Stage managing can be a difficult job to balance with anything else. The hours are long. You don’t always know exactly when you’ll be needed. And you may be nomadic – out on tours, cruise ships, or hopping contracts to where ever the next place is that might hire you.

And early career stage management jobs might not be paying quite enough to cover all the bills and all the Starbucks you need to function like a human.

Top tips for stage management side hustling:

• Asynchronous jobs are usually a good fit. If you can find something task oriented where you pick the hours, these can work really well.
• Keep an eye out for side hustle offers on stage management groups like Year of the Stage Manager and Stage Managers.
• Ask! Ask other stage managers what they do – especially in your area. There may be companies that are arts sympathetic that they can point you to for filling employment gaps.
• Pay attention at any survival jobs where you are well-liked for little things you could offer to come back and do on your own schedule that you could propose in the future (do they talk about a records room that needs reorganizing but never gets done – a few months later, after leaving on good terms, when you need a little extra cash you could propose a week of work to do just that).
• If you can invest some time and money to upskill in something with a lot of flexibility once in life, you can keep that as your fallback while trying to make the arts your primary income. Like, yes, two years of community college for nursing courses in intense, but once you make it through that, you have a flexible, high income option to supplement your income (have you seen travel nurse Instagram, omg). I’ve always regretted not minoring in computer science and learning to code (clearly not enough to rectify the situation).

Below, I’ve compiled a list of side hustles that stage managers are actually doing, scraped from some recent internet posts in those groups mentioned above. I’ve tried to provide a little glimpse into what the tasks are and the amount of money you might make. However, I’ve also tried to note the issues with each one as well.

May the odds be ever in your favor.

Low Effort/Low Reward

• Surveys – I feel like these are constantly hawked all over the internet as a great way to make some money. And by some money, I mean it mostly seems to be like enough to get that Starbucks once in a while. Most of these surveys pay a dollar or two at a time and can be difficult to qualify for. That said, if you like to multi-task while watching TV or something, you might as well make a dollar or two instead of scrolling Tik Tok? I would be shocked to find out someone used surveys to actually replace a decent chunk of their income though. In the past, I’ve generally made $5-$10 and a lot of that is in the initial sign up bonuses that are sometimes available on these websites.
• UserTesting – this is a website feedback site. I’ve written a longer review here, but essentially, you take a few minutes to give some feedback of a website and you get $10. The main problem here is that it is unreliable. You may not qualify to give the feedback. I like this one the most when I’m doing tons of paperwork and already stuck at my computer. When I hear the little ding of a new offer, I flip over to that page, see if I qualify. If I do, I do the review. If I don’t, back to what I already was doing. I have made over $100 a month at times, because once in a while you can qualify to do a 30-60 minute focus group too. Those are usually paid at $1 a minute and are where the real money is.

Low Effort/Medium Reward

• Background Work – the problem with background work is that you never know if you will or you won’t be booked. So it’s also not reliable. However, registering to be a background actor, especially in areas where filming regularly occurs, can’t hurt. Make sure you register with casting companies, since there are definitely offers out there to make $0 a day. Skip those. The average is around $100 according to Backstage.com, Indeed and some lovely folks on Quora who recently answered this same question. Some reports are as high as $400 and having things like a car style they are looking for or pet can sometimes add to the amount you make.
• Dog Walking – the main problem with this finding clients. There are some companies like Rover.com or Wag! where you can sign up to walk dogs – like the Uber of pet care. These are going to have set amount you make. You do set it, but you have to remain competitive with the others around you to have a shot at getting selected. If you can cut out the middle-man and find your own clients, you can make even more.

Medium Effort/Low Reward

• Transcribing – transcribing can be a bit of a faff, especially at first. Companies like Rev and TranscribeMe require you to go through an extensive interview process that involves some random transcribing work. Then, you start at the lowest paid tier with the most difficult recordings to transcribe. As you move up in tiers, you make a little more and you get access to transcription options earlier. So when you begin, you are getting all the jobs that the more experienced transcribers don’t want to deal with – poor audio quality, heavy accents, etc. As you move up, you learn how recognize which transcriptions will be easier to do and take them when they are available. There can also be a lot of terminology related to different fields that is very unfamiliar, so as you familiarized yourself with it, transcribing those gets easier too. But you have to get past that initial hurdle, which is several weeks of work. I do fondly recall transcribing a philosophy lecture and getting a rave review back because my theology degree allowed me to sail through a lot of the terminology – and it was an interesting lecture to listen to. However, despite considering this a low reward, there was a two month period of unemployment that I did manage to pay the bills with transcription – but I was a transcribing fool. Can confirm though that once you cross into the higher tiers with the earlier access to recordings, it all gets significantly easier.

