Author Topic: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?  (Read 24215 times)

strider3700

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I'm a programmer. I work from home but I'm limited to 30 hours a week at the moment.     I have spare time in my evenings maybe an hour or two a night  which I'd love to find something to do from home that actually makes money.  I can't really take on additional programming jobs as most are not finished in a couple of hours and I really can't be tied down to another job that I need to do.  I've found amazon's freelance job section which is fine  but I'm averaging about $2 an hour at the jobs I've found on there.   

 I'd prefer to make $5ish (minimum wage here is $8)  is this even possible?   I'm aware those makes $80k/year from home ad's are not true but you'd think there must be something out there that's worth a bit more then getting paid 1 cent per picture to determine if it's porn or not...

c

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #1 on: November 01, 2012, 03:55:50 PM »
Are you crafty at all? There's Etsy. People do well with a variety of stuff on there, it's about finding your niche.




cbr shadow

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #2 on: November 01, 2012, 04:05:29 PM »
What's this 1 cent per picture thing?  I'd be interested in that if you can fly through them very quickly..  1 picture per 2 seconds = $30/hr..  That's not bad for clicking through pictures while you sip a beer on the porch.. especially if there's some porn mixed in there! hahaha  Link?

A friend of mine swears by "gigwalk" (i think that's the name..).  It's an Iphone app where you record prices of food items at grocery stores with your camera on your phone and they pay you $5-$15 per item.  It isn't a "Job", but if you live in a fairly urban area you could ride your bike around to different stores and make a few bucks that way. 

Otherwise I'm in the same boat and would be interested to hear what other people do to make a few extra bucks @ home.

TapeMouse

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #3 on: November 01, 2012, 04:07:02 PM »
Are you a woman?  It's not strictly "online," but phone sex pays remarkably well.

c

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #4 on: November 01, 2012, 04:12:44 PM »
My friend did that for a bit, it paid well. I always wondered what you'd actually say, but she said they give you some tips and after a few calls you realize they all want to hear the same, pedestrian crap.

strider3700

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #5 on: November 01, 2012, 04:26:56 PM »
I'm not a woman and I doubt my wife would find me doing phone sex in the evenings a good job to make a few bucks. 

the picture thing is through amazon's mechanical turk.
http://aws.amazon.com/mturk/
I suppose you could get fast enough to make it worth while.  they also offer higher paying jobs but I've yet to be able to get one worth more then $1

prosaic

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #6 on: November 01, 2012, 04:35:12 PM »
Can you write good "how to" articles? Demand Media is hiring tech-type writers, Suite101 lets you write on spec and earn a percentage of ad revenue, and on kdp.amazon.com and pubit.com you can write and upload self-published stories/how to guides that sell for as little as $.99 (you earn 35-40 cents per sale).

Check out kindleboards.com to find a bunch of self-publishers who can help with questions on how to pub for Kindle and Nook.

I make a solid 4 figures a month working from home doing a mixture of these.

cbr shadow

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #7 on: November 02, 2012, 09:20:59 AM »
Ok I spent some time looking into the Amazon deal you listed above.  I read a few reviews, and generally they say you can probably make minimum wage if you do the higher priced items..

Another option would be to find some online Surveys.  A survey will pay $4-$30 depending on its length, and you can take as long as you want to complete it.  I read a bunch of reviews on these, and I signed up for the more popular ones that always pay well.  Below is a review that I followed.
http://voices.yahoo.com/best-survey-sites-actually-pay-cash-271575.html?cat=3

sol

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #8 on: November 02, 2012, 02:13:25 PM »
My preferred way to make money online is to log on to Vanguard and invest a big pile of money in the stock market. Then every day you can get online and see how much money you made that day by doing nothing.

cbr shadow

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #9 on: November 02, 2012, 03:55:13 PM »
Well lets see.. this month I've PAID for investing in the stock market on vanguard :)  I would think it would be discouraging to check vanguard stocks daily haha

strider3700

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #10 on: November 03, 2012, 09:18:19 AM »
getting that big pile of money to invest is what I'm working on.  putting away 33% is making that pile grow  but not fast enough for my tastes.  If I can make an extra $10 or $20 nightly that will go a long ways. 

rjack

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #11 on: November 03, 2012, 09:57:59 AM »
I'm a programmer. I work from home but I'm limited to 30 hours a week at the moment.

