@enigmaT120: I've been dealing books on the internet for about 15 years, so I've experienced almost the entire S-curve of this industry/endeavor. In the olden days, I could make money selling just about any book to somebody on the planet through a variety of outlets, such as ABE, Alibris, Ebay, Half etc. This is not the case anymore by a long shot. OTOH, I am almost certainly one of the 10 best scouts in my range, so I could still support myself in frugal genteel poverty through book-dealing alone, if that is what I wanted to do. Kind of like being the last remaining blacksmith in the county.
However, it is my preference to have my book business just be one of the 5 legs on my rickety-rockety jill-of-all-trades generalist-generalist 3-7 legged stool.
The particular problem I am having at the moment is in part due to the influence of the advice offered in "The 4 Hour Work Week" regarding the efficiency of outsourcing distribution (Tim Ferriss
![Evil or Very Mad :evil:](./images/smilies/icon_evil.gif)
.) I used to have over 10,000 volumes stored in banker boxes stacked 4 high and 4 deep on pallets covering the bottom floor of a rented barn, and every other day I would have to drive to the barn, lift a bunch of boxes, then pack all the books that sold for shipping, then go wait in line at the post office OR pay one of my kids (teenagers at the time) to do it. So, it was like my business consisted of one job that paid well over $20/hr (scouting books) and one job that paid $8/hr (picking/packing.) So, when Amazon made warehousing/distribution available to dealers, I shipped all my inventory to them, for the price of a hit equivalent to maybe paying $10/hr (pick/pack.) At that time, Amazon had a policy that held one-of-a-kind items exempt from long-term storage fees in order to promote depth of selection. This is the policy they have recently changed. So, I either have to eat some very high storage fees that will significantly dent my profits, limit myself to scouting for inventory that will likely flip in less than 6 months (not how rare books market works), or take on the tasks of storage/shipping myself again. I am mostly just grouchy with myself because I should/would have seen this coming if I hadn't been a bit asleep at the wheel because busy with other projects, play-dates and idle chit-chat.
in general, brute would suggest not relying purely on social capital. maybe it's not worse than relying 100% on any other type of capital, but beauty fates, and 7Wannabe5, too, will get old. sugar daddies aren't exactly known for loyalty.
No worries. In my experience, being financially dependent on a man you love is better than being financially dependent on a job you hate, but being your own flavor of independent is best. Also, please recall that I am already 52 years old, so it is somewhat amusing to tag myself as "sugar-baby" because I let the affluent-because-old men I date pick up restaurant tabs and buy me gifts. OTOH, it is true that my current BF previously kept a 24 year old Sri Lankan girl in Dubai, and occasionally threatens to trade me in for either another one of those or next-generation sex robot, but I just reply "Go for it!" I recently read that the 50s/60s are the "cocktail hour" of life, and I am finding that to be pretty apt. Kind of like you might lapse back into a day or two of considering the possibility of a "serious" relationship, and then you think "Why?"
Possum Sugar Baby Gardening Handywoman maybe. $5,500 / (backbone-basics-fund of ~$50,000 + emergency cash of $10,000 + social capital + steady "income" stream of home-grown food + intermittent income streams from writing ebooks, selling canned jam, fixing others' plumbing..)
Not a bad mix/suggestion. Ideally, I would have 5 full legs on my stool, each of which would hold my weight on its own if necessary. I currently make enough money substitute teaching 2 days week to support myself. I would like to maintain this as one of my legs, because it also provides me with opportunity to serve my community and improve the world of the future, social interaction with peers, total flexibility, variety of challenges, fun with finger-paint, gummy-bear dancing and Dr.Seuss, and great deal of autonomy and appreciation (because I am over-qualified.) However, if I did it more than 2 days week, I would not enjoy it nearly as much.
The last year or two, I have been directing most of the profit from my book business to my perma-culture project, and I have been letting the book business run mostly passive, so I am going to have to really ramp it up a bit for a while and deal with my storage/shipping issue in order to restore it as steady leg. My permaculture project would already almost be carrying my weight as a leg IF I wasn't too chicken to live in my camper by myself. I want the cash crop from this project to be something that isn't edible, such as floral and basket craft supplies. Because I am a serious dilettante, my 5th leg needs to be left open/random/short-term. So, it is my plan that my 4th leg will be something more nerdy towards investment (IOW, 1/5 of my plan is the same as the whole plan of some other people on this forum, but I haven't really gotten started with this part yet) , and that is why I am taking a course on building robots. I am also due to collect enough social security to support myself in 10 years, so that could be a 6th leg. And it also is true that the yacht-guy offered to let me sail down the coast with him when he retired and my current BF would probably not make me pay for anything if I moved in with him and cooked him salmon cakes on a regular basis, so that is a 7th leg.
Anyways, returning to the general topic of this thread, the thing I've been thinking about is that the average productivity of the American worker is $68/hr or roughly $130,000 at 40hrs./week. Therefore, I think the premise of "The $100 Start-Up" which is that it is not that difficult for a motivated, intelligent individual to make $50,000/yr self-employed with little initial capital investment, if willing to throw 40 or more hours/week at the endeavor is likely true. So, it should follow that it is also a pretty robust assumption that a motivated, intelligent individual could likely make $10,000/yr. self-employed with little initial capital investment, if willing to throw solid 10 hrs. week at endeavor. Therefore, I would suggest that developing an enjoyable $10,000/10 hour/week gig along with an emergency fund adequate to cover time-to-develop-next-such-gig-if-first-gig-fails, might be as robust a leg on which to retire from full-time employment as $200,000 invested towards passive income.