Can’t get a job? Get a microjob!
Looking for work? Somebody out there wants you to design websites, board dogs, run errands, write blot posts, do laundry, deliver packages, be a virtual assistant.
Sites like eLance, TaskRabbit, Fiverr, 99designs and 3to30.com are virtual employment offices offering gigs you can pick up and put down as needed. Sometimes you bid on jobs and sometimes you post your own ad, whether serious or offbeat. (“I will create a lacrosse trick and name it after you.”)
Whether you call this consulting, freelance or “microjobs,” more of us are headed that way, according to Kristin Cardinale. The author of The 9-to-5 Cure, Cardinale cites U.S. Department of Labor projections that “millions of short-term workers” are needed.
Short-term gigs can help you meet specific goals like paying down debt or creating an emergency fund. The microjob market also lets you test the waters for a product or service.
And some people simply don’t want to punch a clock, according to Odd Jobs: How to Have Fun and Make Money in a Bad Economy. “Usually you decide when you work and when you take the morning off to sleep, or the week off to go skiing,” writes author Abigail R. Gehring. “And the variety of people you will meet, places you’ll find yourself and skill sets you’ll discover are sure to keep life interesting.”
Pros And Cons
Make no mistake: Working for yourself is challenging. If you think self-directed employment = endless free time, think again. However, it might be perfect for people who:
- Prefer location independence.
- Aren’t sure what they want to do. (Greetings, fellow Comparative History of Ideas majors!)
- Have goals that don’t mesh with a straight-eight workday (e.g., being an at-home parent).
The location-independent aspect in particular appeals to me. I’ve written everywhere from the guest room on a South Jersey tree farm to a McDonald’s in Cardiff, Wales.
Other advantages of being your own boss?
- Setting your own hours.
- Every day is Casual Friday!
- No vacation limits (as long as you get your work done).
- Staff meetings are really easy to arrange.
However, let’s not forget the potential disadvantages:
- Work-life balance is hard, e.g., giving a project one more look at 11 p.m.
- Bookkeeping. Quarterly taxes — feh!
- No insurance or retirement. (Some square jobs don’t provide these, either.)
- Isolation.
- Unpredictable income.
That last is a real concern, since you might go weeks without remuneration. Thus it’s essential to learn to budget for an irregular income.
Odd Job Essentials
- Current skills. Computer- or Internet-related jobs require up-to-the-nanosecond knowledge. It’s a constantly morphing niche.
- A thick skin. Having your ideas/proposals rejected can feel like someone saying your baby is ugly.
- Ledger smarts. Make sure you get paid for all your work. Remember to factor in job-finding site fees (as little as a dollar, maybe a percentage of what you earn).
- The ability to prioritize. Multiple projects means careful time management.
- An all-business attitude. Stick to the contract. One freelancer was asked for a additional article and was told she’d be paid extra. Guess what didn’t happen.
But I Have No Skills!
Sure you do. Can you sew? Jailbreak an iPhone? Do you like using coupons, grocery shopping or doing laundry? Those last three gigs paid $12 to $29 on TaskRabbit, and they weren’t hard. The grocery-shopping gig was to buy and deliver just five items.
And then there’s the market for, um, nontraditional employment. If you’re willing to tell off somebody’s boss or sing the name of an Internet start-up in bel canto style on the New York subway, you can get paid to do so.
Try this: Think about the things you do that irritate or startle others, or that engender raucous laughter from certain groups of friends. Such talents may turn a profit. (Can you blow up balloons with your nostrils? I’m thinking “dude birthday video.”)
What About Job Security?
I used to believe in that. For years I also believed in the Tooth Fairy. (Spoiler alert: Your mom put that money under the pillow.) In an era when even police officers are being laid off, how many jobs are truly secure?
Cardinale says multiple part-time gigs can actually improve your long-term options, because you’re exposed to a “network of people at all levels of many organizations whom you can tap for leads to spark future opportunities.”
Maybe yours will be a Cinderella story, e.g., walking an editor’s dog will lead to a discussion of the novel you just finished. (Have your elevator pitch ready, just in case.) What’s more likely is repeat business and/or referrals.