Since you are a programmer, why don't you write a mobile app that you can sell online?

BolusOfBees

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #12 on: November 04, 2012, 10:21:43 AM »
You could learn about Bitcoin, plenty of opportunities for a programmer to make money.  I'm a meer script kid and I've been getting about $100/mon return on a $600 hardware investment.

arebelspy

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #13 on: November 04, 2012, 10:31:49 AM »
Bitcoin is an unsustainable .. well, I can think of no word except scam, although that isn't quite right either.

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BolusOfBees

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #14 on: November 04, 2012, 10:52:37 AM »
Bitcoin is an unsustainable .. well, I can think of no word except scam, although that isn't quite right either.

Regardless of your opinion on Bitcoin's future as a financial instrument, I think he could make decent money with no investment other than his time.  There are lots of people who want to open up online shops, construct a mining pool, or start a bitcoin exchange that don't have programming background to do so on their own.  They then need help maintaining these things. 

I too had dismissed bitcoin after reading a Wired article on the subject, but after I did some more independent reading I decided it was just risky enough for my tastes.  It really boils down to the people involved with bitcoin in its "wild west years".  If you have the community of merchants and service providers to attach real value to this digital currency, then it may have a future.  If you have too many scammers and speculators, then it will be a scam.  So far, it's going fine for me. 

kudy

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #15 on: November 04, 2012, 11:10:55 AM »
I've always been confused whether I could make any money mining bitcoin with my existing computer -  I guess the question is, would mining make me more than the electricity cost?

arebelspy

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #16 on: November 04, 2012, 11:14:09 AM »
I've always been confused whether I could make any money mining bitcoin with my existing computer -  I guess the question is, would mining make me more than the electricity cost?

A few years ago, maybe. Currently, no, mining the coins is not profitable.
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plantingourpennies

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #17 on: November 04, 2012, 04:11:12 PM »
Hey RS what makes it unsustainable?

From what little I've read its an online currency with hard limits on the number of coins in circulation, and protections for privacy as well.

I can't tell if you mean the idea of a crypto-currency is unsustainable for socio-political reasons, or that somebody will hack the currency itself.

Best,
Mr. PoP

arebelspy

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #18 on: November 04, 2012, 04:31:20 PM »
There have been a number of hacks and tens of thousands (hundred of thousands?) of dollars lost, but ultimately what makes it unsustainable is the fixed amount you mention.  Guaranteed deflation. As wallets get lost, the amount of coins go down, as people hoard rather than spend (which is almost all coins in circulation right now), it's worth less and less.

It's running on the greater fool theory right now, and that's about all.
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Bullseye

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #19 on: November 12, 2012, 12:01:30 PM »
I'm using Field agent, a phone app where you accept assignments, usually going to a store, checking a shelf, reporting on something through app.  Takes a few minutes if store is not out of your way (or you get exercise by biking there!), pays $3-12 per task, generally.  You can transfer earnings to Paypay account at any level.

Most importantly for me, this one works in Canada!  I have a hard time finding these types of extra income things here, so if anyone knows any more, post it up!

The Taminator

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #20 on: November 12, 2012, 01:14:21 PM »
Bullseye, can you be more specific about the app? I just did a search and it returned a few that sound like it could be it. Thanks!

Bullseye

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #21 on: November 23, 2012, 11:44:53 AM »

iamlindoro

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #22 on: November 23, 2012, 01:36:55 PM »
I'm a programmer. I work from home but I'm limited to 30 hours a week at the moment.     I have spare time in my evenings maybe an hour or two a night  which I'd love to find something to do from home that actually makes money.  I can't really take on additional programming jobs as most are not finished in a couple of hours and I really can't be tied down to another job that I need to do.  I've found amazon's freelance job section which is fine  but I'm averaging about $2 an hour at the jobs I've found on there.   

