Hi there. My idea for working at home is to become a home typist. Bascially I would advertise on the net or using business cards and find people who have documents that they need to be typed up and then have them send them to me so that I can type them up. Once I had done that I would send the finished document back to them and have them pay me over Paypal. Is this a viable idea? What should I charge? Is there even a market for this? What things would I need to consider? Let me know what you think
Hi Carbon, The idea is certainly viable, but you really need to do a little keyword research to determine the supply and demand of the service you'd like to offer. I know someone who has a resume business online and another who does proofreading, etc., so I don't see why basic typing services wouldn't work. The hardest part is going to be to get found for your service. Targeted traffic is the greatest challenge of most online marketers. Strangely enough, when I started looking for a way to make money online a few years ago, your idea is almost exactly what I had in mind. I wanted to do typing for people! I started searching online for people to type for or a company to type for, etc., and only ended up wasting a lot of time and energy wading through a bunch of rubbish. A couple of months later I ran across SBI and it sounded like an even better option to me. I decided to give it a try and have been very pleased ever since. I still type, but I type for myself, so to speak. Instead of getting paid one time for something I type, I get paid over and over again as visitors to my websites click on ads, purchase products, etc. I'm much farther ahead now than if I would have only ended up typing for others. You can only type so many documents in a day, no matter how fast you are. But, there really is no limit to the number of visitors and income you can earn when you are using your typing skills to create a long-term website business. Having said all that, you COULD build a niche site that is targeting the niche of typing services (like my friends have done with resumes and proofreading). If that's something you really enjoy, go for it. But while you're still in the planning stages, keep your mind open to the possibilities. Blessings, Angie
I believe there are people out there who needs help in encoding some materials to become books, or contents. But the demand really is not that high.
Of course that there are people who need such service, only question is how much you can earn with that. I would advice to make a research on that!
You can type at odesk and charge accordingly for your work, writing, transcription etc is available there.
VictoriaNTC: I would not qualify as I type like a chicken would Victoria That's a good one Victoria. Same here plus my eyesight is not as good as before. Me wife has been complaining that I sometimes confuse her with the maid Henry
CarbonMonoxide Back in my time when I was a typist, I could see the opportunity in large quantities, but these days, most people have access to the internet, email, digital secretary applications and other word processing programs. In addition, there is an issue of proprietary information and securing information. It might work with small businesses who cannot afford to have a full-time secretary or an administrative assistant, so there may be a niche market that could use your services. If you can find one or two companies that use your services. They can later be your testimonials to expand your business.
Hi CarbonMonoxide Any update to your typing idea? I think this is very much a viable opportunity. There are many small businesses that outsource these services. I'd start with advertising your skills on Fiverr. Set some boundaries so you don't get someone sending you a 20,000 word voice recording to transcribe. Get them to record what they want onto a voice recorder (many free ones on the net) or e-mail you their handwritten document to transcribe (this is even better because most scanners/printers already have a text recognition programme that converts hand written text into a word document so all you will need to do is fix anything that wasn't recognised). I know my typing is slow and I would have paid $5 to have essays typed up for me....so thats about 2000-3000 words.(target students) Fiverr is a great place to start and will get you testimonials to build your business from there. Give it a go, you have nothing to loose.
Another avenue can be not for profits who may need flyers, bulletins, postcards etc. done if they don't have someone in house with the talent.
With advances in voice to text software, language translators, I cannot see how this would work in today's market.
It's a great idea, go for it. Charge as much as you want, you'll offer a valuable service so people will need it and be willing to pay for it.
People are already using this. They have been for the last 10 years. Go to www.Elance.com and create an account. The advertizing is in the website. This is a website where people hire people online to do computer work for them. Example, I have bought many articles, and reports from other writers. They earn around $10-$20 an article. You place bids and compete with other article writers. Or, whatever your field is. It is simple, easy and safety+security is a high priority. You can easily earn $35,000 annually. It is a high quality site. I still use it today. Seriously, go there now and prove me wrong.
There are a lot of ways to make this work. You can use sites like elance.com and guru.com to post what you are talking about and hopefully get people to work with you. These sites are highly competitive however. Another site that I really like is virtualassistants.com. There is a fee for this site, but it's really minimal (less than $40 for the year). You can advertise on this site and also look for work from home jobs using keywords. They are really great. As far as what you should charge, I would do your homework by conducting an internet search for virtual assistants and what they are charging for various services.
