Lazy Man and Money

Five Reasons Side Gigs Aren’t Just for Freelancers

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According to a CareerBuilder.com survey, in recent years, 20 percent of full-time workers have picked up a second job. Since the economic crisis in 2008, more and more people are seeking side income to avoid falling at the mercy of corporate layoffs. Today, diversifying your income is a good idea even if you do have a full time salary that covers your needs. From greater financial security to a more rounded resume, here are five ways locking down an extra source of cash can go a long way.

1. You’ll build greater financial security

A second study by CareerBuilder.com found that 42 percent of full-time workers usually or always live paycheck to paycheck just to make ends meet, making it difficult to save for the future let alone enjoy the present. Whether you turn your spare room into a B&B or you start a dog sitting business on weekends, earning extra cash off of assets you already have will lift the weight of worrying about every dollar spent and help you save responsibly for your future.

[Editor’s Note: I can give you a ton of information on dog sitting having hosted nearly 150 “dog days” (number of dogs times the number of days.]

2. You’ll be more marketable

Building a career is, in essence, incumbent upon the ability to hone a skill that makes you valuable and hopefully indispensable to an employer. Therefore, the more new skills you acquire, the more opportunities you have to be indispensable. And the easiest and most economical way to acquire a new skill is to learn it on the job.

By diving deeper into skills you already have — like learning to use new data analytics software — for a side job, you will be better apt to get a new job (if you are looking) or to bring more to the table at your primary job, which could earn you a promotion. Plus, the balancing act that comes with working multiple gigs will help you prioritize and manage your time better.

3. You’ll save more

People are more likely to save a tax refund than they are to save that same amount of money when they’ve earned it in smaller increments throughout the year’s worth of paychecks. Similarly, money from a side gig — because it’s separate from your standard paycheck — has a better chance at finding its way into retirement savings or other investments. You might find that having a steady stream of income separate from your paycheck helps you to better compartmentalize and commit to your saving strategy or debt pay off.

4. You’ll build a better professional network

Getting a freelance writing gig in addition to my full time job ultimately primed me for more writing opportunities, which enabled me to form a full-time freelance career. By maintaining several side jobs at once, I was able to multiply the number of good professional references and contacts in a shorter period of time. Furthermore, many companies like to test out employees on a part-time or freelance basis to make sure they are a good fit before offering them a full-time job. Getting a side job with a company or organization you like or aspire to work at can be a good way to get a job there in the future.

5. You’ll make friends and get free perks

A friend of mine wanted to get her yoga teacher training certification. Instead of shelling out $2,000 on a training program, she offered to work the front desk at the studio near her apartment, where she took classes several times a week, in exchange for the certification. I’ve known people who have gotten similar perks from working at running and surf shops as well. Working at a place where people share similar interests can also open you up to a broader network of people who share your interests — a great option if you move to a new city and are looking to make friends.

Overall, having a side gig puts you in better control over your finances. Whether you are saving up for retirement or for a big vacation, the odds are always more in your favor if you have several ways of getting there.

My 2015 Finances Reviewed: Blogging/Income

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[This is the third part of My 2015 Financial Year in Review. You can read more of my financial picture at that link as I publish more articles.]

I’ve had a lot of challenging years in blogging, but 2015 was my most challenging. Like the other reviews of my financial life, this is going to sound really negative. If you stick with it until the end, you’ll see the positive though.

I’ll start by getting some of the nasty stuff out the way.

The Lawsuits

Legally, my LifeVantage/Protandim Statement is all that I can say. There’s a reason why bolded the following, “I simply could not afford the cost of defending the lawsuit any further. Because of the personal expense that further litigation would have entailed, and for no other reason, I have reached a settlement with LifeVantage.”

Freedom of speech is expensive. It can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in a legal defense. I learned that wealthy people and companies can dictate individual’s freedom of speech simply because of this reality. I’m not sure the creators of the 1st amendment really intended this to be the case with the judicial system, but in my experience that’s where we are today.

I suppose I could have represented myself at my own cost. I don’t think the legal system is designed to make that a fair method of dispute resolution. After all, here’s a real life 7-minute conversation of two sides trying to figure out if someone knows what a photocopier is.

Imagine if you got in an argument with Lebron James and the way to resolve it was by playing him one-on-one and winning. That path isn’t likely to lead to success. That’s what I feel like it would be representing myself in an environment that is devoid of anything approaching common sense.

As I was finishing up with that settlement, I got word that I was being sued again.

This time a water purification company is suing me for writing what amounted to a Yelp review. You can make your own assessment if there is anything in there that would even seem illegal, but I felt like I was simply telling a personal story of what happened when I tried to get purified water when our county alerted us to a possible issue. The additional information I found was as accurate as I could find.

