Ask HN: How to find online employment for a person with limited functionality
Hello HN, I am 35 years old and have 10+ years experience as a DevOps/Systems Engineer, but due to health related issues I'm out of work for 2 years.
Now I encountered a situation where urgently need some additional income of about $300/month to cover my basic needs as my country isn't willing to do that for me, but I'm only able to work about 2-3 hours per days.
I'm looking for some suggestions and experiences in this field, because I'm honestly at a loss here.
Please tell me if you know where it's possible to start looking to get some part-time online work. I'm open basically for any types of online work I can reasonably do as a computer-literate person.
Thanks
44 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 108 ms ] threadYou don't mention details of your health/medical situation, but while you get "the thing" that will NOW get you the $300 per month, perhaps you aim for $350 or $400, and in parallel start thinking on "what can I build that will generate (in two years?) a steady $300". So in 3-6 months you can use the extra generated ($50-$100 per month) to build some service, website, etc.?
Imo that's plenty
Right now I'm able to do some scripting, but I am at a loss how to leverage my knowledge given my current condition, because I'm used to be always employed full-time previously.
Not throwing any shade just don't want to be suggesting stuff you've already tried.
I’d have thought if you had fairly basic web development skills you could make more than $300/month from somewhere like that?
(with that said we don't know OP's location)
Unless you have a track record and reputation on the sites already, your proposals will simply be ignored anyway.
It's really a waste of time there unless you can offer something very unique, or can somehow undercut the developing-nation sweatshops - even then, you'll be mostly ignored with no track record.
This may or may not be what the OP was looking for, but at one point it wasn't uncommon to have humans doing QC work on data streams.
Depending on the type of data and the cost of admitting errors it was known to sometimes pay well enough for the amount outlined.
- Company 1: https://cactusglobal.com/careers/freelance/
- Company 2: https://proofreading.org/about/careers/
Didn't need a certificate in Proofreading / Editing. You have to test edit a few sample papers to get employed. My backgound: software development (but have a Science degree too from years ago).
The work is remote, flexible (you can decline papers) but *not* highly paid. Also quite hard if you get a poorly written paper. I only did it as a stop-gap.
Also: don't know if GPT has finished this market...
if you only need $300/month, and you can only do 2 hours a day, you're much more likely to find what you need locally by word of mouth (helping people fix their computers, setting up web accounts / etc). An hour or two a week would net you the $300/mo you need. It'll be easier to find that hour locally than on the internet.
making money on the internet doesn't necessarily scale down infinitely, for example you can't spend 6 minutes a day earning 4 dollars very easily; there's a minimum amount of time it takes to talk to people and arrange jobs etc.
I would look locally if I were you.
By selling things people actually want there is always money to be made. eBay, Etsy, classifieds & local alternatives.
While selling is kinda predictable you can also avoid handling products and go the affiliate route. Find products you care about, find a way to cheaply promote them, then put together a nice (actually helpful) website, write a few words and fill it with AI text.
A few hundred dollars per month are absolutely doable at 2-3 hours per week once you found things that work for you. So invest the 2-3 a day to find these things.
OP could possibly make content of their struggle, but it would still require certain personality and passion to do that.
If you have any kind of expertise in a area, no matter how niche or weird, a simple knowledge website can easily be that last click for someone. AI can just fill the blanks of your existing expertise.
There are millions of ways to approach this. Sure it doesn't happen over night, and you need to find 'tricks' that work for you and your products and audience.
But I am certain that anyone with enough time can find their piece of the cake that is our world of constant consumption.
(Stupid Example:// I just bought a repair part for my coffee machine, nobody dominates the affiliate market here. However I needed to research which additional parts I would need to open the machine, etc. I googled like 5 related phrases in my research, any targeted blog post would have shown up catched my interest and maybe would have lead to a sale. Let's say there are 1 million machines of that type that need that part every 5 years or so, maybe 10k would repair it themself or at least try to. They Google, see your article and maybe 10% actually buys the parts. 10k, so 2k per year. 10% buying from your links so 200 people, 200 X 5% of 30$ = 300$ a year. Now repeat with the next machine type, then next brand. Etc)
You are already competing with tons of SEO spamming websites trying to trick people into affiliate purchases, and they've been in business for much longer.
Google is almost useless in many cases because of all of those SEO hacking websites.
Especially now with AI, so many websites generated using AI tools to target SEO, and you would have to compete with their practices.
However Google is not that stupid. If your site is the only one users don't leave after 10 seconds Google knows that.
AI content works well, but only if you input the right things and there is hours of work and expertise as well to get that right, even if it's automated in the end. Each problem needs to be tackled specifically no recipe just transports properly to another niche.
IMO organic traffic & SEO is still king. A few Reddit posts or well placed blog comments are enough to establish a new domain. If users spend time on your site, because you share actual knowledge, traffic grows from its own. Even more if you grow with content as well. Sure it takes time, but I still earn my few hundred dollars once and then from things I built years ago and never touched again. Each of them tackling a niche problem I had, researched and then shared in a accessible format. My sites don't look like affiliate spam because they bring value and I target the traffic trough SEO looking for that exact value.
that's quite a low hourly rate, so you should even be able to find jobs at upwork and similar platforms.
apart from that, find sites where you can sign up and where people hiring can find you.
post on hackernews "who wants to be hired" https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring
it may take a while to find something, but it's low effort. same goes for some other sites. sign up where you can and see if you get offers.
describe what work you can do, and tell that you are looking for only 2 hours a day, 10 hours a week of work. don't explain why. for a side job 2 hours a day is normal, so noone will consider it unusual that you can only do 2 hours. they don't need to know the real reason.
when you have the time and energy then go back to those same sites and actively look for work you could do.
codementor for example. it's easy to sign up and depending on the skills you offer you'll get people contacting you. i get about one request per month, which is not enough for me to live on, but it might just be enough for you.
and considering your situation, i would also look at mechanical turk. the pay is low, but the tasks are simple and they may just be the kind of thing that you can do without making you tired. i could be wrong, but give it a try.
Considering your background, freelancing or consultancy gigs might be your best bet. Websites like Upwork, Freelancer, or even reaching out to small businesses directly could land you short-term projects or consultations in your field. Your expertise is valuable, so don't hesitate to put it out there!
getting a (or another) job is also not trivial, esp. if they're not in the US (which is true by the sounds of it)
Tutor CS/SWE students or something you can do with what you have available. Possibly bilingual, translation, or something like that? Cold call companies to make their websites. Find a website that revenue shares for writing articles. Start a social media channel. Bid on government contracts https://sam.gov/content/opportunities
Is that a hard limit, or are you saying that under normal office hours you can only do 2-3 hours? Eg, could you do a few hours in the morning and a few hours in the evening?
I'm guessing that's not possible but if you could push it to 5-6 hours I suspect you'd have a much easier time at finding employment because then you say you're basically able to do what a full-timer is doing, you'd just need a little extra flexibility in terms of hours worked.
(or just any info you want to provide. I don't care about resumes themselves, and don't want you to waste your time on it for me)