Ask HN: How to find online employment for a person with limited functionality

If it is possible without telling us any more about your conditions than you want us to know, it would help to know what the blocker is that prevents more than 2-3 hours of work per day. Because the answers to the type of work we recommend are going to be different if it is a physical limitation of being up and around vs. a mental limitation based on stress or cognitive endurance, etc. Answers will be different if you need 20 hours of recovery after 2-3 hours vs. 2 hours of recovery.

ayamabi · 2 years ago

After some trauma I get tired cognitively really easily now, it's hard for me to concentrate for more than 2 hours.

em-bee · 2 years ago

could you manage two hours in the morning and two in the evening or are you done for the day? either way, two hours a day should be enough to earn 300$ a month if you can find work.

that's quite a low hourly rate, so you should even be able to find jobs at upwork and similar platforms.

apart from that, find sites where you can sign up and where people hiring can find you.

post on hackernews "who wants to be hired" https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring

it may take a while to find something, but it's low effort. same goes for some other sites. sign up where you can and see if you get offers.

describe what work you can do, and tell that you are looking for only 2 hours a day, 10 hours a week of work. don't explain why. for a side job 2 hours a day is normal, so noone will consider it unusual that you can only do 2 hours. they don't need to know the real reason.

when you have the time and energy then go back to those same sites and actively look for work you could do.

codementor for example. it's easy to sign up and depending on the skills you offer you'll get people contacting you. i get about one request per month, which is not enough for me to live on, but it might just be enough for you.

and considering your situation, i would also look at mechanical turk. the pay is low, but the tasks are simple and they may just be the kind of thing that you can do without making you tired. i could be wrong, but give it a try.

Did you consider reselling or affiliate? We human spend our time and money on things constantly.

By selling things people actually want there is always money to be made. eBay, Etsy, classifieds & local alternatives.

While selling is kinda predictable you can also avoid handling products and go the affiliate route. Find products you care about, find a way to cheaply promote them, then put together a nice (actually helpful) website, write a few words and fill it with AI text.

A few hundred dollars per month are absolutely doable at 2-3 hours per week once you found things that work for you. So invest the 2-3 a day to find these things.

mewpmewp2 · 2 years ago

This sounds a bit out there. It seems like it would be very saturated to be able to do this by just making a website with AI text. I could only imagine someone being able to make money from it if they are a content creator with decent following who stands out with that.

OP could possibly make content of their struggle, but it would still require certain personality and passion to do that.

herbst · 2 years ago

I am no affiliate marketer by any means. However you just need to be the last click in the chain of a buying decision.

If you have any kind of expertise in a area, no matter how niche or weird, a simple knowledge website can easily be that last click for someone. AI can just fill the blanks of your existing expertise.

There are millions of ways to approach this. Sure it doesn't happen over night, and you need to find 'tricks' that work for you and your products and audience.

But I am certain that anyone with enough time can find their piece of the cake that is our world of constant consumption.

(Stupid Example:// I just bought a repair part for my coffee machine, nobody dominates the affiliate market here. However I needed to research which additional parts I would need to open the machine, etc. I googled like 5 related phrases in my research, any targeted blog post would have shown up catched my interest and maybe would have lead to a sale. Let's say there are 1 million machines of that type that need that part every 5 years or so, maybe 10k would repair it themself or at least try to. They Google, see your article and maybe 10% actually buys the parts. 10k, so 2k per year. 10% buying from your links so 200 people, 200 X 5% of 30$ = 300$ a year. Now repeat with the next machine type, then next brand. Etc)

farrelle25 · 2 years ago

Maybe a long-shot: Last year I did 15 hrs a week proofreading CS and Engineering journal papers. Got around $300 - $350 per month

- Company 1: https://cactusglobal.com/careers/freelance/

- Company 2: https://proofreading.org/about/careers/

Didn't need a certificate in Proofreading / Editing. You have to test edit a few sample papers to get employed. My backgound: software development (but have a Science degree too from years ago).

The work is remote, flexible (you can decline papers) but *not* highly paid. Also quite hard if you get a poorly written paper. I only did it as a stop-gap.

Also: don't know if GPT has finished this market...

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PostOnce · 2 years ago

(The below presumes you live in a mid- to high-income economy):

if you only need $300/month, and you can only do 2 hours a day, you're much more likely to find what you need locally by word of mouth (helping people fix their computers, setting up web accounts / etc). An hour or two a week would net you the $300/mo you need. It'll be easier to find that hour locally than on the internet.

making money on the internet doesn't necessarily scale down infinitely, for example you can't spend 6 minutes a day earning 4 dollars very easily; there's a minimum amount of time it takes to talk to people and arrange jobs etc.

I would look locally if I were you.

codingdave · 2 years ago

rl1987 · 2 years ago

Back of the envelope... $300 per month is $10 per day. At 2 hr. of work per day it's $5/hr. I don't know your urgency level, but you can trivially make that much on Fiverr by doing small scale work (setting up stuff on servers, developing simple scripts) once you establish yourself a bit.

Dave3of5 · 2 years ago

What have you tried so far?

Not throwing any shade just don't want to be suggesting stuff you've already tried.

I just recently encountered the urgent necessity for the additional income, so I didn't really tried much until now. Another thing I'm thinking about it teaching kids computers and some mathematics, but I also don't know how to start here.

Ok have you tried freelancing? The freelancing sites like upwork and fiverr should be able to get you to that level of money per month.

chris-orgmenta · 2 years ago

I can't promise anything but could you please email me your resume? chris at orgmenta dot com
(or just any info you want to provide. I don't care about resumes themselves, and don't want you to waste your time on it for me)

flowzai · 2 years ago

First off, I want to commend you for reaching out and seeking solutions despite the hurdles you're facing. Your experience in DevOps and Systems Engineering is solid gold, even if you can only dedicate a few hours a day. There are several avenues you could explore to bring in that extra $300 a month without overwhelming yourself.

Considering your background, freelancing or consultancy gigs might be your best bet. Websites like Upwork, Freelancer, or even reaching out to small businesses directly could land you short-term projects or consultations in your field. Your expertise is valuable, so don't hesitate to put it out there!

cebert · 2 years ago

This reads as a ChatGPT response.