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Top Five Sources of Non-Consulting Income

By crooky | January 4, 2008

Very few consultants and freelancers are fortunate enough to make their entire income from contract engagements. In my experience, consultants that are successful in the long term are those who have additional streams of income - both passive and active. In this article, I want to talk about five kinds of non-consulting income you can pursue to round out your annual bottom line:

1. Teaching

One of the ways I make additional money during the year is by teaching at my local university. Currently, I am teaching “blogging for business” through the University of British Columbia. I’m also offering “Competitive Intelligence” but that course never gets enough students to actually run. I got started as a teacher during grad school when I was an assistant professor to an old professor friend of mine from my undergrad days. It was hard work but it brought in an extra $1000/month. That seems to be about what you make at most institutions per course per month.

After my experience at Simon Fraser University, I pitched the Continuing Studies Department at the University of British Columbia on my Competitive Intelligence course. They thought it sounded like a good idea and asked me to put together a course outline. While that course has not yet run, they approached me later to ask if I could develop a course on “blogging for business” because they’d had a lot of demand for it. In the Fall semester last year, I ran it for the first time. It was only 4 weeks long so it wasn’t as lucrative as teaching a full undergrad course but at most major universities - you need a PhD to teach undergrad courses, even as a casual professor.

My suggestion would be that if you have a topic you can teach, pitch it to your local college or university’s continuing studies department. They’re always looking for new courses to offer and as long as it doesn’t overlap with something they’re already teaching, they’ll probably give you a shot. Once you get your foot in the door at a school, it’s easy to pick up new courses.

Keep in mind that most schools don’t pay you to develop your curriculum and they don’t usually like it when you shop your course around to every school in a 100km radius. If you want to teach at multiple institutions, you’ll probably have to develop different courses for each. I’ve got more tips on curriculum development but those I’ll save for a later blog post. If you’re thinking about teaching seriously and want any pointers putting together your course outline, drop me a line.

2. A Book

In this day and age, writing a book as a consultant is pretty much a mark of passage. No, I don’t have my own book yet but it’s certainly something that’s in the works for me. The value of a book goes beyond book sales. A successful book will bring in some passive income after it’s been writing and if it’s any good, there’s always additional print runs to bring in the big bucks. However, the real value of the book is the way it establishes your role in the community as an expert. I’m reading several books on the topic of establsihing your expertise and they all recommend that you write a book.

Once you and your book get slightly famous - especially in a particular niche, the requests for paid speaking engagements will start to roll in. You’ll also gain new clients who will read your book, understand the concepts but lack the expertise or technical knowledge to turn those ideas into a realistic project for themselves. In many ways, a book is a real license to print money. Sure, you have to eat a lot of your own time up front because no one is gooing to pay you to write the book but once it’s written - kaching!

3. A part-time/seasonal job

Many consultants have their “other gig” that helps them pay the bills. One of my good colleagues at Rocket Builders has several additional gigs to keep him in nice shirts. He runs a sailing school and he’s a part-time staff person for the Financing Forum. Between the school (which takes up the seasonal slump in the summer for him) and the Financing Forum, he’s doing alright. I have other consulting colleagues who are paid members of corporate boards or own restaurants.

The key is that you need to find something that offers a decent hourly wage and gives you the flexibility to have client meetings when you need to. At one point, while I was finishing the last half of my Masters in Public Policy, writing my thesis and doing contract work on the side - I was working a full 40 hours/week job with BC Hydro. I wouldn’t recommend it. My health suffered. Realistically, I can’t work more than 55 hours/week. I don’t think many people can and maintain any level of quality. Be cogniscent of the number of hours you’re committing to before you take on a part-time gig.

On the other hand, I was fully intending to take on a job as a full-time tour-bus operator for the summer. The summer is my dead season. I work maybe 5 hours/week on consulting gigs between June and August. That is, to put it mildly, problematic for me. The bus driving gig didn’t pan out but I would recommend something like that to other consultants. Working outside your comfort zone has a couple of other advantages - chiefly that you get your mind out of the game for a while and come back to your consulting expertise fresh. You might also meet potential clients that you wouldn’t normally meet and you’ll learn some use cases (from working in them) that you can apply to every consulting contract that you do from there on out.

4. A more traditional business

Something that I’m pursuing at the moment is founding an education company. Sure, it’s just as difficult to get going as a consultancy but it has the additional benefit of potentially generating passive income for me. As it grows and I take on employees, their work will help pay my bills with little or no effort on my part. I know other consultants that make furniture and sell it on the side. I don’t want to get into the mechanics of business startup in this post but consider what else you can do to generate revenue.

5. Another freelancing stream

I know an HR professional that’s also a gifted artist. I’m trying to convince her to do freelance design work in addition to her HR work. She’s thinking about getting into HR as consulting (which I heartily endorse) but she’s also got this design flair that could generate revenue for her with a mutually exclusive group of clients. The kind of people that would license her work (through iStock Photo, for example) aren’t typically the kind of people that would hire her as an HR consultant so there’s no concerns about how to reconcile the two services. If they’re radically different services targeting mutually exclusive clients, there’s no need to reconcile.

To summarize, I think one key to consulting success is to have something to fall back on when consulting gigs slow down. Good, quality part-time jobs are hard to come by but if you don’t mind seasonal work or starting up something new, there are lots of opportunities for you.

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.

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