A couple of days ago, I made a post asking “are you a producer or a consumer?” These days, there are some people who would like to be doing something but just can’t seem to find a job. I do know how hard that can be; I had a difficult time getting a job out of high school (so I joined the military). If things are bad on the job front, you don’t need to sit around and wait for things to get better. While you are looking for a more permanent job, you can be working, earning a little money, and gaining experience right now! You may decide that you don’t want to return to the regular workforce, or you might use your experience to get another job. Here are some ideas that you might want to try.
I started working from home as a way to earn money while still homeschooling my kids. I’ve tried many of these ideas. Some of them worked for me, others were miserable failures. Since your skills are different than mine, you may succeed in areas that I had trouble in.
Ebay: My aunt makes pretty good money selling things on eBay, although I never had much luck myself. The good thing is, nobody has to hire you for you to make money on eBay. You just have to have an eye for a bargain and know how much something is worth. My aunt goes to the Goodwill Outlet store to get most of the things she sells on eBay, but other people find things other places.
Home Party Sales: This is another area that I have tried (and failed) at, but I know a few people that actually do well with this kind of business. You can find a home party business in almost any category that you’re passionate about, from candles to scrapbooking supplies to cookware. If you’re not very outgoing or can’t sell ice cubes to a thirsty guy in the desert, this may not be your cup of tea (that is why I don’t succeed here). Almost every one of these businesses require a small investment; if you are good at sales though, it might be worth a try.
Content Production: This was the opportunity that I was looking for. I can write, at least well enough that some people want to read my stuff. I got my start writing for Associated Content, but I also write for places like Squidoo, List My 5, and Hubpages. If you like to write, this kind of work can provide you with a steady stream of income, and can give you experience that might get you hired by someone else (that did happen to me, although I no longer work for that company). The pay can be low, especially at first.
Designing Stuff: If you are an artist, then you might want to open up an Etsy shop and sell your original pieces. You might also want to consider opening up an account at Zazzle. I know a very talented artist; I suggested that he open up a Zazzle account. He hasn’t done much with it, and doesn’t make much money. I am not a talented artist, but I know how to do some things, and I do make some money at Zazzle. There are other companies that you can design for, but I don’t know much about them, so I can’t recommend them.
Amazon mTurk: My main way of earning money is by producing content and designing for Zazzle, but when you earn money there, you are dependent upon people reading your stuff, buying from you, and clicking on your links. After a while, the income is fairly predictable, but it takes a while to really grow your business. If you’re looking for a bit of extra income but can’t wait to grow your business, you can sign up for an Amazon mTurk account. At mTurk, there are thousands of small little jobs to do, like rewriting sentences, categorizing products, or answering surveys. Most don’t pay much, but they don’t take a long time to do either.
I recently wanted to earn enough money to get a Roku box to watch Glenn Beck Television on, but the money I earn from designing generally pays for my daughter’s gymnastics. To earn extra money, I worked for Amazon mTurk. Between the mTurk assignments and the Swagbucks Amazon gift cards I earned while conducting web searches to complete these assignments, it took me about three weeks, in my spare time and while watching GBTV, to earn enough for a Roku box (I bought the more expensive version). I plan to continue to do some of these assignments in order to afford some other things that I would like. It’s not great money, but I work when I want, and for how long I want.
Host a Radio Show: I haven’t done this one, although I’m thinking about maybe doing an occasional radio program. You may have listened to podcasts from BlogTalkRadio. Anybody can host a program, and the only equipment you need is a computer and a phone. There is a way to earn a share of the advertising revenue from your listeners, along with the opportunity to get your name known in order to help support any other business ventures that you have. If this is all that you are doing, I don’t think that it would earn a great deal of money at first, but it can be a great way for you to get your name out and get people to visit your other web sites.
Those are some ways that you can earn a little spare cash, even if nobody out there is willing to hire you. Of course, you’re not limited to just this kind of work. If you’re creative, then you can probably think of something else. There’s no reason to cry and say that there’s no work out there. It may not pay what you would like, but if you’re between jobs, what else do you have to do? Working independently does give you experience that you can put on your resume and perhaps land you a job at another company, if that’s what you are looking for.
