Ticketmaster Probably Owes You Money, But Don’t Get Too Excited

Unless you’re one of those “live shows aren’t my thing” people (P.S. I don’t get you), you’re probably a beneficiary in a recent class-action settlement from Ticketmaster.

“Standing for all consumers who bought tickets on Ticketmaster’s website from Oct. 21, 1999, through Feb. 27, 2013, the California-based plaintiffs alleged that the description of Ticketmaster’s fees was deceptive and misleading,” reports Philadelphia Inquirer’s Jonathan Takiff.

Well, yeah. Anyone who’s ever spent $100 on a $65 ticket can commiserate on the topic of Ticketmaster’s fees.

And since the suit covers such a wide range of time, you’ll get to cash in for your suffering — whether you spent your money seeing Beyoncé solo a few years ago or with Destiny’s Child back in 2003.

Just don’t expect very much compensation. In fact, this may just be the worst class-action settlement we’ve ever seen.

Ticketmaster’s Clever — but Crappy — Class-Action Settlement

In an astounding display of ripping customers off even further under the guise of compensating for their shady policies, Ticketmaster has agreed — without admitting wrongdoing — to supply 57 million eligible customers with discount coupons against fees on future orders.

That’s right, you have to buy additional tickets through Ticketmaster to benefit from the suit.

But wait, there’s more!

Those discount coupons will save you the hefty sum of… $2.25.

Yup. You’ll get less than a fiver back for Ticketmaster’s ambiguous wording on its exorbitant fees. And the benefits don’t kick in until June 18, so don’t plan on taking two bucks off the top of that concert ticket you’re buying this weekend.

If your cell phone is as much of a throwback as “Say My Name” — and thus precludes mobile ticket entry — you can also benefit from a $5 shipping credit… so long as you used UPS delivery on the order that qualifies you for the suit.

Two of these shipping codes can be applied to the same order, meaning Ticketmaster is offering a generous $10 credit for a service no one uses anymore.

It’s pretty bad, right?

Well, the good news is, if everyone bands together (see what I did there?) and refuses to take advantage of this “benefit,” we might get something marginally better.

“The same email also discusses a Ticket Code ‘potentially redeemable’ for two tickets to a concert event presented by Live Nation,” writes Takiff.

In order for those codes to activate, class members will have to use up less than $42.5 million in total — or $10.5 million per year — of the $397 million available in measley coupon codes.

We’d have to hold off on the fee discounts until June 2017, however. Plus, Live Nation gets to decide which events would be included in the Ticket Code offer… and their tastes probably don’t match those of all 57 million eligible consumers.

Aw, heck. It’s cheaper to just stay home anyway. Who’s got Spotify?

Your Turn: What millennium-era concert did you attend to qualify for these “benefits”?

Jamie Cattanach (@jamiecattanach) is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. Her creative writing has been featured in “DMQ Review,” “Sweet: A Literary Confection” and elsewhere.

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This 14-Year-Old Just Turned Down a $30 Million Offer to Buy His Business

When you were 14 and needed a Band-Aid away from home, what did you do?

I’m sure my first step was to ask my mom.

After that… I probably just gave up and hoped the cut would take care of itself.

However, a 14-year-old in Opelika, Alabama, is thinking a little bigger: Taylor Rosenthal started a business to solve the problem.

How to Start a Business When You’re 14

His startup, RecMed, began as a project in a Young Entrepreneurs Academy class.

“Every time I’d travel for a baseball tournament in Alabama, I’d notice that kids would get hurt and parents couldn’t find a Band-Aid,” Rosenthal told CNN Money. “I wanted to solve that.”

RecMed is a vending machine for first-aid supplies.

You can choose between prepackaged kits from $5.99 to $15.95 for common issues like sunburns, cuts, blisters and bee stings, or individual first-aid supplies from $6 to $20.

When you’re at a baseball game, an amusement park, the beach or any other place families tend to frequent, you may start seeing the machines as early as this fall.

Rosenthal already has an order from Six Flags for 100 machines. At $5,500 apiece, that’s $550,000 — and he’ll continue to make money from restocking fees and may add advertising to the machines.

Destined to Disrupt

He’s headed to TechCrunch Disrupt this week in Brooklyn to show off his startup.

“They told me that I was the youngest person to ever get accepted to the event,” Rosenthal said. “It felt awesome.”

He’s already raised $100,000 in angel investments, including $50,000 from Opelika-based startup incubator Round House.

The buzz he’s getting from TechCrunch will no doubt attract more money.

Rosenthal apparently is so confident in his idea’s profitability, he’s turned down an offer to buy it — for $30 million.

“It has been amazing watching Taylor grow over the past year into this confident and amazing business man,” Rosenthal’s Young Entrepreneurs Academy teacher Clarinda Jones told CNN Money. “… He’s just 14. Bill Gates should be worried.”

I think we have to agree.

Your Turn: Do you know any brilliant young entrepreneurs who decided to start a business? Share their stories in the comments!

Dana Sitar (@danasitar) is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She’s written for Huffington Post, Entrepreneur.com, Writer’s Digest and more, attempting humor wherever it’s allowed (and sometimes where it’s not).

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Having Trouble Converting Your SEO Traffic? This Is Probably Why

It’s a problem I see all too often…

Marketers learn about SEO tactics and actually do a good job applying them.

Before they know it, their site’s traffic has risen to 3,000 visits a month, then to 10,000, then to 20,000. Along with growing their traffic numbers, these marketers also build up their email lists from this traffic.

They’re excited because they’ve read many stories of entrepreneurs making 5 figures a month from email lists of just a few thousand.

And then, they launch a product and get horrendous conversion rates.

It doesn’t make sense to them—after all, they did everything right, didn’t they? Why isn’t their targeted traffic interested in their products?

If you’ve ever been in this situation, I know you understand the pain and frustration it causes.

If you haven’t, I don’t want you to have to go through it.

In this post, I’ll help you understand why it happens and how to use SEO more effectively to prevent this sad scenario from ever happening to you. 

Does this sound familiar?

In that very general overview of SEO work, there was one crucial mistake. If you avoid it, you’ll drastically increase your chances of creating a sustainable business.

Here is the mistake, put simply:

You’ve built up a good size audience, but it’s not a cohesive audience. In other words, the people in your audience are too dissimilar to each other.

This can be a hard concept to understand at first, but once you do, it will become eye-opening.

You may have tried to monetize with Adsense, or a similar advertising platform, and got decent results. Therefore, your search traffic is indeed high quality.

But Adsense is smart; they serve different ads to different people, based on collected data.

