Help me find a part time job or earn extra money

September 21, 2006 9:47 PM

Flat broke-need a part time job filter. It's been a rough year financially, I'm thinking about getting a part time job to make the ends meet. Just a bit.....

I have a full time management postition that pays well, but due to some special circumstances I need to make about $500 more a month for about 6 months. It's been decades since I've had a part time job and I don't even know what to look for.

Currently my job is very highly technical (aviation mechanics and engineering). I'm not going to ask for more money-they are very good to me.

Some easy things that I could do would be stuff like giving guitar lessons and tutoring. I can also run virtually all heavy engineering equipment, cranes, tractors, etc. I'm an all-around kinda guy, I can do just about anything.

Any ideas, inspirations, clues about breaking into tutoring/guitar teaching etc, would be greatly appreciated.

posted by snsranch to Work & Money (16 answers total)

I'd say go for the music lessons; 10 students @ $50/month'll do you. As cheesey as it is, flyers in school areas and near office buildings where the kid's parents work are fairly effective.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 9:53 PM on September 21, 2006

You can try making up some business cards, and posting them in area music shops. Craig's List postings and newspaper ads may work for you, if they're practical for your area, but be specific about your locale, so as not to waste time with people who won't come regularly due to distance. You may find that local grocery store bulletin boards, laundromats, convenience stores, copy centers, and any neighborhood small businesses that allow business card postings are a great way to "advertise" for free. Take a Saturday, and do some leg work near your house, or wherever you'd plan to give the lessons.

A lot will depend on whether you teach kids, or adults, or both, and whether you are going to teach reading music or tabs, Nashville notation, or other reading system with it. Teaching kids in your home can be tricky, especially if it is an after school activity for the kids, or the parents have transportation issues. My ex-wife used to teach private woodwind students, and more than once, we wound up feeding kids dinner, and/or I drove 'em home.
posted by paulsc at 10:05 PM on September 21, 2006

I know a couple of people who've made a bit of extra dough teaching SAT prep courses through the Princeton Review. It's an evening/weekend job, and I guess it pays OK.

I've also known people who've taken retail jobs at stores where they frequently shop, with the thought that they'll both make money from the job and save on planned expenses. This can work if you have self control, but it can also backfire if you find yourself shopping more because of extra exposure to the product.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 10:10 PM on September 21, 2006

all through college i tutored high school students in math. you can charge $20-$25/hour. it's amazing how much parents will pay for an engineer to tutor their kids. i found students to tutor by putting my name on a tutor list at the local high schools. once i found one student, her parents referred a lot of people to me.
posted by jengineer at 10:20 PM on September 21, 2006

bartend. in nyc, you should be able to make 600 on a decent saturday night.
posted by krautland at 11:05 PM on September 21, 2006

Could you do consulting? I don't mean to beat the issue to death, but you could probably charge $75 to $150 an hour. Could you put the word out to your network that you're available to do projects on the side?

When I had only a few years of experience, I started doing consulting at night and on weekends. Now I do it on an exclusive basis. But a lot of my friends consult on the side so they can pay for expensive trips and whatnot. My bestfriend invoiced $20k on top of her dayjob last year.
posted by acoutu at 11:31 PM on September 21, 2006

"I can also run virtually all heavy engineering equipment, cranes, tractors, etc. I'm an all-around kinda guy, I can do just about anything."

I'd imagine there are people who would want to learn to do these things. Even some who are not illegals.

Not to mention: all of us guys, as little boys, loved heavy equipment; I recall as a three year old cultivating a special relationship with the bulldozer guys and for years I considered prized possessions a cool flat rock and sweet oval rock they'd dug out of the culvert near my parents' home. If you could secure a piece of equipment -- even an obsolete one -- I bet you could charge top dollar to "train" (read": let play with under your strict supervision) yuppies on it. Stockbrokers, bureaucrats, programmers -- esp. programmers.
posted by orthogonality at 11:52 PM on September 21, 2006

bartend. in nyc, you should be able to make 600 on a decent saturday night.

