Between my jobs at Verizon and Polyprinter, I have some down-time and I need to make money preferably on my own time and online. I’ve looked at Amazon Mechanical Turk, google consumer surveys, etc. I could also I guess learn coding or something useful, but I’m not sure what entry-level job I could find from being self-taught in a few months.
I noticed some people at the makerspace have been making money making stuff and selling it (like Frank and his tables), I just need to find a market and something I’m skilled at. I am on makexyz and 3Dhubs and have done commission 3D prints but the jobs are few and far in between. Once I test on the MultiCAM I can think of a lot of decorative things I could sell. I guess even vinyl stickers and buttons on etsy would sell. Even if I could train on the HAAS, would I be qualified to find CNC operator jobs? I feel like the skills I learn at the makerspace doesn’t have marketable value looking for a job.
My car isn’t a 4 door so I can’t do Uber. I’m trying to find a viable way to make more money to get out of my helpdesk job, without experience or a bachelors degree.
Sorry I had to vent, I know a lot of you might suggest going back to school, or stop being lazy. Feel free to bash me for my lack of motivation, I guess I’m looking for suggestions I haven’t thought of. How do you guys make a living.
Teaching classes at DMS is about the fastest way to pick up a few bucks. Once you get your system down, you could pretty much replace your pay at a call center, assuming you can attract enough interest for your classes. Admittedly, that is a lot of classes per week. If I weren’t working overtime out-of-state, I would be teaching a lot more classes.
I’ve tried a lot of other things, too, but nothing amounted to much. You could try applying as an independent contractor, computer tech, at various temp agencies, and just work part-time. That’s what I did for four years. I was an independent contractor, field service technician.
I’ve spent a decade working in call centers. It gives you experience so you can get a different job, and Dallas area has a lot of them. It’s getting to be the great catch-all job for IT personnel. You don’t need a degree to service calls in the field, though.
How about web development? Not sure how much money in there though. You can post job in Odesk etc and, being local, I am sure you’ll get an edge.
I had to teach myself a framework (Web2Py) in the last month and I found it not formidable at all. As I heard, the framework is focused for rapid development. (I should mention though…I have prior experience in C coding).
@themitch22 3D commissions may be few and far between, but have you thought about designing and uploading to Shapeways? May not be a lot, however could be an trickle stream. The other option would be designing cosplay items, print, mold, reproduce and sell on Etsy.
I will take a different view and ask a few questions that you can either answer to yourself or in here…
How much money per month/year are you making now?
How much do you want to be making now?
How much do you want to be making in 2-3 years?
Should I or do I need to… change my current jobs to get what I want?
I put it that way coming from the angle that I have never worked more than 1 ‘job job’ at a time, but have done things on the side sometimes. I always enjoyed working a typical M-F 8-5 40hr work week style life and didn’t want to sacrifice my free time. So I tried to just maximize my earning with the one job I had.
I know there is a lot of work available in web development. I don’t have much programming experience, I have tried but I haven’t had the attention span to sit and learn and practice programming. I know that a lot of money is in programming (Sr. Software Devs make a lot more than I do for sure).
I will probably try to do more work at Polyprinter for now.
Etsy was definitely one of the things I want to do, buttons, posters, and laser cut artistic stuff is very easy to make at the makerspace.
I think people would pay to have themselves 3D scanned and 3D printed like the Pez dispenser heads Haley worked on.
I wish there were more classes available at the space on the 3D printers and associated things such as creating models for custom parts in whatever software you deem best.
I guess I don’t want to abuse the honorarium process, I could teach classes every day, but we couldn’t afford a part-time employee now. I try to schedule classes every other week now, I would do weekly classes, most of my Saturdays are taken up by other events. I agree on design classes, only thing I think I’m qualified to teach is TinkerCAD similar to the class Frank taught.
How can harnessing if the demand and the need is there? It would most
definitely benefit our objectives if more people knew to properly use these
machines anyways. I would like to have more options regarding classes as
well.
I too plan on hosting some 3d printing/designing functional objects courses once I have the material assembled. I primarily work in Solidworks and 123D Design, but I am looking to move to Fusion360
I’m not sure how many brick and mortar stores sell printers around here, but those that do, see if you can offer to teach classes at their location for people that buy printers or pay a fee for the class. It can be a selling point for the merchant (I know a lot of pro photography shops do this). I suspect most people, such as myself, get the bug, buy the printer, get it home open the box and say “OMG … how does this thing work?” meaning software on computer, different types of filament, slicer, online libraries, TinkerCad etc.
See if Poly Printer will co-sponsor the event with the merchant as an incentive to sell the printers - this is something you could get more dollars from PP. If you work at a Help Desk (is it Verizon or Ploy?) I can’t imagine someone better to teach as you know what the recurring problems are from work and DMS.
You have that experience, there are at least a hundred Maker’s willing to endorse you/letter of recommendation on your expertise and gratitude for helping us. You also have IMHO a good personality as a teacher - you aren’t standoffish, explain things, and relate what else might happen.
I personally would love to take a TinkerCad or any other CAD class that lets me make my own things to be printed or how to modify existing models.
JAST’s is an excellent idea because there is a queue for Lynda.com classes.
Mitch, I saw you editing a 3D object, I believe it was a Pez dispenser head, not sure what it was you were actually doing, looked like some type of clean up from a scanned image. Learning how to do that kind of thing is what takes the 3D printer, for me at least, from just printing pre-made files to something I can make.
Mitch you have a lot of knowledge and skills that could be capitalized on - just how to get it out to more people. FWIW It may take multiple sessions, taking it slow enough so we can do on our laptop screens what you are doing - many classes by the time the myself and other student folk find the button, menu, etc, the instructor is a couple steps ahead and steps are missed. Too much is attempted at one time.
