I know a lot of you have looked into it:  Data entry jobs.  It seems to be the ideal work at home solution for those who are looking to make a little bit of extra cash on the side.  If you do a search on “data entry”, you will find all kinds of programs telling you that a few simple hours per day will result in hundreds, if not thousands, per month.

I’m here to tell you that this is nothing more than (what my three year likes to call): poo-poo rash.  (Sorry, but this stupid term is dominating my life at the moment…help me!).  I hate to ruin a lot of people’s hope, but there is no data entry job that will pay you hundreds or thousands of dollars per month for a few hours per week.  A lot of these “data entry” jobs focus on affiliate marketing.  They claim that if you fill out a simple advertising form (such as a Google Adwords ad), you can use affiliate links to make money.  (i.e., you develop partnerships with other websites and if you refer traffic to them, you will get a percentage of the sale).  Believe it or not, this actually worked a few years ago.  Now, I would not count on it.  In fact, for most this ends up costing hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on advertising with nothing to show for it.

So what about freelancing?  There are tons of freelancing jobs like writing articles, submitting links to directories, writing in forums, etc.  All of these jobs require very little skills and are virtually mindless busy-work.  Sounds good, right?  Well, there is a new problem that is emerging and that is the global economy.  Yes, people will pay for these tedious tasks, but the new global economy that we are living in is making it more difficult to compete.  Outsourcing overseas is becoming a bigger trend by the minute.

Would you take $2 per hour for 10 hours per week to submit articles to websites?  (That is $20!)  In the US, probably not.  But in foreign countries $2/hour may be considered a respectable minimum wage.   So how are we (as Americans or Europeans or Australians) going to compete?  Unfortunately, for these simple skills we don’t compete.  Having skills is still essential to make money as a freelancer.  Learning to write articles, fast and effectively is a good skill.  Learning graphic design skills using tools like Photoshop or Illustrator can bring in good money with minimal time commitments.

But whatever you choose to do, remember that easy money really do not exist on the internet.  There are always exceptions to this rule, but if any ad is promoting that a few hours per day can pay your mortgage through simple data entry, move on.  And if you really want to do freelance work, your time is better spent in a classroom or a tutorial website learning a skill that not everyone can do.

- Matthew Bredel