After having been broke for far too long, but also having to balance being a single parent with earning an income, I have spent a lot of time coming up with creative income generating ideas. One of these was to investigate at home data entry. There a lot of scams out there — a lot! After reading through numerous work at home mom websites and reviews of various at home data entry companies, I happened upon Key For Cash which has since changed its name to Virtual Bee.
I’ve been doing data entry for Virtual Bee for a few years now, and
while I’m not getting rich from it, I do earn enough to pay for most of the gas
I use every month. Some months are better than others with Virtual Bee, but I
usually earn a minimum of $60 per month. Sometimes, however, particularly from
late February through the end of April, I am able to earn $60 per week with
Virtual Bee.
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The positives of online data entry with Virtual Bee
- You can do it from home — You just need your computer and an internet connection
- You can do it at any time of day, any day of the week — Mornings offer the most opportunities, however. Weekends offer the least.
- You make your own hours — Some work at home jobs require you to keep regular hours. With Virtual Bee, you work whatever hours suit your needs.
- You aren’t penalized if you don’t work — If you need to take a break from Virtual Bee, it’s not a big deal. You won’t be penalized for not being productive. You can log in to work whenever you need to or want to.
- If you’re fast and accurate you’ll earn more — The faster you type and the fewer mistakes you make, the more you’ll earn. One nice thing about Virtual Bee is they don’t care about capital letters — If the snippet to be keyed has capital letters, you don’t have to bother with hitting shift or caps lock. Just key the letter. This saves you some key strokes.
- There are several types of data to work with — If you are great with 10-key data entry, you can focus on those types of snippets. If you prefer only alphabetical entries, focus on those. If you like a mix, choose alphanumeric. I typically focus on numeric, dollars only, dollars and cents, or checkboxes data entry, although I also occasionally do alphanumeric and letters only snippets.
The negatives of online data entry with Virtual Bee
- It isn’t consistent — There are dry spells periodically. Sometimes there will be days and days with very little work. Sometimes there will be an abundance of work one day and nothing the next. There is no pattern.
- You won’t get rich — Online data entry with Virtual Bee pays 30-cents per 1,000 key strokes for most types of work. For some types of work you can earn up to 60-cents per 1,000 key strokes, but these higher paying segments are less frequent or may be more complex. However, over time you will likely naturally get faster and make fewer mistakes. I have definitely increased my speed and accuracy, and thus my earnings.
- Too many mistakes gets you cut off — If you make too many errors, you will be logged out from your snippet, and possibly the system. If you continue to make a significant number of mistakes, you may have your access terminated entirely.
- The pay dates are inconsistent — Payments come in the mail by check. Although they are supposed to come on a schedule (you can log in and see when your payment was processed), they sometimes come late. Most payments come about two weeks after the processing date, but I’ve waited four weeks on occasion. You also won’t receive a payment until you accrue $30 worth of key strokes.
- Communication isn’t great — I have never received a reply when I have emailed with a question. However, when I emailed to ask them to update my address, I never received a reply, but my email must have been received because two payments later, my address was updated.
When I work
With Virtual Bee, I frequently work while I am watching television or
movies. It’s down time that is generally dedicated to little else, and I don’t always
feel totally engaged with what I’m watching, so why not? I also frequently have
two windows open on my computer so that I can watch Hulu or Netflix on the
computer while doing data entry.
As I said above, you won’t get rich from Virtual Bee, but you may be able
to earn enough money to cover a small or small-ish expense every month. It
definitely has made a difference for us. Please note that you do need to take a
typing test to qualify, and the test covers a variety of types of snippets. You
can take the test as often as you want (or at least you could when I signed
up). Even if you score really well on the typing test, you may experience a
wait before you are approved. This will coincide with how much work is
available and how many others are also testing. It was about two months from
the time I tested and when I was accepted into the program.
If you are ready to check out Virtual Bee, click HERE.
***This post will be cross-posted at my personal blog, M and J in a Nutshell.