They know that the experienced marketer isn’t looking for introductory SEO videos that the beginner marketer is interested in.

Because of this, it doesn’t matter much which kind of SEO traffic you’re getting when you’re monetizing with Adsense.

Has the light bulb gone off yet? All businesses start somewhere, and the majority have only a few products at the most.

If you’re still trying to find your first big SEO success, you might have only one product.

If you’ve been amassing search traffic from any keywords you can, you’ll end up with a highly mixed audience.

Let’s go through an example. Say you’re a soccer blogger, and you managed to rank #1 for these keyword phrases:

• “How to get better at soccer”
• “Soccer betting”
• “Watch soccer online”

All of the above phrases have the word “soccer” in them, so they must be relevant to you as a soccer blogger.

But your business focuses on selling soccer training programs to help players get better.

Although they care about soccer in general, the people searching for betting information or wanting to watch professional matches couldn’t care less about playing themselves (for the most part).

You will get a good response from the part of your email list that signed up through the first article, but that’s it.

I hope it’s becoming clear now:

Your search engine traffic must attract people interested not only in your niche but also in the product you’re selling.

Sometimes you’ll have 3 distinct groups of people. But if you’re ranking for many keywords, you may have several, which makes your results even more dismal.

As you can see, the root problem is in you mindlessly trying to rank for any vaguely-related to your niche keyword.

Traffic is a vanity number at that point because when it comes to your actual business, the traffic you are getting is not targeted, nor is it high quality.

Stop approaching SEO backwards

If you’ve ever fallen into this trap, it’s not your fault, but it’s an important thing to learn from.

Most SEOs approach things backwards. They obsess about the raw traffic numbers, expecting to learn about conversion later—not realizing they’re shooting themselves in the foot.

They spend all their time reading about and applying SEO tactics, without fully understanding their purpose or why they work.

And it culminates in the sort of disaster I’ve walked you through.

So, let’s start with the fundamentals:

Search engines (SEO) are a marketing channel.

The entire purpose of getting the traffic from search engines is to try to move it into your funnel and through it.

Marketing channels feed leads into the top of that diagram.

Once you’ve put your potential customers on an email list, you can usually consider them leads and keep trying to move them down the funnel.

What you should do is reverse-engineer your funnel.

Start at the bottom, and work out a path that a customer could take from the top of the funnel to reach the bottom. If customers can come from search engines, figure out the “right” keywords that would bring them.

For our soccer example, there’s almost no chance that a customer for a training program would come from the keyword phrase “how to bet on soccer.”

By taking this approach, you eliminate the entire problem of an irrelevant audience that won’t make it past the first stage in your funnel.

Who are the types of people in your niche? Some niches are more dangerous than others. For some, there are dozens of different types of people who might be searching for vaguely related terms. For others, there might be only 2 or 3 types.

Obviously, the fewer types of people there are, the less potential for disaster there is.

It’s a good exercise to quickly try to identify the different types of people in your market.

Let’s continue with our example. There are 7 types of people that could search for things related to soccer:

• Players (adults and kids) looking to improve
• Gamblers
• Coaches
• Parents of players
• People looking to understand the basics of a new hobby
• Referees trying to study the game
• Fans (who like to watch the game)

That’s 7 types right off the top.

But you could divide those even further.

You could divide players by their mastery level: beginner, intermediate, and expert players will all be looking for different things.

Gamblers could be divided into casual and serious.

Parents could be divided into those who just want to know how to introduce their child to soccer and those who want to help their child get a scholarship playing soccer.

Your product likely appeals to one or two of these sub-types of people, which is why it’s very important to understand whom you’re trying to attract through search engines.

Once you’ve done all this, identify the types of people who would be interested in any products you already have or are going to have in the near future. Be as specific as possible.

It’s time to evaluate your content

Your next step is to take a hard look at your current content.

Create a list of all the content you’ve published that has the potential to drive search traffic.

Even better, go to Google Analytics, and export your content from the “behavior” section, sorted by the amount of organic traffic it drove (add a filter for “search traffic”):

On your spreadsheet, add a column beside the title or URL. Go through your pieces of content, one by one, and label each with the type(s) of people who would be most interested in that post.

At the same time, highlight rows, let’s say in green, where content fits the type of people interested in your product (from the step before). A quick glance at the end will tell you where you stand.

Can you salvage any non-targeted content? Hopefully, you’ll have a lot of green, but you might not. You might find that most content is probably read by people who won’t make it through your sales funnel.

Should you delete that content or leave it alone?

You could do either, but that would be a real shame if that content is already generating traffic.

Instead, let me suggest a few other courses of action:

• Add extra internal links - By adding internal links to pages that are targeted, you can leverage the authority that you’ve built on these non-targeted pages.
• Monetize differently – Stop adding visitors to these pages to your main email list. Either add them to a separate list and pitch them different products (use affiliate products if you don’t have a relevant one), or use advertising.

While your focus should be on the green content you just identified, that doesn’t mean you still can’t derive some benefit from your work in the past.

Fix your future SEO by pruning your keyword list

You can’t completely fix past mistakes, but you can ensure that you don’t make them again in the future.

You likely have a large list of keywords that you created from keyword research that you thought were good to target.

It’s time to revisit those.

While all those keywords that you identified before are probably good keywords to target for certain businesses, not all of them are good for your business.

Instead of wasting your time creating and promoting content that attracts the wrong types of audience in your niche, you’ll spend it on highly relevant, targeted traffic.

Just like we did before, go through each keyword one by one, and identify the type(s) of people who would search for it.

For example:

• “How to bet on soccer” would be searched by “gamblers.”
• “How to get better at soccer” would be searched by “players looking to improve.”

I highly suggest focusing on the single main product you’re trying to sell. Then, in the future, you can identify products you could create to target these other segments of your niche.

For now, identify the 1 or 2 types of people who will buy your product—the ones you want going in the top of your sales funnel.

Remove (or hide) all keywords that don’t attract those people.

You will be left with a much smaller list of keywords in most cases. However, any search traffic that you get from these keywords is almost certain to be highly valuable.

You’re not limited to SEO

I understand the hesitation to limit the amount of search traffic you can get.

There’s a certain level of security in knowing you are getting tens of thousands of search visitors per month and that there are always more keywords to target.

But here’s the thing: if you want to succeed, you need to forget about vanity numbers, such as traffic, and look at the quality of traffic—and conversions—instead.

Which would you rather have?

• 10,000 search visitors, 500 of them targeted or
• 1,000 search visitors, all of them targeted

The second site will perform better every single time, even with a tenth of the traffic of the first site.

