Thank you so much for stopping by and wanting to know a little bit more about me.
My name is Sam Narzary. I am a freelancer, search engine evaluator aka Google Rater, a bug hunter, a website tester, and a blogger based in New Delhi.
I quit my job in Feb 2016 and since April 2016, all my incomes have been entirely based on the online jobs I do, and through this blog. I’ve branched out to blogging, affiliate marketing, course selling among others.
My Background Story
I was sucked into the corporate world since the beginning of 2014. I worked in some small companies in Jalandhar, Punjab before moving to New Delhi in early 2015.
From early 2015 to Feb 2016, I worked at an MNC in Gurgaon. I was then supposed to join a different MNC and start working with an MNC called ELI in Cyber City, Gurgaon.
I got sick, couldn’t make it to their training and hence lost the job.
I was jobless, desperate and had no savings . Compounding my agony was my relationship that was no longer working.
I applied and appeared for job interviews in multiple MNCs in the Delhi-NCR area, got through a few of them, but one way or the other it somehow didn’t work out. I guess it was never meant to be.
Paying rent, eating, and surviving become very difficult. I even had to let go the wifi service that I had from Nextra. It was becoming too much of a luxury.
It was during those desperate times that I began searching for online jobs. I had to use my mobile internet to look for genuine online jobs. And boy oh boy, the data cost was unaffordable at that time due to predatory pricing.
The data cost at that time was Rs 300 per GB. There was no Jio then. Unlike these days where we get 1GB/day for less than Rs 300 for 28 days, it was Rs 300 per GB, Rs 500 for 2 GBs at that time. We all know how long 1 GB lasts right.
My First Online Job (March 2016)
Call Reviewer
After days of looking for an online job, spending tens of hours per day, and spending like 1-2 GB (Rs 250 – Rs 500) per day, I found a genuine online job.
If I remember it correctly, it was around the month of March 2016 that I started my first online work.
I worked as a call reviewer with Humanatic.com (I don’t recommend them). We got to listen to calls, review them, and classify them. I was hardly making like $1 – $2 a day. It wasn’t enough to even cover my data costs.
But in all honesty, it was the first genuine online job. It gave me some ray of hope.
Second Online Job (June 2016)
Search Engine Evaluator
It was not enough to live off the income that I made reviewing calls at Humanatic.com. Living in New Delhi with that money was impossible.
So I looked almost everywhere. I scoured the internet, I Google searched for tens of hours per day desperately looking for something real.
I have to give credit to myself here. Even though I was desperate to make money online, I didn’t fall for scams like –
- ad posting
- typing jobs
- captcha solving scams
to name a few. I knew that any company that asked for money for stuffs like “ID creation” “deposit fee”, etc, are scams. I avoided them like plague.
Most of these scams are in job posting sites like “Naukri” “Shine” and others. Avoid them when looking for online jobs.
Around the second-third week of April 2016, I read about search engine evaluator job. I dug deeper into it and it sounded too good to be true.
It said that it paid $7/hr to Indians. I am like “Naah this ain’t true”. I did some more search into it before finally deciding to apply for it as there was no money involved. I didn’t have to pay anything to work here.
I applied to two search engine evaluator companies – Leapforce (now known as Appen) and Lionbridge.
Leapforce responded to me very quickly while Lionbridge took some time. So I went ahead with Leapforce.
My search engine evaluator exam started during May 1st week of 2016. I had 7 days to read the guidelines and 7 days to complete the 3 part test.
I passed the 1st part, passed the second, but failed at the last part of the test.
My heart sunk, felt a lump in my throat and a few teardrops fell down my cheeks.
But they gave me a chance to re-take the test. So I scheduled a second test. They again gave me 7 more days to study the guidelines and 7 more days to complete the test.
I passed the test this time. You’ve no idea how happy and elated I was. I got the email in the middle of the night saying “Congratulations! You have passed all parts of the Project Yukon qualification test! “
I signed the paper works, and started working since June 2016.
After working for like 6 months, I started this blog. I posted my first few blogs on how to work as a search engine evaluator with Leapforce (now Appen Connect).
You can check those posts from December 2016 here.
After making almost $3000, I posted my first income report in January 2017 here.
So since June 2016, I’ve been working online as a search engine evaluator and has made thousands in the process.
One month I made $2007 being an Indian. You can read about it here. Americans or Europeans who are paid double of what we are paid can easily make $3000 – $4000 if they worked like me.
