Slashdot Mirror
Successful Moonlighting For Geeks?
Lawksamussy writes "Having just bought a really old house that's on the verge of falling down, I'm now trying to find a way to pay to fix it up. I have a great job in software development that pays the bills, but I'm looking to earn some extra cash in my spare time. Whatever I end up doing has to be reasonably lucrative (or at least have the potential to be so), not require any specific time commitment, and be doable equally well from home or from a hotel room. I'm also keen that it should be sufficiently different to my day job to keep my interest up, so the most obvious things like bidding for programming projects on Rentacoder.com, or fixing up neighbors' PCs, aren't really on. Above all, it should appeal to my inner geek, otherwise my low boredom threshold will doom it to failure before I even start! So, I wonder if any of my fellow Slashdotters run little part-time ventures that they find more of an inspiration than a chore... and if they are willing to share what they do and perhaps even how much money they make doing it?"
Don't read the title too fast. "Mooning" isn't what's being asked.
Reasonably lucrative, no major time commitment, can be done at home or a hotel room. Hmmmm...think, think, think.
Have you tried an ad on Craigslist? Make sure to post a picture of yourself, along with your "rates". Good luck!
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
They all seem to be selling the get rich quick without spending any time and from any where you want using the Internet plans.
The secret however is not to buy them, its to sell them.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I run a software company. http://isotope11.com./ We build web apps for companies all over. I make more than I ever did working for someone else.
Everyone needs to run a software company.
-knewter
There is always prostitution...
I've been doing this for a while and I've managed to release a fair bit of cash.
My wife & I remodeled our previous house: tore off plaster, moved walls, rewired, tiled, etc. We hired out the roof tear off, rough plumbing work and some of the drywalling. Saved a ton of money. Eventually, it made more sense for me quit my low-paying job and become the full-time house repair dude while she worked her good job.
It's not that hard, you learn new skills, have an excuse to aquire tools, and have something to be proud of. It did take seven years, though. YMMV
This time around, we are paying others as much as we can, but we'll probably be left with a weathered-in shell.
It's also a good way to find out you your friends really are. Forget moving day, real friends help you demo and haul.
Good luck.
I hear that pays well
and be doable equally well from home or from a hotel room
Amateur porn site project perhaps? :P
should appeal to my inner geek
If "inner geek" is its nickname, he should definitively find some appeal to this project.
Have you considered getting into home renovation? Granted, you won't be able to do it from most hotel rooms, but I understand there is a growing market for those services in your immediate area. It would certainly be different from your day job.
He's a geek. No reasonably sane woman would want to have sex with him.
I'm not sure what you do for your main job, but personally I would suggest learning some web technologies like PHP, MySQL, and possibly something like Flash. Maybe throw in some graphic design to exercise your creative side. Web programming and web development can, in my experience, be more enjoyable than other types of programming jobs due to the relative simplicity and "instant" results. It is relatively easy to get web development gigs (after you start building up contacts), and it can be done from anywhere. Personally, I may try part-time web development myself after getting my day job settled.
"Everyone needs to run a software company."
Are you based in India? :)
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Build and sell PCs. Not just normal PCs but ones with nifty cut-outs (you DO have a Dremel tool, right) and flashy lights. Call them by some nifty name. When you're not home you can be working on the designs or maybe building some of the smaller bits. As this is "free time" it won't really be that unprofitable if you can build a name and find the market.
Me? I'd like to build some out of exotic woods.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
a really old house that's on the verge of falling down
Soap. Make and sell soap. Sell rich women their own fat asses back to them.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Check out OnForce.com. They look for people in your area to do one-off installs, change out UPS batteries, run cable, update virus programs; all kinds of things that make more sense to hire someone knowledgeable one time than to keep people on staff "just in case."
I used these folks in my last gig to do field work all over the country...cheaper than flying someone out to do it.
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
You want lots of money but you can't commit to any specific amount of time or place and it has to be really interesting and legal. Let me guess, you're 26 years old or thereabouts?
Dude, just get a better job.
I started a blog for money. At first I was making no money, and it was fun to waste tons of hours. Recently I started making more money as I stopped working on it! I lost interest and focus, and I have other commitments. Even posting once a month is a chore. I'm play Warzone 2100 instead.
you want money but you don't really want to do anything for it?
I give private lessons in maths for high school students.
Five times a week, at an hourly rate of 15EUR.
Not lucrative enough to fix a house, but 300EUR a month is a lot of money for me.
Dear Slashdot,
I consider myself fairly well off but just spent beyond my means, making me like most of middle class America. I'm now looking for a get-richer-quick scheme, preferably that can be done at home sitting on my ass, and whenever I want. It must also appeal to the inner sense of superiority I give myself at my day job... but it must NOT be like my day job.
Sincerely,
R.A. Tracer, Jr.
Yeah, but it is the insane ones that makes it worth all the waiting!
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
1. Find a random job
2. ???????
3. Profit
4. Invest the profits in fixing up your house.
5. Get a government bailout when your house is destroyed in a disaster.
Sounds like you should run for Congress.
"That which does not kill us makes us stranger." -Trevor Goodchild
A second job probably isn't a good idea because it could very easily interfere with your first and you may end up losing that. I would try bartering instead. Seriously, somewhere in your network of friends you have to know people who can help you fix up their house and may have a kid that needs help with math or want a web site for their business etc. Not only is this probably more efficient(no need to earn money, get it taxed, then go find people who are also getting paid taxable income to do the work), the overall commitment is probably smaller as well so you don't have to worry about your second job becoming your first.
Monstar L
... so can someone please create a idalsolikeapony tag and place it on this please.
I know the iPhone's not popular here right now. But it has a very low barrier to entry compared to writing a program for any other platform. Internet hosting, collecting payments, and to a certain extent marketing is already handled for you. All you would have to do is the actual programming work.
It's kinda sad, but prostitution seems to exactly fit the bill.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
uhh, only men hire prostitutes, even male ones.
Seriously--there are not many legal options that meet your requirements.
I'd suggest you take a little trip down to the "bad" part of your town and start talking to the guys you see standing around on the street corners. I'm sure one of them would be more than happy to help you set up a franchise of your own.
This ain't rocket surgery.
Nah, get ahead of the bleeding edge, and make them out of cake!
Bill shook his a55 in Seinfeld/MS Ad I, so we know they're on the way...
1. Find out what people want (google keyword tool, etc)
2. Make a website that satisfies the need. Either a downloadable product or a subscription-based service that YOU can make in your spare time.
3. Learn how to do ethical internet marketing
4. Be helpful, promote it, make it worth buying.
Work hard at it and build a business. You will not make money fast, but you there is no cap on what you can make. The more you sell, the more you make. 1-10,000/year is hard, but keep pushing and you'll make more than you could at a job. As much as you put in you will get out.
Find some sites that offer simple solutions for things people need. basecamp, membership sites, accounting tools, etc. Stay away from web 2.0 and places where lots of people need to come and add value.
That's the biz model of a solopreneur. Take it or leave it, but it's real and it works.
Or, start up some web servers at your place and host content for some twisted yet legal sexual fetish. Or sell autographed pictures of your mom.
Okay, so I'm really not helping at all. I myself have earned extra cash repairing laptop hardware, cleaning up horrid computers running windows, and the occasional assisting of installing legal copies of OS X on the purchaser's PC. Mostly connected through word of mouth, so I don't advertise or anything like that.
If you have well built software programming skills (with your previous code as proof) you would be surprised about the people who want a program to do x, y, and z and will give you a nice check to do so. I've done that 4 times in my free time, all with lawyers who a relative knew of.
If you still have your foreskin, you can play "guess what's in the foreskin pouch" where you hide a random item by enclosing it with your foreskin. Not sure how much cash you can get from that - betting perhaps.
