You may have seen the words “Data Entry Jobs” many times on the internet and you may have always wondered, what exactly does it means? I often see people asking this question on the internet:

What is meant by data entry jobs? Or What kind of jobs are called data entry?

And many other questions of the same kind.

In this article, I will try to explain in detail, about data entry jobs.

Where can you get data entry jobs on the internet?

The best place to get hundreds of data entry jobs, is the freelance site.

Here is complete online jobs guide that will help you get registered at freelance sites:

Data Entry Jobs Guide

You may get such jobs at some other websites too. May be in some money making forum or a freelance related forums, but doing data entry jobs at such sites is a total waste of time. First of all: there is no surety that you will get the money after you complete the work. Then, what about the rating system? Freelance sites have a rating system which is an excellent way to distinguish between old and new members or to see who is more experienced candidate for the job.

Also: the amount of data entry jobs at freelance sites is very impressive and no other site or forum can compete with that.

What actually are data entry jobs?

Here are different types of data entry jobs being explained:

Typing Jobs:

There are many different kinds of jobs that come in data entry category. The simplest data entry job is typing content in notepad or word document. We will call it a simple typing job. For such jobs, you may have to write  content from some non-editable source to an editable file.

Non-editable source can be scanned pages or some images that have some text:  there can be other non-editable sources too.

Editable files are simply notepad or word documents.

Data collecting from the internet:

One of the most commonly seen jobs at freelance sites in the data entry category are the one where we need to find some kind of information from the internet and then we need to paste that information in some editable file like Excel sheet.

The information that we need to collect from the internet can vary a lot from project to project. I once got a project worth more than $700 where I needed to collect wedding websites URLs, Email Addresses, Phone Numbers etc.

This kind of work is very simple but there are few factors which determine the amount of data collecting work that a person can do in a specific time period. For example: if a person has a high speed internet connection then he/she will do the data collection job much quicker compared to a person who has a relatively slower internet connection.

Formatting Documents:

There are few jobs where we need to change the format of text in a document. We may need to remove some text or we may have to put proper headings for the content in a file. This is also an easy data entry job.

Online Form Filling Jobs:

There are many websites where hundreds of items are needed to be added. Most of these sites are related to shopping. There are new items for sale that needs to be added in the site. The site has a online form via which the owner of the site can add new items.

The owner may hire a person to do this job for him as this job can take hours to complete. The online form mostly consists of few options like a item title, item description, item images, item price and few other options. For most of such jobs, you will be given all this data and you will only have to copy paste it in the online form.

This is a very popular data entry job which is preferred by many people who are looking for work at home jobs.

Online [Costumer] Support Jobs:

There are many jobs where you will have to do some kind of costumer support job on the internet. There is a commonly available job in this category where you will have to read emails and then you will have to answer to each email according to given instructions. [Email Replying Jobs]

Or you may have to receive and answer phone calls form costumers.

Or you may have to help the buyer in doing his everyday routine work. This will be a personal assistant job. There are many other kinds of jobs that come in this category.

Forum Posting and Article Submission Jobs:

This is one of the jobs where you can actually make lot of money via doing less work.

For forum posting: you will have to join different forums and then participate in the discussion. Do remember that, you should never spam any forum. You need to follow the rules and only use the forum signatures to do all the advertisements. Your posts need to be informative.

In article submission: you will be given some articles and a list of directories where you need to submit them. You will have to open each directory and make an account there and then you will have to submit all the articles to that directory via their online article submission form. If the buyer does not give you a list of article directories then you can find a good article directories list via searching in Google.

Article submission process can be made faster via using simple tools. I am not talking about article submission tools: there are some simple tools that you can install in your PC so when you will do the article submission manually, these tools will help you to do the work much faster.

Ad Posting Jobs:

In these jobs: you will be given some ad in a form of text or may be a banner or image. The buyer may also give you the list of sites where you can post the given ads. If the buyer do not give you the list and you do not have your own ad posting sites list, then you can easily find one via searching on the internet.

While doing ad posting jobs, I suggest that you should be really careful. Some of these jobs might contain spamming work. New service providers do not realize the fact that posting the same ad in the same site in different categories can result in a permanent ban from that site.

Only do legit ad posting jobs and keep yourself away from spamming work, no matter how much money the buyer offers.