 I'd prefer to make $5ish (minimum wage here is $8)  is this even possible?   I'm aware those makes $80k/year from home ad's are not true but you'd think there must be something out there that's worth a bit more then getting paid 1 cent per picture to determine if it's porn or not...

Strider, what kind of programmer?  Can you elaborate a bit on why you're limited to 30 hours per week or why you don't want to take on additional part time programming work?  Is there a reason you have to get each job done in the space of a few hours a night versus having a remote employer whom you can work consistently for every night?

The reason I ask is, I work in IT, and make a substantial extra amount by taking on consulting jobs, including software development, often for many months at a time.  It means committing to a reasonable number of hours per week (I do about 20 of consulting a week) but it's also way, way more lucrative than anything you've been looking at.  I make an extra $50K a year doing this.  Sometimes it's stressful juggling jobs, but in the end it massively accelerates my saving.  It can take some time (months, even) to build up the contacts needed and to turn small jobs into big ones, but well worth it at least for me.
« Last Edit: November 23, 2012, 01:39:18 PM by iamlindoro »

liquidbanana

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #23 on: November 23, 2012, 07:46:04 PM »
Google leapforce, lionbridge and appen butler hill. All of these places hire search engine raters (this covers a wide variety of tasks but mostly rating the quality of websites and search results for particular queries). Leapforce and lionbridge are contract work. Leapforce has no minimum hours, but Lionbridge requires a 10 hours per week commitment. Both companies have the exact same work and the pay is usually $13.50 per billable hour (you aren't paid for training or reading directions). Neither company has a dependable amount of work. Some times you have unlimited amounts to do, some weeks you will be lucky to find one hour worth of work. I think it's easier to get hired by Leapforce, but I'm also under the impression that Lionbridge is hiring right now.

I don't know that much about Appen Butler Hill. For the rater jobs, you have to work 20 hours per week and the pay is $15 per hour. They have pretty high quality and production standards to meet, I hear.

Fizzer

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #24 on: November 24, 2012, 04:10:32 AM »
Try https://www.elance.com. It's a platform for connecting freelancers with people who want to hire them, and there's a wide variety of skills that people are being hired for with programming at the top.

jp

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #25 on: November 24, 2012, 09:05:23 AM »
I work on justanswer.com  and can earn about $50 per hour if i focus.  Usually more like $20.  They have a programming section, though i work in legal

liquidbanana

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #26 on: November 24, 2012, 11:21:07 AM »
Try https://www.elance.com. It's a platform for connecting freelancers with people who want to hire them, and there's a wide variety of skills that people are being hired for with programming at the top.

Be aware that elance has a lot of cheapos and you will be competing against programmers in India and other countries with outrageously low rates. You can still find good work on there, but it's very hit or miss. Don't charge low rates to compete, but make yourself stand out in some way. There are "employers" on there willing to pay more for better quality.

iamlindoro

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #27 on: November 24, 2012, 11:30:42 AM »
Try https://www.elance.com. It's a platform for connecting freelancers with people who want to hire them, and there's a wide variety of skills that people are being hired for with programming at the top.

Be aware that elance has a lot of cheapos and you will be competing against programmers in India and other countries with outrageously low rates. You can still find good work on there, but it's very hit or miss. Don't charge low rates to compete, but make yourself stand out in some way. There are "employers" on there willing to pay more for better quality.

My experience with ELance, Guru.com and the like has been that the quality of customer is quite low.  There's a lot of "I want my app in the app store, on iOS and Android, and there's a firm deadline of three weeks, and I won't tell you what it is until you sign an NDA, and I have some drawings that show what I want, and this should be easy, and it had better be under $250."  The customer is so uneducated about the realities of development, costs of development, app store approval process, etc. that it feels like trying to make an honest bid and educating them on the real costs and timelines involved would be a waste of time.  Of course there are diamonds in the rough, but if you happen to be a developer in a desirable market (either mobile development or very niche skills) then you can generally do better by investing the time to network like crazy with real people.

Even better is if you manage to snag a job from a firm in a high-pay area (NYC or SF Bay Area) but can work remotely from an area with lower cost of living.

