Direct selling (à la Avon and Tupperware) is another area that is still doing well. During the past three recessions this field grew 4.5 percent on average, as retail sales fell 3.3 percent. Kathy Lazear, 49, is one of direct sales’ new recruits. About a year ago, she was told that her job as an insurance agent in Gainesville, Florida, was shifting to part-time. So to supplement her income, Lazear signed on to sell Tastefully Simple, a gourmet food line. She now earns roughly $1,000 a month and has seen no decline in her sales since the recession hit full force. “I love it,” Lazear says. “It has been so much fun. I know that if my day job ends, I’ll be covered.” (To figure out which direct sales product fits you best, go to directselling411.com.)
Target expert sites online
If you have an expertise, you may want to offer yourself as an authority or coach for pay on a Web site like guru.com or liveperson.com (where, full disclosure, I’ve earned a few bucks myself). You sign up for these sites, go through a vetting process and, once approved, hang out a shingle. Customers on the site ask you questions in real time—in live chat rooms—and pay by the minute.
The money can really add up. Last July, Teresa Estes, 40, a Florida-based licensed mental health counselor, listed herself on liveperson.com to make up for a softening in her private practice. By September, the Web business had become more profitable than her original one, so she decided to make liveperson.com her full-time job. Estes has since raised her rate to $1.89 a minute from $1.59 and (after paying the site its 37 percent commission) takes home more than $1,500 a month. “The convenience really works for me,” she says. “So does not being tied to an office.”
Launch your own Web site—with ads
Donna W. Guthrie, 62, is a children’s book author in Colorado Springs. When sales in the book world began to fall, she started thinking of ways to earn extra cash. She signed up with Google to start showing ads on her Web site,
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