I’ve been reading Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged over the last few days and it’s been hard to put down. I don’t know why, but it seems like I often read the right books at the right time. Rand is almost prophetic in some of the things that she says. Right now, her book seems to fit in nicely with the whole Occupy Wall Street crowd.
In Atlas Shrugged, there are two kinds of people: the looters and the producers. I’d have to guess that most of the people occupying Wall Street, Los Angeles, Seattle, and wherever they’re occupying, are looters. They think that they have the right to other people’s work. They’re unhappy not because the government is taking too much from them, but because they aren’t receiving enough from the government.
There are some services that it makes sense that the government provides. Roads. Courts. The military. We all benefit from them; we all need them. Should the government provide schools? I know that they started out with good intentions in mind, and perhaps it makes sense that local communities get together and provide local schools (or at least provide financial assistance for those families that can’t afford private schools), but this doesn’t have to be done on a national scale. Do we really need the FDA telling us that aspartame and vaccines are good but raw milk is going to make us sick? Couldn’t we create a private organization, like Consumer Reports, to do that sort of work?
I was struck by one chapter in the book where one of the main producers, Dagny Taggart, quits her job and goes to live in a cabin in the country. She quit because the government passed a set of laws that basically took away all of her freedom of choice about whether to work or not (just wait, I can see situations where that could be coming to the United States).
In isolation, her character remained the same. She saw problems at her little house and decided to fix them, repairing shingles, creating a walkway, and planting flowers. The nearby town didn’t receive a grocery store shipment because it had rained, and every time it rains the road becomes impassable. She asked, if the road always washed out when it rained, why didn’t they just fix it? Not being one to just sit and complain, she started thinking about fixing the road herself, after she fixed up her little cabin a bit.
While Dagny might have been a railroad heiress, her success didn’t come because her family was rich. Even without all of her monetary possessions around her, she was still getting things done and making improvements to her surroundings.
So what are you? Are you a looter or a producer at heart? You can’t tell by how much money you have now. When you face a problem, do you whine because it’s hopeless, or do you do your best to fix it? Do you want to rely on yourself for the things you need, trading your hard work with others fairly, or do you want others to provide things for you? I realize that sometimes people need a little help, especially in this economy, but when you receive help, is it your goal to get to the point where you can make it on your own and perhaps pay it forward, or are you happy right where you are at?
After I left the military several years ago and time had passed for a few years, things were looking pretty dim for me, in my eyes. My husband’s job wasn’t paying that much, and it didn’t look like there was ever hope to get paid anything above mediocrity. We were having trouble paying bills. We had a string of job losses and our house caught on fire. It was a very difficult time in my life.
Things started to look up. Dh started going to college (he’s now in law school). I started my own business. Dh helped start a business. Good things have started happening to us. Dh was accepted into the Alliance Defense Fund’s Blackstone Fellowship, and today he received an email from somebody asking if he would like to apply for a student assistant position at a law office. I don’t know if he will get the job or not, but the fact that someone is seeking him out asking if he wants to apply for a job is pretty good.
In the past few years, I’ve seen so many ways where people can create incomes, even if they can’t find a job. Maybe they’re not high paying, but they help out, and you can put them on your resume if you still want to work for someone else (I put my Epinions experience on my resume when looking for a writing job; I did get the job). Often, you don’t even need money to start out. Perhaps, if you’re crying for someone else to come save you financially, you might want to think and try to figure out ways that you can start producing.
As the economic situation of this country seems to go down the toilet, more and more people seem to want to voice their opinion on “the poor”. The definition of “poor” is usually defined by the government as someone that makes under a certain income. Stuart Varney seems to have his own conception about how “poor” people get that way:
In the last week, the AP published a series of sob stories about poor people who were having trouble making it in today’s economy. It received a lot of criticism from Blaze readers (I personally like the Blaze, although not all the commentators).
Stop painting the poor with some broad brush. The “poverty” level is just a number. Do people realize that two different families with the same income can live completely different lifestyles?
It is true that there are people that spend years on welfare and never do anything about it. It’s also true that for some, “poverty” is just a bump in the road between years of prosperity. In my family’s case, we used to make the equivalent of six figures… and I expect, between my business, the business that my husband helped found, and the law degree that my husband is in the process of getting, that we will not be among the “impoverished” several years from now.
