Self-employment Archives - Page 22 of 22

Negotiate For A Raise Or Work On Side Income?

Last Updated: October 18, 2021 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 65 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Hey everyone! Happy Friday. I’ve decided that every other Friday I will attempt to publish a short post that asks all of you readers a question. Today’s question is about what is more important to you: negotiating for a raise or working on increasing your side income.

Both negotiating for a raise and working on side income are important to me. Of course I want to work my hardest at my job, but my side income is also growing at a very good rate. Both are very important to me.

As everyone of course knows, I talk about extra income and working on side hustles a lot on my blog. It has pretty much taken over my blog, and that’s because it’s the main thing that I’m working on in my life and ours lives revolve around it right now.

Last week, Savvy Financial Latina published the post I Got My First Raise. In this post she said:

I wasn’t expecting a huge raise, but somehow the raise I got disappointed me. I should be happier my paycheck is increasing by $50 every two weeks, but somehow I’m not. $50 is not going to change my life. Don’t get me wrong I love that I’m earning $50 every paycheck. An increase in income is always good by me! I just don’t want to be stuck in the pool of workers who expect and/or are satisfied with a small percentage merit increase every year.

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Pursuing What I Love or What Brings in the (Stable) Money

Last Updated: May 1, 2018 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 114 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Around one week ago I asked all of you a bunch of questions because I want to learn more about all of you. A lot of you said that the job you currently have is not your dream job.

I’m sure that a lot of you can imagine and/or see where my posts have been going lately. Last year I made the post Do You Want To Be Self Employed and I have been thinking about it ever since. It seems like passion has been taking over the personal finance world a lot lately, with Jen, Holly and numerous other wonderful ladies and gentlemen who have decided to strike it out on their own. Guess what? Finding your dream job is possible!

The other day I was reading a post on Get Rich Slowly about how one reader quit her very promising and high-paying career so that she could enjoy life instead. And then after I read that post, I read about how another GRS reader actually QUIT his passion to take a boring job.

I’m not sure what I want to do anymore. My side hustle income is higher than ever, and I’m constantly looking to diversify it. Right now, I am definitely at the point where I could take a leap of faith and start pursuing other side hustles that I love, and focusing on those 100% instead of my normal 8-5 office job. [Read more…]

Staff Writing is the Perfect Side Hustle

Last Updated: September 21, 2020 BY Jordann - 36 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Growing up, I always had a job. In the beginning, it was making manuals at my father’s manufacturing company for a measly $4 per hour.

Then, as I got older and was able to accept more responsibility, I boarded horses at our family farm and did some training. Then came the gas station, then the drug store, and then several jobs throughout University. I’ve always maintained some kind of extra employment throughout my life.

They’ve all come with their own perks. At the drug store I was able buy anything I wanted at cost, one job in university allowed me to work from home, but the best side job I’ve ever come across is staff writing.

Michelle has written about how she makes extra income on this blog before, she’s a whiz at it. While I’m not a prodigy like her, I have managed to secure a staff writing job, and I love it.

Please read How To Start A Blog On Bluehost if you are interested in starting your own blog (which can then help you find freelance writing jobs). There is also a way to earn a free domain through that blog post and you will receive a discounted price through my tutorial! 🙂

Staff Writing is The Best Part Time Job

When I think back to all of the part time jobs I’ve had over the years, this one is hands down the best. I get to pick my own hours. If I work best in the morning, I’ll write in the morning, if I want to write my posts a month in advance, I can do that too. I get to earn money while sitting next to my fiance on the couch, and since I’m always trying to find ways to spend more time with him, staff writing satisfies this like no other part time job could. [Read more…]

How To Become a Virtual Assistant

Last Updated: June 20, 2022 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 41 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Want to learn how to become a virtual assistant, but perhaps first you’re wondering what is a virtual assistant or what does a virtual assistant do?

How do I become a virtual assistant? That is a question that many of you asked, especially after I wrote my post last week titled What Does a Virtual Assistant Do? Now that we’ve cleared up some of the roles that you can fill as a virtual assistant, we, of course need to cover how you can become one yourself.

Many of you send me e-mails and leave comments saying that you’ll never reach the level of extra income that I have, but I definitely want to know that you are wrong. Just last year I was looking up at all the big bloggers and thinking the same thing “How nice that must be to have all of that extra income.” But now I actually have a decent amount of side income, and I’m still trying to increase my extra income even more. There’s always room for improvement!

Virtual assistant tasks may include social media management, formatting and editing content, scheduling appointments or travel, email management, and more. Basically, you can get paid to do any task that needs to be done in someone’s business, but doesn’t need to be done by them.