Bartending gigs are hard to come by because the money is so good. Usually a bar or restaurant will want a load of experience as a barback before they put you in the front-spot. Also, bartending school takes time and money, which the OP has neither of.

The Princeton Review or Kaplan training courses are kind of regimental--you first have to take a scaled-down version of the test, then you take a two day crash-course on teaching which is not in any way instructive. They say that they only send people out who have successfully "passed" their training, but the one time I did it (Princeton Review) it appeared like anyone with a pulse was given the green light. Unfortunately, it doesn't really prepare you for dealing with problems that will invariably arise in the classroom. The pay was decent, but the work was spotty.

I'd recommend music lessons or math'science tutoring. More money and no middle-man.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 5:03 AM on September 22, 2006

bartend. in nyc, you should be able to make 600 on a decent saturday night.

Bartending gigs are hard to come by because the money is so good.

Wow. Cultural differences? I was going to say bar work, too, because in my experience it's pretty easy to pick up a bar job with little or no previous experience, but it tends to be a minimum-wage gig with a fair bit of running round. Certainly nothing like $600 a night! I used to pick up about £5.50/hour at my last bar-job-on-the-side, with maybe £10 in tips with a bit of flirting, and £5/hr at the one before that. I enjoy bartending, so it's the first area I look whenever I need some extra cash, but wow, I never realised it was so different in the US.
posted by corvine at 5:37 AM on September 22, 2006

corvine, please note he said "new york city", which is basically another planet when it comes to $$. $600 a night could pretty much happen nowhere else (maybe LA). Americans also tip somewhere around $1 per drink, don't know if that's the case where you are.
posted by tristeza at 7:05 AM on September 22, 2006

corvine - tristeza is right. There is plenty of North America where most bar jobs are minimum wage plus a little bonus of tips (more if you're cute & flirty & fast, less if you aren't).
posted by raedyn at 7:14 AM on September 22, 2006

My husband's got a full-time job (he's an econometrician), but to make a bigger dent in credit card debt he tutors math at Huntington Learning Center. I know Kaplan and Princeton Review have been mentioned, but HLC seems to be less regimented about the whole thing. You would have to retake the math section, which shouldn't be a problem.

Regular tutoring there pays about $12/hr (eh), while SAT tutoring pays around $24/hr. This is in Northern VA.
posted by timetoevolve at 7:52 AM on September 22, 2006

Bartending gigs are hard to come by because the money is so good

bah, I bullshitted my way in back in college. all the experience I pretended I had ... you'd be surprised what you can get away with if you only try.
posted by krautland at 8:20 AM on September 22, 2006

Then you must have been good at making drinks. If you've got an encyclopedic knowledge of drinks, and can make them quickly (that's the important part), you might not have a problem. But really, to be a good bartender at a busy place you need to be able to move behind the bar like you've got ESP—avoiding barbacks, noticing the guys on the other side of the bar that are waving twenties at you behind a wall of people waiting for drinks, etc. If you've got the talent for it, don't let such trivialities as experience get in your way. But don't make the mistake of thinking it's easy.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 5:07 PM on September 22, 2006

Response by poster: Thanks for all of the great responses! It looks like I'm going to give guitar lessons or tutor.

timetoevolve, thanks for the link, I'll check it out. I live in an area where that is very feasable.

ortho, I WISH I could do that, and it's funny that you mentioned it because I was actually a forklift instructor years ago. There is nothing funnier than watching noobs crash into stuff while they're completely freaking out!

Thanks again all, and wish me luck.
posted by snsranch at 5:28 PM on September 22, 2006

And no one has said: "Check out craigslist.org." This is the place. Many non-profits are also often looking for part-timers (with pay!) to do mentoring and tutoring or some such.
posted by whimsicalnymph at 9:38 PM on September 25, 2006