What makes Stuart Varney think that I am “poor in spirit” because I don’t earn much money? I go to church… in fact, I give to the church when I can, even though that means that I might have to put in a little extra hours working. I spend a lot of time with my kids – that usually happens when you homeschool. I read books by Gibbon and Geoffrey of Monmouth, and can converse with you on topics like the Little Ice Age and how to protect your emergency equipment from an EMP blast. I didn’t vote for Obama and I support the Tea Party. I don’t support the RINOs that seem to be the media darlings for the Republican presidential nomination either. I support small government, and support massive cuts in entitlements. I don’t use the entitlement that most people take to send their kids to a public school. So from where am I lacking this “richness of spirit” that Mr. Varney seems to think comes with a massive income?
People with the same incomes can live completely different lifestyles. We’re not in debt. We couldn’t afford credit cards even if we wanted them, because we couldn’t afford the payments. We own our two cars outright – one of my cars is 24 years old (I didn’t even have a driver’s license back then). The other car we once had a payment on, but I’m glad to get rid of that, because it was hard to afford. If there’s any way possible, I’d like to pay cash for our next car. I’ll have to save up for that one.
We cut back in many areas that most people spend a lot of money on. My cell phone is for emergencies only and is prepaid, so it’s pretty cheap. Cable and internet are free with our apartment, which is relatively inexpensive since it’s student housing. Those savings, combined with not having car or credit card payments, allow us to live fairly comfortably, even though we live below the “poverty line”. When we first lost the majority of our income, it was hard, but we’ve learned to live with it. I’d like more wiggle room, but we’re okay. We’ll be wealthier someday, more than likely. My main complaint is with people who think that “poor” people are Obama-supporting, high-school dropout, idiotic welfare cheats that don’t have jobs, just because their income happens to be under a certain level. That’s just not the case all of the time.
In some ways, I’m better off than when I was raking in the dough. Back then, we didn’t pay much attention to our spending because the money was always coming. I would spend a $20 like it was nothing. We constantly overdrafted our bank account as a result. That doesn’t happen now. I pay attention to my money. When dd accidentally dropped her tennis shoes in the water, I told her that I couldn’t replace them, and that she needed to pray for shoes. Well, we did, and God provided about 10 pairs of shoes within a week.
So please save your judgements for people based on their income levels. While I do know people who are having financial troubles because they made stupid mistakes, we are not in financial trouble. I know of other people who make less than me that are also not in financial trouble. Money is not a measure of how smart or kind someone is.
I’m sitting here without power, but miraculously, I have Internet for a bit. This I guess will be a miscellaneous post.
Hillary Clinton rang the bell at the New York Stock Exchange today. The Dow Jones fell several hundred points. Is she bad luck? Gold and silver didn’t go up either.
Mexico, Southern California and part of Arizona had their power knocked out last night. Does that have anything to do with the solar flares that I wrote about the other day?
Speaking of power, my power is out. My dh has a phone with mobile wi-fi broadcast capability. I normally hate the amount of money he spends on that thing, but right now it is coming in handy. Until my laptop runs out of juice. Then I guess there’s not much to do except read. This power outage doesn’t have anything to do with solar flares though. I’m sure it was knocked out in the lightning storm.
There are armed security forces in New York City running around with machine guns because of the suspected terrorist threat. I’ve never seen military threats like those in the United States. I’ve seen them in Mexico, in Ecuador, in Colombia, and in Italy, but never in the United States. I guess that the times are changing.
Things are interesting. Hopefully the power will come back sometime tonight so I’ll be able to be productive tomorrow (because this battery will not last).
About a year ago, I wrote about Sunspots and Global Cooling. For the previous few years prior, I had witnessed cool temperatures like I had never seen before in my life. For the first 18 years of my life, I lived in Western Washington, and it had never snowed on Christmas. The last couple of times I’ve visited my family over Christmas, it snowed. My daughter thinks that it always snows there. I even witnessed graupel (which is a little like snow, a little like hail) here in Phoenix over the past winter.