What about the second fear? You might legitimately run out, or run low, on keywords to target (other than very long tail ones).

What then?

That’s when you put your marketing understanding to the test.

If you truly understand that SEO is just one marketing channel, you know that there are many other marketing channels out there.

Now that you know the type of people you’re looking for, you can find them on social media sites, question sites, blogs, and many other online platforms.

Here are a final few resources that will introduce you to these other channels; just always keep in mind the end goal of your funnel:

• Stop Guessing: Here’s a Social Media Strategy That Works
• 5 Spectacular Traffic Sources That’ll Help You Move Beyond Google
• How to Leverage Q&A Sites to Generate Traffic
• How to Use Social Media to Drive Traffic for B2B Companies

Conclusion

This is one of the most important concepts that knowledgeable marketers need to understand. Traffic from SEO itself is not the goal. The goal is to have traffic that actually converts into customers.

Don’t waste your time creating and promoting content that doesn’t attract the right type of readers to your site.

Instead, make sure you’re focusing on driving search engine traffic that is interested in your products—I just showed you how.

If you need help understanding a particular concept from this post, leave me a comment below, and I’ll try to clear things up.

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DWP launches online Pension Tracing Service

Marina Gerner

Department_for_Work_and_Pensions_logo.svg_.png

Government launches website in an effort to help trace £400 million in unclaimed pension savings.

Government launches website in an effort to help trace £400 million in unclaimed pension savings.

read more

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Doing Your Own Thing

Back when I was in college, there was a great gymnasium about a quarter of a mile from my dormitory. I would walk over there three or four times a week to exercise. I used to enjoy low-intensity weightlifting and I also often walked on the stair-climbing machines.

I used to always try to go there during less crowded times, but it seemed like there were always people there. What I really didn’t like, though, was when I’d already be there and then a wave of people would come in after me.

Why did I try to avoid people at the gym so much? I often felt like I was somehow in the way of the people that were much more fit than I was. People in tremendous physical shape, often people who were in athletic programs at the college, would come in and stand around waiting for equipment to free up, while I was flailing around in my own mediocrity.

I didn’t like being in the way of those people. I didn’t like feeling so inept by comparison. So I stopped going.

What I didn’t realize at the time was one simple, fundamental truth: Those people were on a different journey than mine. Their journey was for their own particular self-improvement, as was mine. My journey and their journey really had nothing whatsoever to do with each other other than using some of the same equipment.

My journey towards better physical shape was mine and mine alone. I had no reason to feel bad because someone else was at a different point on their own journey toward better fitness.

When I first started becoming frugal, I had a somewhat similar experience.

I would look up and down the block in my neighborhood and see tons of shiny cars in the driveways. I would see lawns that were well fertilized and frequently watered. I’d see all kinds of little signs of people spending a lot of money to keep up appearances.

One part of me felt a little jealous. Their houses did look more “perfect” than my own. We fertilized our own yard, usually using organic materials, so it wasn’t as vibrant green as the other lawns. Our cars have always been used cars, with the exception of my wife’s commuting car which was an entry level model anyway, not the shining Lexuses and luxury SUVs that could be seen in other driveways.

On the other hand, I also felt a little judgmental. These people were spending big parts of their financial future on all of this stuff. They’d be working forever! They were in debt up to their eyeballs … or maybe mom and dad were still paying the bills!

Over time, I actually ended up learning the same lesson from both of these situations.

The truth is that you always need to follow your own path and the path that someone else is on is not your own, so don’t worry about it too much.

When I’m at the gym now, I don’t worry too much about the superathletes. I recognize that I’m on my own fitness journey and they’re on their own journey. We’re not competing with each other. Instead, we’re competing with ourselves.

When I look up and down the street, I don’t worry too much about our lives in comparison to each other. I recognize that I’m on my own financial journey and they’re on their own journey, each with benefits and drawbacks. We’re not competing with each other. Instead, we’re competing with ourselves, trying to build lives that are better than the ones we had before.

With that type of perspective, your relationship with money changes greatly.

Rather than worrying about what other people want or what other people think or what other people are doing, you can focus instead on what you want and what you think and what you are doing.

You can do things and purchase things solely because of their value to you (or to the causes that you care about), not out of some sense of jealousy or competitiveness or inadequacy.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t be competitive, but you can focus on being competitive with your past self rather than with other people. And you can choose exactly which areas you want to be competitive with.

I found that there were three specific things that really launched me into this mindset.

First, I started actively looking at my current life as a benchmark from which to improve. The idea wasn’t that I was doing poorly in any particular dimension of my life, but that I could be doing better.

For example, when I decided that I wanted to improve my finances, I started using my net worth as a benchmark. I tallied up my assets, subtracted my debts, and then looked at that resulting number as a starting point. My goal became to improve that number each month – and it still is my goal. This turned my financial state from something I compared with others using unclear comparisons (like possessions) into something I compared with myself using very clear comparisons (my net worth).

Second, I recognized that other people are on different paths to the lives they want to lead than I am. The person down the block might be on a path where their goals involve driving a new BMW to work because they’re passionate about cars, and they’re much less interested than I am when it comes to financial independence or debt freedom.

That difference in paths doesn’t make me bad, nor does it make him bad. It just makes us different. We value different things in life, and that’s fine.

When I look at it that way, I don’t mind that the guy drives a nicer car than I do. It’s something that he genuinely cares about more than I do, thus it makes sense that he’s driving a nicer car than I am. If I were passionate about my car like he was and I really wanted to drive a luxury model and that life journey was one that I put as a high priority in my life, then I, too, would have a BMW in my driveway.

But it’s not a life journey that’s very important to me, so I’m pretty content with my twelve year old car. It gets me to where I want to go, and that’s more than good enough for me.

By extension, it makes sense that I would be further along on the path to financial independence than that guy because, in comparison, it’s something that’s a higher priority in my life. Again, it’s perfectly fine that it’s not a high priority for him.

That observation leads me to my final point. The simple fact of the matter is that you can’t place a high personal priority on everything. It just simply doesn’t work. If you do that, you’re going to eventually fail at something. You’re going to fall short at something. You’re also not going to be able to give each of those areas the attention and time and energy that they deserve.

In other words, when you make everything a high priority in your life, you end up not doing anything really well and you end up failing in some areas.

I speak from painful experience with regards to this. From about 2005 to about 2008, I tried to “have it all.” I tried to balance career aspirations, a side business, a healthy marriage, parenting, home ownership, furthering my education, building a lot of social connections, improving our finances, community volunteering, and keep up with hobbies and interests.

It almost killed me and I wound up more or less failing at some of those things.

