I watched a couple episodes of The Soprano’s over the weekend. I’m only on season three, but I’m making progress. Episode 29, “Fortunate Son”, features Christopher getting a little behind on his payments to Paulie and having to find a creative way to come up with $4000 in a week. While I don’t advocate taking on a life of crime, the episode did get me thinking. If you forced yourself to come up with an extra $500 a week, could you do it?
I work a good job, make a fixed salary and don’t generally pursue other ways of making income. I recognize that is quite foolish though. If I were to get laid off or lose the ability to perform my job, I’d be very rusty in finding other ways to make ends meet. I’ve been thinking lately about what sort of things I could do to bring in a few extra bucks each month, in a way that wouldn’t drastically impact my life and may even be fun.
I’d like this post to be a spot for you all to give me your thoughts. If you needed to make an extra $500/week, what would you do? Here are some thoughts I’ve been kicking around:
1) Pick up a work from home, telephone sales job. You work when you want, as much or as little as you want. You get paid only on commission. Back in college, I spent a month or so one summer working for a telemarketing company pitching magazine renewals. The money wasn’t great by any means and, unfortunately, I had to show up at their office each day, but the premise was interesting. I can’t remember the exact commissions, but lets assume you’d get $10 if you could talk someone into renewing their existing subscription with your company. You are provided with a list of existing magazine subscribers and the date that their current subscription expires. You give them a call and see if you can pitch it to them. If it doesn’t work, you aren’t out anything. If it does, you make a few bucks. Do this a couple nights a week instead of watching say, The Sopranos, and you may be able to make a few hundred bucks a month without ever having to go into an office.
2) Participate in usability testing - You’ve probably seen the ads, if not, try Craigslist. Many companies that develop new products (either physical products or online products) bring in average consumers on a regular basis to test their products. Average pay is $50-$100 for an hour or two of your time. You do nothing other than offer your honest feedback on their product. Sometimes the pay is cash/check, often times its a Visa gift card or something but, either way, its money in your pocket. If you could sign up for 2-3 usability sessions a month in the evenings or on a weekend, you could be looking at a few hundred bucks for relatively little effort.
Those are just a few ideas and there are surely many more. Post a comment with your ideas. I review all comments before posting them so don’t be discouraged if you don’t see it post immediately.
Finding alternative streams of income that you can earn week in and week out at your own pace is a great way to acheive financial independence and build confidence in your own value and worth.
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