THE MODERN BOSS: NEW AND RADICAL WAYS OF EARNING MONEY FROM HOME

By Shelby Silva Advertising, Marketing and Communications, ‘22

Life changed in March 2020. During this time people have lost jobs, or have been put into situations that require them to get a job or two. One of the hardest adaptations of working if someone was fortunate enough to find or still have a job was the remote aspect. As the future has stood unclear everyone has strapped up and adapted- using what has been most available to them and using it to their advantage. There is a way to make the extra necessary funds without going through employers and interviews which add to the heavy amounts of stress in the job search process.

Depending on personal comfort, there are several regulated and easy sign-up apps which help make it possible to procure money- all secure and easily transferred to your account. It all depends on resources, preference and skill-sets.

Something familiar and probably one of the easiest ways to hop on the bandwagon is to start practicing a more minimalist lifestyle and sell excess clothes and other unwanted items. Rather than going out the old fashioned way and having a yard sale, these sites with already millions of subscribers looking for affordable and pre-owned vintage are the perfect place to fulfill the dream of running an online clothing boutique.

A top favorite which acts as an Instagram for selling clothes is DePop: which offers the opportunity to sell and purchase any styles. This app is perfect for selling both vintage and designer clothing and comes off as a very Generation Z targeted site. Taking the time to go through older and unwanted clothes can turn something that was once taking up space into a cash benefit.. No matter how out of date or different the clothes may be, there is always somebody out there who thinks that someone else’s trash is their treasure.

Other apps like ThredUp and Poshmark are along similar lines to Depop, with a little more specialty per category. ThredUp leans towards the vintage seeking crowd while Poshmark draws more of a designer crowd.

One of the most valuable opportunities all this time at home has brought is the ability to get in touch with the creative side of oneself and turn art into a thriving and fulfilling business. Instagram has served as a reliable platform to market these ideas and creations while sites like Etsy have made it possible to securely sell to the public.

One of the many new business owners who has taken advantage of this time to put her perlor making passions into a thriving success is newly 24 year old Gillian Puma, owner of Fellow Feeling Creations. Perlers are meltable fuse beads which can be created into an endless amount of designs. Puma specializes in designs in relation to electronic music artists, and popular anime character designs. In an interview with Puma she was asked what inspired her to start making perlers in the first place. “I got back into it at the peak of quarantine as a quarantine activity to get my mind off of things especially since the quarantine was really affecting my mental health.” Puma admitted that making perlers has been practically therapy for her. When asked what made her decide to start selling her perlers for profit she said, “People were constantly asking me to make them things, so I figured to kick it up a notch and start adding more than just the perler creation. I started making magnets, then experimented with making keychains, and now I make earrings as well,” Since starting her business Puma has gained a steady amount of followers on her Instagram @fellowfeelingxcreations and is currently taking custom orders as well as her ready made designs.

Fellow Feeling Creations Instagram

Something that has radicalized not only how the common person can make money, but the porn industry itself is the one and only, Only Fans. The genius system that gives the content creator much more power than any other explicit content sites and an actual ability to make real money. An influencer will set a subscription price as well as requesting payments for any other private interaction with their fans which could include big tips. Only Fans will only take 20% of your profit, as many of these selling apps already do. According to Refinery29, OnlyFans creator Tim Stokely wanted to “push influencer culture to the next level by putting consumers’ money directly into the hands of the influencers’’.

https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2020/12/10163194/onlyfans-creators-make-money

The Only Fans community has aided in the normalization of producing sexually explicit content among the average person. It has also gotten individuals out of difficult situations during this pandemic while financial struggle is at an all time high. It has given people of all sizes, races, and ages (above 18) a platform to feel confident in and manage their lives no matter where they may be from. There are other platforms that give money makers a chance to skip the constant content creation and relying on subscriptions and tips, and get paid fast simply for their own presence.

One of the user favorite “sugar daddy” sites is Seeking Arrangement. What kind of arrangements does this system specialize in? Users can set up an account either to search for either a sugar baby, sugar mommy or daddy. These are situations that give everyone the opportunity to have their say in whatever kind of arrangement best suits their needs, typically with a money transfer set up in mind for the one offering their service of attention and dates. This is also well suited for individuals looking for gifts and companionship, and is probably not for someone who doesn’t want to put time into.

At the end of the day, there are a plethora of ways to make money online and it is not a foreign subject to the public. The way the pandemic has affected what individuals are doing and where has changed the market and what kinds of goods and services are the current hot ticket. These modern forms of quick side money making are the result of turning an uncontrollable situation into an opportunistic situation and therefore rolling with the forever evolving dynamic of how media is utilized and consumed.

Gilliam Puma, owner of Fellow Feeling Creation