The easiest buck I ever made was in 1994.
Before I tell you what the job was, let’s talk about easy money.
I often see business coaches posing this question:
“Do you feel guilty charging for work that feels easy?”
They post it on Facebook and Twitter, offering to help people break through this so-called “money block.” [UDATE: I now believe in money blocks. A whole other convo.]
My answer is, WHA? Hell no I don’t feel guilty. Bring on the easy work.
If it’s effortless for me, I feel even better charging for it.
Do you want to hire a plumber who grunts the whole time he’s fixing your toilet and tells you, “This is really hard”? No, you want him to snake that baby in two seconds, flush it successfully, and be out of there.
Same with a web designer. Or a surgeon. You want to hear, “This is child’s play for me.” Not, “Yikes, this is a tricky one. A real doozy.”
We want people who do their job naturally and easily, don’t we?
My best work moments are the ones where a copywriting client watches me type (through the shared-screen miracle of google docs) and, on my first try, says, “That’s it! That’s the line I was looking for!” And then we have the luxury problem of figuring out what to do with the rest of the hour.
But on the easiness scale, no job holds up to the one I had a couple of decades ago. Here’s what it was:
Michael, a guy I’d worked with at SPY Magazine, had started an internet company.
What that meant, no one really knew. In 1994, we got what email was (though we still used the hyphenated term “e-mail”). But what else did you do with the Internet?
Michael explained. His site, called Transom, would provide a thing called “content” and had a “bulletin board.”
This was the Flintstones version of a forum. (I guess the Jetsons-age version of a forum is Facebook.)
Michael would pay me to be a plant. A ringer.
My job was to post once a day or so, to help Transom look like, and become, an active, thriving community.
Any topic I wanted, Michael said. Just get conversation going.
Naturally, I posted about current events: Melrose Place and Beverly Hills, 90210.
On Melrose, this was during the cliffhanger-heavy days of Allison (Courtney Thorne Smith) becoming a drunk and Kimberly (Marcia Cross) destroying lives and ripping off her wig.
And on Bev Hills, Dylan McKay was in a thrilling drug-addiction spiral, even doing the hard shit like heroin, which he smoked off of tin foil. (This is called “chasing the dragon.”) Like all addicts on TV, he did this while driving on the side of a mountain.
Brendan, Brenda, Kelly, Steve Sanders and the gang staged an intervention. They brought in a drug counselor played by Mackenzie Phillips as sort-of-herself.
I got paid to discuss this stuff!
Had I known that Mackenzie Phillips would one day reappear on Celebrity Rehab, I’d have had even more material. Not that I was lacking. The ever-widening gully between Tori Spelling’s surgically FUBAR’d boobs was worth whole threads on its own.
The engagement my writing got was off the charts. By “engagement,” I mean one flirtatious guy named Geoff who also liked to talk about Melrose and Bev Hills. (I met up with him once in real life, at a place downtown called Temple Bar. He brought his fiancee.)
By “off the charts,” I mean there were no charts for engagement back then. Remember, few people even knew how to get on the internet, much less measure it. One ongoing conversation about a couple of primetime soaps was considered viral.
I earned a weekly retainer for this job. I forget how much, but I was still living at home with my parents rent-free, so any money was gravy. Or, more accurately, lipstick money (Mac Twig and Bobby Brown Shimmer #4).
And, the best part, I made it doing something I gladly would’ve done for free.
Now you.
Do you feel guilty charging for work that’s easy?
What’s the easiest gig you ever had?
TELL ME IN THE COMMENTS.
I love your blogs, Laura!
Easy job I ever had? Definitely being 16 years old, working for my Dad in Zante, during the height of the Summer season (Think gorgeously hot Summer evenings)… basically my job was to get drunk on yummy cocktails, flirt with guys and bring them into my Dads bar to buy me and themselves more drinks!!
Does life get better than that?!?
Nowadays, I’m still loving life, although it’s not quite as Sunny back in the UK, but I get to teach people how to be happy as a Happiness and Success Coach! Woohoo!!