Eventually, what I chose to do is back off of some of those things and set others at a low priority. I wound up choosing one side business – The Simple Dollar – over all the others and even over my previous career. I stepped back from my educational goals. I set some of my hobbies far, far back on the back burner. I focused on my children and my marriage above all of the others, with my finances coming in a close third, and everything else was a lesser priority.

Today, I reap the rewards of that. I have an incredible marriage, three wonderful children with which I have a great relationship, and our finances are in strong shape. I don’t have the career I thought I was building, nor do I have the degree I was once working towards, but I consider those to be great trade-offs.

The key is this: These are the paths I chose for myself, and they’re my own. It doesn’t really matter to me what anyone else is doing. Someone else might choose to focus on their career first and foremost, and that’s fine. Others might choose to focus on a hobby. Still others might be centered around physical fitness or volunteering. They might set their finances as a high priority … or as a pretty low one.

In the end, all that matters is that you figure out what things are truly the most important to you and strive to do the best you can at those things. You should strive to be better at those things next year than you are right now, and find space for doing so by stepping back at other things.

Don’t worry about what others are doing. They’re on their own journey. You might appreciate something they have, but that’s because they chose to set some things at a very high priority in their life that you perhaps didn’t set in your own. Yet, you have your own rewards that come from the priorities that you set. Enjoy them. Be proud of them.

Don’t worry about what others are doing. Worry about what you’re doing and whether you’re headed in a positive direction on the things you care about.

• Related: The Power of Social Indifference

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How This Stay-at-Home Mom Makes Thousands While Her Son Naps

Everyone knows working from home is awesome, and not just because it means pajama pants are totally dress-code friendly.

(Although, as someone who works from home pretty frequently, I’ll tell you: It’s just as big a deal as you think.)

If you have a family, or are planning to start one soon, you may be longing for a flexible, work-from-home job for a whole host of other reasons.

You’d save time and money on your commute and minimize your spending on a sitter.

You’d avoid missing those all-important firsts: steps, words, successful solo journeys to the potty.

You’d actually be able to get all the laundry done in one day. Well, maybe.

But with an internet full of scams and low-paying, one-off gigs, how do you find a work from home job that’s both legit and liveable?

Toronto-based mother Janna Polzin was able to do just that.

Since her son was born in 2013, she’s earned $7,000… by talking to herself. In her closet.

Let me explain.

Artist, Interrupted

Polzin was a successful, professional theater performer for almost a decade after she graduated — as valedictorian, no less — from the Sheridan Institute Music Theater Performance program in 2005.

But when she learned she was expecting, she knew her days traveling to follow gigs, living in a new town every few months, had to draw to a close — a fact that made itself evident immediately.

In the hullaballoo of discovering her pregnancy, she missed a flight to her next performance.

Polzin knew she needed a change, but didn’t want to give up the career she’d worked so hard to build.

Pulled in two directions, she was at a loss… until she curled up on the couch one evening to destress with a video game.

A New Way to Perform

As Polzin moved through the immersive world of Mass Effect 2, she had a sudden realization.

“I just got so into the story and so into [the playable female character], that I felt like her,” Polzin says. “It was just crazy.”

She realized part of what fueled her connection to her avatar: the character’s spoken dialogue. It had been voiced by another successful Canadian actress, Jennifer Hale.

Suddenly Polzin discovered she could keep performing and bringing characters to life from the comfort of her own home — just by speaking.

Make Money From Home, Just By Talking

Polzin had done some voice-over acting before, but not much. Over the course of her 10 year career with her agency, she’d had only a handful of auditions.

Although her agency was willing to help her find voice work and she loved doing it, her stage career came first.

“Anytime I felt like I gained a bit of momentum, I’d have to go to Thunder Bay for a gig for four months, or go to Niagara Falls or something,” she explains.

But she turned to the online acting community and kept hearing about one voice-acting platform again and again: Voices.com.

Voices.com is an international online voice-over acting marketplace that helps vocal talent — both professional and amateur — find the clients who need them.

And make no mistake, demand is high.

Think about all the times you hear a recorded human voice.

TV commercials, animations, radio spots — even the pre-recorded routing system you get when you call your bank or doctor’s office all rely on voiceovers.

That’s a lot of recording, which means even people who’ve never done any voice acting or training can find relevant gigs on Voices.com.

And since technology carries your voice far and wide, you can do this work from almost any place on the globe.

As for Polzin, she was most excited to land a character role in a videogame… which she was able to accomplish just a month after signing up.

Voices.com allowed Polzin to work from home, using her own equpiment, at her own pace — which was largely determined by the napping cycle of her newborn son, Simon.

“Basically, I do it all while he’s sleeping,” Polzin says. Even though her son doesn’t nap much, most pieces only require an hour or less of actual silence for recording, and then maybe an hour’s worth of editing.

Polzin can get the majority of the preparation work — emails with clients and scoping out which jobs to audition for — done sporadically throughout the day, when her son doesn’t need her immediate attention.

Depending on the client’s budget, she could earn as much as $500 for just a couple of hours’ work. And since Voices.com sets adament guidelines for minimum pricing, she knows every job is worth her while.

Oh, and did I mention she set up her recording studio… in a closet?

How to Get Started as a Voice Over Actor

In Polzin’s two-bedroom condo in downtown Toronto, space is limited.

“Everything has to have dual purpose,” Polzin says. “If we get a new piece of furniture, it’s got to have storage as well as being a functioning table.”

There wasn’t space for a standalone recording booth — and besides, they’re expensive! — so she whittled out some space in her hall closet.

You can find her tucked away amidst their sweaters and jeans a few nights a week, getting paid to talk to herself.

It’s actually a brilliant Penny Hoarder move: Clothing is a good sound insulator.

As her client base has grown, Polzin and her husband are working with a contractor to formally sound-proof the room.

But if you don’t live in a busy city in a condo adjacent to a major highway like they do, you probably wouldn’t have too much to worry about.

“If you live in a rural place, you can probably get away with not doing any sound-proofing,” Polzin says. You probably already have inexpensive sound dampeners lying around the house, like moving blankets, rolls of foam, even yoga mats.

And you don’t need to spend a ton of money on special sound-editing software, either. Polzin uses GarageBand, which comes pre-installed on every Mac. Other voice actors use Audacity, which is free to download onto any computer.

As far as equipment, a little investment can go a long way.

“You don’t have to spend $500 on a good microphone,” Polzin explains, “but you will get more recognition [and] positive feedback with a better mic than the one built into your laptop.”

The most important part of being successful a voice actor? Persistence, and the business management skills required of any freelancer.

