Many people dream of quitting their jobs and start making money online. Yet, so few understand what it all entails.
My journey to earning money online was a slow one full of many trials and errors. If I knew what I know today, it would have been much smoother. The thing is, anyone can make money online with proper guidance and information.
I started earning money online by accident. I hope that my story will be an inspiration and encouragement to anyone who considers working from home and earning money online.
Please note: This post may contain affiliate links to products I use, trust, and recommend. If you purchase a helpful product using these links, I may receive a small commission for referring you (at no extra cost to you.) These funds help me keep this blog up and running.
My background
In college, I trained as a teacher-librarian. My family line has no entrepreneurs and so my plan was to work in a day job until retirement. Besides, I had never heard that one could work from home and earn money through the Internet.
Luckily, I got a job immediately after graduation as a tutor at a teacher training college. I taught briefly before switching to librarianship, which I thought was more rewarding.
I landed a job as a university librarian, which I really enjoyed as I interacted and assisted students to search for information. This exposed me to different ideas outside of what I had studied and opened me up to start thinking differently.
With time, I felt I needed a new challenge having worked for some years in one institution. I started applying for jobs. Soon, I got a job as an aviation librarian with great perks and my star seemed to look up.
The shift
Needless to say, not every shiny object is a great fit. It took me only a few weeks to realize that this was not what I had bargained for.
For starters, I had never commuted before in my work life. I had always worked a short distance away from my place of work. When I took this new job, the main highway I passed through every day was under construction.
This meant that to make it on time to work, I had to leave the house by 5 AM due to heavy traffic (can you believe that?). This meant that I would leave my children in bed in the morning. I would also find them in bed in the evening or about to go to bed, not to mention the toll it took on me physically.
To make matters worse, I had a terrible boss who made my job impossible to do. I spent most of my days and nights crying and asking myself what I was doing in that place.
Within two months, I had realized that this was not working. I was so fed up that I could not even finish the six months probation period. At the end of month five, I handed in my resignation letter. By this time, I was so tired both physically and mentally.
My journey to making money online
I resigned from my job having no plan of action on what to do next (who does that?) After taking some time to rest; I was back on the drawing board; after all, I had bills to pay and a family to take care of.
One thing that was so clear in my mind though was that I did not want to go back to a nine-to-five job. I had had enough.
I frantically searched the internet for things to do and discovered that I could make money online. What no one told me was that there were so many scammers on the Internet.
I lost a lot of money running from one shiny object to the other. When I was on the verge of giving up, I finally discovered that I could work from home and earn enough money to live a comfortable life.
I have learned that you can make money online with no experience and with just a few basic tools. Yet, making real money online is not a get rich quick scheme. It requires a clear plan of action and persistence.
Things I have successfully done to make money online
In my work from home and earning money online journey, I have tried several things with various levels of success. They include:
1. Freelancing
I discovered that I could earn money by offering my services to people who needed them as a freelancer. I started by opening accounts on sites like Upwork, Fiverr, and Freelancer where I could bid for various jobs in line with my skills.
I started with basic jobs like data entry, article writing, and transcription. In the beginning, the pay was quite low. With time as I gained more skills and reputation on these platforms, the pay gradually increased.
If one client liked my work, they would send me more work. As more clients gave me good ratings on these platforms, my reputation would increase. Consequently, I would get other clients and my earnings would increase as a result.
I narrowed down my freelancing work to writing articles and doing transcription work. I mainly used Upwork and iWriter platforms for writing articles for different clients. I eventually specialized in transcription.
2. Transcription
Transcription is basically listening to audio files and typing out whatever is being said. You can get a more detailed review of entry-level transcription for beginners.
I realized that there were many transcription jobs and so I specialized in this area.
I started working as a freelancer for companies that offer transcription services like GoTranscript, TranscribeMe, and Rev, among others. These companies offer online transcription jobs with no experience.
Soon realized that I could make more money by cold pitching individual clients who needed transcription services. This helped to increase my earnings drastically.
To scale the business, I looked for transcription work and then used some people to do the work for me. I would just check that everything was okay before sending the work to the client.
Transcription can be time-consuming. An experienced transcriptionist takes between 4-6 hours to transcribe one hour of audio. Other things that can also affect the speed of work are the quality of the audio and the accents of the people speaking.
Another service that I have offered related to transcription is Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) post-editing work. This is a service where software does the transcription. The editor then goes through the raw transcript editing the content, the format and the style following some given guidelines.
Transcription editing is a great service to offer for those who are keen on details and hate typing. I have done this work in the past and enjoyed it.
I still do a bit of transcription to date with some dedicated clients where I specialize in podcast transcription.
If you are keen to learn more about transcription, TranscribeAnywhere offers a free mini-course where you can learn the basics of general transcription.
3. Research
To remove the monotony of doing one thing, I started looking for other things I could do to earn money. I realized there were several companies that paid people to research.
I narrowed down to one company called Wonder. After passing their assessment test, I started working for them. The company provides services to clients who need information to improve their businesses.
Wonder is a fun company to work especially for people who love searching the Internet and learning new things. With my experience working for this company, I know you can do online research work for Wonder and make up to $42 per hour.
4. Web evaluation
Web evaluation is yet another way that I discovered I could make money online. Other terms used for this job are internet assessment and internet rating jobs.
There are various companies that one can work for as an Internet assessor or a rater as some companies call it. Such companies include Google, Appen, and Lionbridge.
I applied and passed the rigorous Lionbridge internet rater job test. An Internet rater evaluates a search engine’s results page to ensure that the results are accurate and in line with the users’ intents.
One needs to be keen and detailed to succeed as an Internet assessor. If you would like to know how to make money from home working flexible hours at Lionbridge, see all you need to know about Lionbridge work from home jobs.
5. Blogging
As I continued with my make money online journey, I started desiring an opportunity that could help me scale and make passive income.
All the methods mentioned above required me to personally do the work or hire people to do the work for me, without which I earn no money.
I kept coming across the idea of blogging, but I kept postponing it and giving various excuses on why it was not for me. Yet, the more I read about blogging, the more I knew this was one of the topmost ways of earning passive money online.
In 2019, I finally changed my mindset. I put away all my excuses and decided it was time to start a blog. I discovered Bluehost which many bloggers were recommending and I used them to host my blog. My experience with them has been great.
What better topic to write about than what I have been doing in the last several years, which is making money online from home?
You can start a blog from zero today with my ultimate guide to blogging for beginners.
Final thoughts
I keep asking myself how I managed in a 9 to 5 job. And to think I intended to work until retirement is something that still baffles me to this day.
Don’t get me wrong, I have had to spend sleepless nights to get to where I am today. However, I cannot exchange the freedom I have for anything else.
I can now schedule my work to allow me to have some precious time with my family and other things that I care about in life. I do not have any boss to report to or ask for permission to do what I want to do. I can take a break whenever I like and go on vacation.
Wrapping it up
Through my blog, I hope to:
- Let you know that if I have made money online, you too can do it. It is much easier than you think.
- Give you tips and ideas to earn money online even with no experience.
- Make the journey a lot easier for people planning to quit their jobs and earn enough money online working from the comfort of their homes.
I did not have the luxury of getting such information when I quit my job. My hope and prayer is that other people’s journey will be much shorter and easier than mine was.
I hope you enjoy reading my blog. Comment, ask questions and hit the subscribe button to get more tips and ideas on earning money online.
Related posts
- Entry-level transcription for beginners
- Online transcription jobs with no experience
- Do online research work for wonder and make up to $42 per hour
- All you need to know about Lionbridge work from home jobs.