A Side Business Does Not Earn Because It Adds a Second Form of Selling Time

Six months or a year has passed since it began. The work is familiar and the volume that can be handled has risen. The jobs have not dried up. Even so, the sum left at the end of the month is much as it was at the start. Only the time spent has clearly increased.

The explanations tend to narrow to two. Either the side business chosen was a poor one, or it has not been kept up hard enough. Both come with responses attached, and both work a little. So the question narrows to a pair of options: look for the next side business, or keep going at this one.

Outside that pair, one thing can be checked. What increased is not the sources of income but the number of parties placing orders. As long as the main work and the side work share the same format — a format in which the figure is decided against time or volume of work — adding a second does not change the condition producing the ceiling. What changes is only the speed of arriving at that ceiling.

There are four things handled here. How many states the words not earning actually cover. Which side the advertised reasons are dealing with. Why the figure for side work is weighted low before anything is chosen. And what to judge the question of continuing or switching by.

What falls outside the range comes first. No list of side businesses that earn appears. Which fields are growing, which jobs carry high unit prices — neither is the substance here. That kind of information exists in quantity already and updates quickly, and there is no room to add to it. Rules set by an employer and the handling of tax are not covered either, since the conditions differ too much between people.

The premise here is a state in which both the main work and the side work have their figure decided against time or volume of work. Where one of the two moves independently of hours, on the other hand, what follows stops applying partway through. Which of the two formats you are on shows up in what would remain if you stopped, and that can be counted.

One more: the first few months after starting sit outside the range. A small figure in that period is not a matter of format but simply of the other party having no material for judging. What is handled here is the stage after the work has become familiar and the job count has steadied, and the figure still does not move. The two look like the same not earning while the moves to make are opposite. The first is solved by keeping it up; the second is not.

The indicators for reading the moment of switching come at the end of the article. What is handed over is not the judgement but an instrument for reading, on your own, what you are currently in the middle of increasing. All three are in a form that can be counted without stopping the work in hand.

Where It Is Actually Stopped

The words not earning point at three states of differing character all at once.

First, the state of not reaching anyone at all. There is something on offer, and it is not visible to those who need it. Applications are not selected, listings are not displayed, what is published is not read.

Second, the state of reaching and not being bought. It is being seen. Enquiries arrive. And nothing closes. Or it ends after one occasion.

Third, the state of being bought at a small figure. Requests arrive continuously. The work is being done. Even so the total does not grow.

The responses to these three differ entirely. The first is a problem of route, the second a problem of how it comes across and of trust, the third a problem of pricing and of format. By sensation, however, all three come out in the same words: not earning.

What stands out in a state more than a year into a side business is the third. Jobs are arriving. The work can be done. And the figure does not move. Handle this state with the responses to the first or second — apply more, publish more — and only the volume of work rises.

That the three are continuous and cannot be separated is a fair point. Even so, the verdict takes one question. Is the reason things are stopped that requests do not arrive, or that they cannot be absorbed when they do? If they do not arrive, it is the first or second; if they cannot be absorbed, the third.

Two can be occurring at once: a low unit price makes a job count necessary, and securing the job count means applications continue. Even here, which is upstream is settled. Raise the unit price and the job count falls, and applications fall with it. Conversely, increase the applications and the unit price does not move.

Left unseparated, a response that worked cannot be distinguished from one that did not. Try something while the three are mixed and the result is mixed too. When applications are increased and income rises, whether the rise came from an improved route or simply from more time cannot be judged without separating. What cannot be judged carries no knowledge of whether it will work next time.

And continue without knowing, and the response becomes a belief. Volume at all costs sets as policy, and once the quantity reaches its ceiling, only the policy remains.

Not separating has a further consequence. Of the three, the one easiest to respond to tends to be the one selected. The quickest to take up is the first — the response to not reaching anyone. Apply more, publish more, list more. It can be executed from today, and the execution is visible. Changing the pricing or the format, the third, requires thinking time before it can be taken up, and once executed there is an interval before any effect.

So even in a state where the third is in fact jammed, what gets taken up is the first. And the response to the first has no influence whatever on the third. Some months later, with only the volume of work increased, the same not earning remains.

The Six Reasons Given All Sit on the Side of Execution

The reasons in wide circulation number six.

The unit price is too low. It has not been kept up. No stretch of time can be taken and the gaps are not being used. Information is lacking. The volume of work is insufficient. Entrants have increased and competition has intensified.

All six are things that occur in fact. The sixth in particular is accurate as an outward matter. That the same methods work less well than a few years ago is an observable fact.

Set the six side by side and one property shows. The four other than the first and sixth all deal with the quantity or quality of execution.