Polzin says her monthly returns are highly variable based on how many gigs she auditions for.

“You have to think of yourself as a business that you’re trying to sell to other people,” Polzin says.

But even if you’ve never done any voice acting or run a freelance business before, we like that Voices.com has resources to help you get started. They even have a series of podcasts so you can learn to make the most of your business while you’re on the go.

The site is packed with tips for amateur and professional voice actors and podcasters, and offers videos, blogs and can even connect you to voiceover coaches.

These voiceover lessons can be helpful: Not only will you learn how to manipulate your range and be able to work even when you’re sick, it might help you figure out what to do when a client has an… odd request.

“You get some clients who’ll say, ‘We want it to sound fresh,’” Polzin said. “What does that mean? [Another] came in and said they want every word to sound ‘delicious.’ You have to try to get into the mind of the client in order to understand, OK, how do I make my voice sound delicious?”

Once you’ve found your unique style, Voices.com helps you leverage your skills to find the right clients.

You can categorize your demos using a huge selection of adjectives and characters, from “Girl Next Door” to “Annoying Kid.”

The more complete your profile, the better your chance for landing a gig. Besides, who doesn’t want to figure out if they can voice an “Elvish Princess”?

A Flexible, Freelance, Work-From-Home Business

Polzin loves working with Voices.com because she can make money at home using the skills she’s cultivated for years in the acting world.

“I often walk away from my computer thinking, I can’t believe I just made money from that!” she said.

She’s able to work on her own terms, in her own time, without compromising her privacy.

Plus, she found a whole new way to channel her love of acting.

“[It’s] such a cool way to connect with an audience, in such a different way than I had thought,” she says.

And the best part of all? She still gets to work in her PJs.

“I have full-on purple plaid pajama pants on right now,” she told me on our call.

We couldn’t approve more of her choice of color — or the entrepreneurial spirit that allows her to have it all.

Your Turn: Could you voice an Elvish princess or annoying kid? Or are you more of a “girl next door”? Let us know in the comments!

Sponsorship Disclosure: A huge thanks to Voices.com for working with us to bring you this content. It’s rare that we have the opportunity to share something so awesome and get paid for it!

Jamie Cattanach (@jamiecattanach) is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. Her creative writing has been featured in DMQ Review, Sweet: A Literary Confection and elsewhere.

The post How This Stay-at-Home Mom Makes Thousands While Her Son Naps appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

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Property hotspots where asking prices have been slashed

Hannah Nemeth

falling-house-prices.jpg

House-hunters could pick up a bargain if they know where to look as asking prices are being slashed, on average, by £25,000 – by almost £4,000 more than they were in January 2016.

More than a quarter (29%) of properties on the market across the UK have had their asking prices cut at least once since going on the market, property website Zoopla reveals.

Sellers in the capital are also offering their home at discount prices, with an average of 7.8% off the asking price – more than the UK average of 6.9%. 

read more

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25 Totally Flexible Ways to Make Money in College Without Dropping Classes

Working through college is a key way to reduce the amount of debt you’ll have after graduation.

But a well-paying job you can balance with classes and extracurriculars can be hard to find.

Have you thought about ditching the demanding work schedule and working for yourself instead?

There are tons of fun and weird ways to make money on the side — without cutting into your study time.

1. Drive With Uber

If you enjoy driving and don’t mind providing a bit of customer service, consider driving with Uber.

As an Uber partner, you set your own schedule, so you can work as much or little as you want. You’ll earn money based on the rides you give, so you have a lot of control over how much you can make.

To drive with Uber, you must be at least 21 years old and have an in-state driver’s license, three years’ driving experience, a clean driving record and pass a criminal background check.

Some cities require your car be made in the past 10 years, but specific requirements vary by state. It must be a four-door, seat at least four passengers, be registered in-state and covered by in-state insurance.

Here’s a link to apply with Uber.

2. Share Your Opinions

We’ve talked plenty about earning extra money taking online surveys.

What we love about VIP Voice is the gamification.

This site gives you points after every survey you take that you can use in sweepstakes and auctions to win rewards like gift cards, vacations, electronics, appliances and more.

After you join VIP Voice and take a few surveys, look for a special survey that offers a $25 reward.

Sign up for VIP Voice here.

3. Get Paid to Watch Videos

InboxDollars will pay you to watch YouTube-style videos — and give you an extra $5 just for signing up.

The videos aren’t cute puppies or Coke bottles exploding, but when you’re getting money to watch them, they don’t have to be quite that entertaining, right?

Instead, they’re sponsored by brands who want to be seen by as many eyes as possible. For each ad you watch, you earn cash in your InboxDollars account.

Sign up here to get started and earn your $5 bonus.

4. Spy on Your Favorite Stores

QuickThoughts for Android turns you into a detective, taking you on scavenger hunts in your area.

These are grown-up scavenger hunts, but they can be just as fun as when you were a kid! Take a few friends with you, and see who can earn points the fastest.

Using your phone’s GPS, the app will prompt you for information on places you’ve visited recently or places it detects you’re visiting right now. You can even accept future Missions.

How are the lines at the McDonald’s you stopped at for lunch? Were the bathrooms clean at Walgreen’s last week? QuickThoughts lets you offer your input and stealthy photos to give businesses this feedback.

For your work, you’ll earn gift cards for Amazon and iTunes.

5. Be a Human Guinea Pig

From medical tests to market research, being a test subject can be an interesting, educational and — above all — lucrative way to spend your time.

Some tests, like clinical trials, may be more taxing and require a greater time commitment.

But some, like market research, may just take a couple hours of your afternoon and earn you free samples and some extra cash.

Keep an eye out on campus for opportunities within your university, too. These are usually quick and might yield $10-$20.

6. Buy and Resell Textbooks

You know you can earn a little cash back for selling your textbooks at the end of the semester.

But you can go beyond that — and actually start profiting from textbook sales.

Instead of relying on your own collection, buy textbooks online at sites like eBay and resell them at a site like BookScouter.com.

Before you shop, you can look up a book’s ISBN at BookScouter and find out how much it’s worth. That way, you’ll only buy books you know you can sell for more than what you pay.

Profit margins aren’t huge on textbook reselling. But if you can average $5 per book and sell five per day, you could earn $750 each month!

You can also buy used books at garage sales to sell online, but it will require a bit more work and bargain hunting.

7. Sell Your Video Game Accounts

If you’re a gamer, try selling your video game accounts on gamer forums or eBay.

Tons of popular games like World of Warcraft, Second Life and League of Legends see players making big money selling their accounts.

You can also sell the virtual gold, weapons and real estate you’ve bought or earned over the years for real-life profit.

