Dictating with Dragon

We all have dictation software on our cell phones.  It is decent, but not accurate enough to do anything substantial.  I have used older versions of Dragon Dictation for the PC and found it to be slightly better than the phone version, but still not worth the hassle.  I spent more time editing what I dictated than if I had just typed it all in the first place.

Work at home website with good info

If you want some really good information you should check out the new site I built about work at home opportunities.  I am not trying to sell anything, just give some advice to those who are interested.

http://realonlinejobreviews.info

Texbrokers.com, so far a legitimate way for writters to work from home

So I have been checking into this online writing stuff and so far I have found it to be a bit difficult to make any real money.  Sure the work is there, it is just very low paying when you are starting out.  And you have to spend a lot of time looking for a match to what you are capable of writing, which is more time you could be making money.
I read about a site called www.textbroker.com on another site and decided to look into it.  The idea is simple, as you write they rate your writing.  Based on how well you write, the more or less you get paid per word.
When someone needs content written, they select how high they want the quality to be, the subject and how many words long it should be.  Then the available jobs are posted on the site and if your ranking is high enough you can view the posted job.  If you like the details, you select the job and you are given a certain amount of time to complete the project.  Most of what I have looked at are due within a day.

Craigslist Scams

I buy and sale a lot of items of Craigslist.  Mostly items I don’t want to sale on eBay because the size of the item makes shipping expensive.

But I am amazed at how often I am contacted by buyers who try to get me to fall for scams that have been around for more than a decade.  Despite the warnings, obviously people are still falling for it so I will outline a few here so hopefully you wont fall victim to these scams.

Can I really make money on Ebay?

Ebay is one of the few ways of making money at home that I have been doing for years.  As a kid, I always collected sports related items.  Mostly cards: football, baseball and basketball.  But I would buy various commemorative memorabilia items or posters that I liked.  As a teenager back in the 90's when cards were booming I would go set up a table at the local card shows and make enough money to buy more cards and do it all over again.  Then came girls, and the cards went into the closet.



I got married, but every now and then I would stop in the card shop and buy more cards.  So when my kids began collecting I was ecstatic because I got to start my hobby all over.  When they would "pull" a high end card worth a lot of money of course they would want to sell it.  So we started selling a few on eBay and they would get the money.

Since we only sold the most expensive cards our collection grew to the point it annoyed my ex wife.  So I needed to clear a lot of it out.  I began listing much of my collection of eBay  I would charged about a $1 extra for shipping and I would give it to my son as payment for packaging and mailing the items out because I hated this part of the process.

Making a few hundred dollars a week, I decided to try expanding into other items.  I would buy toys that were hot selling items from Walmart or Target and sell them as well.  The problem was finding them.  Rarely, can you find a hot toy that is selling for above retail in the store.  That is why the price is so high on sites like eBay.  But, occasionally I would get lucky and find a store that had just received a shipment and I would buy five or ten of an item and sell them for as much as double what I had paid.  Not bad for a few minutes of work.

Then I decided to move into antiques.  Antiques are big business and big money.  My family for generations had been pack rats.  And when my mom moved out of the farm house my family had lived in for over 40 years, she needed someone to go threw and figure out what was trash and what was worth something from an enormous barn filled with items.

For about two months I had a blast looking through items I had no idea existed, much less what they did or what they were worth.  I bought a few books, and visited a bunch of websites to determine the items value.  Some of the items were worth good money.  Some, worthless and a few I still don’t know there value because I can not properly identify them.

We sold a lot of items with no problem on eBay and made a decent amount of money.  I began thinking I could do this full time now that I had a decent knowledge of antiques.  So I began going to yard sales and flee markets in search of bargains I could make a profit on.

This is where my eBay career came to a dead end.  The problem with buying and resale is you have to have a constant turn over of items.  I could not find a steady stream of items I could resale and make a profit.  I would attend yard sales advertising they had lots of antiques for sale.  But when I would get there, they would have some old items, but because they were old people assumed they were valuable and would ask well above what they were actually worth.  I have literally had people offering me items worth a few dollars for $50 or more.

Occasionally, I would find something that look to be extremely rare and valuable, only to realize upon closer inspection it was a reprint or releases of an original item.  While sometimes these can be valuable, rarely are they worth anywhere near the original.

I have yet to try buying items in bulk and resealing them on eBay.  Although this does seem like a very profitable idea.  Most of the items you see on eBay come from China anyway.  I found a few sites from China that sale items in bulk and you can get them for a few dollars an item if you buy 100 or more.  Even if you don’t want to buy in bulk, you can find the same exact item on eBay being shipped from China for about double the price per unit than the bulk price.  The problem for those of us in the states is it can take up to six weeks with some vendors to get your merchandise.

This is where the US sellers make there money.  Some people in the states do not like dealing with overseas vendors.  Even if the product is made there.  Plus, as Americans we are impatient by nature.  We don’t want to wait weeks to get out item, I actually get impatient waiting three days for my item to come in.  So they mark the item up, advertise themselves as US sellers with fast shipping and they clean up.

I have actually seen some electronic items that I can buy in bulk for less than $3 being sold on eBay for as much as $100 by "specialty" stores.  Most of the time you can find these items going for about $10-$20 from US supplies, but the outrageous ads continue to be reposted so I would assume someone is buying the product, even if the numbers are low.

You just have to be careful in selecting an overseas vendor because you really have no protection once you send your money.  So research them before you buy.

Whatever, product you want to sell on eBay you will find a market for it.  I doubt you will get rich selling it, but you can make a living as long as you have a steady flow of inventory.  If you make a particular item in your home this is a great market to sale your items.  But if you have some old items laying around the house you want to get rid of, eBay will bring several times more money than a garage sale will.  Especially when it comes to high end collectable items.

I will write up another blog giving you some tips on what to look out for when buying and sale on eBay so you don’t get scammed or be forced by eBay to refund a purchase after you mailed the item to the customer.

Is Freelancer.com a scam?

I have seen a lot written online about being a freelance writer.  I kind of look into this several years back and registered for a program through Yahoo that I am not even sure still exists.  But it's an idea that I have toyed with for years and only recently began to seriously look into.

The truth about making money from home

For years, I have seen advertisements all over the Internet about making thousands of dollars months from the comfort of your own home.  I knew right away almost all of these claims were nothing more than a scam.  Recently I began to look into the possibility of working from home a little more seriously.  I found a few ways that interested me that seemed somewhat possible.  But it took a tremendous amount of research to wade through the advertisements that were hidden as reviews or to sort through website after website trying to sell me an eBook about how to get rich, feel better or be happier.