Annalise x
I got paid once for standing in a bar serving free shots of Jagermeister to drunk college kids. Not only was it easy, I got to sneak a few shots myself. 🙂 Besides that, in my grown-up years, I got paid $1200 for coming to a meeting once for two hours to participate in a panel discussion on a topic I loved and knew well. Yes, please!
That is my dream! Getting paid to go to meetings. I LOVE a panel. Even though other people hate watching them.
Laura – I love Denise’s video, but I’m gonna pass for now. Suffering course fatigue right now…
But the easiest money I ever made? About 14 years ago, I had an obnoxious prick of a client. He’d email me at three in the morning and blast me the next day if I didn’t reply at 3:30 am. He gave me a heart attack once, and that’s when I finally grew the balls to fire him.
Before all that, though, he asked me to build a third website to sell more overpriced crap to his gullible customers. I didn’t want to do it, so I quoted him twelve grand instead of my usual six, and demanded he pays me half up front. I figured if I get the other six at the end, it’s a bonus, which I did.
I’m happy to report that his wife divorced him for infidelity (Italians…) and that he lost the beachside mansion and a tonne of money. Later, a customer-led class-action lawsuit took care of the home on Hamilton Island and the rest of his money – along with his ability to launch any new businesses.
I still feel happy whenever I think about it.
I’m so glad you got his last 12k! You know, somehow the UK spelling “tonne” makes it seem like even more.
*correction on my URL
Easiest gig? I was teaching a freshman English course in a Japanese university. Those deer-in-headlight students were for the most part unresponsive verbally (probably because their listening skills in English were low). Writing skills—fuhget about it. I was supposed to teach a class of 24 “academic English”. But most of them took 50 minutes to just painstakingly write a short paragraph about day to day stuff.
I worked there for 2 imposter syndrome-filled years…
That’s a pretty sweet gig. I love teaching people who are wowed by the baby basics.
I could talk about Airbnb, towels, sheets all the time. Until one day I decided to charge for it. I still give tons of free advice and my family and friends call me for..
– What should I do about this guest?
– What about this other situation…
I love it. It isn’t a job, it’s me talking about something I know well.
Thanks for the reminder.
All the time! When a job feels effortless and comes naturally, you get the sense you’re ripping people off (and like any idiot could do what you do). But I like to think the guilt is a sign you’ve mastered that particular skill.
Speaking of plumbers, it’s like the old analogy where the plumber fixes something, charges a few hundred bucks and the client says, ‘I’m not paying that, it took you 5 minutes’ and the plumber says, ‘No, it took me 30 years’.
I’m a copywriter too and I still feel funny charging for taglines and slogans because I genuinely enjoy it and don’t sweat blood.
Oh my goodness Laura! Did you read my mind? I’m grappling with this at the present moment. Gotta let that shit go.
Update from last comment when I said I would start meditating again: I haven’t!
What’s so easy for you that you feel guilty collecting money for? I want to know. And I want you to do it.
Does it by any chance involve being on camera, you photogenic thing you?
(wow – Dylan. Had a crush on him!)
I would say that the “easiest” money I make is when I’m working with people in my private practice. I get charged between $233-$250 dollars per hour to hold a person’s kidney/adrenal area, gut and brainstem (not all at the same time – and on the outside, I’m not like.. in their body cavity!).
It is the nervous system work I do to help people re-regulate their nervous systems after either a life time of chronic accumulated stress, or as a result of early trauma that has put those little parts of the body in hyper-alert mode.
I just have to sit there and almost be like that soothing mom that was never there for them.
(of course, I also went through oodles of training and such to get to this point, but now that it is here, it is so simple)
there yah go Laura!
Irene.
If only you could’ve done that for Dylan McKay, maybe he wouldn’t have had all those unresolved issues with his dad (who got blown up in a car).
Wow, what a great gig that was! Sadly I can’t think of one I’ve ever had that was easy.
I still remember all those storylines you mentioned from Melrose and 90210! Ah, memories 🙂
If you want a little trip back to the 90s, go here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm5aPJRP-A0