Don’t Tarmac, Make Some Money Online --- Part 1

By Elvis Ondieki

There you are: Your studies are over, there is no Helb loan coming your way, your parents are not eager to give you free money anymore, there is no forthcoming job AND YOU HAVE TO MAKE MONEY.

I was almost in that situation. Thank God a friend of mine gave me links of some websites. I registered in a number of them, did interviews and exams here and there, sent my scanned ID and voter’s card here and there, and soon I was writing for someone in California. Some time later, my phone was ringing. An SMS from M-Pesa. The payment had come home!

This article aims at giving you insight into the basics of online working.

[The content in section 1 to 5 below is derived from a PowerPoint presentation that I prepared for an employer in California, USA in September 2011]

SOME FACTS ABOUT ONLINE WORKING

Online working is increasingly becoming an option for people throughout the world. More and more people are resorting to online working. Some of the reasons why people work online are:

•          To make money as they await some more formal mode of employment e.g. government employment
•          To  earn some extra cash to top up whatever they earn from their current jobs
•          As the permanent source of livelihood after losing a job or failing to get one, on one’s decision etc.

On the other hand, employers have various reasons for soliciting labor online. Wanda Grindstaff, in a blog post at www.traffictrickle.com, says that employers do that to save on extra costs like healthcare and insurance which are incurred when one has employees at their premises.

Equally, outsourcing labour online guarantees a variety of laborers to pick from; which ensures that there is the best bargain for any job that a person wants to be done.

This graph from www.odesk.com shows the number of hours that people spent working online in August 2011

This table shows the payment summaries of August 2011 at oDesk:

As at 10.20 am on September 5, 2011, the latest statistics on www.freelancer.com were as follows:

Statistics show that there are several people who are using online platforms to give or receive jobs.  Below are some other facts regarding the online job market:

•          Laborers are required to work entirely from home or places of their convenience
•          Platforms like oDesk have designed a software that tracks the hours worked if the employer wishes to pay by the number of hours that the employee worked 
•          More employers prefer giving fixed price jobs as compared to hourly jobs, i.e. they like to pay the contractor after the work has been done, not by the number of hours the contractor has worked.

Employers use several factors to determine the best contractor. Common preferences are:

•          The feedback score given by former employers
•          The length of time that the contractor has been a verified member of the online working platform
•          The origins of the contractor (Some employers prefer people who are native speakers of a particular language if they want to give out a writing project or something related to that).

 Editor's Note: Join us tomorrow for the second part of Ondieki's article. You can write him on ondiekielvis@gmail.com