If you are a competent developer without experience in mobile, you can get the experience by writing and releasing a few of your own apps-- I personally work in apps concerning content delivery and web services/API consumption.  These two give me a wide range of potential jobs I can bid on (in addition to the "basic" jobs that don't require the above).

kudy

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #28 on: November 24, 2012, 12:21:07 PM »
Google leapforce, lionbridge and appen butler hill. All of these places hire search engine raters (this covers a wide variety of tasks but mostly rating the quality of websites and search results for particular queries). Leapforce and lionbridge are contract work.

Very interesting... I think I'll try and get my sister to do this.

I work on justanswer.com  and can earn about $50 per hour if i focus.  Usually more like $20.  They have a programming section, though i work in legal

I just signed up for justanswer.com, and their interface is terrible.  Also, seems as though the quality of questions is pretty variable, and there's a lot of competition in programming.  I'd make my own category, but apparently that feature isn't working right now.
« Last Edit: November 24, 2012, 12:23:04 PM by kudy »

jp

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #29 on: November 24, 2012, 02:31:04 PM »


I just signed up for justanswer.com, and their interface is terrible.  Also, seems as though the quality of questions is pretty variable, and there's a lot of competition in programming.  I'd make my own category, but apparently that feature isn't working right now.

It is far from perfect... i started in 2008, and everyday it has been worse than the day before.  But, once you figure it out, yoyou can make money at it.  I know a legal expert that made almost $200k doing it full time one year.  The most i ever made was about 40k doing about half time.

arebelspy

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #30 on: November 24, 2012, 03:43:32 PM »
Slightly off topic, but I want an app built that all it does is play a short video, then launch another app (already on the device).

I.e. an app called "hello world" that when you click on it, it plays a video of a dancing bear (embedded into the hello world app), then launches the clock app (and always that).

That sounds fairly simple to me to do, but I don't code, and I'm sure everything always sounds simple and is more difficult.

Estimates from you programmers on a fair price for getting that created on something like elance?
I am a former teacher who accumulated a bunch of real estate, retired at 29, spent some time traveling the world full time and am now settled with three kids.
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iamlindoro

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #31 on: November 24, 2012, 04:07:04 PM »
From an iOS perspective, and purely theoretically speaking (but trying to give you an idea of the questions I'd ask):

Before any sort of agreement I'd want to chat about exactly what you're setting out to do as the Apple approval process can sometime be tricky, and the exact parameters of your app can affect that approval (streaming versus video in the bundle (loaded in with the app), will the content change, is there anything about the content itself that could make approval difficult, etc).  Depending on the specifics of what you want to launch, and whether the app registers a URL scheme, what you are setting out to do may or may not be possible.  Apple secures each application by keeping it in it's own sandboxed environment which can make launching a second app tricky-- the second app would need to register a scheme with the OS which allows your app to call out to it..  The clock app doesn't register a url scheme that I know of, hopefully this isn't the app you had in mind ;)

Here is a reference of many of the common schemes:

http://wiki.akosma.com/IPhone_URL_Schemes

Now if you wanted to play a video of your bank account emptying any time you tried to launch the custom SMS/MMS icon, before allowing someone to send a text, that would be doable!

Regarding cost, obviously it depends on just how involved you would want the developer to be vis-a-vis the approval process, how much if any design work would be necessary, etc. but if all you want is the code to be written that plays the video and launches the second app with no interaction, and for you to own it, I would probably quote a few hundred bucks ($2-300ish to write the app, ad-hoc distribute it to you for your approval or for personal use, etc.) with a probable turnaround time of 2-3 days.  Realistically it would probably be a couple hours work in a single evening, but you'd want to build in a little "oh shit" cushion.  If you'd want me to shepherd it through an Apple App store approval, that price would probably go up a few hundred bucks more (as a rejection, or multiple rejections can become time consuming).

Sorry if that got a little long, technical, or boring :)
« Last Edit: November 24, 2012, 04:10:13 PM by iamlindoro »

arebelspy

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #32 on: November 24, 2012, 04:40:05 PM »
I don't need it sellable in the app store, my phone is jail broken, an ipa would be fine. Google Maps is the app I want to launch.
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iamlindoro

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #33 on: November 24, 2012, 05:43:54 PM »
In that case, yeah, probably $200 would be what I would quote for a gig like that.  Google maps is doable, as is making the app future proof (Apple Maps/iOS 6 compatible).