I had communicated with the company VP soon after I wrote the article and they didn’t express any concerns about the content. Eighteen months later they seem to have changed their opinion. The only thing that I can think of that has changed is that Google has decided it is a very good article about that company. If that’s really the reason for the lawsuit (as I suspect), I can understand why they’d be unhappy. In this case, I didn’t like the sales method, but I did praise the company’s products.

I asked my lawyer what the difference is and he said that typically companies don’t sue over bad Yelp reviews. If someone is sued over a bad Yelp review, they typically would simply delete the review and eat at a different restaurant in the future. As a consumer advocate, I feel that I have to meet a higher standard to not delete helpful information. I owe it to readers like you.

Unfortunately, the company didn’t attempt to express any concerns to me before filing the lawsuit. That’s not what I would I have expected from a responsible company, especially since the lines of communication were already open. In our last conversation, I had told them that I’d love to help them do better with consumers in the future. My guess is that they saw that this can be effective way to remove undesirable information from the internet.

The gravamen* of their complaint is that the presentation I received was from an independent distributor and that my article shouldn’t have been about the company itself. After I saw a 3-hour specifically-branded presentation on an iPad that only covered the company’s products, I considered it to be about that company. As I did more research, I found that people on the internet generally did the same. I offered to offer to clarify the corporate structure, but I haven’t gotten their approval to go forward with it. For now it is up to the lawyers and courts to figure it out.

There’s a lot more about this that I wish I could write. I can probably write most of them, but I’d want to clear it with my lawyer first and that’s a process that I’d like to avoid.

* These are the cool words you learn when you get sued.

Everything Else

Like my previous articles on investing and real estate, there’s a happy note to end on. In 2015, I had nearly 2.5 million page views. I don’t think I had come close to a million page views in any other year. That’s huge, huge growth. It warms my heart that people are coming here to get great information and, if they disagree, can use the comments to help make it better. That’s why I continue to respond to just about every reader who leaves a comment.

I expect a major publication to publish a story about my consumer advocacy within the next few weeks. I can’t give you much more information, but if you follow the articles here I’ll be sure to let you know.

You’d think that with all those page views and all that growth, I’d be printing money. If I were a casual reader seeing all the advertisements and those numbers I’d think that as well. The reality is that advertisers are putting more and more money into other platforms such as Facebook advertising. One telling article that I’ve read recently is Get Rich or Die Vlogging: The Sad Economics of Internet Fame. That article is about video blogging, but it could be about blogging in general too.

I am making more money than I did in 2014, which is almost like saying that I performed better than the Bengals in a playoff game (sorry Cincinnati, I was rooting for you). That’s how bad 2014 was.

I’m trying to diversify my income. My dog sitting business is going well. I’ve been able to make another $350 a month on average with it thus far. I’m optimistic that will go up with repeat customers. It’s more responsibility, a little more work, a lot more fun, and an extra $4000-$5000 a year. That said, the dogs definitely bring some wear and tear with them.

I’ve got a lot of other ideas to look into in 2016, but I’m going to leave those goals, projections, etc. for another post.

Dog Sitting: My Two Month Review

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A couple of months ago, I announced that I’d be jumping a new gig – dog sitting. It was a no-brainer because dogs are awesome, they love me, and we have a perfect fenced set-up for it. Oh and I noticed that I could make around $30 a day per dog. As if that wasn’t enough, the dogs will be good company for own dog.

It’s responsibility, but think it is what some professional athletes think, “I get paid money to play games… life is good!” Unfortunately, dog sitting will not be making me quarterback money any time soon.

I’m on two dog sitting services, Rover.com and DogVacay.com. I prefer DogVacay as the interface is better and the rates for hosting seems to higher. Unfortunately, I seem to find every technical glitch with DogVacay. I got an anxious dog mommy a couple of weekends ago when the DogVacay app didn’t send pictures as it claimed to have. Lesson learned: Still with good old MMS or uploading through the website.

The worst part was that their dog Vincent has been by far the most well-behaved we’ve had. It’s not that the other dogs weren’t well-behaved, but he was like a movie dog where he’d sit and ask for permission a paw wave before coming into your lap. After their stay, I wrote back that I’d give them a discount. I didn’t get a response. Oh well, you can’t please everyone.

Enough of that, let’s get to some numbers:

How much can you expect to earn dog sitting?