Keeping it up, the use of time, the gathering of information, the volume of work. All four point in the direction of doing what is currently being done better and in greater quantity. And there is genuine room to improve in this direction. So all four work partially.

Only the first, the low unit price, speaks about the figure rather than about execution. What is advertised as the response, however, is mostly choose jobs with a high unit price. That is a matter of selection, and it does not touch how the figure is decided.

Choosing jobs with a high unit price does in fact raise the figure, so why not stop there. It raises it, and it is a correct move. The trouble is what happens after it has risen.

Suppose a move is made to jobs at twice the unit price. For the same income the job count halves. Where does the time that opens go? If the target amount has not been reached, it goes to additional jobs. That is, income rises and time returns to where it was.

And the unit price has a ceiling. The distribution of figures offered in that field is decided from outside. Movement upwards within the distribution is possible; movement outside the distribution is not. Once the movement is complete, there is no next move.

There is a route out of the distribution, and it lies elsewhere: moving to a format in which the figure is paid against something other than volume of work. That, however, is not choosing jobs with a high unit price. It is not changing the object of selection but changing the format by which you are selected.

The six reasons all sitting on the side of execution has a consequence of its own. The explanation for not working can also only be produced on the side of execution. Kept it up and did not earn, so the keeping up was insufficient. Spent the time and did not earn, so the spending was poor. When candidate explanations are prepared only on the side of execution, every absence of result is read as a shortfall in your own execution.

And the explanation a shortfall in execution cannot be falsified, because the possibility that more would have produced a result always remains. An explanation that cannot be falsified survives indefinitely.

The Phrase “A Second Source of Income” Is Not Counting Sources

A side business is often advertised as something that increases the sources of income. A tacit assumption is contained in this way of putting it. The assumption that the second income comes from a source separate from the first.

Check it. What is the income of the main work paid against? In most cases, hours worked or jobs completed. What is the income of the side work paid against? Again, hours worked or jobs completed.

The source, that is, is the same. What increased is the number of parties buying from that source.

In the language of economics this amounts to adding one more thing of the flow form. The flow form is a format in which each period is stacked again from zero, and this period’s yield leaves nothing behind for the next. Against it, the stock form remains once stacked and lifts the starting point of the following period.

In a state of holding two flows, total income is proportional to the total time poured into both. And the total of time has a physical ceiling. When the ceiling is reached, income stops too.

What occurs at that point? That the ceiling has been reached is observed only in the form of income ceasing to grow. And the observed form is indistinguishable from the form it ought to grow if done better and it is not growing.

As long as the ceiling on time has not been reached, more can still be added — which is true. It can be increased up to the ceiling. What is said here is not that it cannot be increased, but that what lies beyond the increase is decided from the start.

And whether that is known changes the judgements made along the way. Proceed without knowing and, as the ceiling nears, a verdict of the efficiency has fallen off is issued. In fact it is not efficiency; the remaining room is simply diminishing.

This is not a claim that the flow form is bad. Cash arrives early, almost no capital is needed to begin, demand is legible — the merits are real. The trouble is trying to fill the defects of the flow form with the merits of the flow form: covering the shortfall with one more flow.

Add the second and improvement of the first stops. Time comes to be divided, so the reserve on the main side falls. Then there is no time for negotiating the unit price of the main work or for changing the composition of its counterparties. A side business, that is, consumes the funds for moving the structure of the main work.

This consumption is not assessed against the income of the side business. For the side business a figure appears — a few tens of thousands a month more — while nothing lost on the main work carries a figure. What carries no figure does not become an object of comparison.

The Time for Side Work Comes From the Remainder, So the Floor of the Price Is Decided First

A further structure is specific to side work. The time available for it comes out of what remains from the main work.

This fact tells directly on how the figure is decided. Time that remains is not in stretches. Weekday evenings, part of a day off, time in transit. The work that can be taken on in time of this shape is limited to what can be finely divided and carries loose deadlines.

And work that can be finely divided and carries loose deadlines has the property of having many alternative hands. That it can be divided means anyone can take on a part of it.

The figure for work with many alternatives is decided on the supply side. That is, work in a shape that can be taken on as side work is weighted towards a low figure from the start. This is not a problem of how it is chosen but a matter of order: the shape of the time is selecting the shape of the work.

Making a stretch of time would allow better-conditioned work to be taken on, which is true as far as it goes. Making a stretch of time, however, means reducing the main side. If it can be reduced, this is already not side work but the middle of a transition.

That is, raising the conditions while remaining side work has a limit, because well-conditioned work demands both a stretch of time and a position from which that time can be secured. The format called side work is defined by not being able to hold these two.

There is side work to which this structure does not apply: work whose value is decided independently of the shape of the time — a format in which something made once sells repeatedly, or one in which the figure attaches to judgement itself. Here the fragmentation of the remaining time does not push the figure down.

