51 Freelance Ideas By Brian Kelly SMASHWORDS EDITION * * * * * PUBLISHED BY: Brian Kelly on Smashwords How to Make a Living As a Gigging Musician Copyright © 2013 by Brian Kelly Discover other titles by Brian Kelly at Smashwords.com The Artist and Musician’s Guide to Quitting Your Day Job How to Make a Living as a Gigging Musician Smashwords Edition, License Notes Thank you for downloading this free eBook. Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com, where they can also discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support. ***** Table of Contents Introduction Chapter 1: What do I mean by “Freelance Ideas”? Chapter 2: 51 Freelance Ideas Conclusion Introduction The Musician Lifestyle is all about structuring your life such that you can focus all of your time doing the things you love to do. For me personally, I love to play guitar, write, develop websites, train martial arts, hang out with friends, and travel. I realized that I had very little time to do the things that I actually wanted to do because my full-time job was consuming most of my time. Even though I was only at work for about 9 to 10 hours per day, 5 days per week, I still didn’t really feel like doing much else after I got home from work, and considering the fact that I had a lot of other errands to run throughout my busy life, much of my free time was occupied taking care of the other necessities in life. However, even though much of my time was consumed by work and the other things that needed to be taken care of, I still managed to “squeeze in” the things that I truly enjoyed doing. Unfortunately, the majority of my energy was spent on my (extremely uninspiring) job, and therefore I was never quite able to give my true passions the full focus that I would have liked to….at least not until I decided to quit my job and become self-employed in which I do only the things that I truly love doing. I am now living a much more fulfilling life, with a much more enjoyable means of making a living. I am my own boss, and I pick and choose when I will work, how much I would like to work, and what exactly I want to be doing. In order to live the lifestyle that I am currently living, I needed to figure out a way that I could still pay my bills without having to spend all my time doing something that I hated doing for the sole purpose of receiving a paycheck every week. I did so by creating a combination of several income streams. Rather than relying on just my full-time job alone, which is just one income stream (the paycheck each week), which required me to do the same mundane tasks day in and day out; I now make money from several different sources, and I am free to add, remove, or change my income sources at anytime I choose as well. My current income streams include, but are not limited to paying band gigs, solo guitar gigs, renting rooms out of my house, writing eBooks, giving guitar lessons, internet affiliate programs, and running websites. Basically I just simply used the resources that I had available to me in order to generate enough monthly income so that I could pay my bills without having to work at a regular, uninspiring full-time job. After figuring out how to make just enough so that I could cover the bills and have a few extra bucks for spending cash, I than began pursuing additional income streams in my free time. I am currently living a comfortable life, but I’ve never been one to just settle. Therefore, I’m constantly striving to improve. I understand that not everyone owns a home, nor would they want to rent rooms even if they did. I also understand that not everyone has a band in which they play several paying gigs each week, nor do they have interest in doing some or all of the things that I do. However, everyone does have some sort of skills and resources that they can use in order to generate money. It requires a bit of thinking and planning if you truly want to leave your job and become self- employed, and the purpose of this book is to help you along with that planning. I’ve come up with 51 different ideas that you could use in order to provide services to others in order to develop some income streams for yourself. There are obviously a lot more than just 51 things that you can do in order to make a living for yourself without the need of a boss, but at least this will give you a starting point for your planning if you do decide that you would like to become self-employed one day. Chapter 1: What Do I Mean By “Freelance Ideas”? When I talk about freelance work, I am specifically referring to providing services to other people in direct exchange for money. These services can be provided just once, or they can be an ongoing thing. It’s completely up to you. You also determine the price for your services. When you work at a regular job, you provide your services to your company or your boss in exchange for an hourly rate or annual salary. That has its pros and cons. The major cons with working at a regular job are that you have to follow orders, have a boss telling you what to do, and all of the other things that I’m sure you are quite familiar with by now assuming you’ve spent a decent portion of your life as an employee. In short, your freedom is severely limited to what you can and can’t do, and if you don’t follow the rules then you run the risk of punishment or job termination. There are certainly benefits to working at a regular job as well, namely the fact that you get a guaranteed paycheck, and you just simply have to show up every day and do your job without needing to do things such as get new customers, make sales, keep track of the accounting, do your own taxes, etc… Unless of course you are the accountant or