This is going to vary greatly depending on how many reviews you have, how you set prices, and demand in your area. The person I take my dog to when I’m on vacation usually has 4-6 dogs there and her rates are higher because she has awesome ratings and sends pictures about every half hour. (Seriously, I once got at least 20 pictures in the first two hours.) Some of the dogs are her own, but if we just to estimate $40 by 4 dogs and account for a little vacancy, it can be $150 a day. That’s more than $50,000 a year. It’s a lot of work dealing with that many dogs, but it does have income replacement potential for the top sitters.

But I didn’t title this a 2-month review to write about that person. I want to give my own data.

I have a spreadsheet that I set up. Record keeping is key. It has the dates the dog stayed, dog name, dog breed, age, owner information, vet information. I’m tempted to create a little database, just because it would be fun.

The thing I use the most though, is the money columns. I have what owners pay and what my cut is. The services take 15% for insurance and matchmaking. It automatically extends numbers based on the dates of the dogs’ stay. I then let some Excel formula do their thing. The result gives the following information:

  • I’ve netted (including booked) $976.65 through the end of October.
  • In September it was $15.27 per day due to a popular Labor Day with multiple dogs (and a lot of days with no dogs).
  • In October it is $10.97 per day. For some reason, Rover has come up big for me this month.
  • Annually, I am on a pace to net $4,193.85 or around $350 a month.

I think that $350 a month is the number I want to focus on. If that average holds up over the long term, it’s like eliminating a car payment. That’s not chump change by a long-shot.

Much of my personal finance situation this year has stayed the course. I think I’m going to add a projected dog-sitting income to my annual $200,000 in retirement income next year. I’ll probably be conservative and put it at $2,500 in case we travel more in retirement. In either case, it feels good to add another diversified income. Every little bit helps.

My Dog Sitting Business is Taking Off!

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I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was going to try dog sitting to make some extra money. It’s a perfect fit for me since I love dogs and work from home.

I planned to wait a few months before writing an update. However, I’m going to jump the gun after a few weeks and declare it a success. I initially worried that I wouldn’t get business because I had no reviews… and that would lead to getting no reviews since I had no business. In an attempt to steer clear of this, I put my prices below market rates.

I also went the extra mile to make sure that my profile popped. I took pictures of our yard that made it look especially huge. (It really is large though.) I waited to take pictures of our house until after our cleaning service came. I tried to show off pictures of my dog enjoying himself at home.

I don’t know which played the biggest role, but the combination worked. It took a couple of weeks for the first request to come in. When it finally came in, a second one came the next day. A week later, I had a third request for that evening while I was sitting another dog. I write this having sat three dogs over a span of 10 days and having 8 more days of dog sitting lined up through the middle of September. Even at my cheap rates, I should take home nearly $400 in a little over a month.

It has some room to expand. I didn’t get “up to full speed” until the middle of August when the reviews were in. We are on vacation now, which means losing a week of business.

Now that I’ve given some of the financial highlights, let’s look at some of the low-lights. Maybe it’s just luck, but so far the oldest dog we’ve had is 2. Our own dog is a mellow 6 years old. I don’t know if it’s just that these dogs are young or if it is the excitement of the new environment. In any case, they are super-charged when they show up. Sometimes they get they so excited they can’t control their bladder.

With this business, we need to raise our budget for carpet cleaning supplies. In addition, I’ve found that these new dogs love my dog’s bones and toys. The cost of these aren’t really significant compared to the income, but it’s not zero.

The biggest difficulty is really the feedings. If one dog is getting food, they all want food. Fortunately, our baby gates serve the purpose of separating dogs too. Unfortunately, it is still difficult to feed 3 dogs and 2 kids under the age of 3, which I had to do recently. It’s not impossible and I’ll certainly get better with practice… and just maybe a plan or system of some kind.

My New Gig: Dog Sitting…

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When I started this blog many years ago, my goal was to pursue ways that I can better use my resources to secure my financial future. By resources, I mean “time” and “money.”

After reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I was focused on trying to create an income aside from my software engineering career that would allow me to retire early. The hope was that I could retire around the time my wife’s military service pension kicked in. Time flies and that is just a few short years away.

The reality is that passive income is hard to find. I was really excited about peer-to-peer lending via Prosper. I thought I’d earn 13% lending money to others with bad credit. It turns out that those people with bad credit default a lot and over a 5-6 years now I’ve earned around 7.5%. That’s not bad, but money compounds much, much slowly at 7.5% than it does at 13%.

I started earning income from an unexpected source, my blog where I was writing about my efforts. Years later, I’m still a little uncomfortable about how that works.

For the most part, that was all I found.

Yes there are things like growing a dividend snowball. I have mostly stayed with index funds. I don’t really need dividend income in my retirement accounts at this stage. There’s also traditional real estate investing. These areas aren’t exactly innovative ways of making an alternative income. I have some investment real estate, which has been breakeven at best. (The hope is that when the mortgages are paid off in 13 years, they’ll be much more profitable.)

