September 6, 2008 at 6:25 pm · Filed under make moneys
Strange jobs? How do we define that? Years ago I stole cars as a repo-man, had some adventures as an investigative process-server, and even handed out samples in grocery stores. Here are some other unusual jobs you can aspire to:
Wrinkle Chaser
This is the person that irons wrinkles from shoes as they are being made to ensure they are perfectly smooth when you buy them.
Chicken Sexer
This is a real job title. A chicken sexer sorts through baby chicks to determine if they are male or female, and then segregate them.
Citrus Fruit Colorer
A Citrus Fruit Colorer, with the help of steam and chemicals, gives citrus fruit a more natural coloring, because fruit is usually picked before it is fully ripe.
Celluloid Trimmer
A Celluloid Trimmer shaves down a golf club and then adds celluloid bands onto the golf clubs to make the leather grip stay in place.
Odor Judgers
Want to smell armpits all day to help make effective deodorants? I’m not sure why somebody other than some strange fetishist would want this job.
Furniture Tester
Now here’s a good one. The La-z-Boy Company (and probably others) employs furniture testers to check out their recliners. Want to relax for a living?
Cowpuncher
You can herd, castrate and brand cattle. Then, when you get bored castrating cattle, you can repair fences, watering troughs and do other maintenance work on the ranch.
Alligator Wrangler
This is more of a dangerous job than a strange one, and probably not worth the pay, unless you get a T.V. show like the The Crocodile Hunter.
This is just a small sampling of the weird jobs out there. I understand that sumo-wrestlers need helpers in the bathroom, for example, and a friend of mine once had a job painting “Brake Release” on those little handles all day. Then there are the strange businesses you can start, but that’s another story.
Steve Gillman has had an interest in all the many ways to make money since childhood. You can read about more strange businesses and jobs at his website: http://www.UnusualWaysToMakeMoney.com
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June 21, 2008 at 11:16 am · Filed under make moneys
Treasure hunting begins at home. People regularly find famous old books and valuable antiques in their attics, so get up there and look. One couple opened their walls while remodeling, and found them insulated with thousands of old and valuable movie posters. In the thirties a theater owner ahd put them there. The couple sold $200,000 worth of the posters, the last I heard.
There are many more ways to go treasure hunting. I used to take the old telegraph pole insulators form along train tracks, to sell for $4 each at an antique store. They were otherwise being shot to pieces by hunters over the years. The colored glass ones are usually the more valuable ones.
Panning For Gold
For $10 you can buy a gold pan, and start prospecting. It’s easier to see the gold in the green plastic ones. Most federal lands are open to prospectors without a permit. I’ve only seen gold in my pan in Canada (there isn’t much gold in Michigan), but people have better luck in the mountain streams of the southeast and southwest. It’s a nice way to spend an afternoon in any case.
Treasure Hunting With A Metal Detector
Metal detectors start under $200. I’ve found a few hundred coins, but none of them have been valuable ones. When the city tore up old sidewalks, a woman in our town used her detector to find coins . She sold one to a local coin shop for $700. A friend tells me that her husband and her have found many pieces of gold jewelry at the beach with their detector. It’s also common to use metal detectors to find gold nuggets in the southwest.
Treasure Hunting In The Streets
Collecting cans for 37 cents a pound is a tough way to make a living. Here in Michigan and other states, however, there’s a 10 cent deposit on every beverage container. During festivals I see people with bags of hundreds of cans they collected in the parks and garbage containers. Some travel here every year during the Cherry Festival, just to collect returnable bottles and cans that week.
I spoke to a man who went to the big concerts to collect beer and pop cans in the parking areas. He said he makes over $100 in a few hours (plus the time to take them to the store). Collecting “returnables” can be an unpleasant way to make money, but an old guy in town here tells me he pays the rent doing this.
Treasure hunting is about having the right frame of mind. There are treasures to be found everywhere. I once found a chest with foreign notes and coins in the crawl space under our house. Hotel owners report that visitors tuck money in the bedside bible, and forget to take it with them. Sometimes you just have to look.
Steve Gillman has been studying every aspect of money for thirty years. You can find more treasure hunting ideas, and more interesting and useful information on his website; http://www.UnusualWaysToMakeMoney.com
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June 17, 2008 at 9:13 pm · Filed under make moneys
Since childhood I’ve had an interest in unusual businesses. I grew up with four brothers, and when it was time to vote for which television show we would watch, I sold my vote to the highest bidder. You could call that the business of politics. I collected the paper-wads that fell all over when my brothers had their wars, and then sold them back to them for a couple cents each. I was a war profiteer in the paper-wad wars. I also sold candy out of a hollow book in school.
My business activities were more conventional as an adult, but I still loved to hear about and read about the more unusual businesses. Sitting around a fire in an Arizona desert, I once talked to a man who sold used stuffed animals on the side of the highway. He claimed he sold $3000 worth his first month.
The Most Unusual Businesses
Then there was the guy I talked to in Grand Rapids, Michigan, who collected the bodies of dead deer. The county needed the deer carcasses off the roadsides for health reasons. They contracted with this guy for $25 per body. I’m not sure how he disposed of them, but maybe his other business was providing meat to dog food companies.
When I was living in Traverse City, Michigan, someone started a dog poop cleaning business. Want the dog without the responsibility of cleaning the yard? Call A-1 Pooper Scooper. I’m not sure if this would be better or worse than the dead deer collecting business.
Right here in Tucson, Arizona, there is a man who takes leaves from palm trees and twists and turns them into amazing animal sculptures. He sells these for anywhere from $2 to $12 in the street. The palm-leaf scorpions are the best. He just grabs leaves from the nearest palm tree and he can sell dozens of these in a day.
Unusual Online Businesses
Maybe you remember a few weird businesses from back before Ebay got all their rules. One woman made thousands per month selling used panties to fetishists. She bought new panties for her friends, who got them for free as long as they returned them to her unwashed, trading them in for the next new pair. The used and unwashed panties sold for $10 or more on Ebay auctions and they sold fast.
Perhaps you have heard about the online fantasy role-playing game called “Runescape.” It has four million players now. What you might not know is that in addition to buying “virtual real estate” in the game, and earning online gold pieces, you can buy these game things for real cash. There are Runescape entrepreneurs who sell their online houses in the game for hundreds of real U.S. dollars. I think it would start to get confusing - what is real here and what isn’t?
Then there was the guy in who decided last year to finance college by selling one million pixels of advertising space on his web page for a dollar per pixel. You had to buy a minimum of 100 pixels and you could have any image you wanted linking to anywhere you wanted. He succeeded in selling all one million within a few months. Maybe it’s time for me to get back into unusual businesses.
Steve Gillman has been studying money for thirty years (and sometimes making a little). For interesting and useful information, visit his website, Unusual Ways To Make Money: http://www.UnusualWaysToMakeMoney.com
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