I had a level 1 student in a button-down shirt who had a mortgage come up to me after class recently and say “Man, I love this. I’d really love to be paid to do comedy.”

I believe he was thinking: I’d love my current paycheck and stability in exchange for coming to this class. That doesn’t ever happen.

But it’s maybe the second most common question/comment I get from people, right after “how do I get out of my head?” Some variety of “how do you make a living?” or “How could I quit my job and do improv/comedy full time?"

Short answer: You don’t get paid to do improv. You can get paid to teach/coach it, making a solid notch or two below what you’d make at a low level cubicle job.

And "getting paid to do COMEDY,” practically speaking, means living the life of a free-lancer in which you hustle lots of little gigs all the time, hoping for a bigger one. And then even a bigger gig like writing for a TV show is something you get hired for just a few months at a time.

In this life, you get a lot of your time returned to you and a lot of freedom, but you get stomach-dropping insecurity when you think about: children, vacations, property, the future or even just paying rent. That’s the trade-off.

Most people I know who are “doing comedy” have either a part-time job (teaching, usually), or a night-time restaurant job, or a flexible retail job, or possibly a spouse/family who bails them out once a year or so (though I hear people WISH for that more than actually having that). They sit in audition rooms and talk about real estate licenses, babysitting gigs, tutoring opportunities.

Once you make yourself available for creative stuff full-time, you WILL find a lot of small gigs some of which might lead one day to bigger gigs. Small gigs: teaching things, web videos, short films, auditions. Bigger things: TV and movie things that pay SAG rates and residuals that make your financial life temporarily easier.

CASE STUDY: ME

NOTE: The following answer is based on my experience. Everyone’s is unique. I’d love to hear others, actually, if anyone cares to send theirs to me (how do you make a living, those without day jobs?). If I get enough I’ll publish them (with permission, of course!. Send to whines atsign gmail dot com if you’d like).

What I did: From when I was 26 until 32 I was a full-time computer programmer making okay money. I socked a lot of it away because I was responsible and also boring.

At 33, after having done improv for 3 years I quit my full-time job and tried to do computer programming part time along with improv coaching/teaching to let me write and audition for commercials. Turns out I did very little writing/auditioning and instead ran out of money and had to get a full-time job programming again when I was 35.

I programmed computers for 1.5 more years, while teaching/coaching on the side and auditioning at lunch, i.e. not that often. I also started dabbling in stand-up where I could (not often: once every two weeks).

Then at 36 I got a job producing videos for AOL (thank you Sara Schaefer, i.e. a friend I’d made via NYC comedy world), which felt much more creative, though this was still a full-time “show up for your job” job. I learned to shoot and edit. I did that for 2 years, while teaching and auditioning on the side and writing some stuff and making web videos.

Then at 38 I got a job running the UCB school in NYC (thank you, UCB friends) which paid a small steady amount with huge time flexibility. This was essentially like having a steady part-time job. I taught more and aggressively auditioned, which I could do because I’d at this point spent several years doing it and getting known in the NYC scene.

Now I’m in LA: a “professional” improv teacher and, gulp, commercial “actor”(?) who’s trying to get acting/writing work.

What I got paid for last year, very roughly in order of amount: teaching improv, residuals for two commercials, running UCB school, writing puzzles and appearing on NPR quiz show, writing for a soft-scripted reality show, acting in web videos and one TV part, plus very small computer programming gigs.

Which all added up to about as much as I made when I was 27 and wrote javascript for a computer programming company full-time. Though now I spend most of my waking hours doing fun things. I’ll take that deal!

I certainly don’t mean this as bragging, I hope that’s obvious. Nor do I feel that this is a “poor me” situation. I am being specific because I think people who are not doing comedy seem to sometimes “flatten” the comedy world and think that “guy teaching my improv class” is very close to “person who is on SNL” and also “guy who is in this commercial playing all the time on my Hulu” is close to “guy who’s been in 5 movies this year.”

“Doing comedy” = “being free lance” = lots of freedom and time but less money and less consistency.

If you’re trying to get the most talented actor you personally know to be in your short film that requires several long days of shooting, try offering him/her $100!

P.S. To even have a chance of this free lance life, now that you can maybe picture what it’s like, you need a network of friends who know and like you. Stand-ups rely on the people they’ve come up with, improv people need their former fellow students and teammates. Unless you’re so amazingly talented or a direct blood relation of an established person, I don’t know of another way in.