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

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 Etsy or your own Shopify store and use Facebook ads/Google Ads to advertise your website.

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 put in the time.

Start selling anything and everything that has any monetary value on platforms like: Craigslist, Ebay, Facebook marketplace, nextDoor, close5 (if they're still around), letgo, etc. I mean, literally, just go through every last item in your house. If you haven't used it in the last 3 months, what's the point of holding on to it?

It's labor intensive, but at when you're done, you'll have a much cleaner house and a little bit of money too. I do this on the weekends.

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.

File for unemployment. The federal government is increasing the weekly payment. Additionally, I believe this is not limited to California, unemployment compensation starts from day 1 rather than the second week.

Edit: Also unemployment compensation is being extended to job types which previously weren’t covered, like hairdressers and massage therapists. Having been told to stay home from work for Covid should be sufficient to at least get the federal compensation.

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 constantly right now. I assume the demand will flatten eventually but for now they're just taking people on with zero fanfare. Again, not good money, the work is physically harder, and you'll have to take shifts but it's a job you can get in a few days.

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 notifications. All you have to do is focus on selling your unique skills.

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 income can be somewhat reliable. This is my own personal niche.

5. Freelance writing. Even with the downturn, there seems to be a decent number of businesses with blogs wanting guest articles.

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.

Fix bikes. There is presently a bike shortage, but probably a vast inventory almost-working bikes hanging in garages. Offer for a fee, a "no parts" bike tune-up, meaning you do what you can without access to spare parts, and quickly let them know if the bike is beyond your help.

A bit more adventuresome: Offer to buy klunkers and then use them as a parts supply for fixing the bikes that can be fixed, or combine parts to create working bikes that you can sell.

Many bikes are purchased with the best of intentions and then set aside for whatever reason. Later, the owner isn't sure what's needed, if anything, to get the bike in riding shape. They might even throw you a nominal fee just to be reassured that their bike is OK to ride.

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.

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.

I run an affiliate blog, and they're definitely easy to get up and running. However, they're not "only 1 or two hours a day" type things as they are often claimed. But they can be fun and rewarding. I usually make around $200 a month with about 500 page views a day.

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.

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.

Depending what he was doing in call center and if he wants to keep his current job or is open to find a new job, he might be able to find a job for a company that hire people remotely. He can even look for this kind of job internationally. Some industries have been hit quite hard, but some others have seen increase of activity (i'm thinking in the saas world, mainly tools that are being use for remote working, but i'm sure there's other industries as well)

If you're a North American native English speaker with a college degree you can pretty easily get certified to teach English online to Chinese children with VipKid

If you have even a little experience with Linux or are looking to learn, we've built https://hostlaunch.io/ to make it very easy to start a managed cloud hosting company.

Just drop in your DigitalOcean, ServerPilot, SendGrid, and Stripe API keys, set your prices, and you've got a hosting company.

Maybe become a Guided Project instructor at Coursera and share your expertise with learners? I'm sharing some details from a previous post:

Access an instructor community and support team that will give you all the tools and resources needed to create a high-quality project. Earn income remotely on a per-project basis as soon as your project is reviewed and approved. Impact lives of learners around the world by sharing skills they can apply immediately to their careers.

What is a Guided Project? Guided Projects on Coursera are interactive projects that enable learners to gain a job-relevant skill in under two hours. A side-by-side interface allows learners to watch visual instructions on one side of the screen while following-along on the other side of the screen. Guided Projects are for anyone who is looking to get hands-on learning and get practice applying a skill or using a tool in a real-world scenario. Every Guided Project includes everything learners need directly in their browser and step-by-step visual instructions so they can get started without any software installation or prior experience.

Guided Projects are focused on enabling learners to practice and apply skills in computer science, data science, and business software using a broad variety of real-world tools such as TensorFlow, Google Spreadsheets, Tableau, Canva, etc.

If you’re excited to create hands-on, Guided Projects and want to become a project instructor on Coursera, please apply at https://teach.coursera.org/

Check out sites like Lionbridge or whatever, where you can do online tasks (registering maps, transcribing stuff, etc.) - they do pay a legit salary, even though the work can be really boring.

It's basically like a bit more exciting and better paying version of Mechanical Turk.

Other than that...help out HS and College kids with homework? I'm on a lot of homework help forums, as I like teaching math, and there's been an explosion in demand for skype teachers etc.

Depending on his state, he could apply for a job as a Contact Tracer. These are essentially WFH contact center roles.

Has your friend applied for unemployment? He should be eligible...

I made a gdoc with a list of work from home opportunities back in April. Hope this helps!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nF8FH-5f-51-Q_Hzt06jhYMN...

Cant beat online "tutoring". Schoolsolver.com, chegg.com, etc. These sites are booming right now.

Good ole fashion yard work. Despite the unemployment rate, many people are still working and spring is here. Grass is growing, mulch needs spread, etc.

content generation. you have no idea how many marketing companies need content writers for their clients. typically you can make between $5-$25 an article with an article being 300-2000. most articles don't have to be great, they just want articles written for a specific keyword.

If he or she has good sewing skills, making masks and selling them on Etsy.