I'm a video game developer by day, and a trader/investor by night. I don't intraday trade, so I guess that makes me an investor.
Typically with 10% of my cash invested in the market, I can make about 3% return (about 30% ROI) monthly *if* I do proper research, pretty consistently.
If you don't mind risk, this is a nice way to make cash as it requires only a minimal time investment and can be done from anywhere in the world.
You've got a college degree in math/science, right? Tutoring hopeless college kids or high school kids from middle class families can net something like $50-75 an hour, more depending on your qualifications and neighborhood. Hours are totally flexible. Hell, if ethics aren't a problem, sell term papers and coding assignments while you're at it.
open source modern art: laser taggi
""... it should appeal to my inner geek", I mean ... what are your other geeky interests? You can be curious, passionate and hack about anything ... if you're like me I'd suggest you glue lollipop stick model of things and sell them on eBay - good money! :)"
You laugh but if you have a talent with wood? Get a Dremel and some wood and you can make miniatures. Some are very talented and the work really requires patience.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
I've been an entrepreneur since the age of 12, running a variety of geeky businesses from BBSes in the 80s, to 3D design studios and rendering farms in the 90s. I've had my consulting business since I incorporated it when I was 15 (with an adult business partner who I bought out at 18).
I still moonlight through a variety of ventures, none of them geek oriented. EVERY moonlighting gig I did that was geek-oriented made my life miserable. Too much geekiness can really break you, honestly.
I run a Christian Printing business that accounts for about 25% of my income, and I run it on the side, maybe 1-2 hours a day. I blog, which accounts for 10% of my income, also very part time. I've owned retail stores which became too full time to manage. I'm starting a digg-like print magazine focused on Chicago (details to come).
Everything I do moonlighting-wise is anti-geek. Much of it is hands on, without programming or thinking about technology or electronics. It keeps me fulfilled.
Stay away from moonlighting in what you do for a living. Find a hobby you can profit from. There's a billion ways to make money, but the most fun ones are the ones that don't cross into the market you're in for a living.
Having just bought a really old house that's on the verge of falling down, I'm now trying to find a way to pay to fix it up.
Ya should've thought about that *before* you bought it dude.
And everyone's first house is their home. Treat it as your home. It is not meant to be a profit centre. You can compromise on the home in order to get a house that is a profit centre faster than you would have otherwise of course.
but then I realised he's a programmer in his day job and probably wants a change ....
it should be sufficiently different to my day job to keep my interest up [...]. Above all, it should appeal to my inner geek
Why not do the majority of the work yourself? There is nothing more geeky or interesting than learning something new, from basic carpentry, to plumbing, to design work.
With my first house, I did the vast majority of the work myself, simply because cash was scarce. As time went on and I was able to save up some cash for expected work, I sometimes just hired the work out because it was something I tried and failed at, or was something that didn't interest me at all. But mostly I still do a lot of the projects myself.
Financially, you should try to compare the earnings that might be available to you to the cost of laborers and craftsmen. I live in the Bay Area, I can earn $80/hr for side projects easily (I could earn way more if I could pick and choose, but if I'm just trying to fill my free time, $80/hr seems to be the sweet spot). Craftsmen charge pretty close to that. So, depending on the specifics of the work on my home needs to happen, I'll either do it myself or try to raise the money with side jobs. It also depends upon what I want to learn.
For example, electrical work doesn't interest me at all, plus it scares me, so I always hire that out. But anything else I'll spend at least some time trying to figure out if I can learn how to do it myself.
As for moonlighting, you'll find the best work through people you know and who trust you. The best advice is to let everyone you know know 1) that you are looking for work 2) what you are great at 3) what your availability is. Eg, "I'm looking for work, I've used X technology to build web sites for Y years, and I'm available Z weekends per month.
Also, don't overextend yourself. Fixing up a house can take years. Don't get impatient, enjoy the process, and don't sacrifice your happiness for the sake of a faster schedule.
There aint no pancake so thin it doesn't have two sides.
And the cool thing is, under the rules of civil forfeiture, there's a good chance that if you're caught you won't have to deal with that house.
Now drug paraphernalia...well, that's also illegal a lot of places, but it really appeals to the inner geek.
You probably want all your digits for your day job.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Whatever you find - I'm in
so I would advise you move to India where all the jobs are. Trust me, I compete against them and can't afford to charge minimum wage...
If you own a truck and some basic tools, I'd recommend learning small engine repair. Fix lawnmowers, generators, scooters, etc. I'm sure you could find more than enough business if your rates are reasonable (I'd say $25 - $30/hr).
Well if it's money you are after I know of this man in Nigeria who has come into a large amount of money, and needs to transfer it off shore for Tax Reasons. You will get 50% if you let him use your bank account. All he needs is your Name, Bank Account Details, and SSN. It is all perfectly above board. I know because I read it in an email.
Since you're a programmer, you'll have no problem creating one. Do it in the language of your choice -- except VB. You'll make tons of money, guaranteed. You can do this anywhere too!
Think about it.
Why not go out and help your neighbors? Offer your services to help people get ready for the DTV transition, purchase (if needed), install, and configure DTV converters and antennas for maximum reception for people in your community. I figure you can charge $50 a pop for converter set-up and over $100 a pop for antenna set-up and tuning.
Video Production Support
Advertise your computer skills. I freelance web-programming along with my day job and host some commercial web sites.
Some things to look out for though.
- Be up front with your full time employer. If you get fired for freelancing, that's not good for your bottom line.
- Be prepared to spend hours away from your normal life for long periods. If I only freelance nights, my usefulness is only about 25 hours per week before I become brain-dead. 45hrs day job + 25hr night job is 70 hours per week. It can take its toll on family, home, etc.
- You're probably better off just fixing up the house yourself than earning money to pay other people to do that work. You need to know how to fix it yourself anyway. Welcome to home ownership.
Sell custom reprap manufactured parts.
My mother does payroll data entry for her local Parks & Recreation Center as a second job.
She picks up the info each month, then inputs it with Excel & returns it via email once she's done.
She keeps everything on a jump drive so she can do it from home or slow periods at her primary job. She usually spends about 1-2 hours a day working on it.
It may not be the most exciting, but she makes a nice bit of extra cash (an extra $500 a month or so) all of which goes toward remodeling her new home.
Mod parent up +1 Helpful.
I'll chip in $10 for the video.
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
Or, if you don't want to get banned for violating EULAs and pissing players off, play the auction house or stock market. Even keeping track of trends, it shouldn't take you more than an hour a day, and you can certainly run the average MMO client from a decent laptop.
Of course, you may have to buy gold to start making it...
Geophysical data processing may be what you are looking for. It fits what you are looking for, because you can do it from anywhere you have internet access, and the money is good. I have a few friends doing this kind of work from home during nights and weekends, while working full-time at their day jobs.
Typical work situation: there will be a field crew somewhere in the world, acquiring geophysical measurements from an aircraft-based sensor platform, usually for the purpose of mineral exploration. Every night, they'll FTP the day's data to you. You do the bulk of the quality control, data reduction and processing work, and then upload the processed data back to the FTP. You'd also notify the field guys about any potential problems in the data. After that, the in-house specialists will do any final processing (leveling magnetic grids, fine drift corrections, etc.) and when the fieldwork is completed, they'll also prepare the client deliverables (maps, reports, interpretations, etc.).
Hourly rates for this kind of work range anywhere from $25/hr to $80/hr ($200/day to $500/day). If there are no serious glitches in the data that need troubleshooting, a data processor with some computer skills can usually rip through a day's worth of data in 3 or 4 hours. So if you get your data at 7pm, you can be done before midnight and still get a good night's sleep and be ready for your "real" job the next day. (On the other hand, if you have a girlfriend or wife, you may get into some time sharing conflicts, because the production schedules usually don't tolerate much latency.)
