Hello there!

Today started off with a good rain shower. It's been raining almost daily for over a month. But here in the tropics rain is often here this minute and done the next. It's also known to rain on one side of the street and not the other. 

I have a lot of options on what to do today. Play around with polymer clay and make some charms, my newest hobby. Improve my photoshop and illustrator skills with online tutorials. Perhaps work on a school jumper for one of my grandaughters. 

One thing that will take a few hours is posting updates on social media sites for my clients. That I use Hoot Suite for their twitter, facebook and LinkedIn accounts. I just set them up in goggle+ also so when I get their verification email I will add info to that page. 

As you are reading, I am into quite a few activities. Am I retired? Not by a long shot! I recently resigned from a pretty good paying job at a local resort to work from home. The job had become pretty much 24/7 because I often received emergency calls at night and constant calls, texts and emails even on days off. I decided after coming back from a 2 week vacation I just wasn't going to jump back into that barrel again. Was I prepared to quit cold turkey. Not really. I had next to nothing in savings, lots of potential ways to make income but nothing sure fired except a minimum income from a monthly Pennysaver I design and publish for an absentee owner. But my house has no mortgage, my truck is paid for, no credit card debt, no loans so my needs are relatively minor and according to my plans can be covered monthly. 

How will I manage? This is the question you may be interested in since perhaps you too would like to quit your job or at least get some extra income. So if you follow my blog, we can learn together!

First thing I did (after handing in resignation letter and feeling the freedom)

was feel just a tad of panic. Let's face it, the economy is pretty bad and here in Puerto Rico lots worse. But I have always managed to find income some way and since teaching myself computer and grafic design then taking a course online at The Art Institute its a lot easier to make money than selling sodas on a rural route or handing out flyers door to door which I have been known to do years ago to make ends meet. 

So now for the easy way. One day a few weeks before I left my job I came across a estimate from some lady in NY offering former boss social media marketing services, updating the company facebook, twitter, etc accounts. And the estimate was pretty hefty for the amount of updates included. That set my wheels churning. 

While on vacation (yes, I know vacation with laptop etc is not a vacation) I did some research on this social media marketing/managing thing. I actually paid some cash for a short course. It was a minor amount and the course was actually useful. I am not here to plug it but if you want the source drop me a line and I will give you the info. 

So when I got back I contacted a few of the brokers in the resort where I had worked in one way or another for many years so have good contacts. They had originally wanted me to do updates on their web sites but when I explained my new services they jumped on board. One had basically NO social media accounts at all! So I got busy setting them up in twitter, facebook, pinterest, Instagram, Constant Contact and now Google+. I post their property photos and info, get new likes and followers and basically put in a few hours daily updating all the info and get paid by the hour or an agreed set fee. 

Can you do this? I don't know. Do you have a few hours a day to do the updates? Do you have a potential source for clients? According to the course I took you can find clients online via freelance sites but I haven't had to resort to that yet. There are still a lot of potential clients in my area when I am ready to branch out more. 

Meantime I have a lot more income potential things to try that are also fun. I have 3 die cut machines, Silhouette Cameo, a Black Cat Cougar and a US Cutter. With them I make banners, signs, custom greeting cards etc. 

I have 3 sewing machines, industrial straight stitch and serger, and a super cool Brother machine that does embroidery and connects to computer and you can make it sew your own designs. None of which I have had a chance to learn to use with the 24/7 job. 

I have been buying crafting supplies and tools for months looking forward to the day I would quit the job and be able to use them to make things to sell like hairbows and earrings, necklaces, beanies, bracelets, etc. Now admittedly these things are not going to make me rich. Not money wise at least. But personally I love to make things myself. And if I can sell them after enjoying the making of it, thats good enough for me. 

So actually I am way better set up incime wise than the years prior to taking on the ex-job when I had none of the cutters or sewing machines or crafting items and only had the monthly magazine to count on. Which by the way I can now dedicate more time to and hopefully increase sales  and therefore income from that. My eggs are certainly not all in one basket! And in today's economy that is an especially good thing!