The benefit of multiple income streams

Here's a piece I wrote for Daisy Luther at the Organic Prepper entitled "Why Everyone Should Have Multiple Streams of Income to Survive What’s Coming."

Hop on over and take a look.

Making money from home

Want to earn money from home? Below are a few suggestions (some of which are based on reader responses to an earlier post):

• Telecommute. This is obviously the easiest solution. The recent coronavirus lockdowns has demonstrate that a surprising number of jobs can be done remotely. Yay for the internet! Even if your employer insists you return back to the office after the lockdowns, it’s worth negotiating to work at home at least part-time.

• Consider seasonal work such as spring cleaning, house or pet sitting, fall garden clean-up, etc. Post flyers around the neighborhood offering your services.

• If you’re good with young children, consider childcare in your home. Many working mothers desperately need loving, reliable care for their children.

• If you’re a fast and accurate typist, consider transcription work which can include general, legal, and medical. These types of jobs can pay by the page, by the word, by the hour of tape, or other factors, and most are done by independent freelancers contracted by larger companies (such as Rev, Scribie, Aberdeen, Dailytranscription, Transcribeme, or GMRTranscription). If you are fluent in a foreign language and can translate, your earnings can skyrocket.

• If your writing and editing skills are superior, you can do everything from freelance magazine writing to editing and proofreading to tech writing. Some have even started independent e-publishing services.

• If you’re a tech person, build websites for businesses or freelancers.

• For creative and crafty people, open an online store through Etsy or some other e-commerce platform. It can take time to build a business, but established crafters can do very well.

• Also for crafters, sell your items wholesale or consignment to brick-and-mortar businesses. You can also sell at farmer’s markets and/or craft shows.

• Do consulting work. If you possess specialized knowledge, offering your assistance on a freelance basis can bring in extra income.

• If you have a green thumb, consider local food production providing produce to local restaurants, groceries, or farmer’s markets. If your home has adequate traffic, you can also set up a produce stand at the end of your driveway (check with local authorities for any restrictions). Produce farming can be a heavy workload, but a benefit for those who are passionate about eating locally.

• Sell seedlings and cuttings. We know a local woman who makes at least $10,000 each spring by selling thousands of vegetable starts from a stand in her front yard. She uses open-pollinated seeds and can maintain her seed stock indefinitely.

• Learn how to film and edit your own YouTube videos. Some people use these videos as stand-alone income (through monetization), others use them to supplement a separate business.

• If you’re skilled in sewing, do alterations or custom work. Some seamstresses draft their own patterns in various sizes and offers custom tailoring in local stores. For those who specialize in the needle arts (knitting, crocheting, embroidery, etc.), some people sell original patterns as well as finished items on Etsy or other online e-commerce platform.

• Offer online courses. Whether your talent is sign language, cheesemaking, or woodcrafting, someone else wants to learn from you. If you have a background in education, you can teach online through Connections Academy, K12, or Edmentum. You can also tutor online through Cambly or Chegg Tutors. Many opportunities exist to teach English, such as EF (Education First), Golden Voice English, and VIPKid.

• If you have a pleasant phone voice and a quiet room, consider call-center jobs. Many companies both large and small need someone to answer phones. Look online for companies that contract out such work such as FlexJobs or Indeed. If you want customer service work, try Working Solutions, Vicky Virtual, or ModSquad.

• Teach a foreign language. For several years, our homeschooled daughter took conversational French lessons from a woman who taught both children and adults out of her home. If you’re fluent in another language, teach what you know.

• Rent a room. Visiting professors, traveling nurses, students, business people – if they’re passing through, they need a place to stay. You can offer space formally through an organization such as AirBnB, or simply through word of mouth.

• If you have a working homestead, consider hosting workshops with overnight stays for those interested in learning rural skills.

• Cut and sell firewood. This can be an extremely lucrative side gig in rural areas where woodstoves are common.

Pitch in with some more ideas! Let's hear 'em.

How can someone earn $500 a month?

All right, dear readers, time to put on your collective thinking caps.

