Ask HN: My wife needs something to do from home to make money...
My wife is a stay at home Mom and is bored - unfortunately she doesn't have the best formal education credentials but she is far from stupid. However this does heavily impact her ability to get a job that pays much more than minimum wage, usually labor intensive. She has a herniated bulging disc in her lower back, so I'd prefer her not do a lot of manual labor all day. I wanted to hear from you guys what sort of entrepreneurial endeavors she might embark on with my programming/web expertise and a little bit of cash backing her. The catch is, she needs to be able to do it from home. She doesn't need to get rich - even earning ~$1000/mo would be acceptable as long as the man(woman) hours to money earned ratio is reasonable. Ideas?
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[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 257 ms ] threadhttp://www.smartpassiveincome.com/how-to-build-a-niche-site/
It's not HN-ey, but I can see it working for her.
Best of luck!
Thanks.
There is no guarantee of success by being an infopreneur, and it can take a long time before you start seeing real money from it. I have a friend who made $10,000 in her first year with two sites, and I think her success is far above average. She now makes $50,000 with three sites.
It's harder nowadays than ever before though, because there's more competition and there's only one #1 spot on Google. And there's no guarantee of money. Some people could spend hundreds of hours and only make a few dollars.
For a wife who may not know anything about technology and wants to get started as an infopreneur, SiteBuildIt.com is a good service. They look terribly outdated but their information is solid. I checked them out for a month and saw their information is all the same stuff I learned from experience.
Writing useful content on a web site is what matters for a real business. Not spammy link practices.
My wife sells Avon and it's a not half-bad way to make some income on the side.
Depends on one's situation. As the poster described his wife, it sounds - to me - like a valid opportunity.
Avon is not only a pyramid scheme
No, it's not.
That said, I don't think it's a good choice for the OP simply because of all the travel and sorting boxes, etc, involved.
But thanks anyway.
Recovery from child sexual abuse. I talk about that sort of/some on a blog called November West.
Raising and effectively educating very challenging children. I talk about that on a site called Kids Like Mine.
Getting well when doctors say it cannot be done. I talk about that on a site called Health Gazelle.
I don't know how to get traffic or effectively monetize any of them, in spite of the big reaction it often gets out of the handful of people that read them.
For example, a "which of these things is not like the other ones" type task might be estimated as taking 15 seconds, but if you're in the zone you can do them in 5 seconds, netting you 3x the hourly rate.
A lot of companies hire people to manage social media too.
(A) Customers respond to someone who knows what they're talking about
(B) In any case you're happier doing something you enjoy
Suggest some possibilities!
http://r.bernsteinbear.com/r/self/comments/sgaka/dont_trust_...
The gist was the links he posted to the PPC/SEO companies were actually his own (and this was his true purpose).
[Edit, found the link!]
I still think there's business in drop shipping as long as you do your home work and apply common sense.
You need to field questions from your customers as the merchant, without generally being able to have access to the products you are selling. You need to deal with shipping companies and angry customers questioning the legitimacy of your products. (Because they are cheap and coming from another country and they were slightly different to the last one they brought.... they must be fake).
Affiliate marketing is a lot easier place to start, you send s customer, get a commission and don't have to deal with the rest of the process. In terms of products I think the greater opportunities are in drop shipping, as long as you can do everything mentioned. There are people though making a fortune on leads without having to worry about everything else.
Here's the company she worked for: http://www.nuance-nts.com/ - they're the same people that do Dragon Naturally Speaking and Siri. Kinda weird to be training algorithms that are replacing you.
It's between a 4 month and 1 year course, depending on how much time you spend training. She finished it in about three months by working on it all the time.
On Etsy, I've seen a lot of people making things that don't seem like they would be labor intensive beyond the occasional shifting and arranging of raw materials.
If she's capable of making things that would do well on that website, count me among the jealous :)
Good luck.
Along the same lines, I know there are independent product developers (iOS apps, Android apps, web apps, etc.) who are tired of doing email support themselves, but find it hard to find competent contractors to do thoughtful first-level support for them. This usually doesn't require advanced technical skills, mostly just being able to interpret vague descriptions, escalate important reports, and respond with polite standard English. I imagine building up a good reputation on a public Q&A site (the Apple discussion forums or something) could be a helpful first step for this, and then using connections to get an initial client or two who can vouch for you.
If you are ever getting hit with xrumer blasts, you just need to rotate your "What is 5+5?"-type registration questions because someone hard-coded your registration process into xrumer.
Beyond that, if you have any users at all, you'll be able to cultivate an armada of volunteer moderators to help you out.
i.e.: if your wife is called "gloria" the app is called "Ask Gloria"
the app is free(? or 0.99) with a 1 question package.an additional question pack (of 5 questions) costs 10(?)$
the selling point is that not an anonymous person or siri-AI answers your stuff, but a real human being. the app can be pitched to techblogs and other stuff as an (funny and "slow life") alternative to siri & co.
it's the smallest niche i can think of. just a wild idea, would love if you give it a try and report back to HN.
Pretty handy service however I think you'd want to be able to call in your question as there might be a bit of forwards and backs in trying to work out exactly what you're trying to get the answer to.
(Serious question. Not kidding.)
After being here a while I appreciate being able to read comment threads that are centered around useful conversation from people who know what they're talking about and not a contest to see who can crack the funniest joke. If you like that, Reddit's good.
Suggestion: never try that anywhere but a web forum.
Doing sex phone work is a bit "ooh, naughty" here but as a topic for general conversation is far less offensive than in the US. We even get light hearted documentaries about sex phone operators on TV (http://steverogerson.suite101.com/my-phone-sex-secrets-chann...) featuring students and grannies who've decided to give it a crack to earn a few quid, but when set amongst US norms your suggestion is barely better than suggesting she walk the streets.
tl;dr - When in Rome..
Unfortunately it got converted to clothes and shoes pretty quickly :(
"Persuaded some muppet": she gained her mark's confidence.
"to sell her a Korg Triton for 80GBP": she ripped her mark off.
"and got 580GBP on ebay for it": and then she profited from the rip-off.
in some circles, that is referred to as grifting.
Taking from idiots is an evolutionary step. Look at VC funding!
Most developers hate doing this, & PM's are not good at anything.
I usually pay $40/hr for this, however it only takes a few hours, and that rate means the bug report is reported in a way that it's easy to read and recreate without having to have a conversation about it.
I can't imagine how programming has anything to do with assurance (the A in QA). Though I have seen job descriptions confuse QA with analytics and analytics definitely requires programming expertise. I usually chalk this up to HR not knowing what the hell they are talking about.
1) Programmer testers that write reusable, and automated tests, as well as encourage & assist the dev team to write their own tests. These folks work through the entire project , usually on product type projects.
2) Manual Testers (there must be a better name) These folks are good communicators that focus primarily on the client perspective. Developers, and their tests, tend to evaluate code in a rigid & consistent way that may not reflect the end user experience. These testers are also used on products but more commonly on turn-and-burn projects for Agencies or startup MVP's that are not huge yet.
If you did want to get into programming I do think that QA is an outstanding way to bootstrap a web dev career. I've laid out a plan here http://www.robertspeer.com/blog/no-degree-no-problem-some-ha...
It's not how I got got into making web apps but I think it's a solid way to get into a well paying career.
I believe I can usually communicate well with programmers, but is there anything else I can do to make myself qualified for this type of job?
Also, are there any recommended sites or places to look for these types of job postings besides the 99tests one mentioned? Thank you.
The pitch is "Be a User Tester and Earn $10 per Website".