What country, what skills, how desparate

Call center for what kind of company? Can he reach out to similar (possibly local) companies and offer to do similar work for them?

Years ago, when my first job folded, I did customer support for them for a couple months on a fixed rate with a minimum time. e.g., $75/hour, minimum bill of 0.2 hours -- those are examples, I don't recall what I actually charged.

The point is, he's used to talking to customer all day and negotiating issues and frustrations. That is really valuable experience to a small company that may not be able to afford a full-time customer support person.

Besides that, being a Virtual Assistant might be a good transition for him: https://horkeyhandbook.com/how-to-become-a-virtual-assistant...

Amazon's Mechanical Turk market place (https://worker.mturk.com). Also google around for the forum and find insight and tools to help snipe higher value tasks.

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.

This is a recent curated list of online jobs, 'Modern Day Jobs':

https://moderndayjobs.com/

Domino's Pizza is overloaded. They need cooks, drivers, etc. Probably the best money you can get now without an investment in learning something.

Go to suburban neighborhood. Offer to clean the garbage roll out barrels.

Tether yourself and go up on customer's roof and blow off the leaves and debris.

Weed the flower beds. Wash windows. Detail cars. Play with kids outdoors. Clean and polish the brass fixture exterior lights.

Use customer mower to cut the lawn.

My friend does Concierge errand services and he makes $50 a day.

Teach english, cambly

Your friend should check with the state to see if they are eligible for unemployment, food, or any other benefits as soon as possible; regardless of what their employers says.

For more information, Google: [corona laid off benefits]

I’ve been working on a project to allow anyone to get paid for their time. It requires they have some knowledge that someone else is willing to pay for but it might help. Free for hosts. BuyTime.co

Hope your friend finds success!

Pretty wide open question. I recommend that whatever creative leanings your friend has, to focus on them. Do what you love and produce something of value, then try to sell it.

It seems that a lot of people are starting OnlyFans accounts...

Swabber assistant if your country or county is opening to it.

I'm pretty sure (from people I know that this happened to) you can apply for unemployment even if you're furloughed and "still employed".

hey

some options for your friend:

1)if he has hardcore skills like programming, or any techy-related, try upwork.com and find a niche for himself, but a new comer will have a difficult time to get sales first, you need start with a very low price rate, get some orders then raise your hourly rate. 2)he can also choose Fiverr.com, one can provide many services there, typically $5 per case, small cash. 3)start a youtube channel: post videos that he is good at and can attract enough visitors. This is pretty much a long term endeavor as you need 4000 hours watch and 1K subscribers to get monetization enabled, but if he can find the right niche and get the hang of it, this thing is legit and can earn enough for living.

seems there are no very quick ways to make some money, but he could still try:

4) provide some quick local services for quick money 5) regard 3), he can post CPA offers under the subscription section below the Youtube video, you can earn money at very 1st day via doing CPA affiliate marketing, just post right videos, attract visitors, put offers.

Good luck

This thread is so important. At times of crisis like this we need to know about demand. Demand is king. All of the sudden we have resources like knowledge, materials and even money, but not much clarity about how to employ them for the greater good.

In my head, still in a very abstract way, we need something like LinkedIN exposing demand and not only job openings.

Not applicable to most people, but: Breeding Fish.

Especially with the air travel situation what it is right now, fish stores have trouble restocking. So, if you already have some equipment but the market was always too lousy, you might be able to pick up a few bucks. Hard to scale up to a significant income, though.

You can do Virtual Visits at Papa.

https://www.joinpapa.com/papa-pal-qualified-application

Help out senior adults through the aging journey.

If he is a call center operator, I don't get why he can't work from home. If his current employer can't allow this, maybe he can find a more technically competent company?

Now that kids can't go to school because of lockdown, the demand for online teaching is proliferating. You can start coaching students online or just kids in your neighborhood.

I don’t know of anything that is instant in generating income.

I remember flexjobs.com having a pretty diverse curated catalog of jobs you can do from home.

Not the typical remote engineer postings we see around here.

Perhaps not for call centers, but for recently laid off engineers you could do mock interviews on sites like PracticeCodingInterview.com, Gainlo.co, and interview.io.

It all depends on his health condition, abilities, equipment owned, and place of residence. These are required to produce an actionable suggestion.

onlyfans

Learn programming while doing something like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, etc. delivery in the mean time. Then start applying for roles.

Buy office chairs from offices that are closing and resell to people who are setting up home offices.

Start a remote call center company.

Where is this? Would your friend not qualify for some sort of government payment?

UpWork, Fiverr, ...

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

Gig economy jobs

Learn a skill that can be used to get a higher paying job once a vaccine is found.

textbroker.com

Day trading

Day trading futures (and developing the required mindset).

The best way to start generating income is to change your mindset.

Instead of asking other people, all of whom have found their own specialized niche that will never be applicable to anyone else, step away from the computer and look around.

Just in the past week I have heard from so many friends that are looking for good people. They never post stuff on job sites - it's way more trouble than its worth. They ask around.

Get outside and talk to people in your community. Call friends, call relatives. Volunteer your time. There's an abundance of opportunity right now in this churn - make it happen!