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There are ads everywhere telling you that you can make extra cash by staying home and clicking on a few links or playing some app. But how many of them actually payoff in the long run? It’s easy to be skeptical about things like this, mostly because half of them are just spam and the other half are ‘earn a dollar in a month’ types. Work has been glued into our minds to be a nine to five shift at some place serving some people, not stay in your pajamas all day working at your computer or on your phone. For some people, working alone in your own home sounds like a dream come true. But for others not so much, some people need the everyday rhythm of getting up and going to work or the need to socialize. During the beginning of Covid quarantine I was living it up. I got to stay home and do whatever I wanted, stay up however late I wanted, and sleep however late I wanted. But one of my roommates was having a much harder time than I was. He got restless over time and needed to be able to work again to feel like he had a life again. For me and others, a perfectly happy life would be not leaving my house for most days of the week.

I remember years ago when getting paid to shop started being a thing. At that time I had a job and this was just an extra way to earn a little money. Spending money to get money sounds nice, but you have to have that money in the first place to spend it. Rebates (now called Rakuten) was one of those popular websites and I believe it to be the most effective. It feels great to spend money on something that you need and get some of that money back, especially with larger purchases. One time I spent over one hundred dollars on new tires and got fourth dollars back from it. It’s always exciting to get money, even if it was really yours to begin with, but something back is better than nothing. Some of the other similar websites give you small amounts back for specific items, usually grocery or household items. My personal favorites are Ibotta and Fetch Rewards. With Ibotta, you can occasionally find rewards that give you a free item. You just upload your receipt, scan the item, and you get your money back. Fetch Rewards is very much the same, but one great thing with this company is they also check your email and a linked bank account for receipts. They usually don’t give you as much back for these, but if you’re like me and shop Amazon almost everyday, it’s worth it.

Some of the newest ‘get rich at home’ businesses involve download apps and playing games. We’ve all seen those ads where someone wins a punch of online coins on a casino game and suddenly they have hundreds of dollars in their bank account. That’s just the dream for me right there, but can it really work like that? Unfortunately for me, that’s not going to happen. Luckily, other people have already tested it these out and with a quick search you can learn if it’s a scam or not. My favorite of these games are the bingo ones. Blackout Bingo is the only of these that I’ve tried and I think it’s fun as just a game, but you could actually win money. It’s similar to the get money for spending money websites because you always have to pay to play and if you lose you just lose that money. They get people to think they are winning more than they actually are by saying you could win five dollars if you win this game, but you have to bet two dollars to start. Basically, you don’t get five dollars for winning. You’re getting two dollars back out of the five because you spent three of it to even play the game. And if you don’t win that one game you lose more than you would have won. You would have to win every game you played to be able to actually make money and that’s unlikely to happen.

Another way to earn money at home is to search online for ‘work at home’ jobs. These are usually jobs like a virtual assistant, customer service representative, data entry, translation, or even telemarketer. All of these jobs tell you that you get to make your own hours and work from wherever you choose. A great thing about that is you could be working for a company in a completely different area than where you live, broadening your job search by a lot. After searching through most of these jobs, some of them sound great, you get to choose the jobs you accept and you can do them from wherever. I’ve read so many applications for jobs like these, I’ve even applied for a few, but I’ve never heard back from any of them. Maybe I’m just not finding the right companies or maybe they haven’t gotten to my application, but wouldn’t they want to hire people? Other jobs I’ve seen sound perfect, but of course it’s an amazing job so there are no open spots or it’s a fully online job but for some reason you have to live in a specific region to sit on your couch.

Some jobs on the other hand, at least for me, an introvert (if you couldn’t tell), they sound terrifying. The thought of calling people all day to talk to them about things they don’t want to buy is like putting me on stage at a crowded arena. I can see myself taking hours to finish one call. The first few hours of me staring at the typed in number on my screen, then a few minutes on a call, then another hour or so to let my nerves settle. That doesn’t sound like the type of job I would want and it definitely doesn’t sound like it would be worth a few extra bucks in the bank.

Overall, I have had very little luck in the ‘work from home’ section of Indeed. I’m still waiting for that one job opening I’ll probably never see or when I do it will never be hiring or I don’t have a degree so I can’t answer phone calls. I’m not saying it’s impossible and I’m not saying it’s harder than finding a non work from home job. I just wish it didn’t seem so impossible. Maybe I just want to sit on my couch in my pajamas with my cat on my lap and earning hundreds of dollars by popping bubbles on my phone. Sounds realistic, right?