Educational requirements are typically a 4-year university/college Geophysics degree, or something somewhat related, such as Physics, Engineering, Math, etc. In any case, if you have a degree, your chances are good.
Training will probably take a few weeks, for you to get some experience and develop a feel for what good and bad data look like. Essentially you are the first line of quality control, so it's up to you to quickly flag any problems that could be due to operator error, sensor malfunction, or other factors.
You may or may not have to do some selling to potential employers to get them to let you work entirely from home. However, the way the mineral exploration market is these days (base metals such as copper and nickel are expensive), this shouldn't be difficult as there is too much data to process and not enough people.
A few geophysics companies are always hiring data processors:
Only a moron like you would deny Natures Perfect Time-Cube.
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
Why not do the work yourself, and run an ad-driven site about the process.
When in the hotels, write up the step-by-steps of your projects. You'll save on the work cost, learn a new skill, and maybe make some cash from the people like me who are constantly surfing for tips and tricks on doing work around my house.
I won't do plumbing, that I'll always contract out for, but most improvements around the house are done by me. I've learned a lot by hitting the web before I undertake any project, when I've hit stumbling blocks, and on how I could have improved my finished project. If your site provides good info (and renovating a full house can be huge) you'll attract a fair bit of attention.
If you go this route, include scans of all your sketches, plans, etc. it's useful for folks to be able to see how someone went about doing a task they want to do on their own.
The way I make a little extra cash is from doing freelance translation. There are quite a few companies that contract out linguist support for several languages such as Arabic (duh...), Mandarin/Cantonese and several others. The more in demand a language is the more that is paid to the translator.
I understand that learning a new language can be daunting and difficult, but I have always considered it a very geeky pursuit and a complete removal from my daily coding. Also I must amend that the Army taught me a language so I do have a leg up, but if anyone does follow this path then at the end of it they will know an entirely new language and with it come greater job opportunities and access to another culture.
I've started an after-hours business with some friends and basically we've targeted restaurants and the hospitality industry to provide services for. A lot of places out there want a simple, well designed website and don't want to pay an arm and a leg, we charge about 1/4 of what the market charges because we get to pocket the lot and overhead costs are very minimal - we pay about $50/month for our hosting and will be moving to co-location from our homes in the near future.
basically the design for the site takes around 10-12 hours using GIMP, cutting it up and coding it in html/php should only take 8 hours, then you just need to add the content which should take no time at all. and you can net yourself a tidy little profit, plus ongoing profit if you host the sites yourself.
-- Sex is the antonym of pringles. Once you pop it's time to stop.
I'm shocked no one suggested trading. I've been teaching myself trading for a few years now. Engineers are analytical by nature and trading is absolutely perfect. Backtesting systems and analyzing data for patterns are a yin-yang fit for techies. It's potentially lucrative and can be done from home or a hotel room, as the OP specified.
You could get into jewelry making. Sites like Think-Geek have bracelets made out of cat5 cable. If you have old random objects I'm sure you could get creative and make some bracelets and necklaces.
"if only i had known i would have been a locksmith." -albert einstein
FWIW: I actually have a couple of projects that might offer the writer the flexibility and interest he craves. They are projects with beginnings and ends, not ongoing eternally (I don't think), so they're not 'forever' financial solutions for him. Although, who knows what could come of this. This also might be of interest to other Slashdotters, but I cannot discuss them here. Anyone wishing to contact me may do so at mister snitch [at] hot mail [dot] com, and I can offer broad strokes. BTW, the first thing I need is a patent attorney to protect the idea. It would be the sort of attorney comfortable with, say, patenting Amazon's various processes. Also: I HAVE rebuilt a house. Learned a lot, but it took forever and I don't know that I'd do it again.
That's probably illegal (at least in most parts of the US). However, if he were to eat out your ass for free, he could videotape it and sell it (or charge for webcam views). I'm not into the gay porn scene, but I suspect there's money to be made with ass-to-mouth videos.
Just sell off some of your daytime data to the highest bidder.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
http://bellspace.net/
I don't make much from it.
After doing it part time for a couple of years, I realized that it was much more enjoyable than working in IT. So I ramped up my own marketing and have now been doing it full time for approximately 5 years.
My point, I guess, is that whatever you end up doing, it should be something YOU like. And who knows, it could lead you to another career path altogether.
...moonlighting means to get a second job for extra money.
For geeks, moonlighting could mean a wide variety of things from modelling and lighting moons and planets to igniting flatulants publicly.
I spend far more time entertaining myself there instead of trying to earn money, but despite that I cash out a hundred UDS every month or two based upon a few hours of work a couple years ago.
If you actually applied yourself, you can be one of the few who does more than pay their ISP bill. Some do earn full time incomes. Others make half-hearted attempts, or pursue their own visions regardless of the market, and don't realize they are failing.
The hard part is deciding how you want to do it. Creating scripts? Building/developing? Terraforming landscapes? Creating furnishings? Animations? Real estate? Services? Consulting? PR? Marketing? Teaching? Other employment? DJing? Have any musical talent? You could perform there too.
Creating things of residual value allows for continuing income with little time investment. The latter things require continual time investment obviously...
Considering that you will pay taxes on money you make moonlighting, working on the house yourself may make more economic sense. As others point out, it isn't that hard. Also dealing with construction contractors can be extremely annoying. They can make technical people seem humble, modest, and considerate by comparison.
more cowbell
Assuming you have a Master's degree or similar...
I teach at a local community college. I teach 4 classes a year, (2) 16 week classes, and (2) 11 week classes. That's about 65 nights a year, spending 6 hours at a time on campus.
I get $35-$40 per hour, so that's $200 a night for 6 hours. 3 hours teaching, 3 hours in the computer lab.
All the classes I teach are the same basic course: intro-to-computers, welcome-to-college, here's-how-you-type-a-term-paper-in-word-and-take-an-online-class.
Andy
You could always try to see if you could be an IT recruiter. That way, you could be on of the people that vets candidates for jobs and get a tidy little commission out of it. The benefit of it is that you can see what jobs are on the market in your field, as well as making sure that incompetent people have a harder time entering it.
Consider astrology/divination/psychic readings sort of thing.
Minimal learning required, reasonable money.
Can be done online too.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
Try building AGI scripts for Asterisk machines. $100+/hr, and can be done from anywhere (use Trixbox in a vmware session and xten softphone to test, or remote into a machine).
....A Lumberjack?
(Ok, so a part time one)
I think everyone here is missing a critical point... You just bought a house that is on the "verge of falling down", you aren't into renovation and you didn't already have a plan to be able to afford renovations? Did you miss the whole mess the housing industry is in because of people buying houses they couldn't actually afford? While you may have avoided one of the ridiculous mortgages by getting a wreak at a bargain, you've just changed when and how the money gets poured into the house (and a house in that bad of a condition stands a really good chance of costing far more than you might think).
Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepard?
and there was also a 70's song by Leo Sayer
oh god, yes, try to convince people these days that they are supposed to wait 50 years before cashing out and not 3.
A buddy of mine at work has a second job stocking shelves at a grocery store near his house.
If you're looking for secondary income, try picking up a part time job somewhere interesting.
Some options I'd consider:
A u-brew location. It's low effort most of the time, and you get to spend your day talking about beer with a wide variety of people.
Retail in a game store, or small hardware store. Again, you get to hang out and shoot the breeze all day with people that share interests.
Bartend. This requires a bit of a skill (takes 6 weeks to learn). I have a few friends in this industry, and they seem to enjoy themselves. Most only work 2 shifts a week, and pull about $80-200 a night, depending upon the sort of bar it is.