Linnea Sage, an actor and voiceover artist, says two-thirds of her work comes from previous customers. She generally earns close to $2,000 a month through Fiverr. “We’re in a time now where artisanal work is valued,” says Sage, 24, who lives in New York City.
Can You Make Your Entire Living This Way?
That depends on things like how many jobs you can line up, how much you need to live on — and, of course, whether there’s demand for your skill.
“You have to have something that people want,” says Elijah eSalaah, a 43-year-old beatboxer who has sold more than 600 Fiverr gigs in the past year. He generally earns $450 to $900 per week but doesn’t rely on it; as a disabled veteran, he receives a monthly check. Additionally, the cost of living in Kansas City, Mo., is lower than, say, Manhattan.
Digital illustrator Shana Shay makes between $400 and $800 per week through jobs from 99designs, a crowdsource design site. Those earnings plus her musician husband’s income — and the fact that they have no child-care costs — allow the family of three to get along fairly well. “It’s not for everyone,” Shay says, “but for me it was a chance to hone my skills (and) be at home with my daughter.”
If you want a rich-and-famous lifestyle, it’s unlikely you can get it solely through short-term gigs. (Retirement planning is a real issue, too. Ask any at-home parent or someone who’s been unemployed for a year.) However, it could be possible to live on what you earn.
Really? On $5 a Throw?
You may be able to set your own rate. Even sites like Fiverr allow higher wages for certain extras, such as 24-hour turnaround.
Depending on your specialty it might be tough to earn consistently livable wages, however. Witness an ad that begins: “I will write five high-quality articles of 500 and more words within short time for $19.” That pitch continued in poorly phrased English, with punctuation that made me twitchy. Yet it’s pretty common, since $19 USD probably goes further in whatever country is home to that “high quality” writer.
Getting noticed can take time; so can learning to juggle multiple projects. Digital designer Shay submitted 60 proposals before succeeding. Now she’s figured out which projects best match her skills, how to communicate with potential employers, how to prioritize her time in general.
Suppose you can’t make a living wage selling your design skills, or blowing up balloons with your nose? That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take an occasional microjob to augment your regular wages. Even a $5 gig will buy a lot of ramen.
But please: Resist the urge to underbid just to get a contract. Fellow freelancers will thank you. So will the people who have to read “high quality articles” that aren’t.
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There are 74 comments to "Can’t get a job? Get a microjob!".
I’ve found that sites are all helpful but you need to do your own due diligence. Very few of them actually qualify the service providers or users for that matter. I try to stick with those that at least have some qualification process.
Wonderful article. We have to remember it takes work to get work and some of our success may depend on where we live. It does give us hope though.
Fiverr and other gigs can bring in some cash, but to really leverage your time, you need to increase your hourly pay rate, and gigs like Fiverr won’t get you very far. A better approach is to use Fiverr, ODesk, Elance, and other sites as testing grounds for your freelance services. That way, you can see what’s most in demand and what pays the best, then focus on offering those services.
Along the way, you can create an actual business out of it, either as a freelancer or consultant, and eventually bring in a full-time income, with, as the article mentioned, MORE financial security than relying on a single employer for your income.
That’s essentially what I ended up doing. I started my consulting business on the side and grew it over time. After about 12 months, I realized that my time spent at my day job was getting in the way of how much I could earn consulting; at that point, I went part-time at my day job while I ramped up my business, and a couple months later, quit my day job completely. But one thing that helped was that my consulting income and workload was consistent and consistently growing.
However, I didn’t start my consulting business thinking that it would eventually become my full-time gig. When I started consulting, I just liked having the extra money–which was wonderful. I started my consulting business in January 2007, and within about 15 months was able to phase out my day job.
Since then, I’ve QUADRUPLED my former day-job salary, and I’m MUCH more secure being self-employed and having lots of clients than I ever was by having a single employer.
I have an interview on my blog where I talk about how I made the switch from employee to consultant, and where I talk about some of my initial fears & doubts, and give actual income & rate numbers.
Greg Miliates
StartMyConsultingBusiness dot com
Greg, if you don’t mind my asking, did you build your business starting out on site like these or by more traditional methods like networking, etc?
I’m curious because I wonder if people can actually build a full time business starting out on these sites. A few people I know steer away from these websites because once you offer your skills for pennies on the dollar, it’s very difficult to get anyone to pay you what you’re worth later on. Would it hurt people’s credibility?
