Creative ideas for turning time into money

December 23, 2014 1:05 AM

I'm a poverty-stricken grad student writing a dissertation. I want to use what free time I have to supplement my income. Ideas please.

I probably have about 15-20 hours a week that I would like to turn into money. I don't want this to be a formal part-time job for various reasons; I want to be able to make a little cash when it looks like I have a couple of hours free. I'm in Berkeley, CA. Some things I've thought about:

- Tutoring. There's probably not a huge amount of demand in my field (classics / linguistics), but maybe there's some.
- Proofreading / editing. I'd be good at this, but I don't have much experience or a client base; how best to start?
- I have a car which I don't use much (but still need), but it's too old to qualify for renting out on Getaround / Relayrides or for driving on Uber / Lyft / Sidecar. I figure I could upgrade to a newer car for around $4K; would it make sense to do this and hope to make the money back and start turning a profit?
- Retail arbitrage? Do people really make money doing this?
- ...? Over to you, MeFi.

posted by zeri to Work & Money (31 answers total)

Just a warning that this extra income may impact your taxes, financial aid, fafsa, etc. So do a little digging.
posted by k8t at 1:18 AM on December 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Dog walking.

Minimal overheads, you get exercise at the same time, and you can make quite a lot.
posted by Salamander at 1:52 AM on December 23, 2014 [11 favorites]

Mystery shopping. Sometimes the payoff comes in the form of a free meal or merchandise.
posted by tippy at 2:32 AM on December 23, 2014

Deliver pizza.
posted by Rob Rockets at 3:52 AM on December 23, 2014

Cat sitting, dog walking, house sitting. If you get on it now, I bet there are a few people who need emergency last minute care.
posted by Toddles at 3:57 AM on December 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

For all the choices the problem is this is an independent business. I think they are all potentially viable in the long run but its hard to see that you can get it off the ground only in the limited time you have. If you want to start up an independent business I think you need to stake out at least a few months of full time work to get on your feet before you go part time. If you can do that then my suggestion is that rather than focusing on your specialisation I am guessing you could do a good turn doing humanities AP and Verbal SAT prep as well as university statement and admissions tutoring.
posted by Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory at 5:02 AM on December 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Babysitting. Esp with younger kids, they're in bed by 7 or 8 pm and then, time to study.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 5:08 AM on December 23, 2014 [4 favorites]

I can't find the site right now, but previous AskMe's about part-time jobs for grad students linked to a company that offers editing/proofreading services to academics who want someone to check the English of their paper before submitting to journals.

It may be worth reconsidering the more formal part time job, if you get a bit unorthodox. My best friend (who is writing her dissertation right now) has been working in the office of a church (where she isn't a member) in Berkeley since she was an undergrad. She's one of a rotating array of students at the front desk working around their class schedule (and now works one morning a week, mostly as a way to schedule time that is explicitly not for school work, I think). My guess is that there are other places that want office assistance that aren't going to schedule shifts like a shop would.

Also, if you have any childcare experience and you hustle, you could try finding some people whose kids to watch before school starts again. My coworkers with kids (not in the Bay Area) all have a few days in the next couple weeks where they haven't been able to find somewhere for the kids to be. Babysitting generally could be an option. (I know someone who worked as a nanny in Berkeley as an undergrad, but I think she had fairly fixed hours, like X afternoons a week or something.)

Tutoring is a bit hit or miss. It is lucrative, but it's not many hours. My department maintained a list of grad students will to tutor. I never looked for students beyond sticking myself on the list. (Note: we concluded that how many clients you ended up with tended to be a function of a) where your name appeared alphabetically and b) how 'American' your name was perceived to be. There were a few people who were never contacted over a number of years, likely because of (b). They were the go to people for "I'm too busy, but so-and-so would be great" responses.) No one ever really had more than two, maybe three, students in a semester.

Kumon or something would get you a lower wage but more consistent work, so you might come out ahead. But that's presumably scheduled.

You could look for a gig with DSP as a notetaker or reader or something. I think you get a 1099, so tax isn't withheld and the notetaker wage is only $12.50/hr. (I worked as a typist taking dictation and while my pay was at least partially funded by DSP (and I got a 1099 from them), I'm not sure if I was in the same situation as notetakers.)

Nothing that's fairly flexible is going to get you 15-20 hours a week, I don't think. But you could definitely consistently bring in a bit of extra money.
posted by hoyland at 5:11 AM on December 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Be a Task Rabbit person.

