Help me find part time work

October 13, 2008 3:26 PM

I'm looking for a way to supplument my current income with $200-300 a month on top of current work. Any suggestions? I have tons of Photos that I want to sell through stock photos, suggestions?

My Skills:
• Managing vendor contracts, working with vendors to resolve problems and managing vendor
projects.
• Extensive experience providing superior customer support via phone, email, in person,
and through ticketing systems.
• Computer system support, help main computer systems and software
• Troubleshoot hardware and software issues including, but not limited to; Microsoft Windows
XP and Vista operating systems, Microsoft Office 2007 with a focus on Office 2003 issues,
LAN/WAN connectivity, workstation and laptop hardware components and peripherals, and
printing/fax issues;
• Set up new user accounts on domain and phone system, including all group privileges
assigned;
• Experience in setting up, maintaining and managing Mac OS X and Windows XP operating
systems.
• Experience with setting up users, modifying their privileges and setting up exchange features
in Microsoft Active Directory 2003 and Exchange 2003.
• Set up new Phone users in Cisco Call manger 4.2, Set up voicemail and phones.
• Set up content restrictions in Bluecoat web filter
• Monitor and block traffic in Cisco ASA firewall
• Designing and building web sites, in HTML,CSS and working with JavaScript frameworks
• Designing flyers, business cards and other print items in Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.
• Providing help to users in Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, answering questions, and
training them in better methods to get what they’re trying to get done.

posted by BoldStepDesign to work & money (8 answers total)

Wow, I just saw this post on lifehacker a few days ago: freelanceswitch
posted by ruwan at 3:37 PM on October 13, 2008 [1 favorite]

It's pretty easy to make a few hundred a month doing computer-type contracting, but it might be difficult to ONLY do a few hours of work. I tend to manage this by doing medium length contracts, but only a few a year. If you want a small amount of steady income I'd probably consider sub-contracting - find someone you know who does contracting work, take on the bits they don't have time for or whatever, they take a cut, you take most of it. They (hopefully) do the accounting, bill collecting, job finding, etc, etc, and you just do the work. I've done that off and on for most of my career except for the last few years where I just farm old contacts for new work when I need something.
posted by RustyBrooks at 4:28 PM on October 13, 2008

Did you try any of the suggestions in your last question, which is pretty much a reworded version of this one?

Also, trying to game MeFi by adding tags like "women" and "girls" is not cool.
posted by mkultra at 4:33 PM on October 13, 2008 [2 favorites]

Whenever I need a little bit of money, I rent out the extra room in my house. I find someone who is not home very much who needs something short-term. Presto! Extra money and only a little bit of inconvenience!
posted by typewriter at 4:34 PM on October 13, 2008

I buy stock photos from this source quite regularly. Perhaps set up shop?
posted by lottie at 4:47 PM on October 13, 2008

You can easily get $50 an hour doing in-home support. I fell into it kind of by accident -- the son of a friend was doing support for an accountant but didn't have time to do it much anymore, and so I ended up doing it because I was already doing it more or less for the friend. I don't do much of it and often go weeks without doing any at all, but if you were a little more aggressive about finding clients than I am, you could probably be making $500 extra a month pretty quickly by working a couple hours one or two nights a week.
posted by kindall at 5:28 PM on October 13, 2008

How?
posted by BoldStepDesign at 6:13 PM on October 13, 2008

superior customer support via phone

Lots of call centers let you work from home by logging in whenever you're free.

For the website and flyer design or the freelance computer-fixit stuff, you can put up signs with tear-off phone numbers on bulletin boards around town, such as at the entrances to grocery stores. Be prepared for low contact rates, but do this frequently enough and you'll soon have people recommending you to their friends (if you're any good).

Finding "weekender" support contracts at the small business level is going to be difficult if you have a full-time job with no flexiibility. When computers break, it's usually during business hours.

In general I would not sell myself with a long resume-like list of buzzwords. I'd focus on a couple of the easy wins that you're best at. Marketing is all about focus.
posted by dhartung at 12:10 AM on October 14, 2008