A Full-Time Income on Part-Time Hours

A Full-Time Income on Part-Time Hours A couple of years ago, after Id returned form maternity leave and decided that I quite enjoyed spending time with my son, I went part-time as a writer. Yet, despite having cut down my hours, I was able to maintain my yearly income. Wait, thats not true. I increased it. If youre a writer with a day job or a work-at-home parent in charge of noisy kids looking to make a nice income on part-time hours, you need to maximize the work you can do in those limited hours. How? Read on. 1. Take on only high-paying work. I only worked 20 hours a week during that first year as a writing parent, and so I knew that I no longer had time for $50 blog posts or articles that paid $100 for 1,000 words. Instead, I focused exclusively on $1-a-word markets and $100-per-hour projects. That meant that even if I did actual write for only 10 hours a week (the rest of the time devoted to marketing and admin), I could, in the weeks that I filled up those hours, be making $1,000 a week. Not bad! 2. Take on easier work. Before motherhood, my biggest joy was being a journalist, going out and finding untold stories from places no one had ever looked. I wrote about the environment, womens issues, politics, and business from my home in India. I won awards for my work. But this was difficult, time-consuming work, and once the ba 3. Make the most of every bit of research. I have a rule for myself: Every interview I do should lead to at least two more ideas for stories. So when I interviewed a well-known food scientist for a story about genetic modification, I ended our conversation 4. Come up with ideas in multiples of three. I rarely come up with a single idea. I come up with the idea in multiples of three. Thats because I take the initial spark of an idea and try to transform it into something that would fit into a number of different publications. So my query on how busy women can keep fit wont just be sent to a womans magazine but a magazine for working women (The Five-Minute Fitness Program for Executives), a parenting magazine (Fitness Tips for the Time-Crunched Mummy) and maybe even a general interest publication (Fitness on a Stopwatch). 5. Have a goal for every hour. Its so easy to open up your computer in the morning and waste two hours on Twitter. This happens when you dont have a plan of action. Make a to-do list for the week and then each day before bed, take the top three things you know you must do tomorrow and put them on a separate list. When you sit down to work in the morning (or during afternoon nap time), you know exactly what you need to get done. The more productive you are in the hours that youre actually working, the more youll be able to earn. Finally, remember, when people work 80 hours a week, theyre not actually working those 80 hours. Theyre working a productive 20, a not-so-productive 20, and a completely wasteful 40. So maximize your own productivity for your first 20 hours and youll be earning a full-time income in no time.