Commission sales. I worked for a bit at FutureShop (the CDN Best Buy). Their sales staff is all commission based. I've never had such a fun job. Also, commission sales pays quite well.
rock and roll, man.
This signature is typed manually.
You won't be able to do this from a hotel room but I took a welding class and everyone that passed their test had a chance to meet with local companies looking for welders. Most of them were willing to consider part-timers, especially if you were TIG certified. If you can weld aluminum or do food grade work, you're golden.
One guy in our class got a job at an Antarctic research station.
I ended up getting an exec job before the class was over, so it never turned into a part-time gig. But I still have people who want me to weld stuff for them. And if you have a plasma cutter besides the welding gear, you'll have lots of friends and plenty of part-time work. Even my buddies will slip me a couple bucks, it's enough to pay for my welding supplies. You can usually find classes at a local community college, I'd stay away from the trade schools.
The only problem with getting certified in stick welding is you'll never be able to look at big pipes or structural welds without inspecting the beads. Checking for splatter, bad puddles and spots where they missed flux. You can get to be a seam snob.
If you're artistic metal art is really popular. There was a guy who come in once in a while to buy our class scrap. He made metal art little things and made quite a lot of money selling them. I used the plasma cutter to make a name plate for a friend and I bet I've had five of her friends call and ask if I would make them one. And, I have to say, a plasma cutter is not only a cool tool to use, it sounds totally bad ass. Like a jet engine that blasts a spray of molten metal. Imagine being able to cut in 1/4 steel as easy as writing with a big Sharpie.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
In a time before the wife and kids I used to bartend, and bounce.
You have to be outgoing, but if you are in a college town, it can be "rewarding".
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
grow weed and magic mushroom
it's easy and if someone ask about your electricity bill you tell them about your 1200w computer psu
Read the Rich Dad books. They teach you how to think to get a head financially. They're not get rich quick books.
Sorry my bullshit sensor overloaded.
I find cooking to use a some of the same skills I use in my day job, but in a totally different way. I've created a cookie recipe and am now in the process of ramping up baking to sell to local small markets. Eventually, if this takes off, I'd like to open a storefront.
The crimes of eBay are a disgrace to it's pig latin heritage!
Do a bit of research and then sell your soul on Ebay.
Bartend and Barback at a local Stripclub. Good money, good time, great moonlighting :D
If you are a contractor for the government.. be a slack-ass like 70% of them do already and bust your ass after work and weekends fixin' up the shack. If you are married with real little ones it's very tough to do, I've been remodeling my house for the past few years and boy has it been quite tough at times. You are a geek, right? Get your nerdy friends off the online games and put them to work.
Phishing.
ya - i've been on rentacoder. Kind of Rediculous to compete with people who do the old Bait and Switch in India. We'll work for $8-$15 an hour... give you crap - then charge you more. I prefer developing real relationship and demonstrating a track record.
i play poker for $10 an hour. read Dan Harrington's books.
it got the internet, VHS, DVD and BluRay going.
"Violence is the last refuge of the competent, and, generally, the first refuge of the incompetent" - Thing_1
I'm with the tutoring and writing term papers and stuff for math and science. If you've actually made it through undergraduate school they all seem ridicoulosly easy looking back on it. I hate every minute of tutoring I do for anyone in any subject, but its un taxed money as well.
But also, as mentioned, depending on local home coding laws you can probably watch some episodes of bob vila, buy a couple home improvement books, invest in some tools and do everything yourself. I helped my parents build a several hundred square foor addition, the only thing we didnt do ourselves was framing and roofing. We applied for a building permit and received it without any question, looked up relevant electrical codes for additions and followed them as closely as possible. Most of the stuff isn't rocket science, so if you're even remotely a handyman and your local building codes dont prohibit it you'll probably find it easy.
Start a soap business, working out of your home, using the fat you steal from the local liposuction clinic.
This will work really well and appeal to the inner geek! Take out a home loan and apply for it online! Easy quick cash and since you did it online it's pretty geeky!
I don't know that you really save money by doing it yourself, and it may actually end up costing you more when you figure in the price of your time and other non-obvious costs, but there is still one killer advantage to doing it yourself, which is that nobody will care as much as you do about getting it done right.
Over the years, I'd say 20% of the tradesmen I've hired have done a great job, 40% are mediocre, doing almost as good as I might do if I was in a hurry. The other 40% are chimpanzees, and it can cost a lot of time and grief to unroll their messes. Unfortunately I'm not very good at prospectively telling the difference between these groups.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
You do realize that you're not even beating inflation, right?
Please help metamoderate.
Why money? Do you really need money that bad? If your main goal in life is beemers and dumb blonds, then you'd be in management or sales. Try something fun, like model rocketry or building a robot to fetch beers and do the laundry.
I tried to start multiple web businesses during the dot-com boom, but none of them clicked. I realized that marketing is not my bag. It was an interesting experience, but I've had enough entrepreneurism for a while.
And, anything you do for the first time you will probably not do it competitively at first. Gaining enough skill to compete with experts in the field will usually take a while. Think back to the first programs you wrote. They worked, but the code was probably ugly and difficult to maintain, and if you had any control over the user interface, it was probably clunky.
Table-ized A.I.
Don't live past your means.
With a little study time invested you could make extra cash using affiliate marketing and paid advertising (PPC on google, etc).
I've setup a few sites that bring in $500-800 a month with a hundred or so invested in marketing each month. The key is just finding the right niche market to target and the right product to promote.
I have a blog on it I don't really keep updated enough, but there are some resources there to at least get you pointed in the right direction -- www.dotcomicon.com
It took a while, but now I make about $20/month with Dreamhost rewards/referrals. It's free to get an ID, and once set up takes virtually no effort on my part. This explains how the rewards program works.
-- Boycott Shell
Most of my online poker friends are geeks. Math and left brained types thrive. The learning curve is steep for the first two weeks. After that if you can't make $100 an hour in limit hold'em from any hotel room or your back porch, at least you'll know it. Search for Roy Rounder for beginning help, and read some good books. Poker online is a game, but luck is less important that losers think. Good luck though. lol "Cast Out Your Old Tired Expectations." That's Coyote Logic.
I have tried to do side work as a geek for money on many occasions and have found that in the end the amount of work that I end up doing far exceeds the amount gained over time. What I have found that actually works very well is just letting small businesses in your community at places you frequent know that you are in computers and willing to work a trade in services. I did this with my vet several years ago and I have not paid a single cent for my dog in over 4 years. This includes food and boarding of my pet and anything to do with the health of my dog which. I get roughly 2-3 calls a month from them and probably spend 4-8 hours every quarter there keeping printers working and just fixing things that someone has screwed up. I have crunched it out and this deal easily saves me 3-4k a year depending on teeth cleanings and annual travel. The health of my pet is amazing as the vet is very invested in keeping my dog alive. I have recently cut another deal with a large salon that provides office space to hairdressers and pedicures. In essence they are giving me office space (since I mostly work from home when I am not not he road) and hair cuts for my wife and two daughters. This deal will save me an additional fortune over time and gives me a place to hide from the previous mentioned family members. The benefit to the salon owners is that the office space means they will have a friendly tech in house when I am home. Not to bad a deal to keep up a small wireless network and one server. Now if I could only figure out a way to get free toilet paper. With three women in one house you can imagine the implications!!!
How about becoming an horologist? It takes some tools, patience, and study, but is very rewarding. You can buy old run down clocks at thrift stores and repair them, refurb them, etc. and sell them for fantastic margins as repaired antique timepieces. Pocket watches, grandfather clocks, desk clocks, etc. I know a guy who basically picked up clocks while out on his sales route, or traveling, and would sell them for thousands upon restoration. He put his kids through college, basically.
