I've spent the past week attempting to discern a feasible earning strategy. Much like Felicia from No Job for Mom, I've come to the conclusion that traditional employment is not a good fit for me. Hyper-structured, mundane and repetitive tasks bore me to tears. W hen I get bored, I get depressed, and deliver sub-par results on jobs I should be able to do in my sleep. At the same time, there is no get rich quick scheme out there. So what's a girl to do?

Here's my current plan. I'm working five jobs. Say what? Follow me if you can...

1. I'm working as a speech coach at my old high school. I'm being paid next to nothing to coach a speaking event, and absolutely nothing to coach debate. Why do it? Public speaking, in case you haven't noticed from prior posts, is a major passion of mine. Passion = drive = sanity. Got it? It's not a massive time commitment, and it keeps me motivated.

2. I'm working as a copywriter for WeDeal.com. This keeps me working for profit in the writing sector, boosts my resume, and provides supplementary income. Because my subject matter changes with every piece of copy, it keeps me interested in the work and churning out good results. Not a bad thing.

3. I'm working retail. Am I thrilled about the concept in theory? Absolutely not. It does nothing to my resume, is not something I'm passionate about, and pays very little. But you know what? It pays. Reliably. It gets me out of the house and mandates socialization. It gets me a 40% discount on cute clothes. Right now, these literal benefits outweigh the intangible perceived detriments, so I'll take it.

4. I'm working as a head hunter. I can't particularly decide how I feel about the work, and I'm just getting started, so... time will tell how beneficial this position becomes. There are four things that excite me about this job. For one, I can do it from home on my own terms. This means I'm around baby. For two, the money is (theoretically) awesome. It's a commission only position, which didn't interest me at first, but the way it's set up, it's very difficult to not make money. The guys running the firm are a year or two older than me, made a killing in their first year, and are expanding rapidly. I like my odds. Finally, the position FORCES me to do something I haven't focused on enough- networking. Networking = contacts = more opportunities. Yes, please. Finally, I'm helping people find work and advance in their careers. There's something very satisfying about that.

Speaking of which, if you're in the market for a new job, drop me a line.... but back on subject....

5. I'm writing. This is where I get to the point of the post.

See, for the most part, I've written for upfront payment only. I couldn't afford to write a lot of residual earning pieces, because I needed money right away. What I began to realize was that there are a limited amount of reliably paying titles available for upfront pay in my areas of passion (communication, business management, etc.) and that sucks. A lot.

Residual earnings sounded awesome. You write, you publish, you make money... forever, basically. You write about what you want. You do so at your leisure. You do it from home. THAT is what I wanted to do, but didn't have a cushion to fall back on.

This is what I figured out my cushion will likely be on a monthly basis, reliably:

Copywriting- $500
Retail- $640

Remember, I'm living at home. This pays for daycare, my terrible cigarette habit, transportation, basic debt payments, etc. It lets me save a tiny bit. This doesn't include the head hunting position, but from a very, very, VERY conservative perspective, that should be bringing me in 2k a month. With that said, I'm looking at $3140 a month at least, giving me $37,680 a year, plus around $700 annually for coaching. That's enough of a cushion for me to revisit the concept of residual writing.

The real question is whether all of this work is worth my time. This is how it breaks down on a weekly basis:

Coaching- 5 hrs
Copywriting- 4 hrs
Retail- 20 hrs
Head hunting- 20 hrs
Writing- 8 hrs

Total hours worked weekly: 57 hours

Multiply that by 52 and divide as necessary... I'm making about $12.94 an hour. Not a fantastic hourly wage. However, this assumes the lowest possible monthly income for head hunting and no income from writing. More realistically, I should be making around $3500 a month head hunting. When it comes to writing... it's hard to predict. My goal is to make AT LEAST $2000 via residual earnings by this time next year. If both of those numbers come to fruition, I'm looking at $19.69 an hour. It doesn't put me in the millionaire's club, but it's something.

There are two distinct benefits to this approach, as far as I'm concerned. For one, income is largely unlimited. Aside from my speech stipend, none of these numbers are static. The copywriting load is increasing week to week. I could theoretically get bumped up in hours with the retail gig, which will come with a raise if I have anything to say about it. The head hunting, if I like it and do well, will likely wind up trading off with the retail hours for substantial financial gain. Writing? Well, all you need to do is talk to people like Felicia, Pat Flynn and a myriad of others to realize just how lucrative that CAN be.

The second and most important reason to love this set-up is that it keeps me around my daughter. Aside from the retail work, I get to spend the day with her. Yes, I'm working, but as I've mentioned in prior posts, distractions do little to my productivity. The other plus is that much of this work can be done when she's sleeping. Regardless, I still have plenty of time to play. I mean, I'm working 57 hours. 25 of those hours are out of the house. If there are 168 hours a week, and I assume 8 hours of sleep a night (haha- pipe dream), that still leaves me with 7 waking hours a day, on average, that are not work related.

So, here we go. I'm going to give it a shot. We'll see how it plays out, and I'll keep you updated, but only time will tell.

*Photo credit to mzacha at Morgue File