Thoughts, anyone? I’ve never used these sites, so I’m interested in learning more.
I started my consulting business back in January 2007, so those outsourcing sites weren’t a big a trend like they are now. So, no, I didn’t use those outsourcing sites to get consulting work, BUT I do use them now to get work done that I either don’t know how to do or don’t want to do (either because it’s low value or because it’s stuff that I’m not interested in doing but need done). Those outsourcing sites have been a great way for me to get more done very inexpensively.
That said, there are a number of ways to get freelance and consulting work without posting your skills on Fiverr, ODesk, etc. I talk about the nuts-n-bolts specifics and tactics on my blog, but essentially, it involves identifying and working the marketing channels where your potential clients are likely to be–usually in a specialized niche.
You’re right that you don’t want to lock yourself into low-hourly-rate work. By focusing on other, less commoditized marketing channels, you’ll be able to charge a higher rate, and will be able to present yourself as more of an expert than simply a commodity.
While it IS possible to make a full-time living from sites like ODesk, ELance, etc., you’ll be able to charge more and therefore work less if you tap into more specialized markets. However, ODesk/ELance can be used to test the waters to see what kinds of freelance work is most in demand and pays the best. Those sites also make it easy to get into the freelance/consulting market, get your feet wet, and then transition to more specialized, higher-paying markets.
Thank you for the reply! I’ve considered transitioning to free lance in the future when (if!) I have kids and need more flexibility than I have now. (Right now I love the security of a full time job.)
However, one thing I did like about this post is that it mentioned possibilities. I wouldn’t farm out my day job skills for less than they’re worth, but I have a lot of odd skills I could put to use.
Greg, I did mention that it’s a way to test the waters for your own product or service.
For many, I expect that odd jobs are a way to augment other part-time work or to keep the dream alive (acting, writing) until the Big Chance arrives.
Donna needs your help. Well, not really but honor her now.
VOTE FOR DONNA! CLICK ON HER SITE AT THE TOP OF THIS PAGE–SURVIVING AND THRIVING—it’s the 1ST POST. CLICK, READ, VOTE on the left side of the page on the blue ribbon type thingy.
Good luck Donna. You deserve any and all good things that come your way.
Thanks, KSR. However, you forgot to include an explanation of what they’d be voting for…
Briefly: I’m entered in the PF Olympics at the Financial Blogger Conference. Two entries, one from Get Rich Slowly (“Stealth savings”) and one from my own site.
J.D. tweeted this yesterday so I presume it’s OK to leave the links:
http://www.gobankingrates.com/personal-finance-olympics/stealth-savings-sneaky-ways-fatten-wallet-donna-freedman/
http://www.gobankingrates.com/personal-finance-olympics/dont-throw-out-until-smelled-donna-freedman/
While I have not tried any of these sites, I do have friends that have with very little success. For example, a friend hired someone to do some programming on her site. The site never worked the same. She also tried to a post for a job, but was out bid. There is always someone willing to work for less and provide faster service. I asked another good friend, a programmer and person who needed to support a family, about using eLance to post for a job. He said it was not worth his time, since whoever wants the work done is expecting a bargain.
I realize there are some success stories, but I would not be comfortable suggesting these sites to anyone I know or advise professionally.
Another thing to consider is that it’s going to take some experimentation to find the sweet spot of what services to offer, how and where to pitch them, and how to price them.
Too often, it’s easy to feel like we’ve “failed” because something didn’t work out when we tried it once. Fact is, NOBODY does anything well the first time. Getting good at anything takes practice and experimentation. Life is not a pass/fail course. Where would Michael Jordan be if he quit after failing to make a basket the first time he tried?
Be forgiving with yourself, replace the concept of failure with one of learning and improvement, and you’ll start seeing your successes grow.
This is great advice. Thanks for sharing this with us. Great encouragement because that’s what most of us tend to do.
Peggy
Sometimes you get what you pay for 🙁 You don’t have to be an expert to offer your services on these websites, and that’s both a benefit and a pitfall. It stands to reason that if you want to pay the lowest price possible, you aren’t going to get top quality. Sometimes quality doesn’t matter, though.