Easier to ship/xfer than cars, less ubiquitous that refurbished PC's, and a much better purchase-to-sale ratio. Oh, and completely awesome for your inner geek.
but she'll get back to it after the baby is born.
As a new father I have to say that you're probably in for a surprise there.
You will have no free time of any sort for a long long time. And you won't want to trade the little bit you do get for $10/hour.
For a few years I made my living doing a very geeky sort of eldercare. There are an awful lot of people, mostly women over the age of seventy-five, who need a hell of a lot of skilled help that a broadly skilled geek can provide. They are usually still managing three or four bank accounts, two to ten investment accounts, about twenty to fifty annual contributions, and various other expenses. And usually dealing with one or more personal aides, who almost never speak good English and even if they do, do a lot better with somebody young, firm, and capable who keeps them on target. And they are usually slowing dispersing their possessions, which frequently involves psychologically complex claims of interest in donating things but with dozens of conditions, most of which they can't even articulate. And all with families who want all of this dealt with but aren't going to make the time to be there enough to do this and would be hobbled by family dynamics if they even tried.
Once you learn to see it that way, almost all of it is systems problems. Things that can be hacked.
Add all of this up, and, especially when you added in the families who were in the process of moving from standalone homes to senior residences, I had far more work than I was willing to take on. And since I underpriced the market by charging thirty to fifty dollars an hour, I really got to pick and choose. Flexibility mattered far more to me than the marginal income. Just think of it as consulting work. The kind where the ability to keep a good timesheet is crucial, as is the ability to bill regularly, and then get the client to pay, which, when it goes wrong, is usually just another problem you can, ironically, bill to fix.
The trick to all of this? Being capable enough that whether the problem is about bookkeeping or logistics or finding and managing a contractor, your answer can be "don't worry; I'll take care of it." If you can make that promise and keep it, you're golden. You'll probably, like me, end up needing to find one or more assistants to help out if you're not willing to commit to doing this full time. I tried to keep it all at about fifteen hours a week and while peak load (say, moves of large houses or medical crises) was quite a bit higher, on average I did just fine. Fwiw, I peaked at five assistants on a couple of big jobs. Finding and managing them was, of course, much of what I was being paid for.
There are hundreds of thousands of affluent households who are just now moving from private homes into senior residences of one sort or another and the bottom line is that these residences are institutions. And from the food to the visual esthetics to the available services and schedules, these places are just not up to the job of satisfying these people who have had decades to get used to a higher standard. The person who can fill in that gap can write their own ticket.
What I'm describing is a boom industry and will be for years to come and it uses most of the skills I learned as an IT director and consultant. Financial management, crisis management, learning to live the "pager lifestyle", handling subcontractors, and so on. Things like explaining the limitations of servers to PHBs and routing installs around union b.s. apply, too. Not to mention being able to switch from being "a suit" talking to a lawyer (or a doctor, or both at once) to climbing under a desk to see if a new outlet was done properly. But since you're working for a family, you've got waaay more flexibility than you do at a corporate job. And if you're good the word of mouth will get you as many clients as you're willing to take on.
As for the "work from home" issue, like many kinds of consulting, for every hour you spend onsite, you spend half an hour to three hours offsite. Doing research, coordinating subcontractors, and so on. If you are online and can be on the phone for a while now and then, it doesn't matter if you're home, at work, or in the middle of a bro
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
Umm prolly gonna get burned for this, however, i make a tidy sum each week from selling stuff on Second Life. Took me a while to make sufficient products - but now is essentially passive income requiring 1-2 hrs for upwards of $500usa per week.
www.secondlife.com
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1. overtime
do not do the siding and/or windows before the roof. I've seen people do this and they damaged brand new siding while doing a roof tear off. Of course it is fixable, but it really is a waste of time and money.
'sig' deleted due to the stupidity of it's 'nature'
Have you heard of chacha.com? You can apply to be a "guide" there, and basically look up random facts on the internet all day. It is surprisingly addicting, and it's a good way to use your geeky research skills and speed. You get paid by the answer, 10 cents to start, and 20 cents once you hit a certain level of quality, which isn't too difficult to attain. It's not hard to make $8-$10 an hour that way, if you're fast.
The best part is, there is absolutely no obligation- you log on whenever you want, and work for as long as you want.
What I'm describing is a boom industry
I am intrigued and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
very easy and profitable. your inner geek can create most substances that people want but are too stupid to make themselves.
this has been tried and tested. just don't get caught.
Ya know what? Occasionally reality involves the things that the scam artists imitate. That's why they imitate them. Kinda like any other cliche; they became cliches because previously a hell of a lot of people has found themselves saying those things with no ironic intent.
/.er going for a quick snipe, bugger off. If you really think that you're saying something useful or insightful, bugger off with a big ol' cyanide-covered cherry on top.
On a less conceptual note, go for it, do the research and see if I'm blowing smoke. Try, say, searching on the phrase "eldercare consulting". There's a hell of a lot of businesses out there and a hell of a lot of corporate idjits who think that very personal problems can be solved with standardized, templated solutions. You know, just like computer consulting.
And fwiw, if you actually read my post you'll discover that what I'm suggesting is anything but a free lunch. TANSTAAFL is fully in effect. To do what I did is impossible without at least six or seven kinds of expertise and no small amount of focused, skilled work.
So if you're just yet another superficial
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
Install home automation components ala www.smarthome.com's INSTEON line. It lets people control lighting, home theater, etc. and it's very geek compatible.
Seriously, it worked great for me. I could work flexible hours later at night doing carding at bars. I was provided with free diet soda and was paid. Never gets dull, and every night you get great stories you can tell your friends at work while you look and feel like a zombie. :)
It made me plenty of extra cash when I was going through some lower paying contracts, and most bars will take anyone who doesn't have a raging case of halitosis and shows up when expected.
WTF?!?! Why would anyone buy "...a really old house that's on the verge of falling down" and then get a second job to pay for it?!?! Are you fucking retarded or on drugs? This has to be one of the stupidest questions I've ever seen posted on Slashdot.
Geek.
Software developer.
Spare time.
I'm sorry, but it is not possible to have all three.
I run the biggest blog in the Ruby space and was recently looking for (paid) writers from the community to help me out. This might be an avenue in the areas where you're proficient. Most top blogs in certain niches would love to have someone dependable and you could earn a few hundred a month for reasonably little work as long as you're already familiar with your area.
I care about the mindset or lack of one.
Most of these people that I get in the offshore tech support centers are locked to a script. Why I ask, "can I speak to someone with a functioning synapse?" their response is "we don't have anyone like that here."
Before I pick up the phone I do some basic troubleshooting. They put you on hold for "a moment" that lasts for more than 5 minutes, then apologize for it, then do the same thing again.
And of course, when you ask why they want you do "try something" their response is "sometimes it fixes the problem." No logic.
Fight Spammers!
The sad thing is that you have no idea how dead-on your statement is--in multiple ways. Drug dealing and having a broken-down house go well together, and I don't mean for the purposes of using it as a crack house...
Someone in my past who was a drug dealer (and I'm not talking about myself, but I still choose to post anonymously), would hide his earnings by buying a distressed/outdated property then hiring a contractor to fix it & paying cash... Contractors LOVE cash because a) they can hide it from the government--profits and purchases of materials***; b) it's much easier to pay their illegals--er, undocumented workers. So, the contractors write up a very underreported invoice--that the IRS can find out about--but get paid a much higher amount for much more work. (The IRS and even the local municipality have no clue what condition the home was in before and how much work was actually done). The work gets done on the home, greatly increasing it's value. Property sells, the profits are clean, & he moves onto the next property... He then pays himself a salary based on the profits and is a full-time real estate investor.
