The "real" minimum wage is zero. Meaning zip. Nada. Nothing. Don't believe me? Then let me give you a brief lesson in basic economics. Several years ago I was an active real estate investor, until the bottom dropped out of the housing market. Looking for a way to earn supplemental income, I took a special class to learn the business of real estate appraisal, finishing with the second highest score of about fifty people. However, in order to actually earn an income as a real estate appraiser, a minimum number of hours would have to be "earned" by me working on the job as an unpaid apprentice to a licensed appraiser before I would be granted my license. But guess what? Because so few houses were being bought and sold at the time, I couldn't even find a single real estate appraisal business in the Atlanta area that would let me work for them for free. I couldn't even give my work away. Nobody wanted new competition for what little work the market offered at that time. As a result, the $750 fee that I paid for the real estate appraisal course turned out to be a complete waste of money, unless we count the chunks of the plot of my first novel, Coastal Empire. Speaking of which, there is something much better than minimum wage: residual income. As long as I live and copies of my books sell, I will earn residual income in the form of book royalties, which is a beautiful thing. Do the work once, and get paid forever. The only tricky part is, books need to be sold to produce income, so we need to know marketing. By taking that class, excelling but then failing, … [Read more...]