When I decided to become a WAHM and started investigating options to make some money, I searched the internet extensively. There’s a lot of blogs, websites and forums out there supplying a wealth of information and leads.
I also found, however, that most of these websites are based in the United States. While much of the advice is sound anyway, a lot of the money making options are actually not available for those of us living elsewhere in the world.
Case in point: Amazon Mechanical Turk
When I went on ‘maternity leave’ (meaning I couldn’t commit to freelance work for the time being), I went looking for a more casual, commitment free way to make some money online.
One of the things that I saw suggested time and time again was Amazon Mechanical Turk. It seemed perfect for my needs. All you have to do is sign up for an account, then you can carry out a wide variety of small tasks (called HITS) for which you earn equally small amounts of money. With an hour to spare here and there, people were reporting making relatively good amounts of cash. Moreover, the programme is well documented as real and the payouts as dependable, so no worries about it being a scam.
So I signed up. In the registration form, I set my location to Ireland. It went through without a hitch.
A few days later, I received an email back saying I didn’t qualify. No further explanation.
Disappointed, I searched the internet and only then found out that mturk isn’t available in Ireland. In fact, it’s only open for those within the United States. This is not clear at all on the website. Why did the form allow me to apply with my country set to Ireland in the first place?!
But wait, there’s more!
Amazon Mechanical Turk is but one example of a popular casual earning website that is only open to residents of the United States. Since then, I’ve become a lot more careful in managing my expectations.
If you’re not in the United States, it’s an important lesson to learn. This goes for any work from home, not just the casual stuff.
Some other things to watch out for:
- Even if an earning option is open internationally, be aware that sometimes there are restrictions on how you can be paid. For example, cash might not be an option, leaving you with vouchers that are effectively worthless in your country.
- Depending on where you live, you might be hit with an exchange rate from USD to your currency that will not be in your favour.
- Some websites allow people to sign up worldwide, but then require a United States social security no. Yeah, right…
- If you’re buying and or selling anything, shipping rates can really come back to bite you in the behind.
On the upside
It’s not all bad news though. Just because we can’t access the mturks of this world internationally, there’s still plenty of options for making money from home as a WAHM.
In fact, not being in the United States can also work in your favour. For example, depending on where you live, you might not have to worry about taxes like our friends in the United States do. I don’t, as long as I stay under a generous threshold.
The USD exchange rate can really work in your advantage in some cases, and while shipping might be expensive, being in a different country could well grant you easy access to commodities that are in demand elsewhere in the world. It’s all worth exploring, right?
Experience working from home around the world
In future posts the, I’ll be paying particular attention to how to make things work internationally. As I’m in Ireland, my experience is based there, perhaps extended to the wider European Union.
I’d love to hear about other people’s experiences from other places in the world. Please comment and let’s all share our knowledge and help others on their way.
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