That being said, I'm curious to know how he's dealing with the present storm in the housing market... Then again, last I heard he was in jail (and not for money laundering...)
***To add, local building suppliers (other than the nationwide chain stores) often give "cash discounts"... By this point, the $$$ has changed hands so much that it's impossible to prove it's drug money.
It's pretty lucrative from what I hear, especially if you sign up Kraft Foods as a client. And even when arrested, you may likely beat the rap. Ask Jeremy Jaynes about both. He'll probably be back at it soon.
Just be warned, you'll see me on the other side of the scrimmage line. ;-)
...and contact the Nigerian prince for email templates.
My Blog | Badsh
Here's a one-off suggestion for some moonlighting cash: work in your country's elections. You don't mention what country you're from, which suggests you're from the US, and the US is in desperate need of poll workers who are competent with information systems.
The money isn't great, but I can do it whenever I'm not in a public place, and noone except me cares how accurate the translation is.
Some people just look at the pics and make up the story.
Warning : it makes you feel like a Gynacologist - you start critiquing the qualtity of your porn even during recreational viewing.
What? You're a geek right?
The odds that you've actually had any are....
Oh wait...not by choice...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
You say that your HP boss had a "lack of integrity". How? You completely ignored your employers explicitly expressed wishes (which you asked for) and moonlighted anyway? Who is displaying a lack of integrity here? Why did you bother asking if you were obviously going to ignore any answer you didn't like?
Also, why did you leave interesting work at National Semi for boring work at HP? Somebody has to do the boring work, and it ended up being you. Exactly how was this HP's fault?
I'm not saying that any of this was a good HR decision, but it is going a bit far to say that HP did not behave with integrity.
You sound like a Prima-Donna Asshole, and I, for one, would not have been sorry to see you go. You do indeed sound not very well suited for a worker-bee position.
A "terrible desire to call stupid people stupid" is not just bad for consultants, it's bad for pretty much everybody, except maybe Drill Instructors.
If you want to make money out of something (legal) that you do a few times a week in the evenings and weekends, you must first of all realize that you probably won't earn neither fast nor much money.
Also, this will probably be something that you aren't very good at yet, especially since you want it to be different from your profession.
Expect a lot of time spent simply learning new skills in the beginning.
You might, for an example, get into woodwork, if you've got a big enough garage and don't have to use it for a car or if you happen to have an extra shed or such.
Making chairs, tables and such. It's quite relaxing, it's very different from any kind of work where you use a computer as you main tool and some people are willing to pay quite a lot for locally hand-made furniture.
The tools and skills you acquire can also be put in use to fix that house of yours. =)
Personally, I live in an apartment, so I currently do electronic music in my spare time.
I can sit down a few minutes or hours a day and stop in an instant if I must do something else. While away from home, I can work with Reason and Sonar on a laptop and at home I only need about two square meters extra space beside my desk for my synthesizers and such.
About a year and a half ago a friend and I thought "Hey, why don't we try to commercialize some of our music?", so we've been working on finishing songs, getting to know people in local studios and stuff like that.
Hopefully, we'll be in a position where we potentially could make some money out of it within a year or so, of course depending on if anyone actually likes our music enough to pay for it.
The downside is that I spend lot's of time in front of a computer at work and while making music, I spend a lot of time in front of a computer at home too. =P
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
It took you seven years to do all that remodeling. If you enjoyed it, and looked at it as a hobby, and an opportunity to do cool stuff, fine. But don't say that you saved money. How much money could you have earned in all that time you spent working on the house? Even with a low-paying job, probably more than enough to pay for somebody else to do all those repairs, and then some. I remember seeing somewhere that DIY-labor ends up being "worth" about minimum wage because of how much longer it takes them to do tasks vs. a professional. Watching a pro vs. a DIY paint can make you a believer quickly.
My wife and I recently moved out of a 24-year-old house in need of a decent amount of "refreshing". Pretty much all of of it was DIY-able work. (paint throughout, carpeting, laminate countertops, replacing rotten siding, refinishing cabinets, etc.), however, it would have taken us six months worth of weekends and had us hating the place by the time we were through. The $8-9k we paid in labor costs were more than worth it, and the work definitely paid off in what we got for the house when we sold it.
In addition, the professionals we hired certainly did a better job than I ever could have, without a lot of practice. (Most of the work was done by the world's most awesome (and unfortunately, pricey) handyman.)
Don't get me wrong, I like working on my house (I'm doing all the interior painting myself), but I'm under no illusion that I am really saving anything. Instead of paying actual money to a pro, I am paying the valuable currency of my free time. In the end, that is what you are buying from a professional.
Everyone has to make that decision, but the money you save is a distinctly secondary consideration.
SirWired
affiliate marketing
make websites that review / recommend products and earn a commission when somebody buys through your site.
clickbank, amazon, commission junction have large and popular affiliate schemes.
you can find somnething to promote that you're interested in and it won't be too difficult to make a site about it.
you could also create your own cheezy ebooks and sell those, even recruit other to sell it for you.
You should count yourself lucky that you have a damn job. The rest of us are voting Obama in the hopes that the economy doe
I think it has a lot to do with what you like to do. I recently starting selling USB flash drive in LEGO bricks on eBay.
I can control how many I sell by the amount of the LEGO bricks I churn out with a needle file.
You can see more at http://www.brick-flash-drive.com
I don't make a hell lot of money (I make more money/hour in my day job), but I enjoy doing it in my spare time.
Trade Forex.
That said, if I were you I'd learn how to do some home maintenance stuff. You can make some money doing it(if you're licensed etc), and more importantly you can save some money on fixing up your home.
Beyond that, dream on, there's almost nothing you can do that remotely that isn't IT, which you don't want, and there's not much you can make money on if you're not willing to spend time doing it.
Get rid of your cell phone and put the $40-$80 per month toward whatever.
If you pay $80/month that's $1000 per year. That's a new computer or a nice vacation every year.
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
After last week and this I suggest defrauding the NYSE. Google bomb old news stories about Northern Rock and then short their stock.
Alternatively, I hear phishing scams are quite good these days. Or credit card fraud.
Matt
Create a Social Network. It's now fairly easy with tools like elgg; and you can work on it from anywhere !
Thats how I started urtbox.com
business plan
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
I needed to burn through my vacation time at my job once ("use it or lose it"), so I became a substitute teacher. I did it every Friday until I got my vacation time way down. It was a good fit; it was useful, very different from my day job, made reasonable $$$ (though only about 1/4 of my day job), and plus I was still paid due to my vacation time. Surprisingly, the first few times were quite tiring -- I went home a took a nap! I also considered teaching a community college course, which might also work for the original poster.
Time is money, friend.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Buy the Home Despot or Black & Decker book, learn some new skills. You will save a ton, and can use those skills next time around. (Words of warning: read the explanations first, especially for plumbing and electrical, and check into permits/inspections. And draw good diagrams -- it'll pay off handsomely in short order.)
Adsense works more than fine for me.
Buanzo Consulting - 15 Years of GNU/Linux experience, for you.
I work weekends shooting weddings for a studio in town. Plenty different from the day job, not the greatest pay, but challenging and fun to me. :D
Plus great excuse to invest in more photo gear
Reality though, it's taken a while for it to become profitable, but sticking to a budget along the way helps tons.
First, incorporate as a LLC, if possible.
Make sure you track your time carefully.
Record your gas back and forth to job sites!
Stuff I would suggest you take a crack at:
Oracle Off Hours support. Find a company that is 24/7 and offer to do staff holidays on the weekends for a reasonable price per hour.
Right now companies are making unreasonable demands on staff and morale is at an all time low.
