How to Make Money in the New Economy

 How to Make Money in the New Economy

This isn't a tutorial on how your next-door neighbor's step-half-sister aunts earn $5,000 every week on the internet. That's something we'll leave to the spambot comments. Instead, through a microeconomy based on the Internet, people can make anywhere from a few dollars to a few thousand dollars every month.

With unemployment hovering at 8% for nearly four years, it's no surprise that people are getting inventive to make ends meet. Some people are renting out empty rooms, while others are putting together IKEA furniture for everyone within a 20-mile radius. The percentages of 99 percent vs 1 percent haven't altered, but there is a lifestyle shift inside those figures. The wealthy are venturing into the realm of internet consignment, offering the luxury products they've grown bored of at costs that are affordable to those in lower economic strata. While middle-class workers are at their 9-to-5 jobs, MIT graduates are doing their laundry and waiting for their goods to arrive.

Economists are hashing out terminology like "access sharing" and "micro labor" to describe the phenomena and its offshoots, and applying New Keynesian theories to it. For those most affected by the crisis, however, it boils down to a basic principle: as economic difficulties grow, so do solutions. And they've shrunk to the point where individuals are reduced to a single-variable economic model: themselves.

They are, however, far from alone. Hundreds of websites have evolved from lamppost fliers and its slightly more advanced Craigslist Gigs progeny to connect those selling their services with those in need. In the new economy, entrepreneurship breeds entrepreneurship, with startups providing many people with the opportunity to establish their own businesses.

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