I believe that you OFTEN get what you pay for — but “content farms” exist for the reason you cited, i.e., for when quality doesn’t matter. How often have you come across a no-design, sloppily written site monetized to the hilt? Somebody who just wants to make money on the Internet will pay $5 per SEO-stuffed article just to have something to put up.
Not that I wish to generalize.
My husband has had the same problem. He has actually worked for the same well-known company for over four years now as a copywriter and it seems next to impossible to find freelance work. There does always seem to be someone willing to work for cheaper and he has continued to look for stuff for ages. He has even responded to ads in which he has received e-mails back saying, “I have received over 150 e-mails about this job…” or “Actually, would you be able to work for now pay at first.” Maybe one day…
That should read: “Actually, would you be able to work for no pay at first?”
It can be really discouraging to see jobs posted for less than a living wage, or to be undercut by someone will to work for virtually pennies. For most folks in the U.S. and Canada, you’re going to be much better off using those sites to get your feet wet freelancing, but then transition to more specialized markets where you can charge a premium for your skills and experience.
Even with freelance writing–which many see as a commodity–there are plenty of freelance writers who charge a premium for their services–but NOT by staying on ODesk/ELance. Instead, you need to identify and cultivate more specialized markets and marketing channels. For example, instead of focusing on freelance writing in general, focus on a specialty, like copywriting. Good copywriters can command over $200/hour, since their services are so valuable to companies. By focusing on the value you provide, you’ll be able to identify potential niche markets, market yourself more effectively, and find work more easily–all while charging a higher rate. It’ll take some legwork, but it’s certainly possible.
Very cool ideas. I think I could make it doing bookkeeping and accounting work if I had to but haven’t tried yet. I like the stability of a paycheck while working on my blog.
Unfortunately, when employers do this, all that happens is the ranks of under-employed citizens grow, the ranks of the uninsured grow, and the ranks of people needing government assistance just to meet basic needs grow.
I am, however, a participant. Three and a half years ago, I started freelance writing in anticipation of eventually leaving my fulltime job to be a SAHM.
I quit my job almost 11 months ago. I earned 60% of our family’s income when I quit. I have a masters and 8 to 10 years of career experience in the field plus an additional 6 years of retail / service jobs. We were debt free and my husband continues to work at a regular business hours job. We have a third child on the way, and the cost of childcare for three kids would have been more than what I earned, anyway.
So, I currently freelance / ghostwrite for a few clients. I dropped one client because they decided to stop paying for content and only pay $.01 per 1,000 pageviews instead. So not worth my time. I now focus on one client that pays once per week, seems to have plenty of work and I can complete assignments fairly easily and quickly. I have another client in the wings that I go to when my preferred client doesn’t have anything available.
I can work when I have time and do as much or as little as I prefer, which is great for a pregnant mom of a 5yo and 2yo!
Great article, Donna! I especially love the “odd job essentials” — I feel like this is a very thorough representation of the pros and cons of the freelance/microjob life!
This is a great post and one that I will probably refer to often, but I do wonder in the long term how sustainable this is. Like Jessica #5 pointed out, this will increase the number of workers who are underemployed and uninsured. Large employers will continue pay as little as they possibly can and this is a good avenue for them to do that.
I’m self-employed part-time and the only reason this work for me is because I’m a young woman on Medicare and collect SSDI (which is fairly rare). If I didn’t have these benefits, I would never be able to do this unless I had a spouse bringing in a sustainable income and health insurance.
I’ve tried eLance in the past a few years ago and was outbidded multiple times by people overseas who are willing to earn pennies on the dollar. I actually don’t remember what the jobs were anymore, but I get the idea they have to be highly specialized.
Freelancing sounds like my version of hell. I hope ‘regular’ jobs last at least until I have enough to retire on…
Sometimes I can hear the flames cracklin’, Ely. Other days are pretty darned good. But as noted, there are disadvantages — and some people prefer a structured setting.
Freelancing has its ups and downs, just like any other job. For me, I’m lucky it’s been mostly “up”; it was an also a way for me to escape a regular 9-to-5 that I LOATHED.
This is interesting… I’m starting to do consulting work and have been offered a fee gigs that offered me a nice sum for 1 hour of work (well, maybe as a grad students that a nice sum).
