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Ask HN: Ways to generate income when you're at home without pay?

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Re: Ask HN: Ways to generate income when you're at home without pay?

#161

Post by zackmorris »

I'd recommend joining the local tech Slack channel(s) for your city or state. I've seen several decent job openings and gigs where I live. The nice thing is, you can chat with the poster if needed and get an idea of what the work entails before you apply.

I'm not searching anymore because I believe that tech has lost its way and won't be a rewarding field until it allows for ~20 hour per week part time jobs that let us make on our own time. Because I've been surviving in tech for 20 years and have basically gotten nowhere with my life goals. Always feast or famine. But I do know how to survive.

Re: Ask HN: Ways to generate income when you're at home without pay?

#163

Post by notabee »

hurxnid wrote: post #72
koheripbal wrote: post #41

Unless you're desperate for cash, the most effective way to raise your income level is to learn a new skill while updating your resume and networking in that field. Position yourself for the post-pandemic economy. ie. tech.

Any recommendations for someone with a background in logic controls and light IT (industrial background)? What is actually worth investing your time in?

Just offhand, that sounds like a good start to being a datacenter tech. Learn how to handle all the power equipment, HVAC, racking and stacking, cabling, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Ways to generate income when you're at home without pay?

#164

Post by olyjohn »

Spivak wrote: post #5

DoorDash, GrubHub, Uber Eats, and the like make pretty decent money. About $7 per order before tip and in a busy area you might be able to snag two or three orders going the same direction making the $/hr a little better. It's basically the definition of not great money but it's not very difficult, not physically straining, and you don't have to interview or whatever for it. Grocery stores in my area are also hiring…

IMO, there is a reason these delivery / driver services have extremely high turnover. While the hourly seems decent, you lose your ass in car maintenance, gas, and insurance. The wear and tear you put on a car driving around town all day doing short trips is quite high. That cost can often not show up for months, until it comes time for something like an early brake job. Then half your month's pay is just gone with a $1200 bill. I suppose that you can just put off that oil change and transmission service a bit longer in order to help pay for the brakes.

Re: Ask HN: Ways to generate income when you're at home without pay?

#165

Post by zackmorris »

dbancajas wrote: post #2

not stay at home but donate plasma. upwork probably is another avenue.

You should not be getting downvoted for this. Where I live, our plasma center is offering $450 per month because supply is so low right now. I've heard it can be as high as $600 per month for new donors.

I feel that it's maybe morally questionable to donate during the lockdown, but, my city has allowed bars and gyms to reopen. So that sentiment is probably no longer true at this point. I do live in a relatively sparsely populated area though. People in major cities might consider waiting a few more weeks or months.

Re: Ask HN: Ways to generate income when you're at home without pay?

#166

Post by grahamburger »

ornornor wrote: post #119
jsamuel wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a huge market of people who want to purchase managed hosting, not be responsible for their own servers. Think of the customers (such as WordPress developers) of any traditional hosting company like DreamHost. The purpose of HostLaunch is to make it extremely easy to start your own managed hosting business to sell web hosting services in that same market.

I don’t get it. What’s your edge? You basically have no control over anything. Why would the customer go with jsamuel hosting rather than ornornor hosting if we’re Both reselling exactly the same thing? Or why not stay with dreamhost for that matter? What’s the reseller’s edge in that case? Anything goes wrong you have to wait on DO to sort it out. And price wise you can’t do anything that anyone else can’t get from…

In addition to other answers offered here it can be a good addition to an existing business. For example if you do some IT consulting with local companies you can offer them hosting as well without building out your own hosting infrastructure.

Re: Ask HN: Ways to generate income when you're at home without pay?

#168

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

TrackerFF wrote: post #150
soared wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think someone working at a call center has the technical aptitude and financial resources to source and build there own extrusion machine.

Lots of technically gifted people working dead-end jobs, due to things like location, family situation, lack of formal education, personal issues, or whatever :-)

Exactly.

As the saying goes "talent is evenly distributed; opportunity is not."

I've known lots of very smart people working what would be considered dead-end, or at least, lower-end jobs.

Re: Ask HN: Ways to generate income when you're at home without pay?

#169

Post by econcon »

pat_space wrote: post #54
econcon wrote: post #50

There is shortage of 3D printing filament because of virus, so I've been creating filament and selling it. https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-ho... This activity also help recycle waste plastic. Production cost of filament is $7.5 per 5kg and filament roll has 850 gram filament and can be sold for $20-30 per spool It's trivial to get the quality right. You can sell rolls on Amazon, eBay and Ets…

Thanks for the link. Where are you selling your finished product?

Amazon for now

Re: Ask HN: Ways to generate income when you're at home without pay?

#170

Post by tbran »

I just started working on a list of gigs/side hustles - you can see it here:

https://goofy-swartz-25f1b7.netlify.app/

or here in a day or two:

https://www.lotsofopps.com

Filter by skills, physical level, time to get paid, and things you have. It has some rough edges, but I'm fixing things and adding new listings every day.

Finding some of the data is difficult - many companies bury their commissions and fees and very few companies tell you what you'll earn. Most payouts take several days to reach you, but if it's your first ever payout, it may be an additional 1-2 weeks.

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