2024-01-22 — A New Job!

Gosh, going back 2 weeks…

I’m writing this on the 5th of February, 2 weeks to the day from the day I’m actually writing about.

I started the morning with a training meeting online with justanswer.com. today was the day that I was officially able to get started being a just answer expert–specialty, cars.

The meeting was one of those kinds of meetings where you can sort of halfway sleep through it because the information is super basic. Of course, it probably helped quite a bit that I’ve been a subscriber with a membership to just answer for several years now, so I already have a pretty good feel for the landscape of the website and how it all works and whatnot. Given my previous experience, it’s probably a very useful meeting for others.

On my end, I was just anxious to get started.

After the meeting, it took about an hour, or so, I think, before everything was active and I could start answering the first questions.

Brand new experts have the questions sort of spoon-fed to them, so you just sort of wait there, and when a question is available, it pops up on the screen. You can choose to accept the question and be the expert for it or pass on it.

I realize pretty quickly that there were definitely slow times. As after answering some questions, it would be 30 to 60 minutes wait time between questions.

That was informative for letting me know the reality of what it’s really like to try and make a living as an online expert.

I also realized that there were just as many glitches and issues and frustrations to deal with as an expert as there were as a customer. 😅

There are links that don’t work at all. Reports that won’t load. Links will take you to the wrong place.

It’s a bit of a mess. 🙃

Anyway, I learned that during the day, it’s an absolute free for all, and the odds of being able to grab the easier questions before someone else does is nearly impossible. I learned that if I’m willing to work later at night, I’m much more likely to get jobs that I can even choose that aren’t taken before I can get them, easy or hard. And if I’m willing to deal with jobs that are hard or out of my knowledge base, that require me to learn stuff in order to be able to answer, then I can get those generally later in the day into the evening.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been learning about that. I spent quite a long time answering people’s questions today. I wouldn’t be surprised if I answered like 40 or 50 different questions. I worked all day at it.

The good news is, if I need to, I can use this online job as my main source of income, which means I can work from anywhere in the world.

It doesn’t pay as well as what I’m making now, but at least proof of concept is there. So if I wanted to work from New Zealand, i could. 🙃 And now I have a source of income that means if I drop this mobile mechanic gig to start working on non-profit stuff, I now have a source of income ready to go.

So… No more excuses. Only minor barriers. Time to get going. 😎

And that was my Monday the 22nd!

Lift the world.

~ stephen