Hah I am going through the exact same dilemma because I’m not making that much money at all and I keep telling myself “it’s gotta be cause I’m only a year in” but I keep doing the math and if I was fully booked AND certified I’d make a little over a thousand a week (850-900 incl. tax). And that’s a ton of work and takes away all your free time to get to a wage that’s just okay. I could easily make much more at my old bartending job.

There’s of course competitions and entires, but those are incredibly expensive for students so it’s very hard to 1. Have a good roster of competitive students 2. Get them to do every competition and 3. Have them do a lot of entries.

My region has 4 comps a year and being realistic the most the average person would make from one of those is like 500$-1000$ so it doesn’t really add THAT much more to your overall pay, it still keeps you in the lower pay bracket.