Financial seminars often emphasize the importance of diversifying your income sources and investing in the right places for maximum success. It’s no longer surprising to hear about people having a full-time job partnered with numerous moonlighting work or rakets after the 9 to 5 grind. Rakets are those stints or gigs that provide you with the extra boost. You can use it for many things: your next planned overseas trip, your food trip allowance, your next staycation, extra cash for buying gifts for yourself or other people, or just plain windfall sources for your financial planning endeavors.
The internet is one of the best places to find them. Here are just some of the online rakets that you can try.
7. Web Designer
Creative types who are unafraid of acronyms like HTML and CSS can find themselves in this category. Web design is a constant need. And it makes even more sense if you incorporate good user experience practices (UX) in your design to keep up with today’s trends.
6. Web Developer
This is not the gig for the faint-hearted, as it involves sitting for hours on end, debugging, and developing something for your client. It requires persistence, strong logic skills, and a knowledge of manipulating specific programming languages to achieve the project’s purpose. Some languages like Python and Ruby are much friendlier for beginners because they resemble the English language more. Online coding schools like Codecademy or the more comprehensive programming languages’ official documentation allow you to learn and practice for free. A portfolio containing impressive sample works on places like Github will help you land some clients more than a certificate or college degree.
5. Abstracter and/or Indexer
Content is churned out daily through online and offline platforms. Keeping track of them involves robust indexing or abstracting. Some companies that handle volumes of information hire freelance abstracters, summarizers, or indexers who will abstract/summarize magazines or books and append the proper indices to them. A human touch is still required in some cases although artificial intelligence already boasts of being able to do this effectively. Regardless, this back office activity makes it easier for a data management company’s clients to do a keyword search. It’s popularly done by data custodians of academic journal databases that get clients who subscribe to their content.
It’s like a library, but it’s digital. (Note: some training may be required.)
4. Social Media Manager
Some companies have large marketing divisions dedicated for online and offline marketing efforts. But others outsource a portion of the work such as their social media management as a part-time thing. Are you addicted to Facebook? I have already seen some extraordinary people who can handle being an active user of Facebook for 22 hours straight per day. If you are one of them, your insane level of energy can be put to good use with the social media manager raket. It requires you to keep track of a company’s social media presence like their official Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter pages.
3. Photographer
Text is pretty dull without engaging photographs. Another popular raket is that of producing high quality photos. You can take excellent photos and take it up a notch by bringing your talent to live events coverage. But you can also go by the quieter and more regular route of submitting stock photos in websites like Shutterstock and getting paid for them. The primary requirement for this is a good eye for details and the right equipment.
2. Virtual Assistant
Virtual office setups are no longer alien concepts these days. Companies overseas already allow work from home options. Some local companies are also becoming open to the idea because of the worsening traffic situation in business districts. A virtual assistant job involves tasks like working on spreadsheets, cold calling clients, setting appointments, and doing other errands for an individual or a company. The scope of the work varies depending on the nature of the client’s business. The time zone also depends on the client’s business hours.
1. Writer
Online writing has a lot of types, although it is simply lumped here as one category for the purpose of simplification. You can do technical writing, creative writing, grant or proposal writing, and many others. Documentation is important just about anywhere. Some groups pay as low as $3 and others pay as high as $250, so you can find your sweet spot in the middle with a good portfolio and the right platforms. I believe that for people starting out in this type of raket, it is essential to master the basics of grammar and style, explore one’s voice with topics that they are naturally passionate about, survive writer’s block, and find appropriate platforms that allow their voice to be really heard.
Certainly, there are more rakets out there that have not seen the light of day. Some can be taken directly from the clients and some make use of platforms like Rakets PH, Freelancer, and Upwork. I have even heard of one foreign raket that pays people to shop online or take surveys.
Do you know of any other lucrative gigs that your fellow Filipinos can harness for success? Do share the information and comment with your ideas below! Your comment might help another fellow get started with online rakets.