Medium Effort/Medium Reward

• Blogging – this is not a reliable source of income. You never really know what you will make month to month and it takes a while to start making money. It can be done, of course, I’ve been doing it here for 10 years, but it takes a good bit of work. And you have to be passionate enough about something to crank out a lot of content – even at times you don’t feel passionate. However, a lot of what this blog has made, after it started making money, has been directly proportional to the work I’ve put into it. At its height (2014-18), I was posting 3 days a week, hosting a personal finance blogger link up on the weekends, attending personal finance conferences, freelance writing for some other personal finance outlets, taking blogging courses. These days, I post once a week and, honestly, not a lot very interesting is going on at the moment, and I don’t do any of those other things anymore – and the income it makes these days reflects that. If you’re interested, you can check out what 10 years of blogging made here. So blogging – no guaranteed income but a lot of potential.
• Props – I think working as a props designer or shopper is a great way to supplement stage management income and add to your resume, especially if there are enough theatre companies wherever you are. A lot of this work is done on your own time and if you’re up front with the theatre company that hired you about your other time obligations, you should be in good shape.
• Overhire Technician – this should’ve been higher in the list probably but if you have basic technical skills, reach out to local theatres to be put on their overhire/casual technician list. You can contact the local IATSE chapter to ask them about their overhire list. You can contact local university theatre’s to see if they have an overhire list. In many areas, this should actually probably be medium effort (to get on the lists to get the calls) and high reward, because IATSE pay can be pretty good.
• Uber/Lyft/Instacart – the thing that all of these apps have going for them is that they are very easy to get started with and totally flexible to your schedule. You do need a car for them. And there has been some research done that you should consider carefully if your expenses make Ubering/Lyfting worth it. Actual drivers report that it can still be worth it if you are in areas that have high use and drive during peak times and evening hours, where there is usually an extra surcharge.
• Bartending – bartending can make you a lot of cash but it’s not an easy gig. You also need to find somewhere with flexible enough scheduling to work with what you need as a stage manager.
• Substitute Teaching – I was a substitute teacher on and off for about 10 years. You can read some of those stories here. I’ve taught in New Jersey and Virginia. I tried to teach in California but that was where I learned that some states require you to have a teaching license to sub and some don’t. California does. This also isn’t an immediate income fix. You have to apply to a subbing licensing. You have to go get fingerprinted. You often have to be approved by the school board (you don’t have to be present) during their next meeting. But once you get past the administrative nonsense at the beginning, subbing can be really flexible and fairly easy. I liked subbing high school way more than small children. I found the days were really full on with small kids and you were often still trying to actually teach them. I also… don’t really like little kids. However, high schoolers are fine. You pop in a movie. You give them a handout. And you just vibe all day. Fairly chill. Most of the time.
• Baby Sitting – similar to dog walking, the main concern here is finding your clients. If you Google you may find agencies you can go through to start building up a clientele. Or you can use your existing network and put out the word you’re looking to baby sit.
• Temp Agencies – these groups fill basic admin style jobs for a set period, so if you’ve got a break between gigs for a few weeks partnering with a temp agency can be an ideal way to fill it.

High Effort/High Reward

• Freelance Project Management – while you can try to parlay your stage management skills into a project management role, and you may be successful, this is high effort because you might need to upskill a little and do some project management training. That being said, you can possibly work remote project management jobs or shorter contract ones between stage management gigs. This can very lucrative work.
• Be Your Own Business – a lot of businesses fail, some chug along making a little bit, and some are wildly successful. But it feels remiss to mention that if you have some kind of skill or talent that can be its own little business, it can be a good way to bring in some income – like this dude who makes Portable Number Lines. It feels like it belongs in this category though because of the risk involved and the start up effort. Hopefully once you’ve got it rolling, the effort can reduce a little. I know my friends and I have been working on this role-playing game for more than two years now and it is still in a very high effort phase.
• EMT/Event Medic – I thought this was a really interesting suggestion from another stage manager. Clearly EMT training would be wildly useful for any stage manager (I think even more so for circus stage managers), so you’ve got an added benefit there, but I have definitely stage managed gigs before with event medics who were just hired for the day. This is definitely high effort as it requires a lot of training to do, but it could double very nicely with your stage management life.
• Medical Trials – I am lately a little obsessed with this. You can make several thousand dollars for being a voluntary guinea pig. However, you are risking your body and potentially your life a little bit with some of these medical trials. Though some are for really simple things like sleep studies. They are high effort because you usually have to stay on site for several days and do a few check-ins that are in person and non-negotiable regarding the times. But you can make bank for things like agreeing to get the flu for two weeks while they study you. I have wanted to do one for a while, both out of curiosity and to report on the whole experience here.

I’m curious, if you’re a stage manager, what side hustles have you tried? What do you look for in a good side hustle?