When You’ve Tried Everything to Work from Home
I know I’m not alone in my efforts to try and work from home, homeschool and actively serve in my local church. The blogosphere is full of mamas sharing their endeavors to do so. I will share my journey here in the hopes that it will help one of you navigate through the seemingly endless opportunities out there.
What I Have Tried to Do
Being a RN, I of course tried to find some medically-related at-home position. There are loads of things that I was qualified for, but the hours required were not conducive to mom and homeschool teacher roles. Furthermore, most of the positions I found were either review, transcription or interview roles and require a silent, dedicated work environment. Ha! Quickly disqualified!
There are plenty of these legit jobs available, but they pay pennies.
I then moved on to a host of miscellaneous data entry positions (think Mechanical Turk). I tried to enter info from customer receipts, take surveys, etc. There are plenty of these legit jobs available, but they pay pennies. Literally, you make cents per hour. But, the work in not hard or stressful, you don’t need any equipment/training to get started, there is always work available and there are no quotas/time schedules to meet.
To attempt making DOLLARS per hour, I looked into general online transcription and found a couple winners. My favorite two companies to work for were TranscribeMe and Rev. The latter was my top choice, but it was very difficult to communicate with leadership and there was very little wiggle room for mistakes. I am a bit of perfectionist and rule-follower, so I was very disappointed that I couldn’t get feedback with a chance to improve my work. So I went to TranscribeMe. I found this company much easier to work with and for, but the pay was quite less than Rev. I was putting in a couple hours a day and making only around $30-40/week. And I did compare my typing speed/turn-around times with others to find out that I was at mid-to-high end of the pack. When I learned that, I concluded there wasn’t much room to grow there to improve my earnings.
What Actually Worked for Me
I didn’t find the fit for me until another homeschool mom told me what she was doing. She said I could work entirely online if I wanted or do a mix with some things done in-person. I checked it out and didn’t think it was for me until….my hubby said to do it. He is super skeptical of most work-from-home “opportunities” and so his recommendation weighed alot. I have been working online now for over a year and love it because I truly work when I want. I’ve met alot of wonderful people who are so encouraging in not only work endeavors but also my journeys in homeschooling and motherhood. I have true friends in those ladies and make enough to pay for things that need replaced (like brakes, TVs and laptops….literally in back to back months!) and save for bigger projects and vacations. This opportunity has been one of my daily blessings often over the past year and I look forward to sharing more about it in future posts.
