Making money working from home

October 25, 2004 9:12 AM

How would you go about trying to earn $100-$200 a week working from home?

This is somewhat along the lines of this question, but less tech-centric. I'm interested in all ideas here. How would you do this if you had a day job? how would you do this if you were otherwise unemployed? Tech-savy or not. Freelance copy editing seems cool; I've done some writing work in the past, but never editing. Starting an online weirdo art site to sell stuff would be fun, but I don't think it would necessarily bring in more than a couple of bucks a week at best. I have a couple of friends who buy and sell collectable stuff, mostly via eBay, that seems to work pretty well for them, though it requires money up front to get started. Any other ideas? I don't mean for any of the above to rule out any suggestions. If you've tried anything I've mentioned, I'd love to hear about it too.

posted by soplerfo to Work & Money (7 answers total)

Well, as an editor and writer, I'd freelance write, and I have in the past. But I'm fairly lucky and have some contacts and a ton of experience. Without that history, I wouldn't have as good a shot of doing this.
posted by GaelFC at 9:28 AM on October 25, 2004

Masseuse? - with or without release.
posted by FreezBoy at 10:49 AM on October 25, 2004

Why, by stuffing envelopes, I've made $2,300+/month at home in my spare time!
posted by waldo at 11:16 AM on October 25, 2004

My father is averaging about $50 an hour playing poker online.
posted by mischief at 6:02 PM on October 25, 2004

I spent about a year buying and re-selling Powerbook G4s on eBay. Seems like I averaged about $200-300 a month profit. Fewer transactions to manage than selling knicknacks, but even at that, it took more time than I anticipated watching for new listings and vetting sketchy eBay sellers. Still, it worked out pretty well for me and supplemented my savings while I was researching grad schools.
posted by Jeff Howard at 7:55 PM on October 25, 2004

I make significantly more than $300/wk playing poker online.

Any reasonably intelligent person, with the right books and and some discipline can be making $30/hr within a few months.

If they're willing to continuously improve their understanding and practice of the game, it's easy to do significantly better than that. If they learn how to play four tables at once, it's pretty trivial to break $100/hr.

(Warning: statistics show that about 90% of poker players are long-term losers. It's vital to leave that 90% as quickly as is possible.)
posted by mosch at 9:40 PM on October 25, 2004

Any reasonably intelligent person, with the right books and and some discipline can be making $30/hr within a few months.

What books would you recommend? Do typical poker strategy books translate well to the online world, or are there special books about online poker? What site(s)/software do you recommend?
posted by rorycberger at 2:57 PM on October 26, 2004