How NOT to make money from home.

What's good?            Money.  It's always good.

What's bad?               These sites.

What's the difference?        My mistakes and wasted time.

There are a few sites out there where you can sign up for jobs to earn some money.  Some are good, some....not so much.  Below are three of the not so good, I'll make another post for the good.

Fiverr.com

I signed up for this site about a month ago and haven't gotten a thing from them.  But I only have one gig posted, writing, and there are probably thousands of writers on there.  It's very easy to get lost in the crowd.  I have yet to find a way to promote yourself further outside of videos and creating really off the wall gigs, which just isn't for me.

I check it every day, even though they'll send you an email with any responses.  So far nada for me.  I have noticed, however, that once of week or so my gig will become paused and I have to reactivate it.  Not sure what that's about.

Anyway, nothing good and nothing bad about this one.

Freelancer

I had read a lot of good reviews about this site, yet I've had nothing but bad experiences with them.  As a result, I am currently deactivating my account.  I personally would not recommend them but, as always, make your own choice.  To help you with that choice, here's what happened to me.

I created a profile listing my skills, etc., and signed up for their free account, because I'm cheap.  You're allowed to bid on eight jobs per month with the free account.  I thought that would be enough until I started making some money, and then I'd re-evaluate whether or not I wanted to pay.

You then browse the many jobs they have available to bid on, and there are many.  Once deciding which job you want, you make a bid on it, naming your price and services.  You're also given a spot to sell yourself with around 1000 characters, enabling you to really pile it on.  You can see the bids others have made but can't see what they typed about themselves.  I liked this part of the whole process as it allowed you to pick and choose and gives you a more active role.

However, and that's a bolded and capitalized HOWEVER, I have not had good luck with the whole process.  Within a week I was contacted to perform some data entry work, and accepted the job.  A few messages passed between the requester and myself to iron out the details and I was to start the next day, having logged onto the website where the work was to be done.  The next day, though, the website didn't exist.  I contacted the requester through Freelancer, and this is when I discovered their account had been deactivated.

So, I contacted Freelancer, explaining the situation and asking if I should be concerned because I had logged onto this mysteriously disappearing website.  Their initial response to me was, "You don't have any currently active jobs."  That's it, nothing more.  I replied with all the same details and told them to look at my messages since all the info is still there.  

And here's the kicker.  They responded alright, telling me that the account had been deactivated because it didn't follow Freelancer's guidelines.  Then they spent an entire paragraph threatening to deactivate my account if I continue to work with people who don't follow the guidelines.  Nice, huh?  I chalked that up to lesson learned and continued on.

Move forward two weeks and I receive a notice from Paypal stating they paid an invoice from Freelancer in the amount of $10.48.  What???  Checking my Freelancer account, I notice I've been upgraded to a paying account with a notification stating, "Help boost your income by making more bids."  No email from them, just that notice in my Freelancer account.  No no no.

The gist of the story, they upgraded me since none of my bids were accepted and they just KNEW having 100 bids instead of only 8 would help me.  I demanded a refund and deactivation of my account.  The emails continued and finally a week later the money was back in my Paypal account.  I am currently on my third email requesting they deactivate my account.  Their last reply was that I would still be able to make up to eight bids a month.  My reply, "You people already took money from me without asking.  I don't trust you anymore.  Deactivate my account."  So, we'll see what happens next.

Speechpad

This is an online transcription company which initially seemed great.  You typed everything you heard people say on video and audio recordings for the lump sum listed.  I started out on this like a ball of fire, clacking away on the keyboard as I watched my balance grow.

The bad?  Lots.  Their software sucks, to be blunt.  You cannot slow down or speed up the recordings nor can you change the volume.  You can rewind for five seconds by moving the mouse and clicking on the rewind button, then moving the mouse back to where you were typing and clicking there to start typing again.  There is no spellcheck, unless you type it in a word document and that means clicking between screens constantly.  Or you type into their screen, copy and paste into a word document to spellcheck, then copy and paste back into their screen.

You must use their formatting, spelling, and grammar guidelines.  No problem, right?  Just click on the guideline tab.  Except, you can't do that while you're typing or it boots you out of the job and it gets rejected.  I learned that the hard way.  So, you download the guidelines......all 33 pages of them.

While typing you must insert time stamps [00:00:00:0] that coincide with the audio/video at the beginning of each paragraph, each laugh, each pause greater than 2 seconds, each new speaker.  No button to push, you have to type that out.  Each sound needs to be shown with a time stamp and tag: [laughter] [cough].  Each speaker has to be labeled, and there's a whole page of rules for that.

But they paid good, so it's worth it, right?  I thought so at first.  In fact, within five days my balance was almost $300.00.  Woohoo!  Yeah....not really.  You have to wait 14 days to be paid, no problem, most companies are like that.  They just neglect to tell you it's 14 business days.  And hidden somewhere in all that fine print is the fact that while they list the funds in your balance, you don't actually get the cash until their customer approves the work you did.  That was a month ago for me, and I've been paid $66.79 to date.

And, icing on the cake, in the beginning the jobs came fast and furious, one right after the other.  They were good jobs, easy to understand, and I maintained a high quality rating.  Then suddenly, all that stopped and the few jobs I was assigned were in foreign languages or impossible to hear anyone because of loud music, etc.  Needless to say, I no longer waste my time with them.....and it did take time.

So, that was MY experience with these three companies.  Not great, huh?  I'll admit it could have just been me.  I may not have read every little word so eager was I to start earning the big bucks.  But if you choose to give them a try, you'll at least have your eyes open a little wider than mine were.

Hope this helps.  I'm currently writing up a post about the sites that I've actually made money from, so stay posted.  

As always, take your time leaving but hurry on back.  :)