I had not considered fiver…. is that really worth the effort?
I would stick with sites like Elance for finding online work. Fiverr is a really great site & I have used it in the past for hiring people for little odd jobs.
But you have to remember you only make $5 per client which limits how many services you can offer for that price point. With Elance you are bound to find more jobs with better pay as there is no price minimums or maximums.
Chase Miller
As noted in the article you can actually make more than $5 (actually $4, since Fiverr takes a dollar). The “gig extras” you can make your tasks more lucrative.
One person with whom I spoke makes between $20 and $65 per job. Since the jobs are often very quick-turnarounds, the money is pretty decent.
I got myself all trained and ready to go freelance a few years back. It was helpful after a layoff, but I quickly realized that I didn’t want to be the second self-employed person in the household … my security needs are just too high.
In my professional field, there is no such thing as starting over. Once you have left the workforce, you have to expect to go back in at the same level.
Because no-one wants to hire someone with 20 years of experience for an entry-level job, even when the candidate says “I know it’s entry-level and that’s what I want because I want to learn something new.”
And jobs in my field, while often amenable to flex-time, are not part-time jobs. So I have been happy to find continuing employment as a wage earner. The prospect of trying to cobble together anything close to a comparable income from “side gigs” was … unappealing.
That said … that is exactly what I did after the layoff. I did teaching and training from home, as well as in other people’s studios, to bridge the gap between SUI and the bills.
So I definitely encourage people to have an open mind about ANY (legal) way to use their skills to make money when full-time employment is unavailable.
Freelancing is not for shy, introverted geeks. However, for someone who can present themselves and already has some other income (like Lance above) this is a good way to get your toe in the water.
And, if you’re prepared to take 9 rebuffs or ignores for every hit, you can get started and, if it works fine. If it doesn’t, try something else.
The benefits of working from home and on your own schedule are strong enough to warrant at least a committed try…
Great article. The old concept of a regular job having any sort of “security” is long dead and in reality never existed in the first place. Any job where you can potentially go from say a $60,000/year salary to $0 from getting laid off, sacked, etc. has no security to me. This is why I work for myself. Yes, some days I don’t make as much as others because the work fluctuates. However, I’d rather have a risk of only making $40,000/year instead of say $60,000/year instead of the risk of $0. Ironically, it’s actually less risky to work for yourself in a lot of cases, since you have more than one revenue stream.
If you work in IT, there are very high chances of working from home and getting paid good rates. Having said that, networking with companies goes a long way.
Agreed. IT is the place to be for working from home and consulting. All the way from $10-$15/hour computer fixing/spyware removal up to whatever you want to charge for specialized services.
I have a steady consulting gig ($5000/month) and do additional side work ($40/hour for old clients, $50/hour for new). I’m working on a degree that will let me charge quite a bit more.
Even now though, I get to be fairly picky about who I work for and what jobs I do. I just turned down two gigs last week that didn’t match what I want to do.
I am going to check these sites out. I will probably use it to pick up some hands-on work like shopping for someone or running errands in spare time, stuff I like to do anyway.
I got hired off of an ELance gig – started off with no college degree and no experience, and within six months I’m a freelance editor for a major news network, easily meeting my living expenses from working 4 hours a day from home. Or Mexico. Or a music festival.
Adding in whatever other fun projects I get from ELance make it a good living that letting me finally do all the things I’ve been wanting to do since I became an adult. Plus, I know that if my editing job falls through, I have enough contracts to keep me going while I find another long-term client. Not bad for someone who ran out of money and hasn’t finished school yet, and who had a long stretch of unemployment tarnishing her resume.
Some of these sites have a bad reputation, but I’ve learned every style of editing, ghostwritten some YA novels, and have learned how to maintain social network marketing profiles/blogs, as well as how to use SEO in a judicious fashion. Because I was able to get my feet wet by ghostwriting fiction and got practice and favorable feedback that way, I have the confidence to write something under my own name.
These are all skills I wouldn’t have even considered if I hadn’t seen postings on ELance and thought “that looks like fun, I will try that out.”
The writing market is over saturated, and it can be overwhelming trying to break in. My significant other is a computer guy, and like others have said, it’s easier for him to find and maintain a good living. As a language person, I would have had a much harder time even knowing where to begin without ELance to provide a framework.
