Pizza Delivery
The economic slump is hitting big time here now. What I’m earning delivering pizzas and what I’m spending on gas to drive around are getting too close together.
Pizza delivery isn’t netting me enough money to keep doing it. People still tip, but not as well as they did a few months ago. Even though gas prices are down to around $3.65 a gallon, tips are only two-thirds of what they were in May. Tips are where you make all your money. I’m stopping delivering pizzas as of the end of this week. I would have been reducing my hours anyway since school is starting.
Not as many people are ordering pizzas for delivery. I used to go out with 3-4 pizzas on board. Now it’s 1 or 2 and the pace has slowed slightly. I work the same number of hours but make half as much. It’s about the same number of miles to deliver 3-4 pizzas as it is to deliver 1-2, so I’m paying out the same amount in gas money.
I was grossing $1800 per month on average and netting $1400 after taxes. I know that’s too much tax for that amount of pay, but I’m still earning at least $1200 a month in summer tutoring where no taxes are being taken out. I have the taxes taken out of the pizza delivery job instead of having to pay quarterly self-employment taxes for tutoring. Gas costs me an extra $250 per month to do the job, so my net was $1150. It was worth it for that amount of money, and often it was a couple of hundred dollars more than that. Now I’m only netting $575. That’s not enough. I can make that amount up by adding 5 hours a week to my tutoring schedule, which isn’t hard to do.
If you are delivering pizzas for extra money, make sure you’re actually netting enough to make it worth your while.
Tutoring Is Back
School started this week so tutoring will start ramping up next week. I have a GED student continuing with me from the summer and I have one new student scheduled starting Monday. That will ramp up quickly by the end of August. I’ve already warned all my regular students that if they want their pick of times and locations, they need to get on my schedule early.
I also got a raise from the tutoring company I work with (I’m a 1099 contractor), so that’s extra money for each hour I spend tutoring and that was effective August 1.
New Cost-Cutting
I thought there wasn’t any more I could cut out of my budget, but closing down my business officially has freed up some more cash. I shut off the business phone and that saves us $40 a month. I had to keep the phone on until I could file my form ADV-W with the NASD.
Tuition for my son’s homeschool curriculum will stop next month and that will save us $66/mo. I wrote my own curriculum for this school year. It’s not that hard knowing what I know from teaching high school kids from all over the city. I know what they take and what they have to know before they get into each class, so coming up with a 7th grade curriculum wasn’t that difficult. I was able to get all the books we need from the last library sale for about $15. Libraries often carry textbooks and other very good how-to books, like the “For Dummies” series. They sell old editions when new editions are purchased. Check out your next library sale and pick up some real bargains.
I’ve been reducing the number of features we have on our home phone as time has progressed, and I’ve decided we don’t need caller ID anymore. That was the last to go. Our regular home phone bill used to be $80/mo when I started cutting features last summer (2007). Now it’s down to $20/mo. I screen calls the old fashioned way, using the answering machine. I only pick up when it’s not a collections call. Otherwise the machine takes messages and I call back when I’m ready.
The last big cost cutter was to do everything possible to extend the gas mileage of the Honda and consolidate trips as much as possible outside of pizza delivery. I was able to reduce our gas consumption by 1 whole tank per month, saving us $50.
Totaling the savings up: $250+$50+$40+$66+$15 (home phone) = $421
That’s another big reason I’m stopping the pizza job. Excluding the $250 in gas money, we’re saving $171 extra now. My tutoring income plus the savings will more than make up the $575 my take-home pay will be reduced.
Another Side Business
I’ve also been working on another side business. I’ve been helping local people and business owners set up their own websites using WordPress. I got into it from the suggestion of another blogger. When I sold my red beans and rice recipes blog, the guy I sold it to needed help with transferring everything over to the domain on his server. I helped him as part of selling him the site, but I’ve found a couple of small businesses that want a web presence but don’t want to spend around a thousand dollars having a professional designer set it up, and then them not be able to make changes easily. Those companies also charge too much money each year to keep hosting your site. The cheapest I’ve heard about was $250 per year for one site. That’s criminal! It costs me $230 per year for domain name registration and hosting for 10 sites. That’s $19 a month total. I more than make that up with a few affiliate product sales.
I’m making around $250 per WordPress site. I do most everything for them. I set up the domain name and hosting, install WordPress and help them pick out a free theme, or they can browse around Google and get a paid theme if they want. I set up their site with the theme they choose, add the plugins they’ll need, set up tracking (Google Analytics), teach them what the main statistics mean and show them how to use the WP administration panel. I also set them up with an RSS feed and get them a FeedBurner account.
Once they go through WordPress with me and then over the phone when they make their first change on their own, they’ve got it down. One website only costs them $380 to set up and host for the first year, then hosting and domain name registration will run them another $132 per year from then on. They can add more domains for another $11 per year each. I set them up on hosting that allows unlimited domains so the cost doesn’t go up if they add a site.
This is just something I’ve picked up on the side since I’ve gained so much experience with WordPress over the past year. I’m going to start marketing it locally, networking with my local business owner friends and acquaintences. They’ll let me leave business cards or fliers on their counters.
I haven’t run into anyone who wants an autoresponder system yet, but when I do, I’ll set up AWeber accounts using my affiliate link and earn a monthly commission on top of that. I set people up with hosting that I’m an affiliate for and I earn a monthly commission there as well. It’s not a lot, a dollar or so a month on each account, but after awhile it all adds up and I don’t have to spend a bunch of time and no money getting those income streams to flow.
If you’re a Baton Rouge local and want a website set up that you can run yourself that doesn’t cost you an arm and a leg, please drop me an email at joubess at gmail dot com. Please leave your name, business name and phone number, and we’ll get together and get you set up.
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