Looks like things may be changing. The solar flares look like they might be kicking up again. Over the last day or so, we’ve had two M-class solar flares and one X-class solar flare (the largest kind), all headed towards the earth.
Other than the fact that it could alter the Earth’s temperature, these solar flares could affect us in other ways in the next couple of days. If you remembered the height of the last solar cycle in the 1990s, there were times when satellite service would be interrupted and television or cell phone service would have problems. Of course then, people weren’t as dependent on their cell phones, or even the Internet.
Over the next few days, you don’t want to have to rely on your cell phone, GPS, or even television service. There may be interruptions caused by these solar flares. Hopefully it won’t come to much, but it is something to watch for.
Last year, I read Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – at least the abridged edition. It’s a difficult book to read, but it covers some important history (I suppose if I ever get the time I will read the entire unabridged history).
In it, Gibbon describes how Rome went from this powerful society with the most advanced roads and technology on the planet, to being a society which we know of as Medieval Europe. I personally don’t even think we know the half of Rome’s greatness at its height. We are still discovering some of the things they did. Medieval Europe was just so low that nearly everything was lost. The people were so desperate (or something) that they would tear apart the old structures of Rome in order to rebuild their own buildings. The Colosseum at one point was used as a garbage dump.
Rome declined gradually, but I’m sure that the people felt something. Where once the army was practically invincible, it starts getting defeated on the battlefield. While the road system once allowed people to travel from one end of the empire to another, the paths started to crumble. The aquaducts that carried fresh water started to break down, and the sewers started to back up.
Today, America seems to be in decline, just like in Gibbon’s history. Shows like Inspector America and The Crumbling of America talk about how America’s infrastructure is breaking down. I witnessed it myself a couple of years ago as I drove up the California coast. Our educational system is flawed, and our politicians are corrupt. We aren’t winning our wars in a decisive manner like we did in World Wars I and II. America no longer supports a space shuttle program.
The rest of the world isn’t off the hook either. Riots abound nearly everywhere. Famines plague some of the poorer countries. Europeans are having a self-inflicted energy crisis just like the United States: countries are closing nuclear plants and don’t want to use coal or fossil fuels, so Germany and England may face blackouts. We may abandon the International Space Station because of problems with one of Russia’s shuttles.
Although we live with technology that makes our lives better, the society that we live in is fragile. We need educated people to keep things running. We need energy. We need people to work in all of the industries that we depend on for our lifestyle.
I do believe that the Lord is coming back soon, but if he didn’t, then I think that we would see a serious change in the way that we live.
Last night, I saw an article about a grandpa who was in some legal trouble for forcing his grandkids to go on a hike at the Grand Canyon. My first thought was, “what’s wrong with that?” I made my kids go hiking while we were on vacation.
There’s a little more to the story than the headline mentions. First, it was an 18 mile hike. That’s a little excessive for unwilling participants. I personally think that many kids can go on 18 mile hikes, but unless the kids’ family is hiking all the time, that’s a little much. Secondly, it was 108º outside. I like to hike, but I personally would pass on an 18 mile hike in that kind of heat.
The story doesn’t end there. The grandpa wasn’t giving the kids food or water on the hike. I don’t care if it’s 58º or 108º outside, if you’re hiking for 18 miles, you need to have something to drink. Plus, grandpa was hitting the kids with towels or something.
So it makes a little more sense that people would be upset that grandpa would force his grandkids to take a hike.
I’ve written before about how much I love Amazon.com’s Prime program. My husband was able to get it because he’s in law school, and they offer free shipping to students. I order from Amazon all the time as a result. I love knowing that whatever I order from them will come in two days, for free (the shipping part at least).
Anyway, Zazzle has it’s new Black program. You can get a year of free standard shipping for $10, or a year of free 2 day shipping (similar to Amazon’s Prime program) for $39.95. They offer a free trial too.
Shipping can always be a big cost when you order something, so I love this new program. You can get some great Zazzle products (like this wolf poster by DRCrafts), buttons, stickers, etc. I know that it seems far away now, but the end of the year will come up sooner than you know it, and custom calendars are very cool gift ideas. I did one for my family with my kids pictures in it quite a while ago.
