Ep #45 How Much Income Do You Need To Make From Remote Work?

Today's episode is about different ways that you can calculate how much money you want and need to make. If you missed any of the other episodes, click here for episode 41 and listen all the way through so you can get everything for the month.

Now, today we're going to focus on how much money you want and need to make, and I'm going to give you three different ways to calculate that.

Now, let me back up and tell you that when I talk to my clients and members of Remote Work School, sometimes people don't exactly know how much money they need. Often we get stuck in what we used to make or we think only about the bills we have to pay. We also don't think about how things are changing all the time.

Like right now, we're in the middle of inflation. In fact, I just talked to a guy the other day who said he planned for retirement but didn't plan for this much inflation, and it forced him back into work. What's also common is I find that when people worked at a specific job and made a certain salary, they have that salary stuck in their brain.

They have a ceiling on what's possible or what they think they need to make. And so some of this comes from money blocks or old money stories, and I can't spend all the time today talking about that, but I do wanna give you an example of what I've shared on this podcast before about how my grandmother was great at accounting.

She was the accountant in my grandfather and her ice cream business, and when I was 10, she made me open a checking account and made me balance a checkbook, but we couldn't find one penny. She got annoyed with me. And at one point I remember her calling me a dummy, and that stuck in my brain, and that was the point at which all of my dysfunctional stories around money began and also questioning my self-worth.

That's a lot to unpack. Again, I'm not gonna do that today, but I do want you to think if there's a time in your life when you have a money story like that, because that root is something that might be holding you back from sprouting a whole new way of earning money for you. I'm gonna talk more about the practicalities today, but if you need help with that kind of work, then shoot me a DM on Instagram or check out my free training at the end of this.

So let's talk about different ways to calculate what you want and need to make. I'm going to go over three.

• I'm going to talk about hourly.
• Retainer rates
• And then what I call making money in a leveraged way.

Now, first of all, you need to get a good handle on your expenses, and surprisingly, for a lot of people, this is hard.

I did this recently with someone in my family and they were absolutely shocked at how much more their expenses were than then they thought. And I know, I get it. It's hard to sit down and really look at your money situation, especially if you're on the struggle bus. 

I've been in this exact situation many, many times in my life, but you have to get a handle on exactly what's going out every month, and then you have to budget for the other stuff, the fun stuff, or the money you want to save or something that you're planning for in the future.

And you can ballpark it for. And now that you have that figure, you might also have a pit in your stomach because sometimes there's a gap between where you are today and where you ideally need to be. But you must figure out that number to the best of your ability because that's going to give you a lot of clarity on how much money you need to make and what the options are.

Let's talk about the first one, which is getting paid by the hour. It's the most common way that people get paid, you know, the average person, and it is my least favorite way to earn income because you are trading every hour of your time for money. However, you can negotiate your hourly rate in some cases.

Now, recently I was hired for a contract and the person who hired me wanted to pay me on a monthly retainer. I'll talk about that in number two, but she was underestimating the work. I knew she was, and she knew she was too, and that's why she wanted to offer me retainer work and try to squeeze every hour out of me she could. Because I knew this, I decided to go back and offer her an hourly rate.

I don't like to do this, but I knew I would make more money per hour if I did it. I offered her an in-between rate of what she was going to want to pay me versus what I wanted to get paid. It was kind of a win-win. Again I wouldn't normally do this, but I knew that she was underestimating the work, and when I finally did the work and calculated the pay, I would've lost a thousand dollars had I taken a retainer.

The reason I bring this up is number one, don't always assume that getting paid on retainer or even salary or any other way that you get paid is somehow going to be better than hourly. Because with hourly, what you can do sometimes is negotiate the hourly rate. Now be prepared to explain how you're going to contribute and what that person's going to get out of you for the hour.

What you don't wanna do is tell them why you need the money. It's never a winning strategy to tell them that you need to get more money per hour cuz you have bills to pay. We all have bills to pay. Instead, position it as to why you're going to give them more value and why they're winning in the end, by you negotiating that salary.

The second one is a retainer rate. Now, this is when you get paid a flat rate for work that you would do. It could be monthly, it could be weekly, it could even be per day. And what I like about this is that it does give you consistent income depending on how you work.

Now, if you get good at the work you do and you duplicate it over and over and streamline your process, then you can end up working less and making more. For example, I have a peer who sets up client onboarding systems for businesses, and then she maintains those systems monthly. So she's created the same steps no matter who the client is.

And what used to take her 30 hours a month now takes her only 20 because it's routine. She can work faster and take on more clients per month, which means she makes more money. Now the key to this is finding something that you can get good at and offer it as a service over and over. Now, I'll give you some examples.

These might not fit for you, but I just wanna throw some ideas out there.

• Things like bookkeeping, where you have a system that you do the same way every single month. 
• Scheduling social media, again, you can get good and fast at that. Content writing, like articles and blogs, especially if you use,  artificial intelligence like ChatGPT which can speed up your process.
• Video editing, especially if you create templates and you just drop people's videos into those templates.
• Creating custom recipes for people based on their diet, especially if you already have a set of recipes that you go to based on those diets over and over again.

Now, you could even do a daily rates.

Often these are called VIP days, and this is where. Do work for people or you work alongside people and you get something done in a day. Now the same friend that I mentioned that sets up client onboarding systems per month, she also offers a V.I.P. day rate where she charges $5,000 a day to set everything up for you!

This gives her the best of both worlds. She can do a monthly retainer, but she can also do V.I.P days.

The last one is my favorite, and it's called "Leveraged Work." This is where you do something one time or a few times and you generate income well into the future.

These are things like digital products.

• Online courses. M
• aybe these are e-books or workbooks.
• You could even publish books on Amazon. I have friends that have written books on Amazon and they get paid over and over again, and they only had to write that book one time.
• These could also be things like printables. These are little printables like planners, checklists to-do lists. And you can sell those on places like Etsy. I know lots of people who do that.
• This could be group coaching programs or membership where you're serving a lot of people at one time, so you're earning more per hour. That's the business I run.
• Write blogs that include links to things like Amazon, and then you sell products from Amazon or other affiliate programs over and over again. Or even use that same blog to bring in ad revenue.

Now, I know a woman who teaches moms to sew their kid's clothing and does well with a program like that. These could also be video tutorials that you record once and sell over and over. I'm gonna talk in a future episode about my friend Richard, who's 80 years old, and he and I are working together to get his art training online in video.

You could sell other people's products like become, an affiliate. It. For example, for Remote Work School, my program, I have an affiliate program where people can earn a percentage when they refer people. I'm launching that again very soon, so more to come on that. Now I could go on and on, but hopefully what you're learning is that there are so many different ways to earn income and it takes a little bit of creativity.

I hope you enjoyed listening. Come back next month because I have the most exciting series called Founders Over 50. These are people who started businesses over 50 years old. You're going to be so inspired.

If you have any questions  Click here to DM on Instagram.

Looking for more inspirational ideas? Sign up for my free training:

How To Get Remote Work To Have A Flexible Lifestyle (Without Running Out of Money), https://www.camilleattell.com/remote-training

Rate, Review, & Follow on Apple Podcasts

If you’re loving the Remote Work Retirement Show please consider rating and leaving a review! This helps get the word out about the show and helps other people find hope and practical steps to find the right remote work for them. Click here, scroll to the bottom, tap to rate with five stars, and select “Write a Review.” Then let me know what you loved most about the show.

Also, make sure you don't miss an episode by clicking here to follow and get notified when each one is published.