Lshum

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #34 on: November 24, 2012, 10:57:19 PM »
I'd love to find something to do from home that actually makes money. 

I use oDesk.com, it's another freelance site. Like some people mentioned, there are a ton of people from India and the Philippines who work for crazy low money, but I found my niche. Most people on there aren't good writers or native English speakers and the ones that are charge a lot. I've been making $200-300 extra per month (I also have a full time job) with writing. I had to low-ball a few jobs to build some feedback, but I make about $10/hour now, most of it guaranteed through their payment system. I take on however much work I can handle and have done a variety of different jobs, ghost writing book chapters, blog posts, put together a bibliography for someone's thesis, etc. It's the best way I've found to make decent money in my spare time and on my own schedule. I highly recommend it.

liquidbanana

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #35 on: November 24, 2012, 11:51:18 PM »
I take on however much work I can handle and have done a variety of different jobs, ghost writing book chapters, blog posts, put together a bibliography for someone's thesis, etc. It's the best way I've found to make decent money in my spare time and on my own schedule. I highly recommend it.

If you're willing to do this work, it would probably be a lot more profitable to write ebooks to sell on Amazon. I don't know if you've looked into it, but if not, you should. :) Aside from the thesis person, people are making good money off of the writing you do if they are willing to pay you for it. Just cut out the middle man.

I don't have the patience for odesk/elance/guru customers. If I did, I'd likely have the patience/perseverance to write a bunch of ebooks that would be making me passive income every day.
« Last Edit: November 24, 2012, 11:53:01 PM by liquidbanana »

strider3700

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Re: is there actually a way to make decent money online in your spare time?
« Reply #36 on: November 25, 2012, 12:44:47 AM »
iamlindoro - Mostly C# but really these days I do a lot more testing/design/training/requirements gathering with customers and managing of the programmers then actual writing of code. the programs are desktop pulling data from a database.  Nothing shocking but the field is somewhat specialized, with lots of industry knowledge needed to have a competitive product.The reason I'm limited to 30 hours is that's what my day job has set the limit at. That may change in the next few weeks as we're getting really busy.    The pay is so so, but I work from home and just need to provide 30 hours a week.  Very little must be at any specific scheduled time so I work whenever I feel like it.   I  did contract work for awhile.  Eventually it was pretty much a constant contract with this company but I refused to deal with customers I'd only work directly with the company.  This was a covering my ass thing.    Anyway they decided to print me onboard to get me dealing with customers...

 We actually have jobs out being bid on elance.   We required an NDA to be signed on the job if you wanted to see the detailed specs which basically layout how our product works and 100% of the features.  Not unreasonable in my mind.  We removed any quotes that came in having not seen the spec and anyone that wouldn't sign the NDA.  The programming job was trivial,  maybe 10 hours work if done in house but there are hundreds of them to do so the hope was/is to outsource large amounts of it to temporarily get way more manpower and crank through them.  We got quotes ranging from $8/hour to $60/hour (none of us make $30/hour)  we got quotes ranging from 20 hours to 500 hours and my personal favourite one who figured it was between 700 and 1200 hours at $45/hour. They had 8 people to work on it....  My guess was someone new should be able to figure it out in 15-20 hours without issues.

In the end it went to a company in India for $200 20 hours at $10/hour.   The final code was fine and they weren't that difficult to deal with.  Some have great English others are horrible.  I deal with the English speakers and they pass messages to everyone else. They start before I go to bed so we got a few hours online at the same time to answer questions.     It's pretty hard to compete with that.

The reason I don't want to take on these types of jobs is I can't guarantee time.  Many evenings I'll get an hour or two.  Some evenings the kids won't sleep and I'll be busy all night then a wreck the next day.  If I can't find it and complete it in 1 evening I can't guarantee I'll be able to get back to it and finish it any time soon.

As for the writing suggestions thanks but  I have no idea what I'd write that is worth crap.  I've never written anything beyond highschool and the arts was obviously not a career path for me.