If you’re somebody that already designs for Zazzle, then I’m sure that you already knew about the Zazzle Black program, but if you’re not a Zazzle designer, then you might not have known. I personally will be more likely to order from Zazzle if I know that I can get the reduced shipping costs. The “World’s Greatest Grandma” shopping bag that I ordered for my mom’s Christmas present seemed to be of really excellent quality, and sometimes I think about ordering things but the shipping always keeps me from ordering something small.
I think that most of us care at least a little bit about what kind of impact that we’ll have on the world around us. Most of us don’t get to see what the world would be like if they had never been born, like George Bailey on It’s a Wonderful Life, but sometimes we do find out, years after the fact, that something small that we did really did affect someone else (and hopefully in a good way). When I was a kid, I was a little too mean to my brother, so it’s nice to know that I did have something of a good effect on people.
The closest thing that I could ever think about that happened in my life, George Bailey style, was one summer at our family reunion when my cousin Henry was in the pool and was struggling. I picked him up and carried him over to the side of the pool. There were other people there that day; I’m sure if I hadn’t been in the pool at the time, somebody else would have saved him.
I got to see my cousin Henry over the weekend. I hadn’t seen him in a very long time; probably not since I graduated from high school. Over the years, he hasn’t spent too much time with my family; he’s actually the son of my uncle’s ex-wife, and I guess that some people in my extended family (which used to be pretty close, it’s a shame it’s not like that any more) hurt his feelings or something. It was good seeing him again. He said that he always thought that I was pretty cool, but I was a lot older than him so we had never really gotten to know each other. He also mentioned me carrying him out of that swimming pool. I guess that if I had ever been in a situation where I thought that I was going to drown and someone pulled me from the pool, I might remember it, but I was surprised that he had remembered it.
We all do small things every day, and occasionally we do a big thing. We don’t have to pull somebody out of a swimming pool or give up our dreams to save a small town’s building and loan, but if we do the right thing, we might find someday that we did affect somebody’s life. We may not hear about it for years, or even in this life, but we’re all here to do something. Some day, we may find out that we had a wonderful life after all.
Ever since I became interested in real-food nutrition about a year ago, I’ve noticed that a lot of people that are interested in health often seem to be supporters of the Democratic party. Not all, of course. Some would like the government to pass laws to tell the unhealthy masses what they can and cannot eat.
I do not support that, of course. If you have read much of what I write, then you would probably guess that I’m conservative. I’m not a Republican; I consider myself a Constitution Party member (I voted for the Constitution party Candidate in 2004, in fact). I do support much of what the Tea Party supports (although it’s not a real party). While I don’t support passing laws telling us what we can and cannot eat (I prefer education), I do think that there’s something that both real-food advocates and conservatives can agree on: farm freedom.
While large-scale agriculture doesn’t seem to have a problem with governmental regulations (many of these companies help influence the regulations), small farms are increasingly the target of governmental raids. Amish farms have been raided for selling raw milk. One person was fined over $90,000 for selling rabbits (making about a $200 profit before the fine). Another person was fined thousands of dollars for giving food away. In some ways, we’re not much different from the Tunisian fruit vendor that set himself on fire because he was tired of the government interfering in his life and making it difficult for him to earn a living.
I don’t care if you like to eat healthy, clean foods, or love to eat Ho-Hos and Coke every day at lunchtime. If you’re an American, I hope that you can at least agree that small farmers should be free from excessive governmental interference. If there’s a true health hazard, then perhaps the government might want to warn us; however, in many cases, there is no reason to take away a farmer’s livelihood. I’d prefer freedom, even if it means there is a little risk involved.
Work You Can Do Without Getting Hired
– at least the abridged edition. It’s a difficult book to read, but it covers some important history (I suppose if I ever get the time I will read the entire unabridged history).
and 
talk about how America’s infrastructure is breaking down. I witnessed it myself a couple of years ago as I drove up the California coast. Our educational system is flawed, and our politicians are corrupt. We aren’t winning our wars in a decisive manner like we did in World Wars I and II. America no longer supports a space shuttle program.
, but sometimes we do find out, years after the fact, that something small that we did really did affect someone else (and hopefully in a good way). When I was a kid, I was a little too mean to my brother, so it’s nice to know that I did have something of a good effect on people.
