freelance work: what can I do? Transcription? Something else?

[richmal3]

I urgently need to find some work I can do from home, that fits in with my family commitments (single mother with one child and elderly parents). I was wondering about freelance transcription work but the sites I've looked at seem to require very fast (80wpm) typing speeds - I can only manage about 60wpm.

I don't have any formal typing qualifications but have pretty good spelling, punctuation and grammar skills. I don't need to earn much per hour (we live very frugally).

Has anyone else managed to do this without formal qualifications? Or are there other things I could try? All suggestions welcome!

proofreading and editing for overseas university students?

Can you practise your typing and get faster?

Hi, you need to have a good think about your skill set.What did you prior to having a family? Office work, selling? Customer services?
Proofreading is a skill and work is hard to come by, there is much more to it than spelling, the sites you mentioned I assume are people per hour? or similar? I have never gained any work this way, not paid well enough.
You say you live frugally, so how about dog walking? Around here £10 per hour is the norm, same for cleaning privately - these would probably fit in with children. to do admin type work at home, you will need reliable broadband, a reliable computer and space/peace in which to work.
You need to be able to sell yourself, no-one will come looking for you, check out any local networking events maybe. Is your child school age? daytime baby sitting could be another possibility, not actual child-minding but baby sitting. If you take care of elderly parents could you be a private carer for someone, I often see adverts for part time private carers.
I am just having a think really, maybe something I have mentioned will strike a chord?.
The first steps though, what can you do? what do you want to do? what might you be capable of learning to do?
Good luck!

You might want to look at the website peopleperhour.com Quite a lot of people need simple writing or proofreading jobs doing. There is a lot of competition for the work, so I started offering myself for quite a low fee, until I built up some good feedback and then put my fee up to something more realistic. There is all kinds of stuff on there so you can have a browse and see if there is anything else you might be able to do.
Best of luck!

Richmal3 this is a bit of a late response and I hope you are not still looking for work but do take a look at peopleperhour if you are as perfectlybroken suggested. I started out there a few years back and have grown a "real" business from that start.

One thing that springs to mind is blog writing - not your own but writing for the multitude of companies who can't/won't write their own blog posts but need them. Your grammar, spelling etc is good so you just need to find subject matter that you can write easily and naturally about.

You may not get paid much at first but you will get quicker/better with practise and can then put up your prices. Just watch out for those on PPH who want something for nothing - don't undervalue your skills.

Good Luck