Hey, guys. It's Chelsea from
The Financial Diet. And today, I want to talk
to you about a subject that for many of us is probably
really, really relevant right now. And that is how to
make extra money. And I don't want to do
it in one of those really annoying, spammy
comments like my cousin made $300 from sitting in
his room, kind of ways. I want to talk about the not
sketchy, completely legitimate ways you can start
making extra money. And why is this so
relevant right now? Well, if you've been living
in some kind of bunker, Kimmy Schmidt situation, and have been
unaware of the global pandemic that has had enormous economic
impacts, I can fill you in. The Economic Policy
Institute predicts that almost 20
million Americans will be laid off or furloughed,
which is a leave of absence without pay, by July. And as of today, May 12, about
18.6% of the US workforce, which translates to just
shy of 30 million people, have applied for
unemployment benefits since social distancing
measures have gone into effect, according
to the US Department of labor.
Right NOW as of mid-May,
about 60% of Americans are in some kind of
a lockdown, which is down from a high of about
94% at the end of March. And although by
the time this airs, that is subject, probably,
to some change, one thing that we have learned from
some of the states that have reopened
earlier than others is that just because
a state is open does not mean people are going
out and shopping and spending in the same way. All of these
various components– the need to stay home,
combined with the loss of a lot of income
for many, has resulted in a much higher level
of interest in work from home opportunities. And one thing to keep in mind is
that with all of this increased need for more easy
side income, there are going to be a lot of
scamming opportunities out there. Do remember that
anything that requires you to give money or put
down a credit card for a job opportunity should be
considered immediately sketchy and to be avoided. You should always also be
able to get total clarity around the terms of your job,
even for a contracted project– things like how
much you'll be paid, when you can expect to be paid,
how to invoice, et cetera.
Do not allow the
unusual circumstances to translate into people
taking you for a ride. So without further ado,
here are seven ways to make money from your
home right now that aren't completely sketchy. Number one is
virtual babysitting. So a new thing has risen
up in the need for parents to access child care,
combined with the inability to safely have child care
workers come to their home. And that is virtual babysitting. Basically, this is when
you are spending time with a child via things
like Skype or Zoom while the parent is in the
home, but otherwise occupied. The demand for this
service has exploded. It is up 700% in the
last month, according to Elizabeth Harz,
the CEO of Sittercity, which is a website that connects
parents and babysitters. And of course, this is
not a complete replacement for parental supervision. And the sessions are
usually on the shorter side, lasting around an hour
or so, so the parent can accomplish another task. And the activities
can range anywhere from doing little workshop
activities together to reading a book to leading
some kind of exercise class to just spending
time with the child while the parent can focus
their attention elsewhere.
Rates can range from about $15
to $36 an hour with an average tending to be somewhere
around $16.50. And usually, the sessions
are booked in multiples and paid up front. Sites like care.com will
allow you to set up a profile and specify virtual
only for the time being. This can be a great
opportunity for people who have a lot of experience with kids. Maybe you've had
your own, or you've had experience with
nannying or babysitting, or just been the oldest
of many siblings. If you're good at taking
the lead in these situations and figuring out creative
ways to keep children engaged, because obviously, you
can't physically keep them in the room– so you have to
make them want to stay paying attention to you– it's a pretty cool challenge,
and something that can easily add to your monthly income.
It is worth noting, however,
that nannies and baby sitters have seen an average
84% drop in employment. So competition is
likely to be steep. But you could
easily have an edge if you are fluent
in another language or have a skill you can
teach, like yoga or singing, or something else that
could set you apart. Number two is virtual assisting. Unlike virtual babysitting,
virtual assistant jobs have been around for
a pretty long time.
Everyone from authors
getting ready to head out on book tour to large
companies looking to keep some of their
workforce remote have utilized virtual
assistants for years. And there's no one
set definition or list of responsibilities for
a virtual assistant. But common ones
can include things like calendar management,
setting up meetings and work trips, managing emails, updating
websites, and sometimes even updating social media
channels, although social media management is often a
job in its own right. And the average hourly rate is
$15.80, according to Payscale, with an upper bound
just under $30.