sales associate for the company, but even than you are still just doing your job in exchange for a pay rate. You are still providing a service for the company that you work for in exchange for what they decide to pay you. While it may seem easier to simply just go out and find a job, do what you’re told to do, and simply collect a paycheck, I still would much rather have complete control over my life and how I choose to spend my time. If you have been reading around my website, and you have downloaded this eBook, I am assuming that you have a least somewhat of an interest in becoming self-employed. The freedom of becoming self-employed far outweighs all of the benefits that any regular job could possibly offer me. By “freelance ideas”, I am simply referring to ways that you could make some money for yourself in place of needing to go to work every day. You could mix and match any of these ideas together, and you can work as little or as often as you want. When you are self-employed, you are your own boss, and therefore you make your own schedule, your own rules, and it is up to you to make as little or as much money as you would like. I wrote this book simply to give you some ideas in case you were unable to think of any. Many people have the notion in their heads that “I could never do that” when referring to self- employment. I used to be like that as well, because my whole life I had always just worked for other people, and I assumed that in order to be self-employed that I would need to run some sort of complicated business where I managed several employees. However, I’ve found that is not at all the case. It wasn’t until I put some actual planning and took some actionable steps that I found out just how possible it was to live a life without a regular job. Hopefully this book will help you to believe that self-employment is possible for you as well. It really is a very nice life when you get to make your own rules and schedule. After seeing what the self-employment life is like, I don’t think I could ever go back to working at a regular job ever again. Some of these ideas may sound a bit silly to you, and others may resonate with you. Honestly, there really are no rules with this stuff though. You could do any of these things one time just to make some quick cash. You could pick a few of these and try to make a living from them. You can mix and match idea. It’s completely up to you, and that is the beauty of freelancing. You call all of the shots! With that said, here are 51 freelance ideas Chapter 2: 51 Freelance Ideas 1.) Give lessons on the musical instrument of your choice – You simply find the people that are willing to learn the instrument, determine a fair price, and you teach them how to play for that price. Make up some cheap business cards and give them out to all your friends, and advertise on social networking sites. 2.) Car detailing – Advertise your services through word of mouth, your website, social networking sites, etc People are willing to pay very good money for a good car detail job. It may take you a few hours per car, but if you do a good job, you can make some very decent money and receive plenty of repeat business! 3.) Website development – With all of the available free and low-cost software on the internet in addition to all of the available free information, it’s really not very hard to develop a very nice website. However, many people feel like they are clueless when it comes to this type of thing. Learn how to do this, and charge a fair price for your services. 4.) Freelance blogging – There are a lot of internet bloggers out there that are trying to drive traffic to their websites through well-written articles. Many of these people don’t write their own articles on their sites. Instead, they pay freelance writers to do it for them. You could be one of those writers. Use Elance.com or another freelance website as your medium to earn your business. 5.) Tattoo artist – If you can draw, maybe you can look into becoming a tattoo artist. Tattoos are extremely popular nowadays. I have several friends that simply went out and bought a tattoo gun one day, practiced tattooing on fake skin and their own skin, and they then moved onto tattooing their friends. Like any other skill, they’ve improved significantly over time, and they now have several tattoo appointments per week. 6.) Private martial arts lessons – Have you been training martial arts for a long time, and you are now very good? People are willing to learn your skills. With the rise of Mixed Martial Arts, fighting styles such as boxing, wrestling, Jiu-jitsu, Muay-Thai, and Judo are becoming more and more popular. Karate and Tae-Kwan-Do are not so popular these days. I personally pay for private Jiu-jitsu lessons as well as train at an MMA school. 7.) Wedding make-up – As a man, I have no experience with this, but a friend of mine does this for a living. She simply does the make-up for brides-to-be on their wedding days. Women have so much else to worry about on the day of their wedding, and they will gladly pay a talented woman to make them look beautiful on their wedding day. She advertises her services on a low- cost wedding make-up site, and she also has her own website. 8.) Gutter cleaning – It’s kind of a disgusting job for sure, but it doesn’t take a long time at all, and many people much like myself, do not feel comfortable climbing onto a 3-story roof in order to clean their gutters out. I pay my friend $50 twice a year to clean my gutters. It takes him about 15 minutes each time. He only charges me $50 because I’m his friend. He charges other people 2 to 3 times that much. If you have no fear of ladders or heights, you can simply charge people to clean their gutters for them, because many people do have that fear. 9.) EBook writing – Just like internet blogging, many people are writing eBooks these days. Many people also do not write their own books, but instead pay for a freelance writer to do it for them. You could be that freelance writer. Again, you could advertise your services on a site like Elance.com, social networking sites, or your own website. 10.) Outside metal railing painting – I never heard of this until just recently when I got a knock at my door from a guy who told me that my outside metal railing needed to be painted. He told me that he charges $25 to do it, and he highly recommended that I get it done. I didn’t take him up on his offer, but I did notice that several other people on my block had “wet paint” signs on their steps later that day. Who would have ever thought of making a living doing something so simple? 11.) Run sound for bands – As a guy who plays in a band that runs their own sound, I fully understand the need for a sound guy who knows what they are doing. It is extremely difficult to run your own sound in a band while trying to perform a show. If you have the funds and/or the equipment, you could run your own equipment and charge more, or you could be a knowledgeable sound guy that simply just runs the bands’ equipment for them. Either way works. There’s no need to dedicate yourself to just one band either, as you can always just be a “per show” sound guy for a bunch of bands rather than be part of just one group and be required to be at every gig. There’s many ways you could go about this. 12.) Website artwork creator – Some people may be pretty good at developing the layout for their own websites, but they may not be very creative when it comes to creating the images for the site. If you are a creative person, you could simply charge people to do this aspect of their websites for them. Again, Elance.com, facebook, etc… are all places to advertise your services. 13.) EBook format convertor – After writing a few eBooks, I realized just how much of a headache it is to convert my books from Microsoft Word format to EPub (for the iPad and Nook) and the kindle format. I did eventually figure it out because I was unwilling to pay for something that I knew I could do myself, but it took me about a week (at about 3 hours per day) to figure it out. It was a HUGE headache, and I know other people would be willing to pay for someone else to do this for them. In fact on Elance.com there are several people that are advertising this exact service. 14.) Carpet cleaner – Go out and buy yourself one of those steam-cleaning carpet cleaner machines, and charge people to clean their carpets in their homes for them. I’d much rather find an independent freelancer to do this for me for a cheaper price than a big-name company. The freelancer will most likely do a better job, and at a cheaper cost. 15.) Dance instructor – I’m referring to private dance lessons here as opposed to working for a dance school. I have two friends – one who privately teaches Irish dancing, and another who teaches basic “hip-hop” dancing. There are lots of terrible dancers out there. Therefore, there are many potential clients. 16.) Hair dresser/stylist – A female friend of mine works in a hair salon, but she also cuts peoples’ hair out of her basement on the side. If you have this particular skill, you could easily set up a little shop in a room of your house or apartment and bring your own clients there. 17.) Piano tuner – Many families have a piano in their homes. Not many people know how to tune a piano though. You could simply learn how to do this, and charge people for your service. The advertising mediums are the same as for everything else. 18.) Guitar repair – I learned of this when I found out that my $2000 Gibson Les Paul guitar had a crack in the back of the neck. I almost had a nervous breakdown, but luckily I found a guy that repaired guitars online. He didn’t live too far from me, and he charged me about $120 to repair the guitar for me. After I got it back, it was just like new! This guy will surely get repeat business from me for all future guitar problems. 19.) Guitar set-up – A guitar set-up is not the same thing as a guitar repair. A set up is where you adjust the intonation, the action, and the overall “feel” of the guitar. Add a nice polish and string change, and you’ve got a very nice service to provide. There are many guitar players out there that don’t know how to do a proper set-up themselves, and they would gladly pay others to do it for them. I am one of those people. 20.) Cabinet Maker – If you are an experienced wood-worker, and you know how to make a nice set of kitchen cabinets, than you can make some beautiful cabinets that would sell for up to and over $100,000 per set. It may cost you about $10,000 or so in materials, but if you have the starting cash and the skills, you can make some SERIOUS money this way. My dad is an excellent woodworker, and he made two beautiful sets of custom made kitchen cabinets for his home and for my home. He prefers to just keep his woodworking as a side hobby though rather than a full-time job. However, if I had the skills that he did, I think I would seriously consider going into the cabinet making business. Those things are worth some serious cash! 21.) Weed Puller – I hate pulling weeds out of my yard, but it’s just something that I have to do every month or so. There are plenty of well-off people out there that will gladly pay someone to do this for them. I know some people who pay others to do this for them. Again, it’s a quick job, and you could make some decent cash for doing something that other people don’t feel like doing themselves. 22.) Cake Maker – Everyone likes a nice cake for events such as birthdays, graduations, etc… My one friend has the hobby of making very intricate cakes for his friends. He has charged up to $150 for some of his cakes before, but he mostly just makes them for fun. After hearing how much people are willing to pay for cakes, I strongly considered going into business with him. I actually still am! I’d run the websites and do the marketing, and he’d make the cakes. 23.) Internet marketer – In this day and age, there are lots of people who are trying to run an internet business of some sort. There are lots of good ideas out there, but generating traffic is many times the biggest obstacle for people. If you know how to generate traffic to websites, you can team up with people who have websites and products to sell. You can charge for your marketing skills. 24.) Sales page creator – Again with internet marketing, creating a great sales page is crucial in selling products and services. Not everyone knows how to create a “catchy” sales page. On Elance.com, you will find lots of people offering this specific service. 25.) Masseuse – I know at least 5 female friends of mine that went to masseuse school, and have a table set up in their homes. I’m not really too big on getting massages, but I know plenty of people who are! 26.) Wedding photographer – This is pretty self-explanatory. Get a nice camera, and take some great pictures. Charge accordingly. 27.) Skateboard sponsor video filmer – I used to skate when I was younger. I was never that great, but I had several friends that were very good. Many of them moved on to get sponsored. In order to get sponsored, they needed lots of video footage. In order to make a great sponsor video, great camera and video editing skills were required. Very few people were able to film a great video. A great video many times made the difference between getting the skater’s foot in the door or not. If you have this skill, you can sell it. 28.) Play in a cover band – I do this, and I make pretty good money from doing so. I love every aspect of it, and I am extremely grateful that I have gotten to the point that I am at today. We simply charge bars and clubs to play at their venues. We are a very good band, so we get lots of repeat business. 29.) Solo performing – I’m not the greatest singer in the world, but I know plenty of people who are. Lots of people do solo acoustic acts, and just like playing in a cover band, they simply charge bars and clubs to play there. If you are a good player, you will surely get lots of business. I do solo acts myself, but they are just guitar-based acts. I solo over top of the music that a DJ plays. Solo gigs are also available for pianists, saxophone players, etc…If you are a good musician, you will be able to find paying gigs. 30.) Booking agent – Lots of bands want to play, but they don’t know how to get paying gigs. If you have the connections, you can simply charge bands a percentage for getting them into various venues. We have an agent that gets us a few gigs here and there in addition to the many that we get for ourselves. He charges a percentage for all of the gigs that he gets us, but we wouldn’t otherwise be able to get into these venues. Therefore, it is well worth paying the percentage that he charges. 31.) Tutor – If you are exceptionally good at math, English, science, etc… you can charge people for your tutoring services. If you are college educated, than many people will trust that you are capable of teaching them. 32.) Babysitter – This is probably more geared towards women than men, but lots of people need a babysitter for their kids. You could do that for them! 33.) Pet sitter – Yes, people are even willing to pay to have their pets taken care of while they go away on vacation. I never knew that people really paid for this type of service until one day a friend of mine told me that she was getting paid $150 to watch a cat for 3-days. All she had to do was stop over and feed the cat everyday and make sure it was okay. Easy money! 34.) Dog groomer – Again, this one is for those pet-lovers who are willing to pay others to give their dogs a haircut and a bath. This isn’t my particular cup of tea, but maybe it is yours. There certainly are lots of people out there that are willing to pay people to do this for them though! 35.) Computer repair – Maybe you are very good at fixing computers (removing viruses, replacing hard drives, etc…). Everyone and their mother has a computer nowadays, but not everyone is tech-savvy when it comes to repairing their computers. You could charge for this service. 36.) Blacktop driveways – Redoing a driveway’s blacktop is a pain, however the actual process of doing it is not all that difficult. It only takes a few hours of work. Again, there are many people out there that don’t feel like doing this themselves, and therefore if you are willing you could provide this service to them for whatever price you decide to charge. 37.) Personal trainer – Many people want to get into shape, but with the slew of available information on exactly how to do so, things can get very confusing. If you are a fitness enthusiast, and you know what you are doing, you could personally train people. You don’t have to work for a gym to do this either. You could just get your own clients. 