So I'm looking for some ideas...

[Adanac]

I'm going off for school again this fall, but this year I'm a bit tight for money. I don't want to get any loans or debts, and I want to focus on school rather than work five nights a week, or even weekends. Does anyone have any ideas, maybe a job I could do online, anything like that? I've already entered about a thousand draws for money and prizes so hopefully that pans out.

[Xei]

Dunno, what do you mean by school? If you're having money troubles does that mean university? :l Private tutoring can bring in a very good wage and is flexible, but obviously you have to have some kind of skill, and you have to be enthusiastic.

[DuB]

Amazon has a service called Mechanical Turk. Basically people post tasks on this online marketplace and pay people to do them. Typically it's stuff like transcribing scanned books, filling out surveys, translation (if you have this skill), etc. You certainly won't make enough money off Mechanical Turk to support yourself, but it can provide you with drinking money for the weekends or whatever. If you're interested in making enough to support yourself without having a job, consider selling drugs.

[Xei]

If you're interested in making enough to support yourself without having a job, consider selling drugs. Excellent advice as ever.

[Spartiate]

Amazon has a service called Mechanical Turk. Basically people post tasks on this online marketplace and pay people to do them. Typically it's stuff like transcribing scanned books, filling out surveys, translation (if you have this skill), etc. You certainly won't make enough money off Mechanical Turk to support yourself, but it can provide you with drinking money for the weekends or whatever. Woah, that's kind of interesting. Any more info on this? It sounds like something that would be ripe for scams/catches...

[DuB]

Excellent advice as ever. I'm only half-joking... Woah, that's kind of interesting. Any more info on this? It sounds like something that would be ripe for scams/catches... I've never used it from the user side, only from the provider side. Sometimes when our lab has brief, simple experiments or surveys for which we want large, relatively diverse samples and strict experimental control is not crucial, we will post these on Mechanical Turk. It's pretty nice because we can get a large number of participants quickly and cheaply: typically around 100 participants in 2 days, at a cost of around 50 cents apiece usually (depending on length and nature of task). I've seen the results of some Turk surveys designed simply to gather info about the kind of people who participate and why they do so, and it seems that the modal motivation is that people do the tasks when they're bored and want to do something at least somewhat more productive than randomly clicking around the Web. Like I said, you can make a nontrivial amount of change in your spare time this way, but it's not something you would want to raise a kid on.

[Adanac]

That Mechanical Turk sounds amazing, and am I ever glad I posted this topic haha. Well, I'll be checking out that for sure.

[Xei]

Most of the people offer you like 1p doing a 10 second job... do the math, this isn't going to keep you out of debt.

[Spartiate]

I looked into it as well. In Canada you can only claim your earnings through gift certificates for amazon.ca, which has a pretty crappy selection.

[Adanac]

Yeah turns out this sucks... oh well. I thought it was too good to be true haha. Any other ideas anyone?

[Black_Eagle]

Here are some of my ideas: 1. Look into the military. 2. Look into government financial aid like FAFSA. 3. Go to stores like Goodwill that sell secondhand items, buy stuff, and try to sell it at a higher price on eBay. 4. Look into getting money from relatives. 5. Look into becoming a hooker. 6. If you are supernaturally attractive or have big muscles, you could become a stripper 7. Deal drugs Unfortunately, if you're looking for something that can give you enough output to pay for college with minimal effort, dealing drugs is probably the best option. All the other options I can think of require you already have certain skills. Edit: So what distinguishing skills do you have?

[Adanac]

Hmm, I'm not sure if I really have any distinguishing skills I could sell. Right now I work in Parks as a summer job, and I'm in school for genetics. I suppose I could look into selling things on my own time, to be paid on a commission basis; I feel like I could probably convince people to buy things from me. Selling drugs is always an option, and would be rather easy, but I'm really sketched out by it so I don't think I will. I'll also look into private tutoring, though that seems really close to a real job haha.