For more resources,
you can check out things like the International
Virtual Assistants Association, or the Virtual Hub, which
match assistant with clients, and so on and so forth. The most important skills
for this sort of job are things that you might
imagine, like organization, clear communication,
timeliness, attention to detail, heavy familiarity with basic
office software, et cetera. But if you have higher
level communication skills, around things like using the
latest apps or social media and communication tools, that
can easily give you an edge. Check out sites like
Upwork for listings. Number three is tutoring. If you have a background in
education or a specific field, or have heavy knowledge
in a specific skill– like for example, fluency
in another language, or ability to very
accurately teach English– tutoring is likely to see
a very big surge in demand.
Because parents are
turning to tutors to help supplement their
children's newly online classes and make sure they
don't fall behind. For example, tutoring
company Varsity Tutors saw a 40% increase in
demand in April, again, mostly stemming from
this total shift that we've all had to make
in terms of education. And the rates for tutoring
do vary wildly, depending on your level of education,
expertise in a subject, experience with
tutoring, et cetera– also, whether you're an
independent contractor or work with an agency. The average hourly
rate for a tutor at a company like Huntington,
Varsity Tutors, Mathnasium, and so on, is about
$13.85 an hour.
Independent tutors who set their
own hourly prices typically make closer to $26 per hour. And that's with
minimum experience. A personal note here from
our research assistant. She tutors middle school math
and science and high school physics and calculus. She has a physics degree,
but no education background. And her rates are
$60 for middle school and $80 for physics
slash calculus. She's pretty sure she's actually
undercharging for the area, because most of her clients
are friends of her aunt. Her cousin, who is
a full time teacher in addition to an English tutor,
charges about $250 an hour. As she puts it, NYC
prices are wild. And while obviously, this
huge rise in online meetings lends itself very nicely
to a lot of the way that tutoring had been
done virtually in the past, taking the extra step of using
things like screen sharing to ensure that your
student is seeing a fully rounded picture of
what you're trying to teach is a great way to make sure
that nothing is slipping through the cracks,
just because you don't happen to be in person.
And yes, as some
tutoring companies do require that tutors take
certain exams in order to demonstrate proficiency and
pass them with certain minimums to be certified to tutor. But if you are already
proficient in a subject and have a natural ability
to help other people learn, you may want to give
this a try yourself. Number four is transcription
and translation. Transcription is
very simply the art of listening to an audio
recording very closely and writing down
exactly what is said. This often will happen for
things like interviews. And there are three main types
of transcription– general, medical, and real time. General transcription
includes writing out of anything pre-recorded, like
lectures, interviews, podcasts, and even captioning
videos, which we get done for the TFD channel.
Medical transcription
is more specialized and does require familiarity
with medical terminology. Medical transcriptionists listen
to a doctor's recorded notes on a patient and
transcribe those notes onto a patient's file. Real time transcription is
different from the other types because it isn't off
of a prerecorded audio. You're typing up an
event as it happens. Most real time transcription
jobs aren't remote– think things like
court stenographer. But there are some opportunities
if you're an incredibly fast and an accurate typist. The average hourly rate for
these jobs is about $15.12. And translation
work can be bundled in with transcription work. But often, the rates are
higher because it obviously requires the dual
skills of being a good transcription
and bilingual. Some places that hire
transcription Rev, Transcribeme and TranscriptionServices.com. But it's worth noting
that these places often pay per minute of
audio transcribed, rather than a set hourly rate– often somewhere between
$0.25 and $0.65 a minute, which on average takes
about four minutes to do, because you're frequently
having to stop and re-listen to the recording.
However, if you're subtitling,
that will often change to about $1.50 to $3 a minute. Number five is remote
data entry and management. Data entry is very simply
the act of taking some kind of information that a
company has received– could be anything from a PDF
to an audio recording to a Word document– and translating it into
data that is organized and stored by the company. In less fancy terms,
it's often just the act of typing up things and entering
them into a spreadsheet. Bookkeeping and payroll
are very common examples of data entry jobs. Data entry, though,
can go well above that and involve things like
managing and organizing documents, updating
company information, and managing budgets. Technically, transcription is
also a form of data entry work, and is one of the
more common ones. According to Payscale, the
average rate for data entry is about $13.36 per hour. Admittedly, this is a
pretty general kind of work and can often be
bundled into things like secretarial or
administrative work, and even be included in things
like those virtual assistant jobs we were talking
about earlier.
