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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?

#81

Post by posix_me_less »

jurassic wrote: post #37
jefftk wrote: post #26

With daycares closed, there are a lot of people working from home and trying to watch their kids at the same time. You'd need to sort out with them (and any housemates) about what level of contact to have outside your (now expanded) bubble, but people need childcare badly.

My wife, who is out of work, is providing emergency childcare to some friends of ours for $20/hr. People are really desperate for this and I'm sure she could make more if she wasn't just doing it as a favor for our friends.

If you do something for a friend ... and take money, is it really fair to call it a favour?

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

#82

Post by rmoriz »

MiroF wrote: post #74
rmoriz wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I watch some YouTube channels of delivery people (usually on bikes) just out of curiosity. Most of them do it only part-time and see it as a work-out gamification. Looks like during the pandemic many restaurants also closed delivery options and the orders dropped according to some YouTubers in the UK. The most important aspect: It does not scale. It's very hard to earn a living outside of the "surge pricing" rush hou…

I think the bike delivery labor market is super different from the delivery driver market. You are much more likely to find people "gamifying" it as bikers than as drivers.

Is it? According to the videos, they outperform delivery drivers bound to cars. Sure, with a car you can easily work in rain, cold, long distance deliveries. But usually it does not pay out to commit full time or to a specific, expensive vehicle.

If one does plan to deliver (bulky) non time-critical items, payment drops significantly (almost no tips, fixed fee for each parcel).

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

#83

Post by throw98226 »

If you are in the suburbs, there are always lawns to cut.

Make a simple sign outside your home.

"Most lawns $25. Cut, trim, edge blow. 555-555-5555 No contact payment by eTransfer"

This works very well, and will generate a small side income, get you outside of the house, fresh air and exercise.

From here, it's just letting you imagination run wild... Hire and train some young adults, grow from a single person to multi person team, etc.

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

#84

Post by talmr »

smarri wrote: post #32

If you can buy and sell bikes over the next few months I think you'll make some extra money. Right now they are becoming really hard to get with orders taking 2 - 3 months where I'm based.

I had my bike stolen recently so this hits me hard.

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

#85

Post by hckr_news »

pkiv wrote: post #66

Have they considered teaching their skills online for money? If they worked in a call center, they probably know how to deal with some really hard things. I'd love to learn how they have patience when dealing with angry customers. At http://joinstream.io , we're building a super easy way to host a monetized livestream using Zoom. We generate a marketing page for you, handle billing, attendee management, and notificat…

This is cool

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

#86

Post by MiroF »

rmoriz wrote: post #82
MiroF wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the bike delivery labor market is super different from the delivery driver market. You are much more likely to find people "gamifying" it as bikers than as drivers.

Is it? According to the videos, they outperform delivery drivers bound to cars. Sure, with a car you can easily work in rain, cold, long distance deliveries. But usually it does not pay out to commit full time or to a specific, expensive vehicle. If one does plan to deliver (bulky) non time-critical items , payment drops significantly (almost no tips, fixed fee for each parcel).

Are most uber eats drivers buying cars in order to drive uber? That was not my understanding.

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

#87

Post by tiborsaas »

fred_is_fred wrote: post #79
goatherders wrote: post #77

There are some truly awful suggestions here. The question isnt about changing his life by learning to code or setting up a plastics machine (which is pretty cool but takes investment) or starting an affiliate site and then generating traffic, it's about generating income during a global pandemic. 1. Fiverr 2. Mechanical Turk 3. Craigslist Gigs 4. UpWork Can generate $50 by dinner time if you're willing to focus and p…

I think it's disingenuous to suggest that you can setup an account on these sites and have $50 by the end of the day "if you are willing to focus". With the exception of Mechanical Turk, which pays pennies, the others require you have a skill that people are willing to pay for.

OP didn't really help by not sharing any details about his friend. It's friendly to assume that some skills might be monetized on these platforms.

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

#88

Post by cpach »

posix_me_less wrote: post #81
jurassic wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife, who is out of work, is providing emergency childcare to some friends of ours for $20/hr. People are really desperate for this and I'm sure she could make more if she wasn't just doing it as a favor for our friends.

If you do something for a friend ... and take money, is it really fair to call it a favour?

If it’s below market rate; sure, why not?

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

#89

Post by MattGaiser »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #61
MattGaiser wrote: post #38

1. Teach English by video to children overseas. 2. Get a remote call centre job. 3. The DoorDashes and Uber Eats of the world are doing tremendous business right now, as is Amazon (and they have the Flex delivery service). Instacart was also hiring some 300,000 people. 4. If your friend is the creative or innovative type, there are a ton of competitions being hosted by various companies. You enter enough and the inco…

Isn't freelance writing a saturated market even at the best of times?

I have only done a bit of it in technology and innovation, so not sure beyond those categories.

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

#90

Post by mywittyname »

hnrodey wrote: post #52
armenarmen wrote: post #9

Get rid of old stuff on ebay/cl/fb marketplace. Or buy stuff from ebay/cl/fb marketplace and sell on Amazon. and plugging a friend: https://www.flipmine.com/ scrapes arbitrage opportunities b/w ebay and amazon.

Interesting recommendation of flipmine. I buy in to the idea of what they're selling - used goods arbitrage - they're just selling another form of a "get rich scheme". Follow the money. If this niche were so great then the proprietors would keep this software platform to themselves to identify the opportunities and perform the work. Instead, they "offer" you the opportunity while they take in a $39 monthly fee for th…

Lots of companies do keep their arbitrage tools secret.

There is a much greater efficiency in operating a SaaS over a full-fledged business, since the SaaS has almost 0 marginal costs, so every additional $39/mo requires nearly no work.

In contrast, generating $39 in profits through arbitrage requires at least some work and has risk. If you buy a product and sell it to a person who gets a refund, then you lost money.

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