**This is a true story – but disclaimer: I do not recommend you do this. Or, ya know, do it with caution. Anyway, moral of the story, it was a questionable choice on my part but it all worked out ok. For me. Again, I don’t recommend you do this.**

I have been working part time as a stage manager again since June. During the times between contracts though, I’ve been hustling a bit.

Most of the hustling is the blog and stage hand work, but once in a while I go scour Craigslist to see if I can find anything else to supplement my income.

A few months ago, I clicked on a very brief and slightly cryptic:

Make money with voice work!

And that was really all there was to it. And, of course, the Craigslist email to reply to it.

So I thought, what the heck? I’ve always been intrigued by voice work. I sent the email with an expression of interest and a generic resume.

And promptly forgot about the whole thing.

A few days later, I get a text message (guess who forgot her phone number was on that resume?) with some questionable grammar from a guy who calls himself RichieG asking if I’m available to take part in a “Radio Call.”

And because I live on the edge, I said yes.

He sent me a fairly crazy email about the “character” I was going to play for the call. And then he sent over a W9 form and told me to fill it out and send it to Cookie so I would get paid.

I thought…. well, at least he said Cookie and not a Nigerian Prince…?

So I decided that I would wait until after the Radio Call to send it in, just to see how legit that side of things seemed.

The Radio Call time was confirmed and at the agreed upon time, I picked up my phone when it rang and proceeded to have the weirdest 30 minutes on the phone that I have probably ever had with two other character actors and the two producers of the radio show, feeding us lines, telling us our motivations, and then asking us to repeat some of the lines we came up with.

Apparently, I don’t have a lot of range when I get “upset,” I go shrill and frantic too fast. It needs to build better…. who knew?

In this particular Radio Call, I played the girlfriend of a dude who still lived in his mother’s basement. The mother hated me and was telling the boyfriend he had to break up with me because I was a bad influence. The boyfriend was in his thirties and insisting he could date who he wanted. The mother was saying that since he still lived under her roof, she still has a say in his life.

It was all fairly ridiculous.

At the end of it all, the producers said thanks and I hung up. I told one of my best friend’s what I had done and later that day, she hunted down the clip on the radio station’s website.

I would totally post it here if I was allowed, but I am not. However, if you’ve ever listened to the radio during rush hour and in between the music the radio hosts are trying to solve “real” people’s problems…. they’re probably not so real.

After she found the clip on the website and sent it to me, I took a deep breath, but my social security number on the W9 form and sent it to Cookie.

A month later a $40 check showed up on my doorstep.

It definitely helped that the first time I did it was for a local radio station out of NYC, so I recognized the station and even the hosts names.

Since then, once in a while I get a buzz on my cell phone and text message from RichieG asking me if I can do a Radio Call at a certain time.

The funniest thing about it all to me is that when I got my first check, I recognized the company name on it. It’s a big name in radio and from doing PR around the country, I knew it immediately. If the Craigslist posting had mentioned the company name, I would’ve felt a lot better about RichieG and Cookie.

It’s very strange but very easy money.

So I can definitely recommend looking into some of the weirder postings on Craigslist. Once in a while they’re legit; however, make sure you hedge your bets well and if it feels sketchy, know it’s probably not worth it.