Why do work? And by work, I mean the traditional 9-5 job? Through the Internetz, there are more ways than ever to make an independent living! Let me be the first to tell you – I used to be stuck in the 9-5 grind. It has been 8 months since I made the jump to self-employment – and these past few months have been the most exciting times of my life!
Just like me, more people than ever are now making a full-time living from their homes. It’s no surprise either – there are few things that beat working for yourself, from home!
So, for someone who is interested in making an independent living or working from home, where do they start?
WhyDoWork.com (WDW) is a community driven website that aims to centralize work-at-home and telecommuting employment opportunities through their custom search engine. WDW also features a VERY active forum with over 26k members! As Borat would say, “VERY NICE!”
As with all of my recent reviews, I like to look at Alexa ranking, PageRank, and the total number of links in Google to get a better understanding of how popular a site appears to be.
Current Alexa Ranking: 46k (3 month avg.)
WDW’s 3-month Alexa average is 46k. That’s not bad, especially considering their 1-week average is 26k. Even though Alexa is not an accurate measure of traffic, it does provide some indication of how well trafficked a site is, especially compared to others in its niche. Clearly, WDW enjoys very healthy web traffic, which must mean they are doing something right.
Google PageRank: 5
WDW benefits from a desirable PageRank 5. Oddly enough, if you look at how many links it shows Google is pointing towards WhyDoWork, it is only 11, which is strange given the PR5. That being said, don’t let the low number of links in Google fool you — according to Yahoo, WDW has 139 links pointing to it.
What does WDW offer?
Job Search Engine: As I mentioned earlier, WDW aims to centralize work at home and telecommuting job opportunities. They do this with a custom job search engine. According to WDW, their search engine crawls Craigslist and Kijiji listing over 25,000 searchable positions in over 400 cities worldwide daily.
WDW has also compiled a list of the “most trusted work at home employers on the net.”
Forums: As mentioned earlier, WDW has a forum with over 26k members! The forum features topics on everything from affiliate marketing, freelance writing, and drop-shipping, to a special area for stay at home moms and dads.
Blog: The WDW blog has been around since January 3, 2007, which is a lifetime in the blogosphere. The WDW blog has racked up over 100 posts in its time online.
Some of WDW’s noteworthy posts:
- How We Doubled Subscribers Overnight using Google Analytics: According to WDW:
In our case, we strategically placed content inviting users to sign up, or register free prior to viewing in order to take advantage of high traffic but poor site stickiness. On the days following the implementation of this idea, avg. daily subscribers rose from around 20 to over 40.
- 8 Steps to a $50/day Income Online: WDW explains their “shampoo of online success.” Very straightforward guide to earning a solid online income.
- Build Guilt in your Audience and Make Money – the Costco Effect: An excellent explanation of how to build up an audience now and milk them later. WDW shows us how by giving away “free samples” to visitors, you can in turn convert these visitors into paying customers at a later point.
Another Free iPod?
Most of us has been bombarded with free iPod offers more times than we can count. Well, here is a legit offer:
For the month of October, WDW is giving away a brand new iPod nano. To enter, all you have to do is subscribe to their RSS feed for 1 entry, or blog about the contest and receive 5 entries.
Conclusion
I was pleasantly surprised by WDW. WDW does a fantastic job of centralizing knowledge, tips, and opportunities devoted to working from home and making an online income. WhyDoWork.com is easy to navigate, easy to read, and certainly contains a plethora of useful information.
It’s no secret that I have not had very much time as of late to spend in the blogosphere, so it is rare that I add a new feed to my reader. However, let me be the first to tell you that I added WDW to my RSS feed. I recommend you also subscribe to the WDW RSS feed. You can visit their website at www.whydowork.com.
I just wanted to point out that Alexa is not a very accurate metric – it only reports users who have their toolbar installed (a small segment of the internet userbase). For sites with members that aren’t very tech saavy, Alexa does a mediocre at best job at tracking them.
Try Compete for a different twist on your results. It may be interesting to see a comparison of several different sites from several different genres using both Alexa and Compete – I personally trust Compete more, and I understand that they pull data from more than one source, and not just their toolbar.
My comment is not so much about the site than the idea you introduced in the beginning. The funny thing about working online from home and all that stuff is, it wouldn’t work without the 9-5 people. If everybody was an internet marketer, nobody would be buying anything.
Very good point, Ryan! You are absolutely correct. Fortunately (and unfortunately), it will always be the case that the majority of people work for someone else while only a few are able to develop and/or sustain an independent income.
And also without the 9-5ers working hard we wouldnt be able to buy all the things we are buying with our online earnings ;).
Nate-
Intersting site. Will have to check it out see what they have to offer. My initial thought is I hope it has a good moderator. It seems like a place that could easily attract the scum-of-the-earth scam artists.
We actually have 7 good moderators and some great automated SPAM control! 😀
I know what you mean about attracting “scum-of-the-earth scam artists”; Without spam control we’d have approximately 200 garbage posts a day. Our mods do a great job of keeping things clean and useful. 😀
He said SCAM not SPAM. 😉
My apologies…I just see a lot of forums get ruined by not regulating what people are posting.
For instance, forum moderators will let companies post “job offers” that are basically scams. Like the “get paid to stuff envelopes” work at home job opportunities.
this actually looks pretty cool.. thanks for the post Nate!
Nate it is easy to see why your making a living on the net. Your very good at what you do!
I used to be stuck in the 9am-10pm grind. It sucks.
Ouch. A 13 hour day!?!? All the same, you’re still a fair way off of Nate. 😉
13 hours a day is a seriously hard graft – I struggle and I’m only at about 11 hrs a day, but it’s broken up. Did you do 13 hrs in one go?
Very good point, Ryan! You are absolutely correct. Fortunately , it will always be the case that the majority of people work
While I wouldn’t say such people lack aspiration, a lot of 9 to 5 workers I speak to say they “work to live”. I guess for those in business by themselves, or in otherwise very small enterprises, it would be more a case of living to work.
Self-employment is a very risky proposition indeed, and if unlucky, can lead you to bankruptcy. That’s probably turning people off.
On the other hand, if you can pull it off, you’d be in a magical world as compared to other 9-5’ers 😀
Just wondering, is this a paid post? But sound like a good idea to check it out too.
I like to have passive income. This is the best way of earnings.
very thorough analysis you got here. i’m a new reader of their site now thx to you.
@Nate
whydowork.com has only about 139 (210 now) inlinks like you mention, but I strongly suspect that the PR5 would be due to the 4248 inlinks to http://www.whydowork.com 😉 A mere technicality, but I was honestly surprised that a site with just 139 inlinks would have a PR5 – it would have to be a really old site with a lot of weight in the backlinks! 🙂
Apart from that one small technicality, it really is a nice review 🙂
Why Do Work? To have a money!
That’s right. Money
Hmm will definitely have a look at this website …. could be useful 🙂
Thanks for the link !
It was interesting and heartening to read about your transition from employed to self-employed. I have faith that one of these days, i shall be able to follow suit.
I suddenly received this in my mail today (December 28, 2007). Any particular reason why so late?