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Comment by illegalsmile | Hacker News Reader

That brings up a question: What can you do to earn $50 in 24 hours?

Unless you already have mturk the waiting period is days to weeks if you're not rejected. Fiverr/Upwork would all require a large amount of luck to make $50 in one day as communication with client and turn-around time could take 12-24 hours before even starting a small one hour project. CL might be the best way to make that money in that time period doing a miscellaneous yard service or delivery or whatever. I'm curious though if there are other avenues to make $50 in one day.

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I have had to make $100 in a couple hours with almost no avenue to do so. Here are the 2 different things I did multiple times each that show it IS possible to make money using just your creativity.

1. Went to Goodwill store (second hand store for those that dont know it.) Took pictures of the office furniture available. Posted to CL in my city at a price $10 to $20 more than it cost to buy. Subject line: "Price reduced by 30%". Stood in the store adding more items and watched my inbox for replies. This paid approx $20 an hour. I did this at least half a dozen times when my first child was born and we were on the verge of starving.

2. Called everyone I knew with a business and offered to build a website or facebook page or Twitter profile or Yelp page for $x, half paid up front. We HN folks overestimate how technical people are. 100 bucks to "be on social media" is cheap.

> when my first child was born and we were on the verge of starving

Damn, that sounds horrible.

> Subject line: "Price reduced by 30%".

It sounds like a part of sales is about lying to people then? Or obscuring relationships/sources?

Obscuring sourced and information has always been part of sales. Amazon obscures its sources. So does walmart. So does McDonalds. Literally everything on earth would be less expensive if the customer could buy directly from the manufacturer or source. But distributors exist to create efficiency and scale which benefits both buyer and seller.

If you own a pickup truck, put a junk hauling ad on Craigslist. Charge $50 + dump fees. You will have to err on the side of caution here, as dump fees are determined by weight.

People Ready (aka Labor Ready). Be there early before they open, and if you're lucky (because I'm sure they're swamped these days) you'll get a full day's work. You get paid that evening.

A trick I learned back in 2009 was that if you bring a drill, or even a screwdriver, you can get assigned to much nicer jobs (never worked for Labor Ready, but worked for very similar companies during the 2008 recession).

I've always been pretty nomadic, and one trick I was taught long ago when you need cash in a hurry is to go stand outside a self-storage facility and look for people that need help moving. I was able to make $50-$150 a day when times were tight.

I bring this up because people actually do call day labor companies for this all the time.

Is it really possible to generate $50/day on mturk? What kind of tasks would pay that much?

12 hours of aggressive work might get you there.

A friend of mine claims his HITs (identifying/verifying if a tv show switches to a commercial in a 30 second video) pay about $12/hr for anyone who doesn't get banned for low quality answers.

I've seen that there are a number of tools (usually like browser extensions) which allow you to filter and sort HIT offers for the best use of your time.

Language learning tutoring. You can be a "community tutor" no diploma required on platforms like iTalki, Verbling, etc.

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