91–100 of 186 posts
Not HN-ish but has she considered Avon? My wife sells Avon and it's a not half-bad way to make some income on the side.
Avon is not only a pyramid scheme but a terrible way to make money.
That said, I don't think it's a good choice for the OP simply because of all the travel and sorting boxes, etc, involved.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not the most appropriate response to a husband. This isn't Reddit.
Why does noone on HN have a sense of humor?
Doing sex phone work is a bit "ooh, naughty" here but as a topic for general conversation is far less offensive than in the US. We even get light hearted documentaries about sex phone operators on TV (http://steverogerson.suite101.com/my-phone-sex-secrets-chann...) featuring students and grannies who've decided to give it a crack to earn a few quid, but when set amongst US norms your suggestion is barely better than suggesting she walk the streets.
tl;dr - When in Rome..
People have already mentioned SEO, but there's a broader demand for 'article writers' and even people who can write summaries of Web pages, produce ledes for online news services, do proof reading of text, etc.
Thanks for all the replies, I actually wasn't expecting so much of a response - maybe there are a lot more people out there in a similar situation. I like the medical transcriptionist suggestion, as well as the ebay & craigslist buy & resell though I'm not sure she or I know the best type of items to focus on. As for a niche site selling x-type of items... that sounds alright and one I've thought of - but what's a go…
If she's willing to put in the work and knows a market pretty well it shouldn't be hard to acquire things for below their value, pretty them up and flip them on eBay. My girlfriend made a few bucks buying shoes at sample sales and selling them on eBay, but she knows the market pretty well.
Back in the day I used to snipe music gear auctions with bad listings on eBay for below value, clean them up and take some nice photos and flip it back on eBay. Bigger ticket items mean good margins.
I would also have her take a look at some of the types of gigs on ODesk or one of the personal assistant micro task sites (FancyHands, TaskRabbit, Zaarly etc), she might be able to build up a skillset out of random virtual gigs
QA, testing web sites in late development and logging bugs. Most developers hate doing this, & PM's are not good at anything. I usually pay $40/hr for this, however it only takes a few hours, and that rate means the bug report is reported in a way that it's easy to read and recreate without having to have a conversation about it.
I'd love to get into doing this on the side, but 99% of QA jobs I've seen require solid knowledge of programming. Is this not the case?
the product
how programmers (the people) think, and how to cope with them
just a wild, very wild and untested, idea. a mini-niche "mechanical turk" iphone(andorid) app. i.e.: if your wife is called "gloria" the app is called "Ask Gloria" * user types in an question/request. * gloria (the real gloria) response. the app is free(? or 0.99) with a 1 question package. an additional question pack (of 5 questions) costs 10(?)$ the selling point is that not an anonymous person or siri-AI answers y…
This is a pretty cool idea, but it could easily go out of control if even one news outlet picks the story up. I'd raise the price by a lot (like $9.99 a question), in order to keep volume reasonable.
I had this idea because my father suffers from Parkinsons disease and gets quite lonely in the house during the day. He lives in Florida and I life in California and I can't call him as much as I would like to given the time difference. I know he gets lonely and would love to just have a conversation with someone during the day. I would pay to have someone skype him for 20-30 minutes in the middle of the day just to provide some conversation.
I am guessing that there are many other people who are in my situation with sick or elderly relatives. I know I would pay for a service like this and you would be bringing happiness into peoples lives.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd love to get into doing this on the side, but 99% of QA jobs I've seen require solid knowledge of programming. Is this not the case?
At all of my past companies (the current is notably different), and the majority of companies where my programmer friends work, QA requires no meaningful knowledge of programming, just knowledge of the product how programmers (the people) think, and how to cope with them That said, it's not at all clear to me how this is a work-from-home job.
SEO consulting - it can be learned relatively quickly, is not that technical for the basics, and is a great complement to your programming/web expertise for your projects