Within the same word side business, things whose figure is decided by the shape of the time and things whose figure is not are mixed together. And much of the circulating information handles the former, because the former is easy to start and produces results early.

Begin at a low figure and that figure becomes your standard. The figure of the first work taken on becomes the reference point for subsequent judgements: a request arriving a little higher feels like good conditions, one a little lower feels cheap. Judgement is always made as a difference from the first figure. And the occasion for doubting the reference point itself seldom arrives. The mechanism of the reference point is handled in Knowledge of loss aversion divides by which direction it is used in. What is worth holding onto here is a single point: what placed that reference point where it is was the shape of your own time.

Trust Stacked in the Main Work Cannot Be Carried Out to the Side

The third structure. This is the part most easily overlooked.

Work long in the main line and trust has stacked up there. The judgement this person can be relied on has accumulated on the other side. That negotiations pass and the unit price holds is largely down to this accumulation.

This trust, however, is tied to the vessel of the main work. The name of the company, the affiliation, the context of past results. Step out into a different place as side work and none of it moves with you.

What follows? In the side business, the start is from a state of zero trust. The ability is the same, and seen from the other side you are one person without a record.

How a figure is decided in a market where the buyer cannot tell quality apart has a description in economics, and that dissection sits in Where the value of an intangible product resides. What is looked at here is only what differs when the market is entered as side work. The difference is one thing: in side work, the material for judgement stays behind on the side of the main work.

Stacking a record will bring recognition, and in fact this is the main route. The question is whether that stacking is done in a form not tied to the vessel of the main work.

Where the record accumulates only inside one particular intermediary place, leaving that place returns you to the same state. Unless the place where trust is kept is on your own side, the stack cannot be moved. A rating, a count of completed transactions — each is legible only within the place that holds it.

The trust of the main work can be carried out in some cases: where the side work is in the same field as the main work, under your real name, in a format allowing the record to be presented. Here the side work does not begin from zero on the trust side. This format, though, is often unavailable given the relationship with an employer, so in practice the constraint is decided first.

Beginning from zero trust, the first period tends not to pay. And the failure to pay in this period is read as a shortfall in ability. The experience of being valued less than expected connects directly to doubt about capability. In fact it is not that you are not valued but that the material for valuing is not in the other party’s hands, and by sensation these two cannot be distinguished.

There is one point at which they can be told apart. If the material was merely absent, a second job from the same party comes on different terms. To someone who has traded with you once, the quality is already visible. If the second comes on the same terms as the first, what is short is not the material but the format you are offering. The gap between the first terms and the second is not an indicator of ability; it is an indicator of where the trust was placed.

Increase the Count and Only the Total Volume of Judgement Rises

The direction of increasing quantity has a limit too. Increase the jobs and working hours rise; that much is predictable. What is harder to predict is that the part other than the work rises faster than the work.

When one job is added, what increases is not only the work. Exchanges, confirmations, invoicing, records, and management inside the head all increase. These are not proportional to the size of the job. Even on a small job, the rounds of exchange occur a similar number of times.

So the more small jobs are held, the higher the ratio of management per job. And what can be taken on as side work is finely divided work. Work whose ratio rises with the count is being increased by the count.

Systematising the management improves it. Templates, automation, records in one place — all work. Systematising, however, requires time to build. And that time has to come out of time already under pressure.

And systematising works only on the parts where the same shape repeats. Judgement itself cannot be systematised. What to do and how far on this job, whether to take this demand, whether this deadline is workable — the conditions differ every time. That judgement runs separately from execution and leaves no record is handled in Having no time is not a problem of management.

There are areas where judgement can be made routine. Narrow what is offered and decide the conditions in advance, and the number of judgements falls. This, however, means selecting the work taken on, which is the opposite direction to increasing the count.

As the total volume of judgement rises, the large judgements are pushed out. Small judgements carry dates. A reply is due today, a delivery is due this week. Large judgements — whether to continue this format, where to move to — carry no date.

Let things with dates and things without compete inside the same head and the ones with dates tend to win. Each occasion is rational. As a result, the judgement of whether to change the format alone is deferred for years.

And this deferral is not recognised as deferral, because judgements are being made daily. Ten judgements are handed down today too, and the head goes on working. There being a sense of movement, nothing seems to be stopped.

That something is stopped tends to become clear when the signals from outside break off. A month when jobs fell, a week of illness. Room to think suddenly opens. And what first surfaces in that room is the large judgement pushed out for years.

There is a regularity in how it appears. A large judgement surfaces only when there is room, and the room is absent as a result of that judgement having been deferred.

