I need an online job/career so I can move to Portugal next year

October 14, 2020 6:18 PM

I need to figure out an online job type that will work with my criteria and pay about $1000/month.

I am a US citizen living in California. I want an online worker temporary resident visa for Portugal. This means I need a job that makes about a thousand dollars a month.

Difficulty level:

Ideally, we will bike to a coast and then somehow sail to Portugal. Details are not yet worked out. Assume this part is a given unless you have something sailing-related to contribute that will get me closer to my goal.

This means I need to find the sort of online career that is going to let me disappear for a couple months after only working there for a few months! What online career (or specific job) do you suggest?

• Strong preference for highly ethical companies and fields.
• Delighted to do online training if there is a specific program you recommend
• Very computer literate
• Recent bookkeeping experience with reference
• Job history all over the map. I have done all the low-hanging fruit jobs while I focused on other aspects of my life, and I am so ready to move onto something entry-level where I learn on the job and responsibilities grow over time.
• Schedule flexibility is huge. I am a very hard worker, but I also want to be able to do things like take 4 days off for poll working.
• Part-time preferred

posted by aniola to Work & Money (12 answers total)

Online Tutoring? Research assistant?
posted by shaademaan at 6:27 PM on October 14, 2020

I cant recommend it fully because I haven't read it yet, but this book is by a youtuber I follow who works from her RV on the road, and just happens to be on sale. Might be worth the $3 for a potential idea? Work From Home While You Roam: The Ultimate Guide to Jobs That Can Be Done From Anywhere.
posted by cgg at 8:03 PM on October 14, 2020

Lead generation websites for small businesses. You could make $1000/mo with three or four of them. I learned how this works with a program called Bossless Forever.
posted by zdravo at 8:45 PM on October 14, 2020 [2 favorites]

Copywriting, SEO/social media management, any type of coding, website template design, accounting, video editing...it really depends on your skill set and how quickly you can pick up the basics. You can learn all of the above on Skillshare or other online learning platforms.

If you're willing to hustle, get on Upwork and Fiver to start building a client base. If you want to get hired, start looking at companies you like and seeing what jobs they have available. Lots of stuff is remote now.
posted by ananci at 8:53 PM on October 14, 2020

Response by poster: I do not want to work for myself, mTurk, gig economy, etc.
posted by aniola at 8:53 PM on October 14, 2020 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Would love to hear about people who got hired at one of the above-mentioned jobs and then were able to turn around and take a couple months off a few months in, or why that might be possible in any given job/career/company.
posted by aniola at 9:20 PM on October 14, 2020

There are lots of good customer support jobs in tech and more are remote these days. We Support is a great mailing list for that.
posted by Jungo at 9:52 PM on October 14, 2020

Aniola, I suspect it’s going to be hard to take a “few months off” a few months in at most non-gig jobs and expect to have your job there for you when you return. Unless you’re doing something seasonal, of course. I’m wracking my brains thinking of how that could work.

Hope someone here has experience with that, though, and can help you out.
posted by shaademaan at 4:46 AM on October 15, 2020 [6 favorites]

I agree with shaademaan. If you want to work for a short time, then take a few months off, then go back to the same job, that's going to be something like gig economy/contractor/etc. I work in a non-gig job and often hire long-term, non-seasonal people (shaademaan is also right seasonal/temp is probably the way to go). If I know before your first day that you're planning to take MONTHS off within your first year, I'll pull the offer and find someone else who doesn't plan to take that much time off. If I find out after your first day, I'll deny the request and then you'll be going against explicit instructions from your employer if you do it anyway and will lose your job.

As to what kind of job, website QA testing is an option. It's often fairly easy work, you make sure pages on websites load, make sure you can add an item to the basket, and so on. There are companies out there who are hired to provide the service and they crowdsource the labor from independent contractors. Rainforest and test IO are two examples. A downside is the work can be inconsistent (it's there if you want it, but you have to set yourself to available in their system to be assigned tests), so I doubt they would provide documentation about what you earn. You would have to use invoices to show what you have already earned.
posted by Meldanthral at 6:04 AM on October 15, 2020 [4 favorites]

Response by poster: Ok I am very definitely not getting the sorts of answers I'm looking for. Test IO testers, for example, make about $4/hour.

So for now let's skip the time gap (I'll figure something out - maybe do a seasonal job and then get a job job when I get there, or maybe there's big companies where I could work one job and then transfer to another job with a gap in-between roles) and focus on the rest of the question, please.
posted by aniola at 7:55 AM on October 15, 2020

Teaching English online would definitely net you $1000 part-time as long as you’re a native English speaker with a bachelors degree. You’ll also have to be able to enjoy performing (mostly in terms of verbal and nonverbal cues) and working with kids (although some do offer working with teens and adults). You might have to get TEFL certified to up your marketability but I completed my 120 hour cert for under $200 in about three weeks. Most companies pay roughly $18-25 dollars an hour before taxes. Memail me if you want more info on companies.

I also don’t know how Covid is affecting this industry but it was a good part-time gig for me for a while.
posted by Young Kullervo at 9:39 AM on October 15, 2020 [3 favorites]

well the only idea I can come up with that meets half of your criteria is Transcription work. Medical and Legal Transcription in particular (you will need some training in them) pay pretty okay and is very flexible.
posted by euphoria066 at 11:31 AM on October 15, 2020 [2 favorites]