Sometimes, it’s hard to appreciate just how easy it is to make GREAT money as a freelance writer in this day and age.
Whenever I lose sight of that, I think back to the year 1997.
I’m 12 years old, and I want to buy a computer game.
…except my parents can’t buy it for me.
Growing up on the poverty line
When my older brothers were young, my mom stayed at home with them while my dad worked full-time delivering and stocking vending machines for Pepsi.
Unfortunately, by the time the late-‘80s rolled around, a brutal combination of injuries, alcoholism, and bipolar disorder forced my dad to move to disability and quit working.
Once I hit first grade and was in school full-time, my mom went to work as a receptionist.
Raising 4 boys, paying for and maintaining a house, and dealing with a near-constant stream of medical bills for my father, my mom’s meager salary from answering phones all day didn’t stretch very far.
We didn’t struggle to make ends meet. The ends weren’t GOING to meet. We just did the best we could.
And often, that meant as kids, we had to find creative ways to pay for things that we wanted.
The adolescent solution to my funding problem
The computer game in question was called “TNM 7” – a simulation game where you run a professional wrestling company.
Being a massive wrestling fan at the time, I had to have this game.
Problem: it cost $30.
We all live in a day and age where parents drop thirty bucks on their kids without even thinking.
And most kids had zero problems getting that kind of money out of their parents when I was a kid.
But, my childhood was different. There was no money to spend on computer games. My mom was barely making our mortgage payment, keeping up with repairs around the house, and constantly fighting off debt collectors.
After a long conversation with her about the possibilities of what I could do, we were able to find a solution.
It was summertime, so I was going to go to a farm out in the country and spend hours picking potatoes out of the dirt.
We were paid, I believe, 25 cents per bushel. And they were very strict on how full the bushel had to be.
For two long, hot summer days, I was on my hands and knees in the dirt, trying to scrounge for potatoes as the sun beat down on me.
By the end of those two days, I was so exhausted I could barely move.
But I had just barely made my $30.
(And the game was totally worth the work. I played it for years.)
This is a different time
I’m all about hard work on a farm.
Yesterday I was digging and prepping an area of our land for a garden.
There’s a farm up the road from our house that wants our boys to come work for them when they are a little older (and they totally will).
It builds character.
But the situation above happens a lot to us as adults, too: an expense comes up that we don’t have the budget for, and we need to find a solution.
You COULD contact a local farm and go pick potatoes like I did when I was 12.
Today, though, you have better options.
You could just reach out to businesses and offer to write a handful of emails for them.
It’s not uncommon to get paid $75-$150 per email.
And if you play your cards right, you can parlay that into a working relationship where you get paid $2,000-$5,000 a month.
The workload isn’t too intensive.
You can write on the side of your 9-5.
And how would an extra few thousand bucks per month change your life? It would take a lot of pressure off, wouldn’t it?
In this day and age, writing emails is fast, pretty easy, and in-demand.
You could pick potatoes for $15/day, or you can write a few emails for $200-$300 per hour.
I know which one I’d pick.