Bringing in the Bread

Posted on May 25, 2011 by

Wallet is getting emptyWe’ve been covering a lot of milestones lately.  Getting out of the house and into the rig feels good. It feels better than good, it feels great!  But the fact remains that we are still tethered to our local full time jobs.  We’ve been experimenting with ways to make money while on the road in the time that we’ve been stationary.  But as of now we haven’t hit on anything that really feels right.

You always hear about a lot of options out there for making money while fulltime RVing.  As you know, Jessica has experience in web work and my background is in video production.  There are a plethora of what are known as “contest freelance” sites, where creative professionals submit bids and/or spec work on jobs posted by companies. Elance.com and 99Designs.com are just a few examples of this kind of site.  While the initial idea sounds good, there seems to be an issue of supply and demand.  In this case the supply is the overabundance of freelancers applying for these jobs.  And when anywhere from 30 to 100 people are submitting bids, you can imagine that it can be quite competitive.  Most just low ball bid to have a chance of winning the job and what ends up happing is that they end up working for a fraction of minimum wage.

That’s not the only issue, not for us at least.  You can understand by how I’ve talked in the past about how I don’t necessarily approve of the current consumerist state of our society.  I feel that life should be more focused on our experiences and people in our lives rather than things that we buy from the store.  I love doing video work, I love making the TOTO episodes and I love making videos about people, anything to expose people to what’s out there in the world that we live in.   Unfortunately, making videos like that doesn’t really keep gas in the tank or food in the fridge.  Sadly, the money in this field is in Advertising, which is a major player in the consumerist society that I’m trying to distance myself from.

You see the conundrum: we don’t want to play a big part in a consumerist world, but we need to be part of it to survive.  That’s why we’re “Traveling on the Outskirts”, we’re trying to live as far on the edge of society because we know that we can’t leave it completely.

So the struggle continues, we have to find reliable streams of income to support our minimized way of life all while keeping our moral compasses pointed in the right direction.

 

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  • Tony

    capitalism is our system.  Find something you like or can tolerate and make a much money as possible, You’ll never have too much. I always wondered about “Fund Raising”   Even the good charities take 20% off the top.  Traveling around collecting money to help other people is something you guys could use your talents on.   I’m just saying.

    Tony

  • http://www.TravelingOnTheOutskirts.com/ TravelingOnTheOutskirts

    Unfortunately you’re right – there’s no way around needing money!  If we want to drive this motorhome then we need to pay for gas.  Eating is good too. :)

  • Steve

    Take a look at what LongLongHoneymoon.com does.  I am not sure how or what he does but they seem to be doing alright.  I would love to find some way of providing passive income as well.  I have would like to make mine playing poker in different casinos along the way.  Just means you have to have a bankroll you can’t touch for other things. 

  • Kate Negley

    You guys are in the same boat as my hubby and I – except you got the rig! Well done!

    We share your views on wanting to get out of the consumerist ways of our generation (I think we are around the same age). I have been working on building a website so that hopefully we can live off the income on the road as I am a web designer/artist and my honey is a writer/musician. I have not entered the phase of “monetizing” but you might want to check it out. It’s called Site Build It. You can see what I am trying to do here: http://wedding-ideas-on-a-budget.com.

    Considering Jessica’s experience, I bet this might be right up her ally. Hope that helps all of us achieve that life of freedom we crave so deeply :) It’s a process!

  • Joanieh816

    Look forward to hearing from you again, We will keep you in our thoughts and prayers. We are still at Shady Acres in Mobile, AL. Congrats on all you are doing.

  • http://www.TravelingOnTheOutskirts.com/ TravelingOnTheOutskirts

    Is this the Joanie we met in Hill City?  Once we get on the road we’ll have to stop by! :D

  • Joanieh816

    It sure will be nice to see you two again. Robert and I are still here at Shady Acres in Mobile. He even bought a gazebo…

  • http://phasingoutrr.wordpress.com/ Dole

    Hey folks, I’m Dole – hate to necro-comment but realized that you folks are fairly tech-minded like my wife and myself. We aren’t full-timing yet. I don’t have a rig and have nothing but ideas and an apartment full of stuff and a wife who is only 80% of the way there with me on the plan. Her biggest qualm of course – is money.  We tried to do something like this when we first got together. We drove up from Sunny South Florida (where we (still) live) up into GA and stayed with my sister for a few weeks. Then we moved on to Michigan where we spent xmas with aunts and uncles.  I almost got a job… lol We ended up moving back down only about 5 weeks after we took off when the money ran out. We didn’t have the right plan, it was spur of the moment, and we didn’t consider that we could live frugally. 

    So have you folks heard of ChaCha.com? You can become a guide there with spare time.  They will pay you $0.01 + bonus each question you answer out of pre-submitted responses. Users send in questions from a mobile app or texting or other ways, and the answer is sent back to them (try it! Text any question in the world to 242242). I’m a “vetter” the low-man on the totem pole. A question comes up in the browser, and you have a choice of like 25 different replies that other guides have come up with and composed.  Pick the most appropriate one, and you get a penny.  I’m up around 175 replies an hour, which is actually pretty slow. Some folks can do 400 an hour. WIth bonuses that have been happening every day for a month now you can double or even triple your penny. So if you ChaCha Guide for 2 hours a night you can get something like $8-$10 for that time.  Do it every day and you are over $300 by a month. I know it isn’t much but its something positive, especially if you are just browsing around that night. 
    Of course – being this is in the USA you’ll need to eventually get taxed on that. Just keep  it in mind. 

    Another thing is Amazon Mechanical Turks.  This is less reliable but potentially more profitable. You get a penny or 3c or a nickel for every little task, which might be “take a screenshot of xyz website in Chrome v 4.332.1″ or “submit this listing to abc search engine”. I’ve gotten whole dollars for taking a 10 minute survey, and such. 

    If you are a writer there exists factoidz, which shares ad revenue with you. You really need to know how to work this sort of business, and I don’t so I haven’t done much with it at all. 

    I’m doing consultant gigs with my old boss (remotely set up networks on boats that he is working on) and my wife has her Etsy business.  I’m hoping one day soon we’ll be ready. 

    Good luck and enjoy!
    Dole

  • http://www.TravelingOnTheOutskirts.com/ TravelingOnTheOutskirts

    Wow – Thanks for all the suggestions!  We haven’t heard of those websites in particular but have heard of others that are similar.  I’ll look into it these and see if they’ll work for us too.  Keep fightin the good fight and don’t give up!  :D