Survival jobs suck. I find many of those jobs to be tedious, draining, and depressing. I did a summer internship answering phones at a small credit card machine vendor. Leaving the same message on hundreds of answering machines. My livelihood prevented me from taking days off, and put my career on hold for the summer. I was in a show at night, but could not do anything else except get up at 8, answer phones until 5, and drive to the theatre. I was exhausted and unfulfilled. I waited tables at a bar for 6 months after I graduated and I hated every minute. I was a terrible waitress, I was constantly getting yelled at, customers were drunk assholes and tipped poorly, and I hated the feeling that my income depended on the kindness of beer drinkers. My livelihood depended on how nice the guy with the beer belly was feeling. On how quickly I brought him ranch dressing. And how my manager threw a bitch fit every time I called out to be on a movie set. I remember thinking "this is getting me nowhere, and is interfering with what I actually want to do."
Then I got my first promo gig and my eyes were opened to a whole new world. Why? Why should an actor labor in the murkiness of a restaurant or the overlit hell of an office? People will give you their money to do less shitty things if you know where to look.
CAREER-RELATED:
- Be an Extra. Send your shit to every non-union background casting agency in your area, whether you have film experience or not. The days are boring, the hours are grueling, but it's an easy way to get up-close-and-personal with the "professional" actors and you can learn a lot from talking to other extras. Everyone needs extras, from big-budget to low-budget films to commercials to music videos to tv shows to industrial training videos. If you're willing to sit there for 10 hours in a holding room, it's easy money. Bring stuff to do!
-Average Pay: $50-$100 bucks a day. More if you're SAG/AFTRA
-Hours: Varies. Anywhere from 4 to 12 hours.
- Voiceover. Record a demo of yourself reading some commercial and narrative scripts (look online for examples). Unless you're a pro, don't pay to use a studio for your first demo. Use your laptop in a quiet room and do as many takes as you want until you're happy with it. Research online to see where in your area are recording studios, call them and ask who the major VO clients are. Email that shit to everyone. Don't include your picture. It doesn't matter what you look like. Go to business conventions that have nothing to do with film and pass copies of your VO CD around to the vendors. I've gotten work from random offices who call me and ask me to record training videos and answering machine messages. Prepare to be asked to rethink your interpretation of the script, nit-picking on every syllable, and do countless variations of tone/register/color/etc.
-Average Pay: $100-$200 bucks a session to start
-Hours: 1-3
-Shittiness factor: 2/10
- Wedding Singer. Show up and sing at someone's wedding. Usually prefers classically trained vocalists.
-Average Pay: $100-$300
-Hours: 1-2
- Cantor. Show up and sing at Church. Requires you to tolerate a church, and be moderately proficient at singing hymns. Make friends with the accompanist. Attend a ceremony before you sign up/audition to make sure you can deal with the music. Some of these can be highly competitive, some of them take almost anyone.
-Average Pay: $50-$75 a service
-Hours: 1- 1.5
SEMI-CAREER-RELATED
- Brand Ambassador/Promotional Modeling. THIS is my shit. This is the best-kept secret for actors. Companies will pay to have attractive, well-spoken people wearing their logos and standing next to their products. It goes without saying, that the more attractive you are, the more and better-paying promo gigs you can book, but I've seen all manner of people working for various companies. Many would rather have an older professional than a 21-year-old model representing their brand. The best way to get these is to sign up with promotional agencies. Seriously, just search local craigslist "gigs" for Brand Ambassadors and Promo Models and email them. Wear comfortable shoes. If you're sexy, apply for car conventions and booth babes, as those make the most money. I'm literally getting paid to demonstrate Xbox games in public. Example awesome company: http://www.encorenationwide.com (One-day-at-a-time gigs nationwide!) Usually you stand there and pass out flyers, or free samples, or "direct traffic" to a booth, or spin a raffle wheel, or something similar. Inside gigs are always better than outside gigs. Avoid promos that make you wear a huge furry costume unless they're paying you the big bucks.
-Average Pay: $15-$20 bucks an hour.
-Hours: 6-8
- Living Statue. My friend told me about this. A company is paying her to walk into parties, full body paint, and costume, and freeze. And occasionally mess with the partygoers, steal wine glasses, interrupt conversations, etc. So people can stare at you and laugh and create conversation.
-Average Pay: $100 bucks a day
-Hours: 4-5
- Party Character/Celebrity Impersonator. Show up at kids' birthday parties dressed as a popular character (Spiderman, Jack Sparrow, Barbie, Hannah Montanna, etc) Show up at business parties dressed as any politician (Bush, Sarah Palin, Arnold Schwarzenegger etc.) or popular celebrity (Elvis, Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe, Lady Gaga, Donald Trump) or a movie character (Avatar, James Bond, Indiana Jones, Neo) and entertain the crowd. You are required to have your own costume, so pick characters that you could conceivably play and learn all their music or mannerisms. It's hard to break into this by yourself, and convince people you aren't a child molester or a thief, so search craigslist for parents or party planners in need and scour the web for party agencies that hire you out. Do it for friends' kids first and get really good references. Bonus points if you own a big costume (Spongebob, Transformers, Buzz Lightyear, etc.).
-Average pay: $50-100 bucks a party for kids, $100-$250 a party for adults
-Hours: 2-4
UNRELATED (but still awesome)
- DESIGN T-SHIRTS ONLINE. Can't draw? Me neither. Can you use Microsoft Word? You can make money designing shirts. The biggest one, and my favorite, is http://www.cafepress.com . It's FREE to try, no penalty for not selling any, no credit card or membership fee or any bullshit like that. You sign up with an email address, and create a little shop, and put whatever you want on shirts, coffee mugs, bumper stickers, ipad cases, shot glasses, etc. And upload them to the marketplace to sell. And leave them there. Eternally. Cafepress charges, say, 7 bucks for a plain white tshirt. I put words on the shirt (because I can't draw), using their handy little design tool, charge 3 bucks for my design (so the public pays 10 bucks for the shirt) and tag it in the Cafepress marketplace. So when somebody searches for it and buys it, cafepress gets $7 and I get $3. Cafepress handles everything afterwards, I just cash the check. Example: when Michael Phelps won his 7th gold at the Olympics, I went on cafepress and made a shirt that read "One fish, two fish, red fish, Michael Phelps". That's it. Took me 10 minutes. I uploaded it, and posted the link to every single Michael Phelps fan page on facebook. The next night, he won his 8th and final gold, 33 people bought the shirt and I made $100 while I was asleep. I know the first guy to put #winning on a shirt (a la Charlie Sheen) make upwards of a grand in a couple nights. The trick is to get there first.
-Average pay: $100 a month (I have 10 shops selling right now and I do little to promote them)
-Hours: Whatever you want. Usually I do 1 or 2 a week.
If you really love teaching, or babysitting, then more power to you. I didn't include them here because they're pretty obvious.
Break a leg, and happy hunting!
-K