I think the trick with these sites is to score high on the tests and be very clear on your profile: I don’t do content mills and I don’t do anything that looks or sounds like spam. And be prepared to stick with it without getting desperate. People can see how much you’ve earned, and what jobs you’ve done. If you commit to doing high quality jobs, people will hire you for the same.
Will I be moving on to unsupported freelancing in the next year? Probably. But I think ELance (and others, I’m sure, but I only have experience with that one) is a fantastic way to get started, especially if you don’t know anyone else who freelances to ask for help. I would highly recommend this route.
Thanks for the list of sites, definitely going to share with my freelance friends.
I did the five – eight part time jobs (some of them as an adjunct professor at local colleges) for several years and it was fun for a while (I liked setting my own schedule and having a lot of free time and only working while at work — what I hate most about a “real” job is having nothing to do but having to sit in the office). But I’m in my mid-40s now and it got to be a hassle. I went from loving the thrill of hunting for and finding new jobs to dreading having to look for more work.
I have a low-paid but secure full-time job now in a non-profit and I do extra part-time jobs on the side to make a little extra. For me, this is the best of both worlds at this point in my life.
Up with third-world America! Microjobs for ramen! YAY!
Oh Boy! No kidding!
You got that right — I read this and felt nauseous. This is what it’s come to?
Yesterday, I started training to be a virtual assistant with Zirtual.com. I am thrilled that I will be able to be location independent as it has been a goal of mine for over a year now. I got burned pretty badly by the corporate world and I’m ready to try something completely different. Sure, I won’t have health insurance or retirement benefits and I will get paid half of what I was making, but I’ve cut my expenses to the bare minimum and have concluded that freedom and travel are more important to me than money.
Shop around for insurance. You might be surprised what you find.
This was a very interesting article. I’m coming to a crossroads in my life now in wanting to leave my teaching job to venture into writing.
I am acting on a budget plan that would hopefully give me enough of a buffer when I hit the transition phase when I don’t have money coming in yet.
Thank you for this, Donna. And I also want to thank Greg Miliates @ Start Consulting for the advice and #30 Jesse for providing a personal experience from ELance.
I needed that jump start.
Good luck — and I’m glad you used the words “budget plan” in your response, vs. leaping in blindly.
You might be interested in this webpage on What to Pay a Writer: http://www.writers.ca/index.php/component/content/article/80-pwac-resources/76-pwac-resource-what-to-pay-a-writer (It’s Canadian, but you get the drift.)
Beginning writers can’t command the top wages, but it certainly puts those cheap writing jobs on free lance sites in perspective.
The best thing you can do is build a portfolio of work for reputable companies and publications that have good standards. The better the publications where your work appears, the more attractive you are to clients.
Just my two cents 😉
It’s simply not true that you can’t have health insurance when you work for yourself.
You might have to do some research, find a good insurance broker, and/or consult with a CPA who specializes in tax consulting for solo owner businesses. There are probably a lot more options out there than most folks realize.
The costs and benefits will depend on many factors, including your health and the legal structure of your business.
For example, in my case, I have a high deductible ($5000) health insurance plan that only costs me about $200/month. I’m 63, in good health, and regularly take only one prescription medication. Besides protecting me from potential financial disaster in case of catastrophic illness, this type of plan saves me money in several ways.
First, the premiums are only about 1/3 of what I used to pay for a traditional PPO plan.
Second, all nationally recommended preventive services are covered 100% without any deductible. This means I get an annual physical, mammogram, Pap smear, and flu shot for free. Last year I also got TDAP booster shot.
Third, because I’m insured, when I use in-network providers, they can only charge me the contracted rate they’ve agreed to with the insurance company. So my semi-annual blood tests which I have to pay out of pocket only cost me about $20, not the “regular” price of $140 for someone who’s uninsured.
Finally, since my business is incorporated and has an IRS compliant medical reimbursement plan, the company pays me (the employee) back for my out of pocket medical expenses and gets to take them as business expenses on its tax return. And it doesn’t count as income to me.
How sweet is that?
By the way, if you’re not incorporated, but you’re married and can legitimately hire your spouse to work in your business, you can set up a similar arrangement for your company.