8. Get Good Grades

Check with the dean of your college or university to learn what incentives your school has for getting good grades.

Some actually offer cash bonuses to students who maintain a good grade point average!

Ultrinsic.com also encourages high GPAs by paying students. The site allows you to invest money in your future academic performance.

If you make your grade goal, Ultrinsic will give you interest on your investment. You can even earn up to a $2,000 bonus for maintaining a perfect 4.0 throughout college.

9. Audit Liquor Stores

“Professional Beer Buyer” might not make your resume, but it’s a pretty awesome job for a college student.

Companies like TrendSource and Corporate Research will pay you to shop local liquor stores undercover.

Just note whether the cashier asks for your ID, and submit a short report on your experience.

To qualify, you’ll normally need to be between 18 and 30 years old, usually under 25. You can earn between $5 and $50 per audit, with the average falling between $20 and $30.

You’re also reimbursed for any purchase you have to make to conduct the audit. Free beer, anyone?

10. Sell Your Notes

Not all campuses are keen on the activity, but lots of students have made money selling notes and study guides to classmates who miss class or need extra help cramming for exams.

If you’re a thorough note-taker, you could earn around $10-$20 per class.

A strong understanding of the subject matter for a complicated course could mean a lot more for study guides.

Online study materials and tutoring marketplace Luvo says students earn an average of $400 per semester on the site.

11. Become a Tutor

Have you ever considered becoming a private tutor?

Look for programs through your university or specific departments where you could get paid to work with other students.

For more flexibility, consider becoming an online tutor.

Through Wyzant.com, you can browse tutoring jobs and set your own rate.

When you connect with a student to offer tutoring services, you get paid!

12. Be a Micro-Freelancer

Do you have weird ideas and unique skills that entertain your friends?

Turn them into cash through Fiverr!

Post any of your creative offers on the site or copycats like Gigbucks and TenBux.

If you don’t want to count on attracting buyers, respond to user-submitted gig requests. You’ll see any requests related to your offers when you sign into your account.

Read our overview of what you could sell on Fiverr to get an idea of the unexpected talents you might possess!

13. Be a Genealogist

Yes, people will pay you to put together their tricky family trees.

Are you already a hobby genealogist or studying the subject in school?

You could charge between $70 to $700 per request, and take on as much or as little work as you can manage.

Set up your own virtual storefront, like this professional genealogist or list your services on freelance sites like Upwork or Freelancer.

14. Be a Virtual Employee

If you want more steady work and income still offering the flexibility you need to get to class and rest after all-nighters, look online.

You can put networking skills to use as a virtual recruiter, connecting employees or freelancers with the right jobs.

You’ll do things like post available jobs, screen resumes, conduct preliminary interviews and negotiate salaries.

Or be a virtual assistant and get paid to use the organization and communication skills you’ve developed to stay on top of schoolwork, classes and extracurriculars.

With more and more professionals diving into freelancing and self-employment, the demand for people to help with data entry, social media management, website maintenance, research and customer service is rising.

Transcribing also requires little to no prior experience, and offers flexible hours and workloads.

The work can be demanding, but the pay is a pretty good selling point: about $15 to $25 per hour for general transcription, and more if you specialize in a legal or medical field.

You can find these virtual gigs through freelance broker sites like Upwork, Freelancer or SimplyHired.

For VA gigs, also try Zirtual, People Per Hour and VA Networking.

For transcription, look at TranscribeMe, Rev, Tigerfish and Quicktate.

15. Sell Supplies on Etsy

Even if you hate crafting yourself, Etsy could be a good outlet for selling craft kits and supplies to those who love it.

Tools or supplies to make things circumvent Etsy’s rule that everything in its marketplace must be handmade or vintage. That’s an opportunity for you.

Decide what you’re interested in — maybe you have a little knowledge about cross-stitching or quilting? Maybe you have a lot of friends who make jewelry, so you know what they’re into?

Then look for supplies, kits and patterns at thrift stores and garage sales. You can buy them for bargain prices and resell to crafters on Etsy.

16. Hang Out With Dogs or Cats

Love playing with dogs and cats, but can’t have a pet in your tiny apartment or dorm room?

Try getting paid to spend time with other people’s pets!

Dog-walking is the obvious way to earn money caring for your neighbors’ best friends. But there are tons of other ways, too.

If you don’t mind getting a little dirty, you could be a dog washer or groomer. If you’ve got a weekend free, you could pet-sit for people when they go out of town.

Connect with seniors or busy pet owners in your area — offer to drive pets to vet or grooming appointments.

You can set up most of these gigs with a bit of networking, word-of-mouth and maybe a few posters around your neighborhood.

But if you want to be more efficient, try apps like DogVacay and BarknBorrow to connect with pet owners who might want your services.

17. Braid Horse Manes

This woman launched a $1,000-per-month business with zero experience and a $20 kit off the internet — for a pretty odd job.

She works on the weekends braiding horse manes for shows.

If you like working with animals and have at least a little skill French-braiding your own or others’ hair, this could be a fun side gig during your college years.

You’ll find some small shows in the fall and winter months, but spring and summer are the most popular.

And because the work happens almost exclusively on the weekends, you should have no problem fitting it around your class schedule.

18. Do Odd Jobs — the Modern Way

Odd jobs and side gigs are an awesome way to earn extra money without committing to a job or schedule.

You could always find work the old-fashioned way — have your parents ask their friends if they need help with anything.

But modern technology and our infatuation with the sharing economy have made gigs a much more effective way of earning a living.

Use an app like TaskRabbit to connect with people in your area who need help with house-cleaning, assembling furniture or installing a new faucet.

You can use Instacart to shop and delivery groceries to people who don’t have time, resources or ability to do it on their own.

You can earn up to $25 an hour delivering almost anything by car or bike through Postmates, available in about two dozen major U.S. cities.

All you need to get started is your smartphone — and you could start earning money this week.

19. Sell Weird Things on eBay

Did you know you could sell empty boxes on eBay?

What about remote controls? Empty toilet paper rolls? Egg cartons?

Just about anything you have lying around is probably valuable to someone. Auction sites like eBay help you find them.

If you haven’t accumulated a lot of junk of your own (good for you!), look outside. Depending on your climate, you could sell pine cones, seashells or driftwood to crafters who can’t find these in their own backyards.

20. Get Paid to Exercise

Are you walking around campus counting steps on your FitBit all day?

You could be earning cash for that!

Meet AchieveMint, which rewards you for keeping up with healthy activities.

AchieveMint integrates with fitness trackers like FitBit and RunKeeper, even with social platforms like Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare and more.