Sale or Affiliate Jobs:

There are some jobs where you need to bring in some costumers for a site and if the costumer buy any product from the site, then you will get a percentage of the profit that the site makes in that sale.

I do not recommend this work, as the buyer gets all the benefits. You will advertise the products or site all over the internet and in return you may get few sales. But the number of sales can be very low compared to the affect you will be doing. For the buyer: his products or site will be advertised in many different kinds of websites and he will get backlinks for free.

I suggest doing this work if you have experience in this work or you have a high traffic website from where you can send some costumers to the buyer’s site.

Craigslist Jobs:

One of the jobs that you will see all the time at different freelance sites is of posting ads in Craigslist or CL.

CL is a site where people can post ads. For this kind of work: you will be given an ad which you will need to post at CL.

This is simple job but this job can involve spamming. I personally do not know the rules at CL but I do know that there will be some limit to how many ads that one can place at their site.

In case, CL related job requires you to do work according to CL rules then it is ok. But you have to avoid any job that contains work which violates rules of any site.

Paid Sign-Ups:

This is a risky business where you can become a victim of a scam or you may become a part of a scam plan.

I have not seen any service provider who got a review or rating for a job that contains paid sign-up stuff [this is my personal experience and some service providers may have earned money via doing paid sign-up related jobs].

I suggest that you should only do this kind of work if and only if you have previous experience in this kind of work.

I will not go in detail about what kinds of scams are related to paid sign-up projects. The bottom line is that these jobs are risky and you should avoid them if possible.

Website Submission Jobs:

In this work: you will have to submit a given website to FREE online directories. If you do not have the list of online directories then you can get one via searching on the internet.

This was one of the jobs that I used to prefer and recommend to other people. Things have changed a lot and these days, site submission to hundreds of online directories brings no or very less benefit to the submitted website.

Some webmaster still want their site to be submitted to hundreds or thousands of online directories but search engines do not give much or any credit to links from online directories. As time passes, more and more webmasters will realize this fact and the future of website submission is not very impressive.

So I suggest not doing this job as future of website submission is not a bright one.

Captcha Related Jobs:

In this kind of work: you need to type some characters [in a box]: the characters will appear in an image. You may be given a software or tool: you will have to run the software and when ever an image appears, you will have to type the characters which are shown in the image. You will be typing these characters in a specific box.

One of the most searched job on the internet in Asian countries is “online captcha jobs”. People think that this kind of job is the easiest of all other jobs and that people  can make some good money from such work.

In reality: almost all captcha related jobs are spamming related work.

When you get registered at a site, you may have seen an image verification where you need to type some characters from the image, into a box. This is to verify that you are a human and not a spamming bot. Some people make simple tools that fills out the registration forms but these tools are not capable of completing the registration process because of the captcha verification system.

So spammers hire other people to do the captcha entering work for them so that they can spam different websites.

There is no attraction in this job: the pay is extremely low. The work is to spam other’s site.

This is a total waste of time and I highly recommend staying away from such jobs.

Product Entry Jobs:

This kind of work is also called online form filling jobs. In online form filling, you may have to enter information other than products like Phones, PC components etc.

For example: form filling jobs may include work where you need to enter members bio-data in the data base. That is: you will be given data like Name, Age, Address etc of some people who are members of a site. For some reason, the owner of the site needs to add all the data in the data base and so he hire someone to enter the data via online form.

Product entry jobs are the ones where you will have to add information related to different kinds of products in a site. Most of these jobs are for shopping related sites where you have to enter information about new products.

This kind of work is simple, easy but very time consuming. Sometimes you may get very good money for doing this kind of work.

Data Base Conversion Jobs:

There are few jobs where you need to convert a database from one format to another. This is a very easy job for people who know how this work is done. Simple software is needed: this software can convert the whole database of any format to any other format in just few seconds.

I suggest doing this work but before that, do a search for the software that you will need to do this work. Practice a little and then start to search for this kind of work.

Video Posting Jobs:

Nowadays a new trend of advertisement has started. This new trend is to advertise via videos. For this kind of work: you will have to simply submit some videos to different sites like YouTube.

There are some chances that this kind of work will contain spam work, so do make sure that you do not accept any spam work.

This kind of work is just like article submission or website submission or forum posting.

Lead Generating Jobs:

This is the same kind of work as affiliate work or the work where one needs to generate sales.

Lead is simply a customer that you have to bring for your buyer. If the customer buy the product [what ever the buyer is selling], then you will be paid some fix price or maybe you will get a percentage of the earning that buyer gets from lead sale.