Dear Donna,
I enjoyed reading your post.
I agree with your thema in general.
However I find that in my experience once your dreams are big you cannot act small.
Regards,
Amir Shani, Author
Heh, Ive actually written stories for people on Fiverr. It was fun, but definitely just a hobby, not something I could actually make much money doing. Ive also written freelance stuff for other sites, but I never liked how my articles would get edited before actually being published. It felt like my name was being attached to someone else’s words.
eLance is a joke if you’re a real programmer. There are always people with great looking resumes posting ridiculously low bids so unless you’re willing to give yourself away for free don’t bother.
I just quit my full time job to be a stay at home dad. In this case, micro jobs are the way to go. Any little extra income will help pay the bills. 🙂
Good luck, Joe. Remember, child care is easy: Keep one end full and the other end dry.
This post has a plucky, “You too can be an entrepreneur!” tone, but the reality seems pretty grim to me. For every person who goes this route because he/she hates a 9-5, or every stay-at-home parent trying to pick up a little extra cash, I bet there are five people doing “microjobs” because it’s the only work they can get.
I never said it was the perfect situation for everyone. Just one more option.
I don’t think it’s so much that’s it’s bad advice if you find yourself in a certain situation, but that it’s a situation that we’d hope wasn’t becoming so prevalent. It’s a bit like Bear Grylls telling you how to survive in the desert by extracting water from cactuses and eating scorpions, which is a good tip if you find yourself lost in the desert, but a much worse situation than not being lost in the desert in the first place. The critics, I think, would mostly would rather read advice about how to keep from getting lost rather than how to survive in the desert that is apparently the future of America.
True! But in some industries, microjobs are just one of many factors changing the landscape. Take writing, for example. Yes, people who write for cheap are undercutting people who want to earn a living wage writing — but so are bloggers and people who self-publish books.
Whether the changes are good or bad depends on your perspective. If you’re a staff writer being let go so your company can take advantage of cheaper freelancers, it’s not so good. If you’re the cheap freelancer, then things are looking up!
I’m picking on writing because everyone seems to think they can do it well. There aren’t so many people trying to be engineers or accountants as a side gig 🙂
If you’re a staff writer being let go so your company can take advantage of cheaper freelancers, it’s not so good. If you’re the cheap freelancer, then things are looking up!
Two steps back, one step forward.
Can’t it be both? My significant other encouraged me to freelance because, by his own admission, he thought I needed something useful to do to get me to snap out of a deep depression brought on by months upon months of unemployment. I couldn’t find any job, not even as a waitress or a car wash attendant. Maybe it’s because I live in a small town, but I was completely unemployable for over six months – I definitely had no other choice, I was in debt to my significant other and dropped out of school.
We were both shocked that it’s been such a good thing for me. Which, of course, won’t be true for everyone.
But doing micro jobs and contract work definitely teaches you some great skills, and might help keep you afloat until you land your next job. Depending on what you do, it could keep your resume full, avoiding that “what were you doing since your last job?” question that I was starting to run into at interviews. “Sending out resumes and hoping for a response” is not a fun answer to give.
And most importantly, working gig to gig like this forced me to practice good skills that we all want to have – finding creative solutions. Not giving up. Believing in myself and learning how to effectively sell myself to others, how to be patient even when I’m scared and learning how to fail and fail and still get where I want to be. That’s a lot better than sitting around on the couch hoping I can find a job in the next six months!
I definitely agree that it’s better than not working. Your choice was between unemployment and a microjob, and you chose to work. I just find it depressing that long-term unemployment is still such an issue that lots of people are turning to microjobs to fill the gap.
Agreed.
Microjobs are great. One thing that I love is that it gives me the flexibility to maintain my blog. When a deadline is near, I don’t accept jobs. When I want to visit my grandkids, I don’t accept jobs. But,….when I want to eat…I accept jobs.
Funny how that works!
The service-oriented jobs are limited to major metropolitatn areas and the opportunities that aren’t tied to a location wind up paying less than the lowest minimum wage in most states. These are not legitimate options!
As some of the comments indicate, these ARE legitimate options for some people.
What they aren’t is a one-size-fits-all solution to un- or underemployment, just as taking a traditional second job won’t work for everyone.
