Take a pass at a short, short task.
For my articles at The Advocate, I’m always looking for interesting sites or services to write about that are related to personal finance. So when I learned about ShortTask.com through this post at Gay List Daily, I decided to take a look:
The newest tool in the fight against unemployment is ShortTask.com‘¦ All jobs listed on the site are short term, temporary positions or tasks that pay in small amounts, but can really add up if you’ve got a knack for freelancing. Some are rather menial (adding websites to search engines) and some perhaps unethical (adding positive reviews to product list sites), but, as most sites we frequent, there are a few diamonds in the buff.
With a little extra money from the random data entry or research gig, we can once again rev up our engines with that debilitating and fiscally draining vice ‘“ our daily Starbucks addiction.
Sounds interesting, right? That is until you start looking at what the ‘œtasks’ pay. Many of the listings I observed pay a whopping $0.05 to $0.20 per task.
Web Worker Daily indicated that in many ways, it’s similar to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) service. It then points to this amusing Salon article, ‘œI make $1.45 a week and I love it‘ where it asks why thousands of people are happily being paid pennies to do mind-numbing work:
Is it a boon for the bored or a virtual sweatshop?
My guess is virtual sweatshop. Anyway, I won’t be reporting on the sensation of ShortTask.com or the amazing Mechanical Turk.
Rather, if you’re really looking to make some cash on the side, take Aundi’s advice from a post last year and stick with Guru:
Guru has job forums for most forms of legalized freelance work available. From marketing to web design, accounting to photography, and computer programming to architecture, if you’ve got a marketable skill set, chances are guru has a job for you. The first time I punched in my writing credentials, almost 800 jobs popped up for perusal.
Real jobs, I might add.
Has anyone tried to make a buck (literally) on either of these short job sites?
Photo credit: stock.xchng.
I have never found any of the online freelance boards to be worth my while. Although boards like eLance and Guru do have real jobs, the problem is that the projects are always awarded to the lowest bidder, and there is ALWAYS someone who can underbid me. I tried for years to land work through those boards, and I think I only managed to land ONE gig, and that client ended up ripping me off for $250.
While I haven’t tried any of these sites, I’ve considered it to supplement my income and these are very helpful suggestions and points! I will say that I’ve done a lot of reading about writing or blogging for money and a pretty widespread frustration out there, similar to what Alex mentioned, is that people are frequently ripped off both in terms of fees and their content. As a writer, that can be frustrating!
I agree with Alex. Most of the online freelance job boards that I’ve tried have had jobs that pay peanuts. One copy writing services was only willing to pay out $4 per story (for 500 words, I might add). It’s not worth it.
I have gotten work via Guru.com writing book summaries – fun, interesting work. While the client I’ve worked for is great, Guru’s structure is limiting if you don’t become a paid user (and the fees are ridiculously high). If you’re going to freelance you really have to make a commitment to finding clients who are willing to pay good money for high quality content – and then YOU have to give them high quality content.