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 At age 67, Folk spends up to 30 hours a week on projects generated
through Fiverr.com (http://fiverr.com), a shared-economy website
that requires all its vendors to offer something to customers for
just $5 and takes a 20 percent commission on earnings.
Folk, a former radio announcer and small business owner who lives
near Pittsburgh, earns approximately $10,000 per year in
supplemental income to his Social Security benefits on the site
writing short stories and narrating scripts. He also sells - no
surprise here - an ebook explaining how to succeed on Fiverr.
"When I first heard about it, I wondered if I should do something
for $5, but what happens is you often upsell customers something
additional. The most that I've billed an account is $1,300, and
that’s a far cry from $5.
More Americans than ever intend to keep working past traditional
retirement age - whether it's just to keep busy or because they need
to financially - and entrepreneurship is becoming a more common
alternative to full time jobs.
Entrepreneurs age 55-65 accounted for 26 percent of all startups
last year, up from 15 percent in 1996, according to the Kauffman
Index of Entrepreneurial Activity.
Fiverr may be a millennial-dominated platform with just 2 percent of
sellers over the age of 55, but growth in vendors age 55-64 shot up
375 percent at the end of the second quarter this year compared with
a year ago, according to the company.
Starting a business may sound like a risky investment of capital,
but it does not have to be. A "micro-enterprise" - or side-gigging -
can help retirees generate supplemental income without putting
capital at risk and perhaps even enough to stall filing for Social
Security or ease the pressure for drawdowns from retirement
portfolios.
Folk is participating in an emerging online ecosystem that helps
micro-entrepreneurs leverage their accumulated knowledge and
experience. Other platforms include retail site Etsy.com (handmade
and vintage items), and freelance marketplaces Guru.com and
Freelancer.com.
But the action is not limited to the knowledge economy. For example,
Airbnb.com recently noted that 10 percent of its hosts are over age
60.
OLDER DRIVERS
And AARP’s Life Reimagined - a program focused on guiding people
through life transitions - recently announced a partnership with
Uber aimed at recruiting older drivers. Life Reimagined has 1.4
million members; for Uber, the alliance is part of a strategy to
hire hundreds of thousands of drivers as it works to meet surging
demand for its service.
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If driving strangers around in your own car for hours on end does
not sound like an ideal retirement to you, AARP begs to differ.
While it is not putting an age limit on applicants, AARP sees the
Uber program as ideally suited to the younger end of its
constituency - workers over 50 who have been sidelined by economic
turbulence.
"The shared economy is offering people an opportunity to follow
their hearts, have flexibility in their work, be empowered to make
money and be their own bosses," says Adam Sohn, vice president of
strategic initiatives at Life Reimagined (http://bit.ly/1c4KZDL).
"And, for millions of people who are doing what they don't love, or
have been pushed out of precarious jobs and are having trouble
fighting their way back into the workforce, this kind of work also
can provide a transition to whatever is next."
Microentrepreneurship certainly offers a path around the age
discrimination that older workers face.
In an AARP study released earlier this year, more than half of older
workers who lost jobs during the Great Recession said age
discrimination had a significant impact on their ability to find new
work. But in the gig economy, if you can get the job done, no one
cares about your age.
Nearly 25 percent of Uber's drivers are over age 50, according to a
study commissioned by the company recently - and among new drivers
with no previous professional driving experience, 39 percent are
over 50. Three percent were retired before driving for Uber, and 8
percent were unemployed; one in five drivers was employed in a
temporary job.
Uber does not disclose data about the earnings of its drivers, but
the report states that drivers are making $19 per hour on average.
(The writer is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his
own.)
(Editing by Beth Pinsker and Alan Crosby)
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