I also put in VoIP systems using Asterisk or sipxpbx. Hand in hand with that I also usually offer to do network engineering to implement QoS on the network.
I can pull down about $2 to $3K on a weekend sometimes depending on the jobs I have to do.
Most of the time its about $1K.
Which is not too bad for 2 extra days of work. Much better than working at a part time job.
Plus it shows initiative on my resume.
(Although that can scare employers because they realize your very talented and could probably leave anytime.)
I usually keep the initiative part off my resume for just that reason, but not always.
Good Luck and have fun. Doing outside work has been some of the funnest things I have done in my career.
Have fun above all or it probably isn't worth it.
IMHO anyway.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Start taking the classes now, and get yourself a job at the local H&R Block, or Jackson Hewitt. It's a great way to make some extra cash on the side. The best part is, it only lasts for 4 months! You get to have the summer and fall off to work on your new house.
If you get sick of working for the man, you can start your own tax service and take your clients with you.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
I stared life as a computer tech who learned to program in a couple different languages. Since that birth up until now I've gained enough expertise to qualify as a satallite communications expert. Currently I work as a network admin for a large telcom. After work I do 2d/3d art. Its a great stress releiver, its relatively easy to do (with enough practice), and has the potential to bring in enough money to keep me comfortable. It's low responsibility, and I work whenever I want where ever I want. I think the least I've charged for a piece was $20 for an image going on a business card and the msot I've gotten was like 150 bucks for all the images on my buddies start up website. Not great money on the big scale, but when you considered even though it took me a week or so for both of those I only really worked on them for like 10-20 minutes a day
go freelance. go elance, rentacoder, whatever. do stuff you like, this time. you can pick what you want to do while freelancing, since you already have a paying job.
Read radical news here
Let's see there is Tuperware, Mary Kay, Avon.. You should be able to find something.
I found myself in a very similar situation a few years ago and figured out that it was much more cost effective to spend my time just fixing the house instead of working more at a second job (or overtime on my first job) and paying someone to do the fixing for me.
Plus you'll be equipped to fix any problems that come up and when stuff breaks you have nobody to blame but yourself!
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We got something know as moonlight vodka (moonshine: ksiezycowka in polish) because usually you make it during night because it is illegal. Anyway, such kind of vodka if made by expert is much better then anything you can buy in shops and traditionally widely available on polish weddings. If you want I can find few good recipes for you.
I've been teaching chess for a few years, but it is a consistent one night a week for a few weeks rather than flexible.
It's fun, and rewarding, especially when you find a former student playing at the local chess club afterward.
I know locally any class associated with computers is overloaded. Ironically I ran across someone who taught an eBay class a few years ago, who was astonished that it was taken over by someone else and is still going strong with tons of demand.
It's not for everyone, but it's a lucrative way to make extra cash. You can't approach it as a get rich quick scheme, unless you are terribly gifted at playing, you will still need to spend a few months learning the game at lower limits.
Just don't be a pussy who's afraid to lose money first.
http://s.eriously.com
it may not be the typical geek hobby, but I work as a Paid-On-Call firefighter and EMT in my community. Its a lot of fun. Some of the training is extremely helpful in a variety of situations. I just returned from a weeklong Command and Control course at the National Fire Academy. The ability to build a Command system in an emergency situation, grow it as you get new resources is a fascinating topic. I don't make a lot doing this $5000-6000 per year, but it is a ton of fun.
If the state you live in has a medical marijuana law, you can probably find a medical marijuana club that you can sell pot to. I have friends here in California that do it and make an extra $30k+ a year. I would do it as well but my wife is scared of what her parents would say. As far as you geek side, you could could build a high tech watering and environmental control system and put in a security / surveillance system to keep an eye on your growth. Just make sure you stick to the local limit of how many plants you can grow at once. A pound of weed sells for at least $3,500 and as much as $4,800!!!
Yeah. The minimum price is pretty steep, though that is for about half a mile of tape. Truth is, I've never actually bought any. Just acquired it at the end of various projects. After all, the twenty to fifty foot pieces that get chopped off and thrown out as useless for pulling cable are more than enough for my needs. And man, it's soft, doesn't stretch unduly, it's ungodly strong, holds knots like a dream, can be packed in a tiny space in, say, a messenger bag, and much of it is a wonderfully unsettling bright yellow.
All of which makes it so very valuable for, well, all sorts of things.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
I found that helping people with their renovations really was a good way to generate a second income. They all seemed to be to scared to get a bit dirty and pay me well to fix their house up for them. And I am willing to travel.
Hi, I'm Don LaPre.
I was working a miserable dead-end job. Then, all of the sudden, my job was eliminated. I lost my apartment. I lost my truck. My wife was leaving me.
Then, I placed one tiny ad in a local newspaper and the money just started pouring in. I don't even remember what the ad was for, but I within 5 days, I received this check for $45,563.23!
So, I then decided to use that money to place the same ad in 2,000 newspapers nationwide. Then, amazingly, 5 days later, I received the first of 27 weekly checks for over $400,000!!
How did I do this? Please visit my website http://www.you_are_high_and_hopeful_at_3am_on_a_weekday_hoping_for_a_freaking_miracle.com/ hand over what little money you can find in your couch cushions and I'll send you an upbeat DVD that rivals anything that exercise guru Tony Little, motivational speaker/blow-hard Anthony Robbins or even the late great fictional motivational speaker Mr. Matt Foley who has been downstairs drinking coffee for the last 4 hours.
Good luck!
Don.
You must be crazy...
...crazy like a fox!
lol @ herbalife.
Woman on commercial: Last week I made five thousand dollars
Me: She knew NYC mayor Spitzer?
...on Prosper.com. P2P lending. I make micro-loans. Rather than let the bank use my deposits as a fractional reserve basis to gouge other consumers with astronomical loan terms, I compete with other individual lenders to bid down percentage rates on these loans. The upshot is a loan at much better rates than at the bank for the borrower, and returns that have consistently outperformed the best mutual funds in my portfolio. People need help funding projects or for emergencies, and I have the means to help them, while making a fuck-ton of cash, besides. Ain't technology grand?
PHONE SEX
I run a mobile DJ business on the side - gives me an excuse to tinker with some other electronics a bit, and outside of the setup and take down time, you just play music. Money is decent, and you can pick and choose when and where you want to play.
Oh, you can try to get fancy and run it all from a computer, but make sure its a quality pc, that can handle the load.
In my spare time I scan old books, put the pictures online, and sometimes also make XML transcriptions, e.g. of the dictionaries of thieving slang.
I tend to use technologies from work too, but for me that makes work more interesting and more relevant to my life at the same time as making the spare time project move forward.
The site makes money from ads (a little) and I sell the high-res images on stock sites (although I also give them away free on request, or for the cost of shipping and so forth).
Live barefoot!
free engravings/woodcuts
I've been in IT for fifteen years, have a great day job but I wanted to tap into my creative side a bit more, so I bought a camera three years ago. Now I run a Photography Business (www.fenstermacher-photo.com) that has gotten me a good bit of business and it can pay really well if your good at running a business, managing expesnse, marketing and good at taking photos. We are on track for it to be able to offset my wife quitting her job and having the photo income replace her good paying full time job in the finance/investment banking industry.
My Sig is better than your Sig, because my Sig is Mine!
Both are valid motivations, but might take you in very different directions.
Couple years after I had just graduated money was really tight. I had a rock solid perm job but at just a couple years out of university, I was being paid crap. So I bought a commercial cleaning business to do on the side. Nothing glamorous, but I wanted to start small since it was my first go at this sort of thing.
