Have you ever wondered, what are all the things that you could potentially do to increase your income? There are some easy wins. And then there are some difficult ones.
Ask for A raise at work
The easiest way to increase our income is to ask for a rise in our full-time job. Many don’t even realize that they are underpaid for their work.
We should know our value in the market. If we do the same work for some other employer, how much money would we make? Is that comparable to our current salary? Today we have plenty of resources to find that data, like Salary.com and glassdoor.com. Let’s make use of them.
Say for example. If you are a Senior Software Engineer and working in the Washington DC area, you can easily find, how much money a typical Senior software engineer is making in your area.
This is a screenshot from salary.com. Not just for the US, you can do the same for many other countries including India.
Ideally, your salary should be more than the median salary of your region. What if your salary is less than the median? What should you do then? Time to negotiate. Bring up this topic during your next one-on-one with your manager. Present the data and ask for a rise.
Don’t go in and ask for a raise, without any merit. Make sure that your performance is well over the median to ask for a raise. Convince your manager with all the data that you deserve a raise. Only if your manager is convinced, he or she would be able to make a solid recommendation for your salary hike.
With all the bureaucracies in the corporate world, it is not really easy for your manager to get an immediate raise for you. So do not expect the raise to happen immediately. But you should keep reminding your manager, so that they do not lose track of it.
During the next pay hike period, one of two things should happen. You get the raise you asked for. Or better yet, you get the raise with a promotion. If either of these does not happen, then it is time to brush up your resume and look for other opportunities.
But what if I am already making more than the median salary? Is there any way that I can increase my income? Sure. But when your employer is already paying you more than the median income, then it is going to be a bit difficult to get more money from them. The easier option would be to switch jobs.
Switch Jobs
Switching jobs can easily bump up our salary, at least by 25%. Some even get up to a 50% bump, essentially for doing the same job, but for a different employer. So do not hesitate to switch. But yeah, we might have to learn the new business from scratch. But isn’t that a good thing? It definitely adds more broad experience to our resume.
Even if you are not looking for a switch, it is better to keep your options open. LinkedIn comes in handy for that. One cool tactic that you can follow is, to mark yourself as, “Open to work” on LinkedIn. But do make sure, that you choose the option of – “share with recruiters only”. You do not want your employer to know that you are actively looking for a job, do you? No.
But still, if they come to know about that, you can always say, “Oh, I love it here. Just that I am exploring what is out there in the world. That is all.” It is not difficult to say that, right? Actually, it is a good thing, if your employer knows that you are considering other opportunities outside. If you are a great resource, they will try everything in their power to keep you with them – including paying you more money.
So once you have turned on the “open to work” feature in LinkedIn, your resume will be available for all recruiters. If they find a match for your profile, they will reach out to you for an interview. I would suggest attending all the phone interviews, even if you are not interested in switching. Just to get a pulse of, the current market’s expectations. It will help you to be prepared, just in case, if it comes to that. And who knows, you might get lucky and end up in an interview for your dream job.
I know many who actually switched to a better job, only because they were approached by recruiters. So keep that option open. Increasing your luck surface area can help you in getting hit with the right stroke of luck.
Switching jobs more often can help with raise in salary as well. Most companies here in the US, give an annual rise of only 2-3%. If yours is one of them, it is better for you to switch jobs more often – say once in 3 years. Like I said before, that will give you at least a 25% bump to your salary, if not more.
So do not get comfortable with your employer. As Infosys founder Narayana Murthy famously said, love your job. Not the employer. Remember this. You are providing a service to an employer for money. If your service is not needed anymore, your employer will not hesitate to send you packing. Similarly, you should feel free to switch your service to a different employer, if they can pay better for your service.
I know that this is easy to say. But, a bit difficult to execute. I myself, worked in the same company for more than 15 years. Looking back, I could have gotten, at least 50% more, if I have switched jobs every 5 years. But for me, I had other priorities than money. If you are looking to boost your income, then definitely consider switching jobs more often.
These are all the things that we can do, from our full-time job to increase our income. What else can we do?
Investments
When I say investments, don’t imagine stock trading or options trading. Those are speculation, not investments. What I mean here is, extra income from our investments – like, dividends from stocks or mutual funds, rent from rental homes, etc.
Though the extra income from our investments is a nice added bonus, the capital appreciation of our investments is more important. But as we saw in the compounding episode, growth from investments is not going to be big in the beginning. But if we plan right, the income from our investments can potentially surpass the income from our full-time job.
If you are not sure how we can achieve that, don’t worry. We will cover all those topics in future episodes.
Monetize your skillset
Another way to increase your income is, by monetizing your skillset. Are you good with a camera? Do weekend photo shoots for birthday parties or housewarming ceremonies. How about Math or music? If you are you good at that, teach in-person classes or online thru zoom. Better yet, make recorded videos of your teaching, and have them available online. It will churn out cash, even when you are sleeping.
Today in this internet world, it is easy to monetize your skills. Plenty of tasks out there on sites like Fiverr. Data entry, video editing, website design, graphics design – it has never been this easy to do a small project on the side and make some extra money.
If you lack a specific skill, and if you know that it has the potential to make big bucks, it is totally worth investing your time to get trained. Don’t wait for a good time to start. Just go ahead and do it.
But before doing any of these side jobs, just make sure that you are not breaking any agreement with your employer.
These are all the things that I can think of to make more money. I am sure there are many other ways. If you know of any other good opportunities to make more money, please share them in the comments below. We will soon meet again, in another episode. Thank You.