I have a cyber-friend who lives in a fairly remote part of the country. She and her husband are partially retired. She works three days a week in an administrative position, and has kept her job because of the health insurance. Her husband is 40 percent disabled and on Social Security.

Her employer may offer her a more full-time position, something she doesn't want at her age. In fact, she would like to quit altogether and work from home, and we started emailing back and forth about the subject.

One of her questions was the cost of health insurance. I told her about Christian Healthcare Ministries, which isn't insurance but is a very affordable healthcare sharing program.

If she quits her three-day-a-week job, she said she needs to bring in about $500/month. "I need to think way outside the box for a source of income," she wrote.

I asked about the skills she and her husband possess. "My husband already gives handgun shooting lessons," she replied. "He is also an excellent writer. I can preserve food, cook, I'm great with animals and gardening. I have just started painting stones to make garden plant markers. Rich is great at painting interiors, and we can both do basic handy man stuff."

So here's my request to all readers: Let's chime in and give my friend some ideas on how she and her husband can earn an extra $500/month. This is a topic of interest to anyone wanting to live a more remote lifestyle unconnected to any city employment, so let's hear 'em!

Many irons in the fire

It's been heartbreaking to see how many of our friends are without work. Along with millions of other people, a lot of our friends have lost their jobs and simply cannot find another full-time position that pays anywhere approaching the income they were making before.

I remarked to my husband that it's a good thing we've voluntarily lived close to the poverty line for the past seventeen years because it's given us good practice for a tough economy. Over these years we've scaled back our spending and tightened our expenses to the point where we can get by on very little (relatively speaking). Our mortgage is low. We've managed to pinch our electricity bill back to about $35-40/month (though, frustratingly, the power company automatically tacks on a surcharge of $16.50 to everyone's bill to pay for their new building). We have no water bill (we're on a well) or garbage bill (our property taxes pay for county dumpsters). We have no car payments, student loans, or credit card bills. We do have costs associated with running our business - FedEx (which can be pricey!), wood, supplies, etc. which can add up to quite a bit. We fill our propane tanks about twice a year (we used to fill them about four times a year until I stopped using our propane clothes dryer). All normal household purchases are made at thrift stores. (God bless thrift stores.) We rarely shop retail stores for anything (we just bought some new socks and underwear for the girls, which is the exception to our thrift store rule). Our biggest expense by far is our catastrophic high-deductible health insurance.

So that gives you some idea of our household expenses. So what about income?

Our home woodcraft business continues to provide the bulk of our income, and because it's seasonal we've learned to salt away money during flush times to see us through lean times. Works quite well, actually.

Lately we've developed what we call the "many irons in the fire" theory of earning money, which means we'll take on any paying job we reasonably can, even if it's dribs and drabs, to supplement our income. I've taken on a weekend job (working from home on my computer) which pays $400/month. I write a monthly article for a magazine which pays $300. My husband "monetized" my blog, which means that whenever someone clicks on an advertisement in the margin I receive a few cents. I've been contracted to revise a craft book, which is due at the end of the summer. I take on freelance desktop publishing jobs when they come available. I write freelance articles for a variety of magazines. Et cetera et cetera et cetera.

As the economy has dipped lower, I've become a huge advocate of this "many irons" idea of income. It means that if one source of money dries up, we are not left destitute as some of our friends are. By working so many little things here and there, it broadens our experience and abilities for any new job that comes available.

This is something I urge others to think about: diversifying your income portfolio (also known as not putting all your eggs in one basket). It leaves you less vulnerable. It makes sense in a down economy.

Of course it helps if you cut your expenses too. After seventeen years of self-employment and starting our home business from scratch, we've become blackbelts in frugality (though I would say just a first-degree blackbelt - I have friends who out-frugal us by far).

I'm always interested in hearing how others lay "irons in the fire," so feel free to comment on what you're doing to get by in this economy.

(And I would seriously appreciate it if everyone reading this blog would make it a daily policy to click on at least one advertisement. Okay, I'll stop asking.)