show me the money

Okay, I'm not giving it up for free anymore.

If you have teeny-weeny screen res or if you're a scroller, you might have seen some brand spankin' new ads wayyyyyyy down there on the right. I don't care if you click on them or not; I never click on yours. I've been watching my AdSense account over the past few days to see the money roll in, and after three days I'm proud to tell you that I now have FIVE cents in my account. See for yourself:



It's possible that I might not get rich off of this overnight. Looking at the big picture, though, most people have more control over their income than they think they do. One way to boost your paycheck is to earn more money, which is what Stanley and Danko call playing good offense in The Millionaire Next Door. You can do this through a variety of ways:

1. Job-hopping. For many white-collar employees, the best way to get a significant bump in pay in one shot is to look for a new employer. Obviously, how well you succeed (or don't succeed) depends on a variety of factors, including your industry and skills, how well you sell yourself, how good the fit is with a new employer, and whether the new job represents an increase in responsibilities and/or workload from your prior employer.

2. Performance. Make sure you stand out from the pack. Keep your skill set up to date, take on challenges that push you out of your comfort zone, be honest about your mistakes, share credit for teamwork, give your staff opportunties to be star performers in their own right, and build relationships each and every day. You're employer's an idiot if he or she doesn't reward the star performers: people vote with their feet. If you work for an idiot, be a star performer anyway. The more experience you have under your belt, the better opportunity you have to showcase it someplace where you'll be fairly compensated for it.

Note: Don't be a prima donna while you're at it. No one wants to deal with that.

3. Negotiation. Everything is negotiable. I never thought I had the cojones to talk about pay with my management until I pulled the salary levels for my grade and the one below from HR while putting together a job description for a potential new hire.

Good golly, what a revelation. Looking at the numbers pissed me off.

I forwarded the salary information to the bossman, along with a formal request to review my salary and discuss an adjustment. He panicked and phoned me at home, telling me that I'm the star performer on the team and that he feels that I'm underpaid and that it's his job to fix that. He finished up by asking me to please not quit without giving him time to make it right in our annual end-of-year review and raise process. I said that if that's what it takes to not burn any bridges, then that's fine - but that he had better make it right or I'll be shopping my resume.

Note: Don't make idle threats. If you make a statement like that, be prepared to have someone call your bluff.

He's mentioned my salary half a dozen times since then, reminding me that he hasn't forgotten, and he's put me in the pipeline for a hot-cha-cha promotion. I've known the guy for ten years as I've bounced around the firm and I'm gambling that whether the promotion comes through or not, he'll make the numbers work for me. If he doesn't, then I'm not working for him.

Note: The tactics I mentioned above can backfire if you don't know what negotiation means. I once made an offer for a junior position based on genuine perceived worth to someone who then demonstrated that he had an unusual idea of what negotiation entails. He ranted at the HR rep that clearly I didn't appreciate his true worth or I would have obviously offered what he felt he deserved. He fired a string of similarly abusive remarks in that vein at her; after the call ended, she called me, somewhat shaken, and duly reported what the candidate had said.

Well, what would you do?

I pulled the offer, alerted building security and legal counsel that we were dealing with an unstable person, and phoned every division in our service line that was hiring to warn them off of this guy.

No one likes a prima donna.

If none of those tactics will work for you at your job-job, you can always pick up work on the side if your employment agreement allows for it. I mentioned once before that I do pro bono work for a non-profit on a regular basis. It's led to people asking for contract work on projects, which I usually chase away by setting my rates to extortionate levels on the grounds that it costs a lot of money for me to be willing to be annoyed in my free time. If you're more flexible than that (and I'm not sure whether it's possible to be less flexible), you might have broader opportunties.

There are also plenty of people who make money off of their hobbies. One person I know is a golf instructor on the weekends: he gave up a pro career fifteen years ago after finding out that he wasn't quite good enough, but he still loves the game and found a way to make money from it. Another person I know routinely takes IT freelance work just to keep his skills sharp, since he's now in management and no longer writes programs in his day job. A couple of talented runners I know took some weekend courses and landed part-time coaching gigs. A while back, I read in the New York Times that it's becoming increasingly common for professionals who love to cook to take weekend shifts at Williams and Sonoma so they can get paid for talking about cooking, showing off new kitchen products, and benefiting from a really good discount. The point is that you have to be inventive, and if you're going to spend your free time working for extra income, you might as well make it fun.

As for me, I'm focusing on my primary career, which is demanding but generally rewarding. With some help from the bossman, hopefully it'll become a little more rewarding in the pecuniary way in the new fiscal year.

If that doesn't work out, I guess there's always AdSense.

Do you make money outside of your main profession? How?