Ask HN: How do I earn money online just to buy myself a gaming computer?

[sygeek]

I'm 16, and at this place, there's no way I can earn myself enough bucks by doing odd jobs. So, how do I go about earning enough money ($300?) just to buy myself a gaming computer, from where I can continue on myself. I tried youtube partner, but I don't have any original content to submit (neither I can make one because I don't have a camera). I tried to find some freelance work but couldn't find anything relevant for myself.

I need some assistance/advice at this point.

Edit: Currently, I'm on a Pentium4 with 384mb ram which literally makes any modern app impossible (even browsing).

[Sword_Monkey]

You seem to know your way round words so I'd advise freelance writing. Submit a few articles to a few places that are relevant to your interests and fairly current. Naturally taking time to get a feel for the style on the site. Make sure the editors are aware that you're giving them free stuff as a good will gesture and are available for more content if they need it. You should be able to get to $300 this way fairly easily, but it may take some time for responses, and a few rejections if people don't like your writing, but eventually you'll get a few gigs, maybe some steady ones, for monthly, weekly articles.

If you think you can write something good enough (and it's not that hard to be better than 90% of the target audience) then it'd be a nice quick way of getting the cash.

[jameswyse]

Create something cool and fund it using kickstarter? Though it's hard to offer advice without knowing your skillset, what are you good at? :)

[sygeek]

I'm good with computers, in general. I know very basic stuff about programming which doesn't really count.

I see fake/scam kickstarters all the time and I don't think I can create something good enough so people don't see it like that.

[mpeg]

You should learn to code, it's free and you can code with any computer.

Do you really really need a new gaming computer?

[sygeek]

well for gaming and running modern apps without any trouble, yes. I'm learning java but this is probably going to take more than 2 years to have enough skills to earn with it.

I honestly can not even browse properly with this system. Heck, it only knows multitasking in theory. I'm a big-time gamer and knowing to have missed all of those great games I wanted to play over the years hurts.

[aggarwalachal]

Where are you based ?

[sygeek]

India

[Sodaware]

fiverr (http://fiverr.com) might be a good place to start. There are plenty of people who want small jobs doing, particularly things like researching or writing small articles for blogs.