Hi,
From my experience, to get freelance or starting your own business, recommend starting from getting in touch with your industry. Such as getting small job freelance, those jobs might pay a small money, but once you get hooked in, you will be able to learn and expand your knowledge or connection. When time goes by, you will get better paid or might be able to build up your own business.
I and my husband, we own a small family retail business. It is growing and expanding. I remembered in first year, it was so hard. But after you pass the first stage of building business, you will feel it is not that hard to expand or grow more business and make more money in long term.
If you have any ideas of your business, just starting small and learn along the way.
Please make article references to websites urls (hyperlink eLance, etc). This would be friendlier to the mobile device exerience of your site.
This sort of dovetails with a book I am currently reading, Working Identity by Herminia Ibarra. It talks about switching paths mid-carrier, by trying things you are interested in out in small doses.
Yes I accept what some of the other comments mention ie that $5 is not much to earn. However Fiverr started the $5 for a microjob concept but since then fiverr clone site or microjob sites have sprung up and most of these sites offer extra features, in particular the ability to offer jobs for more than $5.
There are hundreds of these sites but the key is to post your jobs on the most popular of these sites. The other advantage is you are not competing with as many sellers as the fiverr site.
This is a fantastic article on microjobs and the growing oddjob freelance market. I don’t know why people are willing to pay for this stuff but they are. A lot big and small companies are hiring people on these small job sites to do their viral and online marketing. So I only see it getting bigger before it levels out.
“A lot big and small companies are hiring people on these small job sites to do their viral and online marketing.”
Right. I just visited http://www.clickchores.com. Their most popular jobs are:
1 “Google this keyword and click”
2″Like my Facebook page”
3″Post my link”
4″Comment on my post”
5″Vote for me”
6″Follow my brand on Twitter”
7″Write an article”
8″Sign up here”
9″Pin this to Pintrest”
10″Search and browse my site”
11″Digg my page”
12″Add me to your list on Twitter”
13″Stumble my site”
14″Watch and favorite my video”
Yes, support yourself by being a professional liar. This kind of activity only makes the world a worse place. Hopefully this one site doesn’t represent this mode of employment.
This is a great post and some great comments too. I agree with comment 20, absolutely! Working from home or freelance or whatever you want to call it is far more rewarding BUT it is very difficult. I know some people who make a comfortable living from these micro job sites and there is not a chance they would give that up to go an work for someone else despite a wage increase. The thing is you cant just create ONE micro job for logo design or anything else and then expect to make a living of it, you need to WORK at it like you would have to work for the other person, promote it the best you can and try to give something others don’t. It is possible, people are doing it NOW and the proof is in the pudding (an english saying there for ya 😉 ) I have just launched a new website http://www.madgigz.com which helps sellers of micro jobs promote their jobs and im always happy to help point you in the right direction. Anyway great post and good luck with everything you do!
I also agree with post 3.
in order to get the most out of using microjob
websites you need to try and test many different
ones to see which ones better cater to your financial needs.
This is a very helpful post. The problem is that we may have the skills that others don’t but we never utilize. I believe this article shows that we should appreciate that and enhance it.
Among the most critical tips for home business operators is to observe a regular workday. If you do not have a regular schedule, you can find yourself working too much and not having enough time for your family. It can put you on the fast track to job burnout and family discontent. It may be hard at first to stick to your schedule, but it will be beneficial in the long run.
Many of this articles respondents recommended websites or blogs that are down, discontinued, expired, invalid, etc. I was able to read many of the posts on same by copying & pasting the links for those now-defunct sites into http://www.archive.org. But, the rel reason for my post is to say this: Only creatively-resourceful people who join like-minded groups in their local area will survive the probable calamity that the U.S. & world economy will experience as a result of purposed-destruction by government & corporate special interest groups & political action committees. Reduce your expenses/debts, share resources, move in with family or friends, keep a written budget, grow your own food, study energy conservation, etc. Then, maybe sites like Fiver & ELance can sustain you while you work to build your own business because working for someone else is risky in this economy. Say it with me: “Creative resourcefulness”-you should try it!
it becomes more and more to survive in this economy micro jobs offer great opportunities for more outcome.