I didn’t start this blog to make money by telling others “how to make money online”. I made money online first, and then I documented that journey in this blog.
Other Online Gigs I’ve Done
Apart from the search engine evaluator work, I also did several other online jobs like –
- Crypto trading using Zebpay and Bitfinex. BTC was less than $1000 at that time. I wrote about it here.
- Website Usability testing with UserTesting.
- Bug hunting in TestIO and Divigante.
- Working with a research app with uTest.
Other Failed Attempts At Online Work
Transcription
I then tried to work as a transcriber with Transcribeme.com. I studied their style guideline, appeared for their test, but couldn’t get through.
It was extremely frustrating to say the least.
SEO Writing
I then tried to sell SEO writing services via Upwork. I took a shitty course by a well-known course creator which was recommended in a top personal finance website. I am taking their names.
I designed my own SEO writing service website, pitched on Upwork but it didn’t work out. I didn’t even know SEO back then. And that course didn’t talk anything about SEO but was trying to teach me SEO writing. Lol.
Proofreading
I also tried my hands on Proofreading. I didn’t succeed at it either. I took a very expensive course, bought an iPad, and all but I didn’t complete the course.
I might have succeeded had I stuck with it. I feel that way.
So essentially, what I am trying to say is – we got to find what works for us. Not everything will work for us. We will excel in some while failing miserably in others.
I found what worked for me, what I was good at, and I enjoyed doing it. I love researching the web, finding new info, reading about latest tech innovations and gadgets. And also I am an introvert. So search engine evaluation job perfectly fit my personality.
So you will have to find what works best for you if you want to succeed online. Else you will burn out very early.
Blogging Journey
After working as a search engine evaluator for 6 months and making almost $3000 which you can read here, I started this blog in December 2016.
You can read my first blog posts from December 2016 here.
I documented my entire journey as a search engine evaluator aka web search evaluator aka Google rater (different jargons) in the form of income reports which you can read here. Nobody in the whole world wide web has done that.
So initially, this blog was about my personal journey with Leapforce (now Appen) as a search engine evaluator.
I never intended to grow this blog in to a “make money online” guide.
But as I began to read about others’ blogging success about how they were making thousands per month blogging I began to invest in blogging courses to up my ante.
If you check my archives you would see that I never actually blogged consistently. Until the end of 2019, I was only blogging for like 16 months. And some months just had like 1 post documenting my income from the search engine evaluation job.
But towards the end of 2019, I started getting serious about blogging and invest in this awesome course. This is an SEO + Affiliate Marketing course that changed my blogging game so much so that I started ranking for almost every post in Google within 2-3 months.
I started taking blogging seriously and upped my blogging game from Januray 2020.
I now post regularly and write about several avenues to make money online such as –
- Transcription
- Website Testing
- Bug Hunting
- Teaching Online
- Blogging
- Social MediaEvaluator Job
- Survey Sites
and so on.
Featured On
I have been featured on or have written for several well-known and reputed publications.
You might have seen me on –
- Huffington Post
- Making Sense of Cents
- Digital Nomad Wannabe
among others.
I deliberately didn’t link to articles featuring me or my guests posts on them. If you would really want to verify, do this –
- Type in Google “Huffington Post Search Quality Rater”, you would find an article about me.
- Type “Making Sense of Cents Search Engine Evaluator” you would see my post.
- Type in Google “Digital Nomad Wannabe Appen Work From Home Review” you would see my post.
Cheers To Future
I am here to help you make money online. As somebody who struggled to make few bucks online but eventually succeeded, I know the pain and the struggle of people trying to make decent income online.
I am not here to make money by telling others “how to make money” without even making a dime. I know a lot of bloggers out there who would tell you to do this, do that and make thousands per month.
Guess what, they haven’t even made a dime themselves!
I would never ever be in a position to tell others “how to make money online” without actually making some.
I am still an active search engine evaluator, I still make money online, and that’s why I can tell others “how to make money online”.
I have the expertise, the authority and trust of people seeking online jobs because I myself make money online.
As this blog grows, I continue to make research, read real people’s opinion and present to you only genuine work from home opportunities.
I want you to succeed online. I want you to have that life that you want. It is not easy, never has been but you will get there.
Cheers to your success.
Sam Narzary.
If you want to reach out to me, you can always email me here.