It rewards you for all kinds of “healthy” activities: going for a run, checking into a health-food store, even tweeting something healthy can earn you points that convert to cash rewards.

21. Clean Trash Cans

Washing garbage cans isn’t going to be a glamorous job.

In fact, as this woman puts it, it’s “downright dirty.” But it helped her earn more than $100 in an afternoon.

Most people don’t think about cleaning their trash cans. They just put them on the curb and steer clear of the foul smell.

But they can’t ignore it forever.

So when you — a young, able-bodied neighborhood do-gooder — shows up and offers to rid them of the stench, they’ll probably take you up on the offer.

It may be dirty and smelly, but the job is fairly simple and a quick way to earn some money in your spare time.

22. Be on Your Favorite TV Show

Do you watch “Jeopardy!” or “Wheel of Fortune” every afternoon and feel like you’d crush the contestants?

You can be part of these shows more easily than you might think, and it can be a cool way to boost your budget.

Read our full guide to becoming a game show contestant for details on joining “Jeopardy!,” “Wheel of Fortune,“ “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,“ “Celebrity Name Game,“ “Let’s Make a Deal,“ “Family Game Night,“ “The Price Is Right“ and more.

If you’re more into scripted TV, read about how to become an extra in one of the most popular shows on the air: “The Walking Dead.”

23. Claim Class-Action Settlements

It may not be the first thing on your mind, but class-action lawsuits are a simple way to make some extra money on the side.

You’re probably already part of a class-action suit you don’t even know about. They come up more often than you might realize.

We share open settlements here when we hear about them, so keep an eye out. You can also check Top Class Actions for open settlements you may have a stake in.

To file a claim, you’ll usually just have to fill out an online form. Some settlements also require proof of purchase of a relevant product or service.

How much you get depends on how many claimants are part of the case settlement and the amount of the settlement. You could get anything from free tuna to a check for $5,000 from California hotels.

24. Sell Your Data Plan

Are you one of the lucky souls who signed up for AT&T or Verizon back when you could get an unlimited data plan?

If you did, and were smart enough to hold onto it, you could make a pretty penny selling it on eBay.

Check out this listing, which sold for $310. This “guaranteed transfer” listing includes a SIM card and sold for $1,449.

Even though phone carriers frown on this activity, sellers have found a loophole of sorts.

They complete a Transfer of Billing Responsibility request to transfer the data plan to a new user to keep it aboveboard.

25. Resell Board Game Pieces

You know those tossed-aside, falling-apart, missing-pieces games everyone passes up at the thrift store?

They could mean money for you.

Spend the few bucks on an old game, and turn around and sell some of the valuable pieces to people who are trying to keep their own sets intact. 

This clever Penny Hoarder made $250 in six months selling board game pieces.

Not all games are created equal. Look for limited edition or special themed games. These are the ones collectors want to make whole.

Think “Lord of the Rings” Monopoly or “Harry Potter” Chess. Some vintage game pieces are highly profitable, too.

Your Turn: What are the weirdest ways you make money on the side?

Disclosure: You wouldn’t believe how much coffee The Penny Hoarder team goes through. This post contains affiliate links so we can keep the grinds stocked!

Dana Sitar (@danasitar) is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She’s written for Huffington Post, Entrepreneur.com, Writer’s Digest and more, attempting humor wherever it’s allowed (and sometimes where it’s not).

The post 25 Totally Flexible Ways to Make Money in College Without Dropping Classes appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

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What to Do When Your Spouse Fails Miserably at a New Job

When my husband grew tired of his mortuary job in 2013, I wasn’t all that surprised. After all, working as a mortician means working in one of the most stressful and consuming jobs on the planet.

With constant days and evenings on call, a work schedule that frequently includes holidays and weekends, and the stress that comes with caring for grieving families, it’s enough to send almost anyone over the edge. In fact, the stress of the funeral industry is one of the reasons I quit working with him (in the mortuary office) when we started a side business just a year before.

• Related: Life Lessons From a Funeral Home

Knowing just how stressful it was, I was extremely supportive when he started looking for a new job in a new field. But when he said he wanted to begin a new career for a financial and insurance company in sales, I was truly intrigued.

The fact that he’d never worked in sales before didn’t bug me at all; I felt confident in his ability to succeed in anything he put his mind to. The thing is, I just couldn’t imagine him working in sales. In my eyes, he wasn’t pushy enough to be a salesman – and he was far, far too sweet.

Still, I gave him the green light because he was so darned adamant about it. And with my support, he put in a three-week notice at work and began preparing for his new job. Because of the nature of life insurance sales, that included studying for some licensing exams he would need to take before he started training. Since he’s such a focused person, the work quickly consumed him.

And once his final day at work wrapped up, he was ecstatic. He would no longer be “on call” for work, plus he could quit working holidays and weekends, spend more time with his family, and have the potential to earn more money. Yes, his new career in life insurance would be commission-based — but he was so determined, he thought, there was no way he could fail.

And I believed him.

A Career in Sales Isn’t for Everyone

The first week of my husband’s training went fairly well, or so I thought. After sitting in a classroom from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day, he would come home and tell me about his day. He was overwhelmed but determined to push through, he told me. I could tell he was stressed out, but I thought it was just par for the course.

But the illusion of hopeful success wore off soon enough, and I began to see how much he was really struggling. Where he was once relaxed and jovial in the evenings, he started to come off stressed, disturbed, and always deep in thought. After dinner, I would catch him staring off into space with a hopeless look in his eyes.

He was trying desperately to keep up appearances, but as his wife, I could see right through it. And about three weeks into training, he finally broke down and told me what was wrong.

As part of his sales job, he had to call 40 people he knew on the phone every single day. The intention of those calls was not only to set up appointments, but to get the names and numbers of more people to add to his rolls.

He hated this part, he said, because he loathed cold calling. Worse, he absolutely hated asking people he knew for their friends’ and family’s contact information. As a final nail in the coffin of his sales job dreams, he confided in me that he didn’t have a lot of faith in what he was selling– specifically, their whole-life insurance products.

While he outwardly expressed his desire to make his new job work, I could tell he was crumbling from within. So I wasn’t surprised at all when he told me he just couldn’t do it.

Goodbye, Dreams

Looking back, I should have known it would end this way. I mean, I worked with the boy for six years at his old job and saw him in action every day.

While I don’t know everything, I did know this: My husband isn’t a salesman.

In his role as a mortician, he went out of his way to help people save money. Where most people try to sell as much as they can, my husband always took a thoughtful approach when planning a funeral with a family– suggesting inexpensive alternatives when asked, never pushing the most expensive products or services, and helping people stay well within their spending limits.

