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unixronin: Galen the technomage, from Babylon 5: Crusade (Default)
Unixronin

December 2012

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Monday, February 25th, 2008 10:43 am

So here I am, looking again at listings for part-time work-from-home to bring in a little extra money.  The past six years or so have convinced me that I'm unemployable full-time for anything I'm physically capable of doing at this point¹ (I could probably get hired to work retail at, say, Home Depot, but my knees and left foot would never stand it).  And it seems there's basically three types of jobs listed if you're looking to work from home:

  1. Telemarketing.  'Nuff said.

    (I'd almost sooner mug old ladies.)

  2. Unspecified get-rich-quick promises using all the pyramid-scam buzzwords.

    (Sub-category:  Unspecified get-rich-quick promises using all the pyramid-scam buzzwords plus a liberal showering of "Christian" and "Mentor" and the like, to take advantage of the pious who think that if it's Christian it must be honest, because surely no fellow Christian would ever try to cheat them... right?)

  3. And "Get paid to take surveys on your computer."  I have a hard time believing there's significant money in that.  The sites I've looked at so far, it seems that to sign up, you have to agree to be spammed, opt in to a bunch of marketing crap, and sometimes even sign up for online college courses.  Can you say "just another scam"?  Sure you can.

Once again, I find myself wondering about a home-based PC repair business.  "The PC Doctor makes house calls!"  With places like Best Buy charging $70-$80 just to examine and diagnose a problem, there almost has to be a way to undercut them on repairs, and there may be money in support too.  (With the number of cheap-crap white-box PCs on the market stuffed full of lowest-bidder parts, there's probably little chance of making money building machines; anyone who knows enough to understand why it's worth using better-quality components probably knows enough to build their own.)

But how does one get started...?

[1]  Well, unless I were willing to uproot everyone again and move back to California.  Which I'm not.  It'd be chancing everything on a roll of the dice, and we'd be back into apartment-rental hell for the foreseeable future.

Monday, February 25th, 2008 05:15 pm (UTC)
For a while after my concussion I worked as a sysadmin for several smaller businesses (real estate and small retail). They all had networks and computers. I was responsible for security and keeping them running. It paid the bills.

I am doing one of the MLM things right now. It ain't get-rich-quick, but there is definitely money to be made, if you are willing to work.
Monday, February 25th, 2008 07:40 pm (UTC)
For a while after my concussion I worked as a sysadmin for several smaller businesses (real estate and small retail). They all had networks and computers. I was responsible for security and keeping them running. It paid the bills.
Yeah, something like that would work fine, I'm sure. It's finding them and getting in. (A realistic evaluation of my self-marketing abilities includes phrases such as "hot meal" and "starving Eskimo".)
Monday, February 25th, 2008 08:02 pm (UTC)
Marketing is a learned skill. There is no real magic involved. It is not my favorite thing, but it does work.