weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to have been accepted for a couple of writing streams there. I’ll review the site here in due course, but essentially if you have a ‘specialist’ skill or knowledge you can sign up for work streams aligned with those talents.

The interesting thing about earning money online is that there’s plenty of trial and error involved. You can plant the seeds weeks, months or maybe even years earlier and only now start to see the fruits of your labor. Such is life.

And that’s how it’s been with some of my Fiverr gigs. A couple of them that have been on the site for much of the year and have barely attracted any interest, and yet one gig (unsurprisingly connected with ways in which to make money) has attracted a disproportionate amount of interest. The lesson here is to find what works and what people are interested in, and invest the time in those areas.

I’ve also learned that you’ve got to be quick. That doesn’t mean putting together a haphazard, sub-standard offering, but you’ve got to appreciate that other people may work along different time horizons to yourself.

This reared its head this week when I bid for a job on PeoplePerHour. Essentially, it was for reviewing and re-writing a CV and the accompanying cover letters. Two days after putting my bid in I received a request from the buyer requesting a bit more information on me. 

Foolishly I decided to sleep on it and respond in the morning. It wasn’t as if I was rushed off my feet or anything, it was simply that I didn’t prioritize things correctly. I woke up this morning to find out that the job had been given to someone else even before I had responded. You snooze, you lose.

So for now I’m going to work on the various existing online opportunities I have, plus see what traction I can get from Scripted. And I’ll also apply a bit more urgency to situations as well…

PeoplePerHour Review: Another Marketplace

I've recently tried my luck with PeoplePerHour, so while my interest is still hot I thought it would be worth putting down a few thoughts.

The interesting thing about all of these marketplace-type of sites for freelance talent is that they reflect the new world we live in. Companies and individuals simply want to outsource whatever they can, and rest assured there is someone out there willing and very able to provide the service. As a result, if you don't get lucky on this site, there are plenty of others out there to help you out.

Well, this site is another provider of this kind of service. You’ve seen it before: buyers looking for sellers, sellers looking for buyers, you get rated for the job you do, payment is done via PayPal.

So what do I like?

Targeting quality. One good thing about this site from the perspective of the buyer and the seller is that you have to be approved to join and I’m guessing the filter system is far more stringent than, say, Fiverr. That in turn means that (in theory) a buyer of a service will get better quality service providers, while service providers can charge a little more.

There are plenty of jobs. It’s maybe not exclusive to this site at all, but having fished around in categories that I’m not very familiar with it does look like there’s a wide availability of tasks to do across the board.   

Options of fixed prices or hourly rates. Depending on what type of tasks you want to undertake, you can sell your services on a fixed price basis or base it on an hourly rate. It’s great to have this flexibility. So far I’ve only looked into the fixed rates.

Affiliate program. You can earn $45 each time you invite a friend and they start their first project on the site. Along with that your friend will get a 5% discount voucher too. This has to be done via providing email details as opposed to using an affiliate link. 

What is more of a challenge?

It’s competitive. Getting rid of some of the lesser-quality service providers is a good thing in many ways. Unfortunately, that means you’re likely to be competing against some individuals with decent quality portfolios and lots of experience. That said, it’s probably not a bad thing or anything different to a lot of other marketplace sites.

Not everyone gets accepted. As mentioned before, PeoplePerHour does have a filter system which ensures that not everyone is accepted as a seller on it. In fact, once you have signed up you are also given a set period of time in which you can “qualify as a trusted member of our community”. To achieve that goal you need to make two sales receiving an average 4+ rating over the period. I’m currently on one 5-rating sale (which is why I thought I’d get this comment in now in case I don’t make my second sale…).

Anyway, I’m going to keep this review brief because: 1) I haven’t really worked hard on building any business on the site so far and haven't navigated around a great deal, even though I intend to; 2) If I don’t sort something out in coming weeks I’ll fail my probation period and I’ll be gone anyway…

Watch this space.