online business

[sundaymorningstaple]

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[Canadian Trader]

Well, I live in Canada and work from home. You might find it easier to get a ITIN - IRS tax number for the USA. Anyone can get one and it helps when working for US employers as so many want it.

Here are the companies I have worked for and you can see that it is slanted towards trading and investing:

Elance: Not great but not terrible for article writing. My first job there paid $8 an hour only and after lots of self-promotion I could get twice that much. Again, be picky and don't work for a couple bucks an hour. Those are dead end jobs.

SeekingAlpha: You will need your US ITIN for this and know how to weave a story on US stocks. They pay $10 per 1,000 PVs and Yahoo Finance also picks up the articles. The average article on the site makes about $45. If you like writing about big companies like Apple it is decent pay.

Remote Equity Trading: This is NOT suitable for everyone. However, I love trading stocks and so I may as well tell you what it is about. Some firms accept new traders anywhere but the US - yet you trade US stocks. Due to the time difference you'd be trading mostly between 10:30 pm and midnight (the first hour and a half in US trading). You do need to put up 2 or 3K of your own money as a security deposit and they will let you trade with 50K or so. They have trading rooms and such to teach you the ropes and even have algo trading if you eventually want to go that route. I'd recommend learning by trading only 100 shares at a time so you make $5 - $10 on a good trade and lose $5 on a bad trade. Start slow, learn, and get consistency first before getting insane thinking you'll make millions. Then be happy if you can trade a small amount and make $100 - $150 in the first two hours of trading. Don't get greedy or you'll get killed. If you say 'Trader Kurtis' sent you they will give you a lower rate. Not saying you should do this as few people make good traders - but just saying in case this is up someones alley. Oh - you'll need minimum 3 months to even be half decent unless you have previous experience.

Affilliate Selling: I do a bit of affilliate selling for an investing software and backtesting platfrom which I won't mention here. My point is don't get into the affilliates that everyone else is doing - that is all sewed up tight. If you use a program, piece of software, or service that you totally believe in and use - contact the company and ask for referral fees regardless if they have a program in place or not. Refer what you are passionate about and are knowledgable with - don't do it simply for cash.

Other article writing communities: I've written for a bunch from Demand Studios to Suite101 and others. The content mill writing is pretty much getting killed by Google. Look for niche writing sites instead of the 'one size fits all' platform that only does revenue sharing.

My last tip is one that has worked well if you are experienced on a topic. Write an e-book and put it up on Amazon Kindle, Apple iStore (through lulu.com) and Smashwords (goes to Sony, Barnes and Nobles). I have written a few investment books - some are short simple guides. I'm not sure how other stuff sells but its not too hard to make an extra couple hundred a month with a couple of ebooks. Amazon sells the most and has a 70% revenue share program. So even if you only sell 40 a month and sell it for $2.99 you can still make over $80 on that one e-book. Not big or fast money but good beer drinking money I guess.

[sundaymorningstaple]

I more or less already did a couple of hours ago. See one of her other posts and my lengthy response due to her posting from a predominantly Chinese oriented spamming host in Calif.