They’re commonly called ‘gigs’. But you may have heard them called ‘freelance work’ or ‘short term tasks’. Whatever you want to call them they are ideal for retirees who want to pick up added income doing quick assignments like the obvious one: driving your own car for Uber or Lyft. Or a less obvious gig where you write a message in the sand for a Fiverr customer. (Yes, you read that right: “write messages in the sand” and get paid for it! More about this later)
And short term means work that can be completed in a few minutes, or a few hours, or at the most, a few days. At the end of the gig when you have finished whatever you have agreed to do then you get paid. While some gigs allow you set your own hours, you will always have a specific completion deadline to meet.
A ‘gig’ is definitely different from working part time. As a ‘gigster’ you are an independent contractor, rather than an employee of a company or person you do the task for. You will be hired to do a specific assignment with no particular promise that a part-time or full-time job with that company could be in the future.
While the word ‘gig’ has been around for ages and has been used to describe one night of work for a musician, the term has come into broader usage because of a company called Fiverr.com. At this site the basic price for any service offered is $5. NOTE Since I wrote this the basic fee at Fiverr has sky-rocketed and now pays much more!
- Promote ebooks on Facebook: $5.
- Send a few promotional tweets on Twitter: $5
- Record a video birthday wish using puppets: $5.
- Write an ad message in the sand and take a photo of it: $5.
Before you start muttering “That’s not enough money”, take a good look at the site. Every successful gigster has a $5 service, which can usually be completed in a very few minutes. Then they have add ons, each costing an additional $5 to $250 or more. Some gigsters also offer the option of leaving a $5 tip. Suddenly $5 doesn’t look so meager anymore. (For whatever it is worth, I have had two ebook covers designed by Fiverr artists including the cover for my best-selling guide, Working After Retirement, and have been very happy with the results!)
Another company, Taskrabbit.com, also hires people to do short term tasks. They only operate in large cities and most of the work seems to be manual or personal assistant-style assignments: house-cleaning, grocery shopping, household moving, handyman repairs. (I’ve had no experience with this company, so I can offer no opinion of its service.)
Now you may be thinking “I’d like a work from home” gig I’ve seen advertised on the internet. I advise you to BEWARE of most of the work from home listings.. They are scams designed to get personal information and money from you. Identity theft could be the result you get– instead of a paycheck.
A Real Life Retirement
One of the best-known gigs in today’s gig economy is driving for Uber or Lyft. All you need is a nice, clean and relatively new car, a smart phone and a few extra hours. For Sam, a semi-retired contractor who wanted to add stability to his up-and-down income, driving for Uber was the answer. During slack times between contracting jobs he spent a few hours a week responding to Uber calls and added a nice sum to his income. When he got his next remodeling contract, he stopped checking into Uber until another slack period came along.
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NOTE: All names on this site have been changed to protect individual privacy. The stories are real, the names are not.