Earn More

Two years? Ten? What if it was just a few minutes a day? …ok. This is starting to sound a little like those get-rich-quick Instagram digital marketing scams. And that’s not what I’m getting at. I’ve been thinking a little bit about the income from my blog the past week. I’ve been at this for 11 years. And I didn’t start with any delusions of getting rich. I just thought it would be nice if the blog made enough money to cover the expenses of running it – which have alway

So I’ve written a few times over the last year and a half about a side hustle I’ve been working on with two friends from college. We have written and published a spicy RPG game for couples very similar to fantasy RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons. The Tavern of Conquests . The three of us were chatting and spitballing it was weird that such a thing didn’t exist because there did seem to be a market for it and then we thought, famous last words, how hard could it be to make this

We took a bit of a hiatus on this topic here, but we are back with the other half of the budgeting formula. Spend less than you earn. If you want a quick primer on how to make a budget, check out this post from a few weeks ago . If you’re interested in kick starting your frugality skills, check out this post about how to spend less . Today let’s look at things you can do to earn more. Your Primary Job Your first attempt at earning more starts with negotiating your contr

**This is a true story – but disclaimer: I do not recommend you do this. Or, ya know, do it with caution. Anyway, moral of the story, it was a questionable choice on my part but it all worked out ok. For me. Again, I don’t recommend you do this.** I have been working part time as a stage manager again since June. During the times between contracts though, I’ve been hustling a bit. Most of the hustling is the blog and stage hand work, but once in a while I go scour Craigslis

One good thing about working in the arts is that I have a strong hustle mentality. I think that since nearly everyone told me life was going to be really difficult if I took this path, I’ve constantly had an eye out for how to strengthen my financial safety net while I pursue stage managing. I’ve been really fortunate due to a combination of luck and hard work to be pretty successful in my main career, but no matter how you slice it, starting out is kind of rough. Paying off

EasyShift is one of those apps that let you take pictures or check prices in a store for a few dollars. I was pretty intrigued because the payouts seem to be higher than a lot of other microtask apps ($10-20 range). I recently started training for a part time job in the mornings that leaves me with a 3 hour gap between when those shifts end and work starts at my regular job and both jobs are much further downtown than I live. Three hours might seem like a lot, but taking

Coming up on 4 years of blogging soon and I’m happier than ever that I started blogging in 2013. Last month brokeGIRLrich brought in $667.10 and I made $315 from freelance writing – opportunities that come 100% out of starting this blog. For the majority of the last year, I’ve been averaging a little over $500 a month in extra income from this blog and about $200 in extra income from freelance writing. Some months it’s a lot more and once in a while it’s a lot less. I spe

If you can hear fairly well, Rev might be a way to bring in a little extra cash to hit your 2017 goals. Rev is a company that has 3 subdivisions – captioning, transcribing and translation. I don’t know anything about the translation pool of freelancers, but for captioning and transcribing, you submit an application and take a test. Captioning The application starts with a very simple Grammar test. Then you’re asked to provide a writing sample based on a few prompts about

Side hustlers aren’t born overnight – in most cases. In my opinion, they’re often birthed out of frugal overload and even then, it can take a lot of tries to get it right. After I hit my frugality limits trying to pay off student loans, it was time to figure out how to bring in more income. I’d say my first ever side hustle was mystery shopping . When I’m living in a big city, it’s actually not so bad. If the shop is on my way home or to work or to wherever I’m going, I mi

I’ve written a few times about how my main side hustle outside of stage managing is substitute teaching . What I don’t think I’ve written about is how much I dislike it. Besides the fact that teaching is totally not my thing and I’m not a huge fan of kids, substitute teaching is incredibly, mind-numbingly dull most of the time. You’re really just a baby-sitter trying to keep nearly grown ups sitting in their seats and not touching each other. This is more difficult than you

I write a lot about hustling here. Planning ahead and patience seem to be the key to any good side hustle, and right now you’re reading my most successful one so far. That’s right, my blog actually makes some money. Recently, it’s been the equivalent of an extra paycheck a month and I am solidly a part time blogger. That being said, it did not happen overnight. I started brokeGIRLrich in July 2013 with a post called WTF is this Stock Market Thing? (Step 1) . I’m not sure I

A few weeks ago, I was visiting one of the most financially savvy friends I have up in Vermont and during our conversations, she told me about easily a half dozen side hustles she did growing up long before learning the word side hustle. But my favorite story was this one – she used to house sit while she was in college. Not only did she get away from her dorm room, get to use a real kitchen, play with someone’s pets and sleep in a far comfier bed, she got paid to do it. Be

Confession: I am a book hoarder. If just owning a book could put the information into your head, I would be incredibly brilliant. To be honest, there are quite a few books on my bookshelf that I may never read – because they are boring as all get out. But, ya know, I thought I should read them. There are a bunch of old text books and reference books that I like to think I’ll use again… someday. There’s also a bunch of fiction books I loved and figured I’d reread – only to

Today I’m really excited to share an interview I did with one of the members of my cast, Cat Greenfield – busker, model and puppeteer extraordinaire (cough, cough, hire her , cough, cough). We were hanging out the other day and she mentioned that she busks in NYC and immediately my personal finance wheels started spinning and I wanted to know more about the logistics of being a busker and how much money she actually manages to make. Fortunately, Cat was more than willing to s

Martin’s guest post last week about what you can learn from his best summer job really got me thinking. As someone a whopping decade removed from Martin (which is ridiculous, because plenty of days I still feel like I just graduated from college… and then I do something crazy like try to go out drinking with my brother who i s still in college and realize, no, I am definitely not 21 anymore), I reflected a lot on my various places of employment over the years: Cashier at Wa

As if I weren't ill adjusted to normal life enough from my days at sea , once I left ships, I joined the circus. The days honestly all started to blur into one of two types over the following weeks and months I was out with them. Except travel days. We lived on a train and train runs were glorious. The views were spectacular and there was never such a good reason to be lazy, stay in your PJs all day and watch TV. I miss them like you wouldn’t believe! So here's a glimpse at m

Sometimes I feel like a really inefficient side hustler, which is not entirely inaccurate, but writing the last few posts, and this one, reminds me that hasn’t always been the case. Whereas substitute teaching was definitely my first side hustle (oh, that’s a lie actually, I think pet sitting my neighbor’s cat when I was 12 could claim that title), the most consistent one over the years has been my pal eBay. I made my first ever eBay sale on June 12, 2003 and even without l

The other day I wrote about how mystery shopping won’t make you a millionaire , but today I wanted to write about a different side hustle that does have the potential to rake in some real cash – substitute teaching. If you work 9-5 Monday-Friday, you’re out of luck in this category, but if you have more leeway with your hours or work evenings and weekends, this could be a great side hustle for you. What do you need to become a substitute teacher? That varies from state to st

Some side hustles really seem to rake in the dough, even to the point where people turn them into their full time jobs. Mystery shopping is not one of these side hustles (although Kyle at The Pennyhoarder did do it full time for a while with ridiculous results – but his entire website is pretty much him pulling off insane hustles with ridiculous results), for the average Joe or Jane, mystery shopping is akin to what my grandma calls “pin money.” Honestly, my first experie