Teach English as a Second Language through community learning

Housecleaning
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 5:21 AM on December 23, 2014

If you know linguistics, and you know more than one language -- even if not perfectly fluently -- you could be an exceptional language tutor.
posted by amtho at 5:28 AM on December 23, 2014

The pay for tasks on Mechanical Turk isn't usually very good, but it's probably the most flexible way to make at minimum beer money levels of income. Reddit's HITs Worth Turking For has users that put up the better paying tasks they find. Generally the better tasks require some kind of test to get a qualification with some specific requester. CrowdSource has writing/proofreading tasks for various projects (e.g. product descriptions for office supplies, fishing equipment, clothes etc.) pretty consistently, and the test to get their qualifications is pretty easy to pass if you're decent with grammar and so on. I can usually swing at least like $10/hr when they have tasks up, often a bit more.
posted by Gymnopedist at 5:54 AM on December 23, 2014 [7 favorites]

Admissions essay editing. Slightly sleazier than editing through school but more lucrative and there are jobs to be had.
posted by pretentious illiterate at 6:01 AM on December 23, 2014

Seconding the suggestion of mturk. You are limited to submitting 100 tasks (called HITs) a day for your first 10 days. Many of the good HITs will only be available after you submit 1000 HITs. You will be stuck doing some mind numbingly horrible HITs for your first 1000, but after that, it really picks up if you know where to look. Check out the guides on mturk Grind and post in the daily thread if you need help. The pay really varies, but if you just need some extra money it's a good low-effort option you can do anywhere.
posted by dangerbird at 6:35 AM on December 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

Be careful in taking on these jobs - things like tutoring and mystery shopping can end up costing you as much as you earn, if not more, in terms of travel expenses and time and laborious after-action reports and so on.

I wouldn't spend more than 40 hours a week on your dissertation, but if any of those 15-20 hours of free time could be imputed to dissertation time and still come in <=40 hours, spend that time on the dissertation to get it done sooner.
posted by tel3path at 6:40 AM on December 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

Writing and selling short erotic stories in a profitable niche.
posted by Sternmeyer at 6:40 AM on December 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

When I was in med school in my free time I edited application essays for essayedge.com; this was years ago but it appears to still be in business. IIRC you could set times when you were available to work & if you can read/proofread quickly the pay is not terrible. I also was able to just make suggestions rather than, say, fully rewriting an essay, which felt less shady.
posted by n. moon at 6:55 AM on December 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Seconding babysitting--if you get a few families on your roster you could work 2-5 hours here and there while parents are working, doing chores, etc.
posted by pipti at 6:55 AM on December 23, 2014

I'm in a similar position to you, and for a while earlier this year, I supplemented my income by selling textbooks on Amazon Marketplace. I had access to a specific source where I could get them cheaply (& once that dried up, I stopped doing it) but if you have access to thrift stores or second-hand bookshops, you can browse the stacks for anything that looks like it might sell for a bunch. Textbook prices (even second-hand) are extortionate and I regularly made $50+ on a single transaction.
posted by littlegreen at 7:15 AM on December 23, 2014

For babysitting you should be able to snag a few clients Right Now if you can get references - I can't be the only self employed parent who forgot to arrange child care for winter break.

You might be able to pick up a few dollars hiring yourself out as a conversation partner in a foreign language or by offering to proofread people's essays in a classical language.
posted by bq at 7:39 AM on December 23, 2014

When I was a grad student, to supplement my income (and simultaneously write the dissertation), I sometimes participated in on campus clinical studies. Now I personally only select studies that did not involve anything worse than an aspirin, but YMMV. Believe it or not, these types of studies involved a session for an hour or two doing an exercise, and then an entire day watching videos on a VCR or doing your own work or reading (and every few hours, fill out a form that takes a minute or to) - and they paid a couple hundred dollars/study.

I found these studies by walking around the physical department of my university, but since it looks like you live near a large city, check out hospitals/want ads will advertise for subjects, too. You can put your name to participate in studies if you meet some criteria that they want, typically based on age and health.
posted by Wolfster at 7:48 AM on December 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Seconding Mechanical Turk - it's boring as hell, but you can do it from anywhere you have a laptop and if you're smart about your tasks and how you do them you can clear $10-15 an hour.
posted by Itaxpica at 7:49 AM on December 23, 2014

Do you have a car? Doing UberX at peak times would enable you to take advantage of your flexible schedule to maximize your earnings/hour.
----
Never mind. Read the question in the full. I'd confirm with Uber and Lyft that your car is too old before writing those options off for good.
posted by ewiar at 7:59 AM on December 23, 2014

I have a friend who is a musician who takes on odd jobs from CL during the day. That's how we met him, in fact. He started out for us doing handyman type of tasks, and we were always able to work with him to fit it into his schedule.

