In 2012, Nora Curl, now 51, had been living in New York and working in the world of antiques for about a decade.
But she realized she needed to move back to her native Pennsylvania to take care of her mother, who has a rare congenital disease. “I got back to northwestern Pennsylvania and I’m thinking, how am I possibly going to make a living in the art antiques world?” she says.
She started a website for appraising antiques and sold items on eBay. Then, in September of 2012, she saw an opening for an online, work-from-home antique valuation role on joblist site Jobrapido. “I didn’t hesitate to apply,” she says, and a few weeks later she got an email saying she’d been approved as a new antiques expert on advice website JustAnswer.
JustAnswer features experts in an array of topics including lawyers, electricians and vets. Users pay a sign-up fee plus a monthly fee and have access to all experts on the site. They can submit a question any time of day and get answers on JustAnswer or speak to an expert on the phone.
Curl has worked full-time on the site since 2012, bringing in more than $124,000 just last year.
Here’s how she built her career on the site and her advice for anyone who wants to find similar success.
‘On weekends, I would go to auction houses’
Curl studied communication at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania and began her career managing restaurants. After moving to LA to work in food services and rubbing shoulders with Hollywood elites, she landed a job executive assisting film producer Elie Samaha. But it wasn’t the job of her dreams.
“I never had a desire to be part of the Hollywood rat race,” she says. “On weekends, I would go to auction houses, museums, junk stores with friends and just kind of treasure hunt.” And she’d often know what was on display. “I would say, ‘oh my gosh, that’s a Tiffany vase or that’s a Steuben glass piece.’” And she was surprised to find her friends weren’t as in-the-know.
“Since infancy my parents were weekend warriors going to…
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