Four Ways to Make Money Online

Photo by Matthew Henry from Burst

As I began my work-from-home journey, I tried out several things before landing on (and sticking with) Upwork.

Here are several online earning methods that might work well for you or at least give you a place to start:

1. Amazon’s Mechanical Turk

When I began searching online for freelance projects I could do from home, the first thing I found online was a task-driven site linked to Amazon.

It is called “Mechanical Turk” and is found at www.mturk.com

The description on the introductory page states this:

Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) operates a marketplace for work that requires human intelligence. The MTurk web service enables companies to programmatically access this marketplace and a diverse, on-demand workforce. Developers can leverage this service to build human intelligence directly into their applications.

With three kids at home, all below the age of six, I needed something convenient.

I created an account and began looking for tasks, called “HITs,” and doing any of them that seemed to pay a fair amount.

I had taught myself to touch-type when I was 12 years old and had done transcription work as a secretary for several years, so the main projects I took on were transcription jobs.

One good thing about MTurk is that it offers a broad variety of projects, including data entry, completing surveys, performing categorization, etc.

While working with Mechanical Turk, I took on the occasional article-writing project, which paid a few dollars for articles of 250 to 300 words.

One evening, as I wrote an article about chocolate-covered strawberries, it occurred to me that I could probably find other avenues for writing, ones that paid more for each article. Ones that included more engaging topics than strawberries.

So, I did.

But MTurk was a good starting place for me, as it helped me refine my interests and decide what I really want to spend my work time on: