Ask HN: How can I (a soft-skilled weakling) earn money?
This is not a post about finding a career. I've picked a career path, and I have to go to school for it. Instead, the advice I need is about earning a decent annual income given my constraints. I am a deeply flawed mortal occupying the lowest rung on the HN ladder -- I'm neither strong enough to be an entrepreneur nor did I have the foresight to pick a trade. As the amount of noise on the subject of how to make money is staggering and probably over-general, I'm turning to HN for its characteristic substantive, credible, and generous collective wisdom.

My confidence is low on this subject, but I'll state my goal plainly anyway -- I'm seeking to earn $27,500 annually working part-time while attending graduate school. At the moment, I'm doing whatever work I can get, but a change of course will be needed to reach my ultimate goal.

As for context and details, my skill-set and my personality have resulted in my being a generalist, mostly of soft skills. I'm excellent at analytical thought and problem-solving, understanding people (especially collective groups of people), creativity, and written and verbal communication. As for personality, I struggle with consistency and discipline without structure when I'm doing something extrinsically motivated, but I work tirelessly when part of a team or environment or when working on something interesting. Because of those skills and my disposition, I've dabbled in sales, business strategy consulting, copywriting, editing, marketing, SEO, coaching, and tutoring through either corporate employment or freelance work. I've had strong to moderate success in each of those areas for sustained periods as long as one year or as short as one client. I've also made a few ultimately limp efforts at (solo, bootstrapped) entrepreneurship which, of course, failed. In summary, I'm intelligent (in the traditional sense of the word) and those I've worked with would almost universally attest to specific benefits realized from my contributions of analytical thought, understanding of people, creativity, and communication, but I've bounced around so often (for reasons I've now come to terms with and addressed) that I lack focus, a meaningful track-record, or any valuable hard-skills aside from writing/editing.

I'm willing to do whatever it takes, but as I have the above-mentioned track-record when it comes to willpower around sticking with work, what I will does not always come to pass. As a result, I think it prudent to try to align with my natural tendencies as best as possible so that I can meet a smaller number of challenges with sufficient energy and focus. This means, for instance, that I'd be willing to learn a skill if it suited my personality or willing to force a given aspect of my personality into submission if something fit my skills, but of course, it would be preferred to avoid tempting too many simultaneous aspects of my historical patterns and failings.

If HN can give me a constructive reality-check as well as some pointed feedback given the details of my situation, it will help steel my confidence to have a solid source at the very least, and it may even provide me with a key understanding or idea to focus on and translate into action.

Thank you for reading.

-twocentsneeded