On a typical day, Audrey Banez-Beltran, 34, of San Bruno, CA, drops her kids off at preschool, rushes home, and throws in a load of laundry so it can wash as she works her full-time job, handling customer service and social media remotely for an online poster company, PosterMyWall. At lunch, she'll squeeze in a Trader Joe's or Target run, then hurry back to answer more customer emails. On her breaks or at night after the kids are in bed, she'll handle client orders for her side job, selling skin-care products for Rodan + Fields.
A former paralegal, Audrey began picking up side work when she switched full-time careers-working in customer service gave her greater flexibility but also meant a pay cut. Now, her cosmetics sales bring in more than $4,000 a year and supply her "fun money" fund: cash, kept in a separate bank account, for dining out with friends, picking up a fancy lipstick, or splurging on gifts, guilt-free. One recent study showed that women working flexible jobs are more efficient than other workers-which is no surprise to Audrey, who's adept at squeezing every drop of productivity out of a day.
But she also says her work is rewarding. "I've had customers rave about their newfound confidence due to a change in their skin care," she says. "I know it's not life or death, but I still feel like I'm making a difference."
We've all thought, If only I made a little more money, but some women have said to themselves, I bet I can. They're bringing in extra cash by working hard-and, more important, working creatively. It's not for the hit-snooze types among us, but it's more doable than ever. All you need is a little advice from manage-it-all women like Audrey on where to job-hunt, what to watch out for, and how to make the most of every minute. Major side-bucks, right this way.
Where the extra money is
Not long ago, earning income outside of a traditional 9 to 5 would most likely have meant physically getting yourself to a second job, but over the past five years, the number of people making extra cash at home has grown tremendously, says Kate Lister, president of Global Workplace Analytics, a consulting and research firm.
"The biggest increase in remote, part-time jobs, by far, is in customer service," says Christine Durst, a staffing expert and founder of ratracerebellion.com, a site that helps workers find legitimate work-at-home jobs. Companies had turned overseas for customer service employees, but after customer complaints, many are bringing these positions stateside again, she says. Instead of renting out huge buildings, they are hiring home workers, many of whom pull flexible shifts for big-name companies you've no doubt heard of (and called!): places like 1800Flowers.com, JetBlue, and Pizza Hut. Apple alone employs nearly 9,000 at-home IT specialists.
In fact, telework in general grew nearly 80 percent from 2005 to 2012, according to a recent report from Global Workplace Analytics, which also estimates that 3.9 million Americans will work from home at least one day a week by 2016, and 50 million will do so by 2018. "The hurdles to working unconventional part-time hours, in an unconventional workplace, are shifting," says Jim Hoen, vice president of Kelly Services, a staffing agency, and leader of its work-at-home division KellyConnect, which placed 24,000 people in work-from-home positions last year, many of them part-time or shared jobs. "The ease of farming out small bits of work remotely means there are more part-time jobs available. In most cases, all you need is an Internet connection."
So-great news-companies are clearly looking to hire more part-time talent, but how does someone hook up with them? There are a slew of reputable websites that help people find remote, part-time work in all sorts of fields: accounting, finance, education, tech, nonprofit, even nursing. Matchmakers for your dream side career include sites such as upwork.com, Trulance.com, freelancer.com, and guru.com. And here's a reason to love your smartphone even more: You can pick up extra cash wherever with new apps that pay you to complete small tasks from your cell. Try downloading EasyShift (see sidebar, page 112), which pays you to collect tiny pieces of data near your location, such as snapping a photo of a menu in a restaurant or reporting on the price of milk at your local drugstore.
Where the extra money is
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