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Alicorn comments on Open Thread: July 2009 - Less Wrong
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So, I'm looking for some advice.
I seem to have finally reached at that stage in my life where I find myself in need of an income. I'm not interested in a particularly large income; at the moment, I only want just enough to feed a Magic: the Gathering and video game habit, and maybe pay for medical insurance. Something like $8,000 a year, after taxes, would be more than enough, as long as I can continue to live in my parents' house rent-free.
The usual method of getting an income is to get a full-time job. However, I don't find that appealing, not one bit. I want to have lots of free time in which to use the things I buy with the money I would earn. I'd much rather just continue to spend down my savings than work more than two days a week at a normal job.
This suggests that instead, I should try to get a part-time job. Chances are, that would mean working in a local restaurant or store of some kind. Unfortunately, I tried one of these once before, and it didn't work out very well. I was hired to be a cashier at a local supermarket. To my great surprise, I didn't particularly mind the work, but on my third day after being hired, I was fired for insubordination. (I had a paperback novel with me, and I wouldn't stop reading it during periods when there were no customers.) I've also tried working for a temp agency. That didn't work out too well either. After completing my first assignment, I was told that the company I was contracted out to complained about my behavior (it's a long story), and so I would not be considered for any other assignments. In effect, I was fired from there, too.
As far as I'm concerned, the ideal source of income would be something with no set hours, that I could leave and come back to as I please. In other words, if I decide that I'd rather play video games for a month instead of earning money, it won't prevent me from earning money the month after that. Unfortunately, the only things I know of offhand that work like that are writing (which is extremely hard to make a living at, and requires a lot of time and effort anyway) and online poker (which I suck at). I'm lazy and undisciplined, and I'm not particularly interested in changing that, so I'm hoping to find a way to make money that works even if I don't try very hard at it.
In terms of skills and education, I have a B.S. from Rutgers University in computer engineering. I can program, but when I've tried programming as a job (as a summer intern), it turned into a Dilbert cartoon very, very quickly. Basically, I was given vague instructions, left on my own to do whatever, and instead of working, I mostly sat and surfed the Web while feeling guilty about not working. I don't think I want to do programming professionally. I ever have to sit in another cubicle again, there's a good chance I'm quitting on the spot.
So, um... I need some suggestions on what to do. Bring on the other-optimizing?
If you have any crafting skills, or if you can make food of some kind that's fairly portable and doesn't need refrigeration, and you have access to someplace where you can park with your wares and bother passerby, that might work. I once made about $30 sitting in a hallway at school for an afternoon selling muffins for a buck fifty each (I was on a muffin-baking spree, and my freezer was getting full), and my town has a fair number of street vendors in nice weather (I have bought things from them before). If the only problem with cashiering was that you weren't supposed to read, this doesn't seem like it would present any problems for you, since, who's going to stop you?
Some places might require you to have a permit; I'm pretty sure the street vendors have to get one every morning from town hall. Nobody bothered me when I sold muffins and I didn't have any kind of permission, though.
Wow! $30? For only an afternoon plus baking time?
quits day job
ETA: Okay, that was too snarky, even for me. Crono only wants to make $8000/year, and that's good enough for that goal. So, good suggestion.
Well, an afternoon, plus baking time for six basic muffins and variations, plus cooking time for the applesauce that went into one batch of muffins, plus the cost of all the ingredients, plus the time it took to write up little flavor labels for each muffin and individually wrap them in saran wrap... And transit time by bus to and from school... I baked the muffins for fun, though, and only decided to sell them when I did not have room to store them and wasn't eating them fast enough.
I mean, I'm not knocking it as a way to spend time, or I wouldn't have suggested it, but I'm not still doing it. I got thirty bucks, spent it on a used camera and a necklace, and called it good. And I had my laptop open the entire time and did exciting things like read Less Wrong, which is more or less what I would have been doing if I'd stayed home to goof off instead of selling muffins.
Along the same vein, Etsy is a place to do that online (not so much with the food though)
What are your thoughts on the recent "Etsy considered harmful" article?
It doesn't seem like she has a good grasp on what people are doing with Etsy and what it's about. If you want to make a 'profitable' business, you're already looking in the wrong place on Etsy. But if your time isn't worth much and you want to sell some crafts, it seems to work fine.