He was never meant to work in sales to begin with because he isn’t a salesman; he is a helper. He’s the kind of person who isn’t motivated just by money, but by the greater good. He has always slept better at night knowing he’s made someone’s life easier – or that he helped them through a difficult time – but never because he made a certain amount of money or met a sales goal. Money has never been what drives him.

When my husband started having night sweats and panic attacks, we knew it was time to throw in the towel. The next few months were extremely hard as we figured out what to do and where to go from there.

Because my husband had one major skill set at the time – he opted to jump right back into the mortuary industry, the one place he was comfortable. Sadly, mortuary jobs are highly dependent on where you live. Since you generally need to live within 20 or 30 minutes of your job to perform your “on call” duties, we knew we would probably need to sell our house and move.

My husband remembers vividly what all of that was like – the feelings of failure he endured each moment he was awake, the sadness we felt selling the only home our children had known, and the desperation he felt leaving everything we knew behind.

Still, we came out the other end in a much better place. While I, too, shed many tears and spent countless hours worrying about my husband and our family, I have come to believe this change was exactly what we needed. And in the end, I’m so glad it happened – regardless of the pain we endured in the process.

How We Survived When My Husband Failed at His Job

Reaching that point took time and a lot of self-reflection, but I got there nonetheless. Although our recovery from the process felt natural and happened organically, I now recognize how each step we took helped us heal. Here’s how we managed – one step at a time:

Survival Tip #1: Take the time to really understand what they are going through.

When my husband started having second thoughts about his new job in sales, I tried not to judge. Instead, I listened intently to what he was telling me. No matter what, I knew I couldn’t help him until I really understood what was going on.

Because I learned what was really bothering him and listened without judgment, I was able to see why his new situation wasn’t working out. And since I understood the root of the problem, it was much easier for me to accept his decision and begin moving forward.

I asked myself if I could survive in a high-pressure sales environment, and I quickly realized the answer was “no.” A career in sales isn’t for everyone, we told ourselves, and that was perfectly okay. At the end of the day, I was proud of him for trying something new – something scary. Not everyone has the guts to jump out of their comfort zone, I told him, and I knew he had our best interests at heart all along.

Survival Tip #2: Reassess your budget.

While I was initially stressed out about money, I didn’t want to force my husband to endure a job he was miserable in, either. Either way, we needed to reassess our budget before I let him walk away from his new career.

In our case, the numbers worked out. Because I was earning a steady income at the time and our expenses were low, I was able to cover our bills in their entirety while he waited a month for his first paycheck from his new job. And since we had quite a bit of equity in our home, we were able to sell it without taking a loss.

This part is crucial for any family living through a job loss or unexpected work change: When paychecks aren’t coming in, it’s important to have a plan.

Of course, coming together on financial matters had other benefits for our family as well. In fact, sitting down together to figure out this part actually brought us closer together and reinforced the idea that we’re a team.

Survival Tip #3: Look at the bright side of things.

Where I could have spent years being bitter over the loss of our home and the fact that we had to move away from family and friends, I started looking at the bright side of things fairly quickly. While part of my new attitude was simply a strategy to encourage my husband and ease his fears, I really did find a lot to be happy about.

First, the area we were moving to had far superior schools than the area we were moving from. As a result, we moved from a struggling school district to one that is constantly rated as one of the top 15 in our state. Second, I quickly fell in love with our new area – the local parks, the city river, and the quirky downtown area. Finally, I learned to love our modest but new-to-us home, which is nestled in a mature neighborhood with two public pools and three parks.

I could have easily wallowed on what we’d lost instead – our old house, and the comfort that came with my husband’s stressful, but manageable old job. But if I had, I could have easily missed out on recognizing everything we gained.

While it’s hard to remain positive when you’re struggling, I’m so glad we found the courage to be hopeful. We still had our health, and we still had each other, after all. Everything else was just icing on the cake.

Survival Tip #4: Learn from the experience.

While my husband’s foray into sales and his subsequent failure was painful for all of us, we learned several hard-hitting lessons from the experience. And those lessons are ones we will carry into each new stage of our lives.

First, we learned that neither one of us is truly cut out for a job in sales. While we’re both hard workers, we aren’t the type who feel comfortable cold-calling family members and friends, or asking people to do things we wouldn’t do ourselves. And if either one of us could ever work in sales, it would have to be with a product we truly believed in.

Second, we realized the importance of the financial principles we were already living by – zero-sum budgeting, and of course, living below our means. If we weren’t living so far below our means, it would have been extremely difficult for my husband to quit his old job to try something new, and then to sell our home and move when it didn’t work out.

Come to think of it, all of the decisions we made – both good and bad – were made possible by the fact that we lived well below our means. And I suppose that’s the best lesson of all – the idea that what we’re doing actually works. Living below our means and well within our budget is what has given us options and freedom in our lives – and that includes the freedom to make mistakes.

• Related: Financial Independence and Career Choices

I have always heard that there is a lesson to be learned in every struggle, and I believe that with my whole heart. But sometimes, you have to dig a little to find it.

The Bottom Line

My husband may not be a salesman, but he has plenty of other positive attributes that more than make up for it. He’s a patient and loving father. He’s honest and hard-working. He’s thoughtful and caring in ways I don’t always appreciate or expect. And, most importantly, he puts his family first – not work, hot his hobbies, and not his friends.

Failing at life insurance sales doesn’t define him, nor should it. The truth is, we’re all good at some things and not-so-great at others. Why should he be any different?

The only thing that has ever mattered to me was that he dusted himself off and kept trying. And that’s exactly what we did – together. After working another year or so in the mortuary business, my husband was finally able to quit his job to work on our online business with me. But that was only possible because he poured his heart and soul into making it work and creating a job for himself – one where he could work hard, but on his own terms.

Years later, we’re finally doing exactly what we wanted to do all along – working together at home doing something we love. If my husband had never had the courage to quit his job and try something new, I’m not sure we would be here.

Over time, I’ve learned that life was never meant to be perfect. Each triumph and loss has a hidden lesson, and we can use each of those lessons to become better – to become stronger. That’s why I supported my husband then and still support him now. Regardless of what job he works in, marriage is so much more.

Through thick and thin – for rich or for poor. Jobs are meant to come and go, but family is forever.

Have you ever failed at a job you were really excited about? How did you make it through? Please share your story below.

Related Articles:

• Why Taking a Pay Cut Was the Best Career Move I Ever Made
• How Our Financial Goals Have Changed After 10 Years of Marriage
• ‘My Job Is Killing Me’

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