Some of the gig economy is like letting people know that your floor needs mopping and allowing random people to come in off the street, check in with a cell phone app, and mop your floor without ever interacting with them. It amazes me that the business model for some of the electric scooter outfits (Bird) is to have random people pick up their scooters, charge them using their home outlets, and put the scooters back out on the streets, getting paid for each one completed. I still have a difficult time wrapping my brain around crowdsourcing work like this.
Understanding that you want to get away from gambling, but would something gambling-adjacent be a reasonable option in the short term? I think that it’s impressive that you made a living playing poker, and you clearly communicate well and have an understanding of different levels of play. Perhaps you could provide private poker lessons aimed at folks who are kind of entry level, going to be in Vegas for a few days, and want to improve their odds a little at the low stakes tables?
You could spend a morning with a group of maybe 5 students to teach them some low-hanging fruit strategies, and then take them to a casino in the afternoon to try out their new skills. Throw in a lunch with some local color and charge two hundred bucks for the package.
I don’t know how you’d handle the hassle of booking, marketing, dealing with no-shows, etc. But it seems like there might be some money there that leverages off of your unique experience and location. Maybe push it as a thing for bachelor parties?
More like finding a new poor person with a mop each night, and paying them as little as possible, since you know you can.
I was in a similar situation last fall, and investigated all the gig options. I decided to deliver pizzas for a national chain, and it was the best fit no question.
The pay is good enough ($17ish an hour by me with tips), the kids who work there are super fun to just hang with as an “old lady” and the best part - I have to be there when I have to be there. I knew I just wouldn’t make myself work as much as I needed to if I was gigging it. And the best best part - I don’t have to spend any time looking for clients or calculating what areas are the best at what time, etc.
Think about going to your local Pizza Hut/Dominos/whatever and applying as a driver. No worries about the age of your car, no battling competition, and it gets you off the Strip with it’s traffic and gambling. Pick a middle to upper class neighborhood away from UNLV and Fremont and just start driving.
True. For example, the singer in “King of the Road” gets two hours of pushing brooms. Perfect example. Though in the US not something people competed for, unlike freelancing.
Interesting. I’ve seen the scooters whizzing around San Francisco, and wondered how they got charged.
BTW, in a Times column about the Uber IPO it is stated that the average Uber driver makes $10 an hour, after subtracting vehicle cost from the fare. I don’t know what the denominator is for number of hours.
This is likely the best suggestion which will, in the long-term, optimize your earning potential. To emphasize ebb’s point: You have a decade of making a living playing poker. Seriously - people will pay you big bucks to “learn your secret”.
How many pizzas did you deliver per hour to earn that $17/hr? What was your base rate of pay before tips?
My understanding is that Uber eats drivers and grub hub drivers make far less than 17/hr after factoring in car depreciation.
How well did people tip in the good neighborhoods?
I did Uber Eats. Made crazy money - once got paid $17 to deliver some college kid a large Sprite from McD’s - he lived 4 minutes away. But then Uber stopped paying multiples, so I stopped doing it.
I think ebb’s idea is brilliant. Top notch.
JohnT, what are “multiples”?
Sorry, surges. For that Sprite, Uber was charging like 5X delivery rates. I guess the guy really wanted it.
This isn’t really a “gig” job, but I would suggest you consider being a security officer (guard). In the SE US, it’s not unusual to make $11 to $16 an hour. The companies frequently have unusual shifts (e.g., two 12-hour shifts on weekends) they need to fill, so you might actually end up working only two or three days a week. The work is not hard and doesn’t require much experience, BUUUUT you need to have a clean criminal record. A lot of the companies have room for advancement and some actually offer benefits if you work enough hours.
It’s not like it’s a long-term commitment or anything. I know a woman who works for a few months a year, quits, and the uses the money for a big vacation. (Her husband has a FT job and covers other expenses for the family.) You can stop thinking about it as soon as you leave your assigned location.
I’ve heard some people make decent money by traveling to nearby cities and doing uber when there is a major event in town (sporting event, etc). They can get surge pricing.
I didn’t know uber eats did surge pricing.
I think it was a “we really need more San Antonio Uber Eats drivers” thing which led to the surges. But it wasn’t really a surge as you were told ahead of time when and where these multiples would occur.
Not on the topic of ride share, but as a mid-to-long term suggestion from somebody who played poker as a sole source of income for a number of years and then changed careers: you probably have the mindset to code.
The analytical rigor and head for numbers needed for poker translates pretty well to coding in my experience, and coding is one of the few fields where you can go to a bootcamp and then get a job without a degree in the field. There are a number of bootcamps that are “free,” even (they make money from the spread between what they charge the company they staff you with and what they pay you). You can make as much as you were making playing poker, with none of the volatility, and corporate benefits to boot.
I know, I know - you lose the “be your own boss” thing. But only for a while, after you have a few years experience under your belt it’s pretty easy to go freelance and do contract gigs wherever you can. And that’s a “gig economy” that actually isn’t screwing you, because you should be easily clearing six figures as a gig coder. Something to mull over.
Before deciding to deliver pizza for Domino’s or Pizza Hut, remember that your personal auto insurance doesn’t cover commercial use of your car. And either does Domino’s’. So if you’re in an accident, you’re screwed royally.
The JP Morgan Chase Institute did a serious study of this and found average platform earnings of $800 or so/month–which is $10,000/year.
Question: How the heck do you support yourselves playing poker? There are not 1, but 2 posters in here claiming to have accomplished this. I was under the impression that poker is a negative sum game, where over an infinite number of poker hands the house will always win all your stake. I know that someone could make very slightly “smarter” gambling decisions, and/or see through other gambler’s “poker faces”, but I wouldn’t assume this would equate to enough of an edge to make money doing it.
As for driving gigs, given the low barrier to entry and the fact that many drivers may be accepting wages so low they are actually making under minimum wage, this is an awful way to make money. I mean you wouldn’t expect to make even as much as a garbageman driving for uber or lyft - there’s a barrier to entry for collecting garbage! This kind of job is best suited for someone who just got laid off and owns a car new enough to drive for the service. It might earn enough to keep up with some of your bills while looking for another real job.
You make money playing poker by being significantly better than the people you play against. You’re correct that it’s a negative sum game - the house takes a small cut of every pot. It depends somewhat on location, game, stakes, and your style, but a rough number is going to be something like paying $20/hr to the casino to play. So… you need to be able to beat other players by more than $20 an hour, and you profit. There are relatively few people who can make a living doing poker - there are a lot of people who would be winners in a rakeless world, but few people that can beat the rake. I think the numbers are in the 6% range, depending on venue, rake, online vs live, etc.
I think you just underestimate the skill level involved. It’s a surprisingly complex game, way more than anyone understands unless they try to study it seriously. There are actually quite a lot of tiers of skill. Player B is good enough to reliably beat player A. Player C is good enough to reliably beat player B… you could probably go all the way up through 20 tiers that way. The mental game that players O and N are playing aren’t even concepts that players D and C would understand.
Edit: Appreciate the suggestions, I’ll write more later.
Can you elaborate a bit? If I get lucky and get the right cards, I can beat the best poker player in the world. Statistically, on 50% on the hands, if that player and I are playing 1 on 1, I will get a better hand.
How does he beat me?