A Few Creative Ways to Make Money
I am always looking out for creative ways to make money to
report on for my websites. I recently found a fun one in a great
little true story, written by a man who had certain survival
talents and decided to demonstrate them. He was dumped in the
middle of a large city with no money on him. Soon he had a nice
hotel room and some cash. The things he did deserve the warning,
"Don't try this at home," but they're good examples
of the possible.
He first went to the drive-through windows of a few fast food
restaurants to collect the change that inevitably drops on the
ground as it is passed from cars to cashiers or vice-versa. When
he had a dollar in various coins, he went to a store and exchanged
it for four quarters. With those he bought a newspaper from a
coin-operated paper box, but when it was open he took all sixteen
papers. I should note that he claims to have repaid the newspaper
company in full after this experiment in survival.
Hawking them on the street, he sold the sixteen papers at
full retail of a dollar per copy. He then took his sixteen dollars
to a bar he already had in mind and ordered the cheapest beer
available, and started a conversation with the bartender. After
his first beer he made what is commonly called a "bar bet"
with him for the next drink. Although I don't remember which
trick he used, there are many that can be learned from various
books. You can make a nickel go through a hole in a piece of
paper the size of a dime, for example, without tearing the paper,
and there are the usual card tricks that can be learned with
a bit of practice.
He won the bet, got his next beer and then got a few of the
other people in the bar interested in his tricks (he knew a lot
of bar bets). After a ten dollar bet or two, which he naturally
won, he found other "targets" who were willing to bet
even higher amounts. That evening he had enough to pay for a
nice hotel and still had $5 or so in his wallet.
(For more on Bar Bets, see http://www.everywaytomakemoney.com/bar-bets.html)
Some Other Creative Ways to Make Money
Perhaps you heard about the man who turned a paper clip into
a house. This was a few years ago. The paper clip was apparently
large and colorful, and he traded it for an antique door knob.
He traded that for something else, and so on, doing a little
better on each exchange. A year later he had traded up to a house,
which was his goal. He meant to use it as his home, but he certainly
could have sold it, making this a very creative way to make money.
Here are some others.
A co-worker of mine, years ago, cut cows out of plywood, painted
them and sold them from his front awn.
When I was having trouble selling an ebook I decided to give
it away by email a chapter at a time, making money off the ads
on the website pages where the chapters were hosted. I made four
times as much income from the book doing this.
A pet detective recently started using trained tracking hounds
to locate lost pets for people.
In Boulder Colorado we watched a man who juggled burning bowling
ins and other things while riding a unicycle downtown. The collection
he took from the audience looked to be about $50 after his twenty-minute
performance.
A recent news item reported on people who are getting old
clothing from thrift stores for a dollar or so per item and selling
them on Ebay for up to $40. They use dyes, sequins and more to
"dress them up" into something interesting.
I know of a man who discovered that he can sell old books
by adding his own commentary or other content and converting
them into Kindle downloads (a type of e-book). He works with
books that no longer have a copyright, and sells them cheap,
getting 35% of each sale made. Anyone can become an author or
publisher for free in Amazon's Kindle program.
I could list many other creative ways to make money off the
top of my head, and then there are all the ones I haven't heard
of, so why not choose one or invent your own and start having
fun?
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