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Are typing jobs from home worth it?
Results so far:
| Yes | 71% | 690 votes | Total: 976 votes | |
| No | 29% | 286 votes |
Yes
by Ruth Belena
Created on: July 16, 2008 Last Updated: October 04, 2010
I was taught how to type on a manual typewriter. After leaving school I used an electric typewriter at work, but I still needed all my newly acquired typing skills for setting out rows of words and columns of figures in financial documents. Errors could only be rectified using correcting fluid and the whole thing had to be retyped whenever something needed to be added or altered.
My career in office work lasted for more than ten years, during which time I was always expected to type quickly, often with deadlines to meet, and accuracy was also important. I was a good reliable typist and my employers were all satisfied with my work.
When I was no longer typing at work, I bought myself a word processor to use at home. I set up my own home business for the first time, while I was still working full time, by starting an introduction service. My spare time was spent typing up people's details, mailing out newsletters and lists, and I did achieve some success, with at least one pair of customers married to each other! This, of course, was before the days of internet dating sites or SMS text dating services.
By the time the many people were starting to buy their first desktop computer or laptop, I had ended my employment and was now working full time from home. I established myself as a desktop publisher, producing a quarterly magazine, small press publications and newsletters. I used a professionally designed website to promote my services to the online world, and the income I got from the website more than covered the cost.
Five years later my publishing services were no longer required, because by then anyone with a computer could put their work on a website or print it out on paper.
Now I spend my time writing web content. My articles, reviews, blog posts, discussion topics and comments can be found on many sites. Everything I publish or write is paid for or is earning money for me.
It does take some thought and a little knowledge to do it but I can produce many hundreds of words every day. My touch typing skills are of great benefit to me as a writer, because I never have to look at the keyboard, and words appear on the screen more or less as I think of them. Then I can revise and edit my work before I proofread, spellcheck, and finally submit my piece.
Knowing how to type well, quickly and accurately, has given me the opportunity to work for myself from my own home. It's still a typing job, but now I am my own boss, and I keep all the profits, except of course what I must pay in tax.
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No
by Kate Johns
Created on: April 03, 2008
Typing jobs from home are not worth it, because for the most part employers are paying next to nothing to have people type for them. By typing, correcting and redoing others work most prospective employers pay very little actual money. A person is better off getting a real job in the workforce that pays decently.
Sometimes a person is better off getting a minimum wage paying job that isn't far from home, to get out of the house and get paid to work. This way a person can make more money working for minimum wage than what they would get paid working for super low pay for employers.
Writing for blogs, doing product reviews and writing for hire jobs for the most part pay next to nothing. I actually had a so-called offer to write well-written articles of 400 to 500 words for less than minimum wage. The money the employer was willing to pay was $2 to $5 a story. Once I found out this wasn't a typo I said, "No thanks."
Writing for other sites that pay per story can be lucrative. But, your story has to get picked over other people's stories, and it has to be very well written. To make it worth it, a person would have to crank out over 30 stories a week and sell at least ten of those.
Some sites lure a person in with showing the stories one can write and how much they can get paid for them. But, by the time I went through the signing up process, that was overly lengthy, all the supposed paid stories were suddenly gone when I went to choose one. I think that's called bait and switch, as in the advertising business and I don't believe for a second that all those stories after 20 minutes were completely gone.
Obviously I didn't write anything for them, and I probably never will. There are plenty of sites out there promising the moon, but when they promise a lot, it's probably not going to happen. A person could start a creative, imaginative blog and advertise it on certain sites such as Digg, and even Google. A person might even make decent money, by having a blog that is made from their area of expertise.
But, working typing for hire gigs on the Internet, one would have to type 100,000 words a day to make it lucrative. I figured to make any real money for that one employer that was willing to pay under minimum wage, it would have cost more for the electricity I was using, than for how little I was getting paid.
Typing from home gigs that are advertised all over the Internet are not worth it from my experience. They would be if the employer paid decent money for a person's hard labor. Why is it that they advertise in the first place, why don't they just do the work, instead of wasting the money advertising for hard working, creative types like us?
Learn more about this author, Kate Johns.
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