It was a BLAST! Doubled my income almost overnight. It was like I had this double life or something. But all good things must end and after a couple years I was totally burned out. Since I had really just been in it for the cash, I thought that there had to be a less stressful way - so I decided to sell out and just focus on my one career (Java) for a while.
Just one year later I was making what I had been before with just one job thanks to consulting. There's a lot of money to be made in just computers if you're willing to go and chase it.
If your motivation is a need for some variety, then you could pick all sorts of things, really depending on your own interests. Some things my geek colleagues have done:
- freelance photographer (portraits/real estate)
- home renovation/house flipping
- trading: stocks/forex
- slumlord
Something I'd really like to do is open a bead and breakfast, but I can't do what while I'm consulting.
You don't have any spare time you own a fixer upper. Just a have a couple of kids and you'll actually be losing time every day.
I hear there's surefire profit in that line of business.
I dabble in this a bit, and if I had time I'd do a lot more of it. There's a killing to be made from sports betting if you're prepared to put in the effort - I know one guy who paid off his mortgage years early by dabbling while he's at work, and at almost no financial risk.
I'd say it ticks all your boxes:
- It's geeky because it involves probabilities and a fair bit of number-crunching;
- You can do it from anywhere on your laptop, and at any time you like;
- It's as lucrative as you want it to be.
There are a number of ways to approach this, but generally, betting exchanges such as Betfair are your friend. They have markets on every sport you can think of, as well as lots of other stuff like politics, reality TV shows, etc. etc. Choose a field that interests you and start to swot up.
What you have is basically an options market - you're buying and selling probabilities. You'll find varying amounts of liquidity, and some markets will be more volatile than others. Study them, learn how they tend to behave.
There are any number of strategies you can employ. If you want to take no risk at all, simply look for arbitrage - use sites like Oddschecker to spot when a bookmaker's offering a price that you can lay on the exchanges for guaranteed profit. This happens all the time - you'd be amazed. Usually it doesn't last long, though (I'm talking minutes), so you have to be quick off the mark.
Alternatively, you can just trade on the exchanges. Like any market, there is a spread between the back and lay prices of anything you can bet on, and all you have to do is back at longer odds than you lay, and you'll win whatever. In more volatile markets, you can cash in on market trends - for example, back a horse at a particular price and then lay it off when the odds shorten, hedging so that you win the same amount regardless of the outcome of the race. The trick here is to spot the likely direction of movement of the market and position yourself accordingly. You won't get it right all the time, but over time you learn.
Or if you fancy something a bit riskier, go head-to-head against the bookies. A friend of mine plays chess against a grand master who makes his living betting in-running on cricket. He does his own assessments of the state of play as the game goes on and calculates what he thinks the odds should be. When the bookie is out of step with his own calculations, he puts in money. Generally this just comes down to his opinion against that of the guy setting the odds at the bookies - and because he's smart he gets it right more often than they do. He says he makes about £500 a day tax-free out of this, and most bookies won't take his credit cards, so he gets my friend to open accounts for him and gives him 10% of his winnings!
There are other crazy tactics that some people use, such as backing horses in-running that are clearly going to win at odds of 1/100, i.e. you've got to put up £100 to win £1. An instant 1% return on investment sounds lucrative, especially if you're doing it twenty or thirty times in an afternoon, but sometimes a steward's enquiry sees the result of a race overturned and suddenly you're looking at a big loss. Effectively by doing this you're gambling on fewer than 1% of winning horses being disqualified.
Bottom line is that bookies get stuff wrong all the time and there's easy money to be made from their mistakes if you're smart and quick enough to spot them. You can feel your way into this by putting up a little bit of play money that you can afford to lose, and learn the ropes. If you're successful, your winnings will accumulate and you'll be able to play for bigger stakes. I'm not able to devote enough time to this to make a lot of money out of it, but I do turn a profit just by having half a brain. If you're able to dedicate yourself, the sky's the limit, and there's no risk.
Why not try online poker, it's an interesting game and can be lucrative if you get good at it. Your current job should pay enough for you to build a decent bankroll.
I tried to get a hold of you by email, but it's hidden? Anyway, I was curious about how this 'eldercare consulting' works. How you actually got involved in the industry, how you found your first client, how you charged people, what kinds of things did you run across, and what not.
As Seen On TV's? Come back!!!
That's odd. I'm a pretty easy guy to reach, there being a grand total of two guys with my name in the entire country and all. Fwiw, I'm reachable as publisher as the email name, at the domain of my main site, streetcarpress.com. That having been said, I got involved first in logistics help for a family where the husband was dying and his stuff had to be cataloged, sorted, and dispersed. Since he was dying, his family was already arguing about who got how much and what.
"His stuff" turned out to include over a dozen (literally) file cabinets and approximately 300 sq feet by an average of five feet tall pile of boxes full of mixed bike parts, radiation monitoring components, and papers, including everything from personal letters to unwashed laundry, and uncashed checks and unregistered stock certificates. (The certificates eventually added up to about a third of a million dollars. I get the impression from the lawyers that about half of that was either underdocumented in the records they had or simply not recorded anywhere.)
My friends knew that I was sick of corporate IT, but was hurting for money and they knew that I always ended up coordinating things whenever a friend was moving or when something otherwise needed logistics or other organizational help. They also knew that I A.) was trustworthy, B.) could sort out machine tools and financial statements, and lab equipment, and hundreds of videos and movies and furniture to be donated, and on and on, and C.) was able and willing to give the appropriate class and demographic "recognition codes" to make the family feel that I would (and did) understand their concerns.
So two different people I knew socially recommended me. Every job after that came the same way. I never needed a resume. It was all word of mouth. Mostly I ended up working for people in an assisted living place called The Hallmark a few blocks from the WTC site. I got hired to help one couple there about a month after 9/11 with sorting out an apartment in the still somewhat secured area. Then the same family hired me to help them at their place, and so on.
As for charging, I started out pretty damn stupid. At first I did it for free, since I was helping friends of friends. Then I only charged expenses, then idjit stuff like expenses plus fifteen an hour or whatever. The only excuse for this is that I was dead broke and was using the shut down apartment I was working in (the former resident was too sick to be there) as a base of operations to get my work done. As I pointed out above, work like this means spending almost all of your onsite time in decidedly fancy places. If they can afford somebody like this, then they'll have unlimited calling on the phones, not care how long you run the air conditioner, and in cases like this, have cool tech stuff that most people wouldn't be able to even identify that I was quite glad to take as barter. So at a time that I was dead broke I was willing to charge very little to maintain the freedom to come and go any time I wanted (sorta) and to have an air-conditioned, quiet place to make my phone calls, do my reading, etc. Over time, as the time commitment got bigger and my finances got tighter, I started pulling out my old consulting timesheet templates and billing them as I would somebody I was doing computer work for.
Fwiw, I always insisted on flexible hours and the right to pick and choose what I did. I usually was given keys to places where I would be doing a lot of work and as long as I stayed very presentable (usual IT guy khakis but a bit more high end, with understated but expensive shirts, bag, and accessories) and made myself useful, I could work pretty much as much and when I chose. Obviously it helped to have as many as five clients in the same building at a given time. BUT to keep this flexibility, I always undercharged my competitors and always cut some slack on what expenses I billed. Since I was competing largely with lawyers and other overpriced pondscum, this wasn't all that hard. I als
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
I do residential low voltage designs in the evenings. Works great with my schedule as most of my clients prefer meeting in the evenings and weekends to fit their own work schedules. The work is subbed out to some of my regulars.
Keeps my brain busy, and its a ton of fun to see your design implemented. Plus you get to play with fun toys every so often that I wouldn't normally afford. I love RTI remotes, Netstreams, any system that you can really get involved in. Its just tons of fun. Check out a program called D-Tools (not Daemon Tools)
http://www.d-tools.com/