If you are a freelancer in need to make money online fast, and you don’t have superb IT skills to make five-six digit salaries, you should take a look at data entry.
As work from home online jobs go, data entry jobs are the most common one. Furthermore, there’s always lots of demand for it.
Work from home – data entry jobs
‘Data entry, a person-based process, is “one of the important basic” tasks needed when no machine-readable version of the information for planned computer-based analysis or processing is readily available.‘
-source Wikipedia
The recent study, conducted as a partnership between Freelancers Union and Upwork, reveals that in 2019. fifty-seven million Americans, representing 35% of the workforce, freelanced during that year.
A similar study conducted in 2014. showed that 53 million Americans freelanced in that year. That’s 4 million freelancers more in just five years!
This growth can be applied all over the world. It’s not specific only to the USA.
Furthermore, the same study showed us that freelancing income is already on par with major industries.
This freelancer workforce contributes nearly 1 trillion dollars to the economy — that’s 5% of USA GDP.
These numbers will only continue to grow as work from home, and freelancing becomes more and more popular around the world. Advances in IT technologies will continue to advance, and with it, online jobs numbers will surely go up.
-link to the study: https://www.freelancersunion.org/resources/freelancing-in-america/
And guess what position is most common in online jobs? Yes, data entry jobs! (or related, like virtual/private assistant).
Freelancer view on data entry – basics
Data entry may be your starting point. Furthermore, it may be a low skill, low pay job, but for reasons I’ll explain here – it’s NOT A NO SKILL JOB.
If you are planning to make money on it, you’ll have to:
- Type fast (WPM should be high, depending on a job but if your WPM is bellow 50, you should consider practicing to get it higher)
- Be precise, make a small percentage of errors (which you’ll have to correct later if you want to work again for the same employer)
Titanic was fast on his first voyage, but it was not diligent and precise. A leopard is fast, but that’s not a guarantee he will go home with a meal.
Light is fast, but… Ok, I got nothing on the light, it’s fast.
What I’m aiming at is that with speed comes great responsibility, nope, that’s Flash?
You have to have speed AND control if you want to work from home, data entry job at least.
Online jobs
So you got the skills, you have the time, a relatively quiet place to work from, and all you need is the job?
Here the things get complicated. It’s hard to get a data entry online job as the competition is vast.
This is what you need to do:
- Find the right online jobs websites (made a list here which can help you out)
- Spend time building a great, grammar error free profile, on these sites
- Browse the right position for you
- Apply for the right jobs
When you do get it, do it right. Recheck everything twice if you have the time.
If you don’t – take the time and do it anyway.
You want to leave a great impression on the employer and get rehired again, some point in the future.
This will soon be a part of your daily routine. It’s all comes with a territory of being a freelancer.
As a result, you will lose some time doing this, but the benefits will be far more rewarding.
Remember, you will have a lot of competitors. The only way you can make it is to strive for excellence.
On my blog, I have already posted a review on some significant online job websites (Upwork and Freelancer), so feel free to check them up.
Conclusion – is data entry profitable?
Finally, we got to the question – how much will I get paid doing data entry?
As I browsed through completed projects on Upwork, I saw that employers paid data entry jobs somewhere between 3-8$/hour (in the USA could be a bit more).
Other websites are similar in that regard.
In my experience (and keep in mind that I’m from the EU), the pay for data entry jobs is not great if you have some other options/skills. But it does help to pay the bills.
Of course, to some countries, this is a decent salary.
I will have to apply for it only where there’s nothing else for me to do, and I’m in a no mood for learning something new.
At the start of this article, I mentioned the study, which showed that 57 million Americans had worked from home as freelancers in 2019.
Furthermore, they were netting in 1 trillion dollars!
Lots of these online jobs were about doing data entry, transcription, virtual assisting, undoubtedly. They are considered low-skilled IT jobs.
At the other part of the coin, there are higher-skilled, more paying, online jobs.
If you can, try to add more value to your work. Educate yourself in some of these areas if you can, and in the meantime, look for data entry jobs.
Some people love data entry because it’s simple, some people find it annoying, and some like it. What do you think?
If you think you are ready, please head to the big jobs list on the Best freelance websites section. Good luck!