38.) Nutritionist – Lots of people, much like myself, know what they are doing when it comes to the gym but are fairly clueless when it comes to the nutrition aspect. Again, there is lots of information out there to decipher from, and a lot of times it is simply much easier just to pay someone to tell you exactly what to do – what to eat, when to eat, how much to eat, how to keep track, etc… If you know how to do this, surely you could find people that are willing to pay you for your help. 39.) Interior wall painter – I’ve had to paint and repaint several rooms in my house, and I HATE it. It’s not hard, but it’s just a giant pain in the ass! Simply go out and get yourself a few brushes, rollers, and other necessary materials and charge people to paint for them. Ironically, some people actually enjoy painting. If you are one of those people, maybe this is for you. 40.) Tube amp repair – As a guitar player who uses tube amps, knowing someone who knows how to repair tube amps is very crucial for me. I know that messing with tube amps is extremely dangerous, even when they are not even plugged in. I also know that I really know nothing about how tube amps work. If you happen to know about this, than you can easily sell your services to all of the guitar players out there. By all means contact me, because I could use a reliable tube amp repairman! 41.) Tax accountant – As a self-employed person, I have to pay my own taxes. Even though I keep very good records of all my income and expenses, making sure that I am paying the IRS properly is a huge concern of mine. I don’t want to underpay them and get charged a penalty, nor do I want to overpay them and miss out on potential deductions. In my opinion, it is well worth it to simply pay someone that knows what they are doing. If you are one who knows what you are doing, than surely you can find several people like me who would be willing to pay for you to do their taxes. 42.) Video editor – Just as blogging and eBook writing is becoming more and more popular every single day, so is sharing information through video. Recording the video is the easy part. Editing the video and preparing it so that it looks professional is the tricky part. If you know how to do this, you could provide this service to people. Again, Elance.com is a great place to start. 43.) Freelance engineer – I have a degree in engineering, and although I’ve chosen to leave the corporate world, I could still provide engineering services for people. In fact, there are lots of entrepreneurs out there with product ideas that need help with the engineering aspect – technical drawings, etc… If you happen to be in the engineering field, this may possibly be for you. I’ve heard that there is very good money in this. 44.) Band Photographer – Many bands need someone to take excellent photos for them so they can promote themselves. It’s not always easy to find a friend that is willing to waste their whole night out taking photos for free. We have paid people a cut of our earnings simply for taking lots of great action photos of our live performances. If you are into photography, go out and offer this service to several bands. They may take you up on your offer, and you will meet lots of cool people along the way as well. [...]... up with these 51 ideas as I was writing this book I had the idea to add this eBook to my website in order to help people come up with some actionable ideas as to how they could become selfemployed, but I really didn’t have the 51 ideas in place until I actually wrote the book All I did was think of things that I know that people, including myself are willing to pay for, and I added those ideas to this... start if you want to advertise these services 51. ) Stand-up comedy – You may not ever get to be as big as Dane Cook, but if you are comfortable in front of a large crowd, and you can make them laugh, you should be good to go I imagine this is very similar to the music business – if you’re good, you will get many gigs Conclusion So there you have it – 51 ideas for how you could provide your services... added those ideas to this book Roughly half of these ideas came from people I know that actually make money from doing some of these things Some of the other ideas came from my own experiences in difficulties that I’ve had in developing my businesses (website artwork, eBook formatting, sound and lighting for my band, etc…) As for the rest of the ideas, I’ve seen all of these services advertised in... know how well you will do if you actually go out and try things The point is that I simply came up with 51 ideas just by thinking about what people I know have done or are doing, and by thinking of things that I would be willing to pay for Another thing to note is that while I was coming up with these ideas, it also caused me to think of even more ways that I could potentially generate income for myself... be able to afford all of my bills I did exactly that Hopefully you found some of these ideas helpful, and hopefully I was able to eliminate some doubts that you may have had about whether or not you are capable of becoming self-employed Feel free to contact me through my website at anytime regarding feedback, other ideas, questions, comments, or just to say hello Thanks for reading, and best of luck... a great light show for us 46.) Video game/computer game programmer – This is yet another form of digital media that people make great money from However, not everyone knows how to implement their game ideas If you have some computer programming and game-design skills, than you can sell your services to people who are looking to create games I am actually in search of a quality game designer as I’d like . freelancing. You call all of the shots! With that said, here are 51 freelance ideas Chapter 2: 51 Freelance Ideas 1.) Give lessons on the musical instrument of your. of Contents Introduction Chapter 1: What do I mean by Freelance Ideas ? Chapter 2: 51 Freelance Ideas Conclusion Introduction The Musician Lifestyle is