But if you have
experience, for example, with things like
coding, that can mean that you have a much
higher level of expertise to offer when it comes
to data management, and therefore can look for
more technical opportunities. Number six is copywriting. Copywriting is
basically just writing the text portion of ads
or promotional materials. And while high level copywriting
can be a pretty bucks job, there is quite a lot of
copy everyday that is often just written by freelancers. Think of the
descriptions that you see of a dress on a store's
website, or social media posts from a brand.
Often, those are done by
freelance copywriters. Other common examples are
things like website copy, email marketing campaigns, even
stuff like coupon language. And copywriting does
require a bit of expertise. And certain things, like
familiarity with search engine optimization or
marketing strategy, can be a huge plus in this area. But as someone who used
to heavily supplement her income with freelance
copywriting gigs, I can assure you that once you
get your foot in the door– and I used web sites like
Contently to market my services and get jobs– it can be a great gig. It's worth noting
the copywriters are paid more frequently per
project than per hour, negotiating a set fee for
a certain number of ads, descriptions, et cetera. But according to Payscale,
the average hourly rate breaks down to about $19.95. And if you have general writing
experience and a few bylines to your name, that
can be a great skill to translate into copywriting,
for which the work is often more steady and better paid.
Lastly, number seveen
is catch-all freelance opportunities. If none of the above apply, or
even, frankly, if all of them do, there is also
always the opportunity of going on to websites,
apps, forums, et cetera that list all kinds of
different freelance and one-off gigs for things that may not fit
neatly into any one category. Sites like Fiverr, Freelancer,
Upwork, Taskrabbit, are all different places where
you can turn any skill you might have– even some that
you wouldn't normally think to monetize– into a way to
catch one-off gigs.
I personally found
someone through Taskrabbit quite a while ago, when we were
moving into the TFD office, to help us with a few
kind of basic furniture building and mounting
projects, that I've ended up working with at least a dozen
times since on various things in the TFD office
and in my own home. These are places that allow
you to create a profile, list your skills, and
set a rate for yourself on different projects. People post looking for
all kinds of things, from graphic design help
to music composition, general errands, building
IKEA furniture, and much more. And while not all of them
can be done from home, the vast majority can be. It's worth noting that
some of these sites do take a certain percentage of
your rate, usually about 20%. But some people do choose
to mark up their prices, so they can still
get paid a fair rate after the site takes its cut. And while most of the highest
paid freelancers do eventually establish their own
clients directly, these websites can be a
great way to build a network, establish your expertise
in various areas, build word of mouth, and gain
the confidence to potentially go out on your own.
If you have a skill
that other people would want to learn or
benefit from, chances are you can find a way to
make a little money off of it. So the point of all
of this is that we're entering a pretty
unprecedented time, where not only are
we going to all have to be a little bit
more creative about how we make money, but
we're also going to have to get more
comfortable with a life that is a little bit more digital
and remote than it used to be.
And by getting creative
with some of these options, you can find that you
even make more money through all of
these various gigs than you were at
your previous job. We actually recently
had a TFD contributor who wrote about her experience
simply doing random errands and tasks through Taskrabbit,
and made over $1,000 in one go on it. And it doesn't look like
remote work is going away anytime soon. According to MIT, about
half of the workforce currently is working from home. And given that we've now
established that telecommuting is possible for so
many of these jobs, it's unlikely that this
will completely reverse.
Getting a little bit more
flexible about how we're bringing in money and being
a little bit more creative about how we're using all of
the various skills we might have accumulated is the key to
staying nimble and viable in this economy. As always, guys, thank
you so much for watching. And don't forget to hit
the Subscribe button and to come back every
Monday, Tuesday and Thursday for new and awesome videos. Goodbye..