Over the last year or two we've continued to use him for handyman tasks, but have also used him for additional things like running errands, helping us set up for parties, and even babysitting when we were both too sick to get our heads off the pillow. Based on his babysitting experience with us he managed to land a gig where he watches another kid after school for 3-4 hours a day. So CL has been a good option that worked out for him. It takes a bit of hustle because you have to respond quickly to ads in order to get the gig, but if you're reliable you can turn it into a regular gig with the right person.
posted by vignettist at 8:29 AM on December 23, 2014

Tutoring, clinical studies, consumer studies, helping people move, proofreading, delivery person, part time position at a food place, "escort", modeling (for art or photography)

Not sure if these are still feasible, but I and/or others I know have done these a long time ago: online poker, virtual currency mining, buying and reselling niche apparel and collectors' items, building websites.
posted by wye naught at 8:47 AM on December 23, 2014

A year ago I would have said Task Rabbit, but apparently they've changed a lot and many of the Taskers are not happy with the program.

I babysat in grad school. Also dogsat and housesat. Hell, you could actually make a lot of money NYE because there are desperate families looking for sitters. Check around on Facebook or Nextdoor. (Someone just posted on Nextdoor in my neighborhood needing a NYE sitter.)
posted by radioamy at 8:57 AM on December 23, 2014

Server with a catering company - you can take or refuse shifts as you like without alienating the employer (they expect this - their staff usually consists of actors and students with varying availability). Here, wages range from ~$13 to $20/hr. Events tend to be on weekend evenings, though.
posted by cotton dress sock at 9:30 AM on December 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Hey, most of the folks here are well-meaning but a lot of the answers read as if the responders haven't hustled for money before.

The major issue is that in the Bay Area, your take-home from Task Rabbit, Mechanical Turk, and so forth are going to be below SF minimum wage ($11.05 starting in January) once you factor out the taxes and SSI you pay as an independent contractor. Normally your employer would pay these. That's actually the exploitation of the "sharing economy" (as well as the fact that if you get hurt at work there's no disability/worker's comp, and all liability is on you rather than your actual employer). You should also know that, de facto, federal self-employment tax takes several hundred dollars as an independent contractor straight off the top.

Catering above is a good suggestion, though--especially if you get to be a bartender. In general, being an employee (or off-the-books cash worker) is what you want.

People definitely make money doing different forms of retail arbitrage, but it requires a really deep knowledge of a sector, normally. Only you will know if you have that.

If you're really set on the flexibility thing, I would look into the food-delivery thing--some like Caviar pay a fixed amount ($10/delivery, I believe), others like Postmates you get a small fee but mostly work for tips. You can drive around. The whole sector is hurting for bodies right now, so the investment is minimal and if you don't like it you can quit.
posted by migrantology at 11:34 AM on December 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

Babysitting. I did this a all through college in Berekeley and it was great. No shortage of work, was always able to pick up more when I wanted it, pays well, etc. I used Craigslist, but you could also put flyers up at the UC and other schools. I even ended up nannying part time for a prof. If you're good (kind, reliable), word spreads too. I also found it (playing with kids) a nice change of pace.

Car is super handy - I occasionally picked kids up from school or something.
posted by jrobin276 at 12:52 PM on December 23, 2014

I would recommend checking out Thumbtack. You can post your services as a, say, editor/proofreader and you pay for specific leads they send you. Unlike Taskrabbit and MechTurk you set your own price.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:09 PM on December 23, 2014

Showing homes. A lot of rental agencies in Berkeley pay more than minimum wage for people with extra time to show rental properties and do data entry. Be honest about your time limitations and stress your time management skills. There is a list of property management companies on the Berkeley Property Owners Association website.
posted by parmanparman at 7:01 AM on December 24, 2014

If you like/are good with dogs, you can create an account on DogVacay (basically, airbnb for dog-sitters) as a dog-sitter. A friend has been doing this for a few months and makes decent money at it. She started out listing herself at the lower end of the local market ($30/day I think in DC) and then raised her rates once she had some good reviews. Speaking as someone who regularly needs a dog-sitter, I think a ABD grad student would be perfect, especially if you do your writing at home. Basically, you just hang out with the dog while you're working, and take him/her for a few walks a day.
posted by lunasol at 10:31 AM on December 24, 2014