This is Not My Side Hustle

This one’s easy. I have a day job. It pays me a fairly generous salary. I rent a domain for about $15/year. I rent space on Nearly Free Speech by depositing money into an account that is debited based on how much traffic my site actually gets. If the account runs low they email me and I top it up.

It’s not that expensive. I spend more money per year on streaming TV subscriptions that my wife uses more than I do, and even she acknowledges that they’ve become like cable TV in that most of what’s available isn’t worth her time to watch.

Even if I were to monetize, all I would do is make my website shittier for what might, if I’m lucky, amount to enough money per month to take my wife out for dinner. I’d have to report the income, ad revenue is 1099 income and thus taxed differently from income from a W2 job, and tax prep for a W2 job is already more complicated than it needs to be thanks to lobbyists working for the likes of Intuit and H&R Block.

Matthew Graybosch