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Last night I had my second photo booth gig of the summer.
I came in. I set up. I babysat my booth for 4 hours. And then I went home.
The best part of the night was pocketing a $600 check.
That made me start thinking… Just what is my time worth?
If you figure in setup and takedown times, I figure the photo booth is about a $100/hr gig. Even when I work as a wedding DJ, I figure I pocket about $50/hr.
I’ll let you in on a little secret…
I make a fraction of that in my day job.
That got me thinking. What is the difference?
Why does one job pay so much better than the other?
Then it hit me. It’s the difference between being paid for my time versus being paid for my skills.
I hate to say it, but working in sales is a piece of cake. I get up, show up, and if I’m lucky the right customers come in so I make money. Yeah, it helps knowing a ton about my product. And it really helps that I’m a people person. 5 months in and there really isn’t any challenge. It’s been the same since day one.
On the other hand, DJing takes mad skills. We’re talking some serious nunchuck skills here. The resume is long and a pain to read, but I will say that I wasn’t able to just walk into my first DJ job and be a rockstar. My growth and development went in cycles. I would hit a wall, then have a breakthrough, then another wall, then a breakthrough. You could almost measure the tiers on a 3 month schedule. Even when I quit, I knew I was a long way from mastering the art of DJing.
And that is why people pay the big bucks for your skills.
Any idiot can press play.
It takes an artist to turn that simple act into something beautiful.
Time to do some thinking. What skills do you have that you can turn into serious cash? Or maybe you already are making serious cash with them. If that’s the case, let me know below.
Hi Kevin,
You raise an interesting point. You will find that you will be able to make more money when paid by the hour for your skills as with your DJing. What you need to take into consideration is the time and effort spend to get your DJing gig, marketing, expenses and other overheads you don’t have with a lower paid day job.
You really need to get out of the mentality of being paid by the hour altogether.
There are only so many hours in a day and only so many days in a year you can work. There will be a maximum hourly rate you can charge for any skill so you are putting a ceiling on your earnings potential.
You need to work out how you can sell your skills, or knowledge time and time again and make sure this knowledge has a high perceived value. This will remove the maximum earnings ceiling and make the skies the limit.
Have you thought about creating a DJing book or training course?
Cheers Roger
Hey Karl
A great article on how to use the skills you have to make more money for less work. We all undervalue ourselves which is a crying shame.
For me its about having the confidence to make the leap from worker to teacher. Maybe one day
Cheers
Paul
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Good article…I think knowing what you are worth is a tough one for many people doing internet marketing or anything online because they are quite isolated in the job. I know some people that go out to work for a company that does SEO or such like to get more confidence in their own abilities and work out what they are really worth.
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