I suggest you avoid such work as only experienced people can actually earn money from this opportunity.

Email collecting jobs:

This is one of the common jobs that are available at freelance sites. This kind of work requires you to search for some specific email addresses on the internet and you need to collect them in a readable file like Microsoft Excel.

Is this work legit?

Yes and no.

Yes because I have seem projects where buyer needs email addresses of people like: wedding dress makers or wedding organizers etc. Buyer needs as many email addresses of such people as possible [within a certain area or city]. For example: the buyer may need such email addresses of people from only UK or only London etc.

What will buyer do with this email list?

Buyer may need to find the person who can offer the best price and the best quality. Or may be the buyer is a wedding consultant and he or she needs such list so that he/she can help her clients get the wedding of their dreams.

On the other hand: email collecting can be a spamming job. People may pay service provides to collect lots of email addresses and the buyer may have plans to use the emails list for spamming purposes.

So this kind of work is legit and you should do it. But do try to find out whether the work involves spamming or not.

Searching and pasting jobs:

You may see projects with titles like: Search and Paste – Simple Job

This kind of work is really simple but requires a lot of time to complete. This work involves searching different kinds of data on the internet and then pasting that data in a readable file like Microsoft Office.

This is a job that you must bid on if you are looking for pure data entry jobs on the internet.

Squidoo Lenses Needed:

This is a kind of job that you should only do if you know little about the site Squidoo. If you do not know this information then I suggest you should do little bit of research about this site and you will learn everything within few hours.

Making Lenses at Squidoo is simply making small sites in a bigger one. Squidoo is a site where everyone can get a free subdomain type of site. The site you will get will be a sub-directory in the main Squidoo site.

Sometimes, you will just have to create lenses and you will be given the content that you will have to add in those lenses. And sometimes you will have to add the content too. Then, you will first have to write the content for the lenses.

This kind of work is just ok. Not sure if you can make some good money via doing this work.

EBay Sellers Needed:

Clearly this is a job for people who actually are sellers at EBay. If you are a seller at EBay, only then you can do this work.

Sometimes you will see projects where people need power sellers and not just sellers.

I personally have no idea about this kind of work but I think that one should be very careful while doing this kind of work. Your seller’s rating at EBay is at Risk while doing this job.

Dmoz Listing:

I suggest to not waste your bid on such projects.

Some people bid on such projects thinking that this is very easy work. They think that they just have to submit a site to Dmoz directory.

But in reality things are not that simple. For such projects, buyers are actually looking for Dmoz Editors.

In order to become a Dmoz editor, you need to apply in their website. But don’t have high hopes as becoming an editor at Dmoz is not an easy thing to do.

So I suggest to not bidding on such projects as only Dmoz editors can do this work. Also, this kind of work is of little spamming type. Dmoz is a free directory and if a editor gets paid for adding a site to their directory, then that will not be OK. [these are just my personal thoughts]

Testers Required:

This is a very good job to do. You do not need any kind of experience for such work. You will simply use a product or a site or anything else and you will try to find out any problems that may generate during the testing.

A common testing job can be of testing a website or a game.

Email Sending Job:

This job requires you to send some amount of emails to different people. This job can involve spamming.

I think you can do this work if the buyer is providing his/her own email account for sending all the emails. Or if you have past experience in such work, then you can do this work. Try to avoid this work if you think that the work involves spamming.

Account Creation Job:

This job has a high chance of spam involvement. Most probably, you will have to create hundreds of accounts at sites like Gmail etc. This is clearly spamming related work and you should avoid such jobs.

Image Editing Jobs::

These jobs also fall under the data entry category. This work is easy to do and the pay is also decent.

There are some image editing jobs where we can actually make thousands of dollars.

A little knowledge about few tools or software is needed to do this kind of work.

There are some image editing jobs where we will have to change the resolution of thousands of images or for some projects, we will have to change the background of images or for some projects, we will have to change the size of images etc etc.

There are many different kinds of data entry jobs that are available at freelance sites. You just have to make sure that you are doing the right work for the right price.

There are so many things that you need to know about different kinds of jobs: these things will help you do hours of work in just few minutes. That way, you can make more money in less time.

If you want the above mentioned data entry jobs on the internet then read this online jobs guide:

Online Data Entry Jobs Guide