Separating When “Keeping It Up” Works From When It Does Not

Keeping it up is the most strongly urged of the advertised reasons. And it genuinely works. There is, however, a condition under which it works. Keeping it up works where what is kept up accumulates into something.

If what is made remains and goes on selling, what is kept up stacks. If a list of readers or customers remains on your side, what is kept up stacks. Conversely, in a format repeating one-off work, this month’s yield does not lift next month’s starting point. Keeping this format up is equivalent to going on running at the same speed in the same place. Whether an accumulation has a route through to the figure is handled, split into four items, in Counting the reasons for not earning from somewhere other than ability.

What is worth looking at in side work is that this verdict grows harder in inverse proportion to how long it has been kept up.

The verdict itself takes one question. If it were stopped now, would what has gone before remain? If it would, it is the accumulating kind and keeping it up has meaning. If it would not, the length of the period kept up does not tell on the result.

That experience remains even in one-off work is a correct point. Skill remains, and so does the relationship with the other party. The question is whether there is a route by which it is reflected in the figure. Suppose three years of keeping it up raised the skill. Did the figure rise by that much? If it did not, the experience remains and is not connected to the price.

At this point a force is added that distorts the verdict. The time invested itself becomes a weight on the judgement.

Hal Arkes and Catherine Blumer showed in 1985, through a series of experiments, that a cost already paid and unrecoverable does in fact change subsequent judgements (Arkes & Blumer, 1985, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 35(1), 124–140). Presented with the same options, the larger the amount already put in, the more often the continuing side is chosen. The cost does not come back, so it has no bearing on gains and losses from here on.

In side work this weight is stacked in time rather than in money. In stopping something kept up for two years, what feels lost is not the future income but the two years already spent. And time, unlike money, is not counted up along the way. Few keep a monthly record of how much of it has gone in.

This distortion grows with the length of the period. The difficulty of stopping, that is, increases with time. Judgement becomes harder not because the conditions grew complex but simply because it went on long.

Esteem works in the same direction. Those who keep going are esteemed, and those who stop are treated as people who could not keep going. Keeping up a format that is not accumulating and keeping up one that is look, from outside, like the same keeping it up. What cannot be told apart from outside becomes hard to tell apart from inside as well.

What to Judge the Moment of Switching By

The moment of switching is judged by three instruments. No benchmark periods or sums are given, because their meaning changes with the shape of the business and the conditions of the household, and to hand over a figure would be to make the judgement in your place.

First, look at whether the figure per unit of time is rising. Not total income. The total rises when time is increased, so it cannot measure whether the format is good. Seen per unit of time, if it is the same as six months ago, what has risen is only the input.

This indicator measures the effect of keeping it up directly. In an accumulating format, the figure per unit of time rises, if only gently. If it is not rising, it is not accumulating.

Second, count what would remain if you stopped.

Suppose everything were stopped now: what remains from next month on? Things made, a list, relationships that come to you by name. If counting produces nothing, that is a state of two flows.

This count can be run without stopping anything in fact. Counting alone brings out the character of the format.

Third, count the time spent last month on the format itself.

How many minutes went on thinking about whether to continue this format, or where to move to? If zero, small judgements with deadlines are pushing the large one out. This one moves ahead of the other two, being a matter of minutes.

The three answer different questions. The first measures the effect of continuing, the second the character of the format, the third the room for judgement itself. And none of the three says you should stop now. What the three show is where you stand, not what comes next. That the figure per unit of time is not rising is a consequence of that format continuing, and does not mean the format must not be continued. The conditions of the household may currently require that format.

The sum left at the end of the month unchanged while the time spent has clearly increased — this shape does not show a shortfall of input. What the added time became appears not in the figure but on the side of what would remain if you stopped. Where nothing remains, the added time has turned into speed towards the ceiling.

With that said, adding a side business was not a mistake in itself. The trouble is that increasing the parties who buy from the same source and making a separate source are both called by the same phrase — increasing the sources of income. While they go by the same phrase, which one is being done is not clear even to you. Once they can be counted separately, the work being stacked becomes readable as either speed towards the ceiling or a shift in the ceiling itself.

The separation can be made from the next job taken. When that job ends, what is left in your hands? Taking on a job that leaves nothing can be the correct choice given the conditions of a household. Adding that one line each time it is taken, though, removes the occasion of looking back over two years at once. If the difficulty of stopping increases with time, the material for the judgement can be moved towards the early side of that time.

The mechanism by which a ceiling is built into the format of selling time is handled, as the ceiling carried by earning alone, in The ceiling built into selling time, and what decides that ceiling in Getting out of the labour-intensive form. The moves for shifting the figure itself, divided into quantity and format, are set out in The one thing to look at first when you want to increase your income.