If you are looking for free work from home courses for virtual assistants, then, I recommend checking out Jumpstart Your Virtual Assistant Business. In that link, you’ll receive a free worksheet and workbook that will help you decide what virtual assistant services you can offer (there are over 150 choices!).

Related content:

Recently, I detailed all of the different ways that I make extra income and I also recently talked about how to get into freelance writing. I hope all of my posts have been helpful. I have many more planned still also. I plan on talking about starting your own blog, finding your niche and everything else. If there is anything that you would like me to cover, let me know.

A lot of you have asked how I found my virtual assistant positions. I will start off by saying that I am not an expert in this area, and I had to do research for this post in order to help you all. I am learning about everything at the same time as all of you. So, while I have not tested everything myself, I am almost 100% positive that these ideas should work for you. [Read more…]

So You Want to Be a Freelance Writer?

Last Updated: September 9, 2021 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 104 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Last week I finally started my Ways to Earn Extra Income. A lot of you have questions, and today I figured I would continue my Extra Income series with how to become a freelance writer or a staff writer. A lot of you seem very interested in this. For the sake of this post, a staff writer = freelance writer, just to make this all easy.

Before September, I never thought I would be staff writing, and I never even thought about it. But once I began, I really started to enjoy it. I really love to write (yes, I do realize that I’m not the best and I probably should proofread more, but I do like to talk), and writing for different blogs was fun for me.

And I’m not going to lie, the money is nice also. Being able to write about topics that I enjoy, from the comfort of my home is great. I try (yes, try) to throw all of my extra money towards student loans, since I do have a $38,000 student loan payoff plan that I am working on.

I believe I started freelance writing in September of 2012. I DID make mistakes though. I signed up for way too much, and as a result, my own blog suffered. I feel like the content on my blog wasn’t the greatest when I had signed up for so many staff writing assignments. Luckily, that did not last long as some of the assignments were only short-term.

Then I ended up stopping a couple of others and right now I am at my perfect amount. Taking on too many writing assignments at one time was definitely a mistake that I made.

Related content: How To Become A Freelance Writer

My tips on how to become a freelance writer:

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Do You Want To Be Self Employed?

Last Updated: November 18, 2014 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 3 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Yesterday, I made a tweet about how everyone keeps asking me the same question about life after my MBA. “Will you stay in your same position or apply at new companies?” I have been asked this by multiple people online, and ALL of my friends, family and those that I had my MBA classes with.

My plan is to stay at my current position. This also led to the next question that a couple of other people asked me (Such as 20s Finances), which was “Why don’t you go the self employed route?”

Below are a couple of tweets that others said. There are some tweets missing, so they don’t really go in order just if you’re confused.

The girls over at So Over This and Savvy Financial Latina are on opposite ends of the self employment debate as you can see above. I’m still not really sure where I fall. I do think being self employed would be great, but I do like the stability of a constant paycheck.

I think one common misunderstanding is that self employed life would be easier. However, I think it’s the exact opposite of that. You will be taking on all types of roles and doing all types of tasks, which, especially in the beginning, will be very time consuming.

Self discipline is also another big factor when it comes to being able to be successful in your own business. Since you will be your own boss, and you will most likely control your hours and the work that you do take on (and the clients you chose), you have to be able to follow some sort of schedule in order to stay on task. No one will be there to tell you to hurry up or give you a deadline.

Below are benefits of either choice, and yes I do realize that not all are positively true for each situation.

Benefits of being self employed:
1. You get to be your own boss. Don’t like working for other people? Well then be your own boss!

2. Your company might be your passion, or something you enjoy doing. I’m assuming that if you start your own business, that it’s not something that you completely hate. It’s either something you like doing, or that you are really good at.

3. You get to set your own hours. I don’t know about you, but I am NOT a morning person at all. Being able to set my own hours or start a couple of hours later would be wonderful.

4. You are in control. This goes hand in hand with the other 3 reasons above, but it’s the truth. You are in control of what you decide to sell, make, market, advertising, and everything else.

Benefits of being an employee:
1. You will not bring work home with you. Yes, some jobs require you to bring your work phone and work home, but if you are self employed, you will most likely dedicate much more time.

2. You want steady paychecks. If you are self employed, there might be months (especially when you are first starting out) where your income might not be the greatest. Maybe they’ll never get up to the point where you would like them. With being an employee of someone else, for the most part, you will have stable paychecks.

3. Vacation, health insurance and other benefits. Yes you have benefits if you are self employed, but the costs will be high. With a position at a company, it will most likely be paid for, or at least some of it will be.

4. You enjoy working with other people. If you’re self employed, you will most likely be working by yourself (at least in the beginning). Maybe you like making friends at work and interacting with others. Not saying that you can’t do this when you’re self employed, but you won’t be surrounded by as many people.

Do you want to be your own boss, or have a boss?