Becoming a Modern-Day Apple Annie

When you're stuck at home because the job search isn't panning out, you have to think outside the box.  In the depression, when so many were out of work and scrounging for the money they needed to get by,  people began to realize the value of making use of any talents/skills to earn even the smallest amount of money here and there. 

In our own home, both my husband and I are currently unemployed and on the job hunt.  During the last time the country had to deal with an economic crisis like this, only the husband would be looking for work outside of the home.  Probably the only negative result of women entering the workforce during WWII was the fact that it led to the American standard of the two-income household - a phenomenon that has resulted in inflation to the point that a one-income household seems an impossibility to most lower-income families nowadays.  When my husband first lost his job at the beginning of the economic crisis, though, our daughter was not school-age yet and, after doing some very enlightening calculations, we realized that, by using the extra time at home to economize, we could actually save money by his staying home and being a house husband while I was going to graduate school.  Now that I have no student loans coming in and no income, however, survival has become a serious issue, the crisis stage of which is merely being staved off by the generosity of our (not-so-well-off-themselves) family.

Though it would be ideal, now that our daughter is in Pre-K, for both me and my husband to find jobs outside of the home, being poor for as long as we have has resulted in difficulties in even this area.  To get by, we've had to sell off assets, including our second car. While we had no choice about it at the time, only one of the two of us is capable of telling a potential employer that we have reliable transportation and full availability now (especially since we live in an area without nearby public transportation).  As a result, one of the two of us has to be on the lookout for a full-time job while the other has to work their availability around the other's schedule.  Of course, this is all in theory because neither one of us has been able to find a job yet.

Despite my education, my own job search, while promising at first, has been proving long and unfruitful, so recently my husband has taken point and begun looking for a full-time job while I try to figure out some part-time ways of making an income. As a certified geek, the internet was the first place I looked to for possible sources of even the smallest amount of extra income.   I checked out some paid survey websites, but most of them seemed somewhat sketchy to me and each one I visited filled my email with huge amounts of spam.  

selling my talent online

The next thing I tried was based on the suggestion of a friend: I've been doing art on Photoshop for years as a hobby and my work has gotten pretty good, if I do say so myself.  My friend suggested that I try to use that talent to make some extra money by selling prints of my art, so I began with a Facebook artist page, started looking for a local place I can get things printed, and have been slowly starting to try to develop my art into an internet-based side business.  No, it hasn't really taken off yet, but a couple of family members have bought cards and a little money is better than none!

Since I love writing and also do this as a hobby, this blog is one of the other ways I'm trying to earn a small amount of extra money on the side.  While it’s a wonderful dream (that I certainly have) to eventually get your blog sponsored and get paid to write full-time, you can also make scraps of cash by using AdSense on any blogs and websites you have.  Adsense works by placing ads on your page and paying you a small amount each time a visitor to your page clicks on an ad (so help me out - click on some of those adds!).

Thanks to my education, I'm considered enough of an expert in Chemistry that I qualify to be an online tutor, which is another avenue of income I'm currently pursuing.  Like everything else I'm trying, its something that makes use of my talents and skills, that I can do in my spare time, and that I can do from home.  Yes, I'm going to be spending a lot of time at my computer and may not be able to update everything every day (for instance, this blog might have to get tuned down to 2-3 posts per week instead of daily posts as it has begun).  I'm going to be busy, yes, but I'm trying to turn myself into a modern-day Apple Annie, doing whatever I can to earn what I can, and no one can validly claim that they weren't extremely busy as well!