Making money while full timing.

[Accordion]

Busking is tough. If you find an area where there are a lot of street musicians, the good spots are already taken. Also, there are lots of ordinances about playing on the streets. You have to keep your eye out for the local police. You might be better off playing in coffee houses for tips.

I have a friend that does well in Quartzite, Arizona playing guitar at various clubs.

If I made 5K a month, I would never even think of busking. Save your money from working that well paying job, and live in your bus without having to make any money.

Keep playing music, but do not expect it to make much money. Times have changed. It is a crying shame that musicians are not paid for their art.

Here's an idea. Set up a flea market booth. Play accordion to attract customers. Sell jewelry.

[lornaschinske]

Originally Posted by Gravycakes

... We have been brainstorming some on how to make money while doing this. I know I can come back in the summer and spring to the Annapolis area and work the job I work now because my current boss has already made the offer and I make about $5000/month so that would be a good push since I feel we could live on $20,000/Yr or less.

There is a thread on Escapees about fulltiming on $25K per year. I know we could do it but we wouldn't be traveling much. I wish I made $5K a month... every month. We would be living high on the hog! For working at my 20 hours/wk part-time job from April thru Dec, I paid taxes on slightly over $19,000 for 2013 (I also worked a lot of weeks where I worked more than 20 hours... like up to 48 hours and I was working 40 hours for over a month... which got sunk right into the bus) .

As for making $$, I am still looking. Might have found some things that is not an MLM, does not require internet access (except for looking things up), does not require me to spend all my time writing a monetized blog on my boring life and just may work for us by giving us a little extra $$, get David exercising more and help get us away from the bus a little more often. I think it will take more than one thing. I would like to get to where I can stop working at my job since it ties me down to one location. I would love to be able to spend our summers in the Southern Appalachian mountains and our winters on the Gulf or East coast beaches. I have no talent that anyone would pay for. If we could get the "some things" to replace my paycheck plus a bit and the economy picks up some more, we could get back into junking if those crappy lying TV shows (American Pickers & the storage war things all of which are fakes) will fall out of favour. I won't know how this stuff will work out for us until later towards around Christmas. I believe I can start putting things in place by June.

If any of the things we come up with will make $$ believe me I will share info with this forum!

[Das Mel]

I'm somewhat of a Doodler, I plan on putting some of my better pieces on something like Cafepress (but not actually Cafepress, probably Lulu or something like that) on various items and selling them that way. I just upload my pictures, pick out what it goes on (t-shirts, totebags, posters, postcards, mugs, stickers, magnets, whatever), and set a price. The website takes care of the rest of it and I get a paycheck for whatever sells every so often.

You can also write short stories and put them on Amazon, that's what a fellow artist friend of mine is doing and as soon as I get a little spending money I'm BUYING some of her books (I enjoy the way she writes). I sort of intend on doing the same thing if I can get out of writing 'Flash Fiction'.

My Boss at work (I'm an Assistant Manager for a Retail store) keeps hounding me about seeing if I can put some of my work in a Gallery in Santa Fe but.... ehhhhhh. Santa Fe is full of rich people and I'm pretty sure they wouldn't want anything to do with my artwork.

Ah, crikey, I have to finish a couple of water colours for the County and State Fairs. I forgot about that. Gah.

[Das Mel]

Originally Posted by Malkieri

You should start an art thread so we can see your "doodles"

I mean, okay, yeah, I've got an online Gallery an' such, but I don't actually tend to tell people about it. They're just doodles.

[bansil]

Originally Posted by Das Mel

I mean, okay, yeah, I've got an online Gallery an' such, but I don't actually tend to tell people about it. They're just doodles.

That looks like that canadian contractor guy that fixes other peoples crappy work....
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Holmes on homes
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[Das Mel]

Oh, that guy. I hate him. I can't watch any of his shows because I honestly can't roll my eyes hard enough.

Hardhat up there is RED's Engineer class from Team Fortress 2.