Last week, I started a new venture, dog sitting. I had been writing about doing it for a while now. I kept thinking I’d dip my toes in the water, but I found it easier to cannonball myself in the pool.

I’m using a service called DogVacay. It’s like Uber or AirBNB for dogs. When people go on vacation. they go to the website, read reviews and information about hosts and book someone to watch their dog. There’s a competing site called Rover, but I heard about DogVacay first so I’m working with them first.

DogVacay takes 15% of the money for matching up the people, providing insurance, and customer support. Hosts typically charge around $40 or $45 a night in my area. Watching a dog for week would gross $300 and net $250 after DogVacay fees. That’s the financial side.

It’s a lot of responsibility to watch someone else’s dog. It’s not passive income by any stretch. However, it’s a good fit for me for several reasons:

  1. Because Dogs! – Dogs are so much better than people. There seems to be good and bad people out there. Maybe it’s because I’ve got some Cesar Millan in me, but I’ve never come across a bad dog. I’m sure if a dog is trained to harm, I’d change my story, but I’ve never come across that. I could spend hours at the local dog park playing with dogs.
  2. Company for My Dog – I bring my dog to the dog park for socialization. Throwing him a slumber party is even better. On my first dog hosting experience, they ran each other into the ground.
  3. I Have the Time – Working from home gives me the opportunity to do a job better than most people.
  4. I Have the facilities – I have a big, fenced-in yard. Being just outside the city many locals don’t have that luxury. Dog owners know that their dog is going to get a lot of fresh air and room to run.

You add it all up and it’s a win for everyone.

That all sounds great in writing, but how does it work in practice?

I’ve only been a host for a short time and I’ve had only dog stay overnight. (I have another dog scheduled for later this week.) This dog had so much energy. It was non-stop motor for 8 hours after they dropped him off before he collapsed to rest. He woke me up at 3AM to go to the bathroom. After I let him back in, he raced into my bed and made himself at home.

Sounds terrible right? I’m used to waking up at 3AM. I often get some writing done for an hour or two and than go back to sleep. This wasn’t a big deal to me. Reclaiming my bed was a little more difficult, but I was able to relocate him to one side and give him a little hug as we drifted off to sleep (again, “Because Dogs!”). The owners had warned me he often sleeps with them. If that was behavior they wanted me to correct, I would have, but if everyone is okay with it, I was happy to let it be. The energy level got to be a little much, but if having a happy, energetic dog overnight is my biggest problem, I’m doing very well in life.

There were a couple of hiccups with DogVacay itself. They sent email notification of a vacation request from a different email account that they typically use and Gmail put it in the promotions tab where it got buried. So for 8 days, I didn’t respond to this request, simply because I never saw it. DogVacay finally sent me a text with the equivalent of, “Hey what’s up, why aren’t you responding to your request?” Within minutes I found the problem.

I was fortune in that the owner was still looking to book with me. I think they’d typically go to someone else, but for some reason they hadn’t yet. The only issue is that dog owners are given an average response time of hosts. It looks like it takes me an average of days to get back to people now. It’s probably costing me business. I explained this to DogVacay customer support and they blew it off. Sure, over time the average will come down, but it’s always going to be a poor representation of my actual response time once I’m made aware of the request.

DogVacay essentially said that they won’t fix it. As a software engineer, I understand that going into the database and editing data is a pain and a last resort. Instead, I suggested that they throw out the fastest 5% and the slowest 5% of response times, to eliminate the outliers. That request went no where as well. It was met with a Roger Goodell-like response something to the effect of, “We are looking to improve everyday. Thanks for the suggestion.”

Yesterday, I got an email from DogVacay about hiring a dog sitter for my dog over Labor Day. As a customer, I’m used to getting these emails over time. There were two obvious problems with the email:

1) DogVacay knows that I’m booked to host a dog over Labor Day weekend.
2) Their top suggestion was a host that lived 3000 miles away from me. They had hosted my dog in the past, but they’ve moved well over a year ago.

I shot them an email about the second point, because it was obvious that they should add a location check to their host suggesting algorithm. Yes, it’s an edge case, but it’s one that is easily caught and fixed. Hopefully, DogVacay will this article and consider adding logic to fix the first problem.

These are really small potatoes and not worth bringing up… unless DogVacay wants to hire me as a consultant (hint, hint).

I’m really optimistic that this is going to work out well. I don’t expect to have 100% occupancy, but I’ve seen some dog sitters with multiple dogs at a time. If it did even out to having 1 dog all the time, it could be an extra grand a month. That’s some good alternative income!