Making Money? Maneuvering the Labor Market?

[thelamb]

MMM had a couple great posts on "unusual" (my quotes) jobs that can net over $50k.  Other than that, perhaps because I'm new here, I don't feel there's much discussion on the revenue side of the equation.  Obviously, teaching the powers of saving is the MO here and for good reason.  But is this a discussion worth pursuing? 

Anybody have good stories on how they discovered, learned and became a badass at a niche skill in order to drastically increase their income? 

Any advice on negotiating better salaries and rates? 

Experience with breaking from their job to do the same job but for yourself and for a much larger cut? 

[Jwilliamson22]

I have thought the same thing.. there is very little about increasing income around here. I will say that Ramit Sethi has good stuff on this subject as far as interviews etc, but I would really like is a groupthink on how to increase revenue in general. Whether it is side hustles or better jobs etc.

I want to increase my income, but I am struggling to find ways to do it.

My current monthly list of extra income:
-$550 renting other side of duplex I own
-$30ish in CC rewards
-$100ish per month on average opening CC's and checking accounts for coupon rewards
-$200 for donating plasma (when I donate although I havent been recently)

I need more tangible ways. I would love to find a way to make $1,000+ per month extra

[basd]

Same here. Always looking for ways to increase income (while still trying to cut costs too where possible, of course).

So far:
* Yearly pay raise. Luckily, I have an interesting job with an employer that treats me well. In the four years I've been working here I've always received a 4-6% pay raise, but increased costs and with our first child on the way, actual income increase might be less or even negative.
* Extra side income. I've started to make a bit of extra money doing freelance work through Elance.com. So far, I've managed to land a couple of interesting gigs that paid well (there's a crapload of low payment jobs to sift through though), which brought in around 150-200 per month so far.

I'll be keeping a close eye on this thread, who knows what interesting ideas might pop up. Ideally, for me it would be something that had nothing to do with IT and computers in general, I work in IT and my side gigs have been IT related as well, it'd be nice to prove to myself I can make money through other means as well.

[thelamb]

I'm glad I'm not the only one.  basd, funny you mention IT.  My own story of how I tripled my income (about 8 years ago) was in IT.  I would love to hear ideas or stories outside of IT, which I guess that can be the problem.  High earning positions are often in IT or Finance or require a lot of "official" schooling, which we generally want to avoid if we're already out there working, possibly just getting rid of the first round of student debt. 

What I will say is 9 years ago I was at one of the big three consulting firms and out of random luck I was asked to learn a new technology I'd never heard of.  At that time I also realized that my company was making like 5-10x what I made for each billable hour.  This is common.  In any client-facing, billable position, there is a markup for your time.  Usually a pretty generous one.  But it's not all margin, by any means.  Billable hours are paying for all the non-billable work such as sales, administration, etc.   

Back then, I was upset by all this, researched this new technology, realized there were lots of 3-15 month gigs for true experts and, because the technology was so new, the labor market wasn't yet flooded.  These gigs were being handled by tiny companies that could maneuver the market faster than the less nimble big three.  Tiny companies with little overhead can take a much smaller cut of the billable time, thus passing on more to the actual worker (a tactic they needed to take to get experts to jump ship).  Needless to say, I started applying everywhere over and over and continued to sharpen my skills for about 3-4 months until finally I landed a 6 month gig paying close to 4X my then current rate.  The risks were simple:  walking away from a salaried position with healthcare and 401k to a short-term hourly position.  To me, it was worth it.  BTW, the 6 month gig lasted 15 months.  This is also common. 

The reason I tell this story is that, although I had a degree somewhat in this field and had some experience, I largely was able to make this switch by learning a new niche technology on my own and, as far as the people wiling to pay were concerned, they didn't care about my background, just whether I could do the job. 
I also tell it because it was revelation to understand what an hour of my time could be worth versus what I was getting paid. 

I have a friend that makes likely in the $60-90k range.  It's a big range but not when compared to his billable rate which is pushing $300/hr.  In comparison:  $300/hr to customer = $30-45/hr to him.

Anyway, that's my little tidbit.  I would love to hear other stories.  What are the next little niches?  Any outside of IT or Finance?  Any other takes on maneuvering the labor market to get more of the cut?   

[basd]

Anyway, that's my little tidbit.  I would love to hear other stories.  What are the next little niches?  Any outside of IT or Finance?  Any other takes on maneuvering the labor market to get more of the cut?

In general (this won't just go for IT, but for all fields I suppose), I think it boils down to two options:

* Go work at a smaller firm with less overhead so you get a bigger part of your hourly fee (I did this for years ago with a 30%+ salary increase as a result)
* Start freelancing, though this comes with additional tasks (such as acquisition, bookkeeping and such) and risks (what if you don't get hired). Not really for me, at the moment at least.

Over here, there are companies that offer some sort of midlance construction. You get a very basic salary, independent of your number of billable hours, plus a percentage of your hourly fee for every billable hour you make. Insurance and pensions are paid by your employer. This might be interesting, however in my current role I have several smaller projects and not all of my hours are billable at the moment. And I like it that way, it adds a lot of variety to my work week.

[grantmeaname]

I feel like there's so much about increasing income that you have to be trying not to find it to avoid it. It's half the equation, and in many cases it's the more important half. If your expenses are already low, sometimes there's not anything left to cut, and the only way to improve your savings rate is to make more.