Five More Unusual Ways To Make Money

September 4, 2008 at 5:19 pm · Filed under make moneys

There are a lot of ways to make money if you have money. You don’t have to turn to complicated businesses or ordinary ways like bank C.D.’s. And you don’t even have to use your money. If you have credit cards, for example, you can get cash advances, and make money with the cash. These are ways that aren’t quite a business because you can do them once or only when you feel like it.

Invest In Other’s Expertise

My friend John had to show me several car magazines before I understood why an old fiberglass car was a good deal at $2,300, because I know nothing about cars. When he eventually convinced me to put up the money, it needed a new transmission for $900. Fortunately, he sold the corvette for $4,300, netting us about $1,000. I took half the profit ($500) for putting up the money for the two weeks.

I used to do this quite a bit years ago, and only once lost $50 or so on a car. I knew nothing about cars, so I did it with friends that know cars but don’t have cash. By the way, if I had paid 18% interest and a $50 cash advance fee to raise the money with a credit card, my profit would still have been over $400, and John did all the work. I love playing with money. Do you have any friends who know everything about boats?

Buy And Sell Mobile Homes

Pay cash and you get better prices on almost anything, including mobile homes. Sell with easy terms, and you get the highest price, because you are making it possible for someone to buy a home. More than one investor out there is buying and selling mobile homes.

I read one investors story about a recent deal he did. He bought a mobile for $4,000. The seller was asking $6,500, but was tired of waiting and paying the lot rent. The investor cleaned it up and sold it for $10,000, with $1000 down, payments of $250, and 10% interest on the balance. Did the buyer overpay? Hard to say, since his alternative may have been renting and having nothing to show for it in a few years, instead of having a home with some residual value.

Be A Loan Shark

People occasionally need money for a short while. A friend of mine for example, got a good paying construction job because I loaned him $300 to get drywall stilts. I used to do this often many years ago, and I never charged less than a $5/week as a loan fee (don’t call it interest). I made one or two thousand dollars extra some years doing this. If you have any qualms about it, check the laws in your area and put it all in writing. Also, if you want total security, take collateral.

Buy And Sell Estates

We recently met a couple who buy out estates, sell some of the things at flea markets, then run the rest through auctions. They’ve made a living doing this for years. They load up a trailer after negotiating to buy a whole house full of stuff. Then, if they don’t want to do the flea market thing, they just auction everything on Sunday afternoon for a nice profit.
If you are a good judge of value and have a regular auction nearby, you could do the same with rummage sales. Just offer $100 for everything and then auction it off piece-by-piece. The auction near us lets anyone sell their stuff, with no fee to enter. They just take a 25% commission.

Playing With The Casino’s Money

I worked at a casino for years and I saw a lot of people foolishly writing down the numbers that came up on the roulette wheel. Foolishly, I say, because their their theories were nonsense. Casinos will always welcome these players and even hand them the pen and paper.

One player, however, was actually scientific about it. By finding a bias in the wheel, after “charting” it for 5,000 spins, he made thousands betting on just one or two numbers. When a number comes up, it pays 35 to 1, but one of the numbers, because of manufacturing imperfections or whatever reason, was coming up 1 in 27 spins, instead of the average 1 in 38 spins.

So all he had to do was bet $10 a spin, and he profited $80 for every 27 spins of the wheel in the long run. That’s about $100 per hour. The ups and downs are dramatic though, so this is not for the faint-hearted. In this case, I saw him lose as much as $700 in a night. Also, not all wheels have biases (they eventually replaced that wheel). So have you ever tried “card counting” in blackjack…? There are endless ways to make money.

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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How To Make Online By Sharing Your Hobby With Other People

August 24, 2008 at 5:08 am · Filed under make moneys

Tons of books, courses and coaching programs are offered today online on the concept of how to make money online. The problem is that you can read for ages and yet not have an idea of how to build a profitable home business.

If you’ve read any amount of e-books, bought courses, or attended teleseminars on the theme of building a successful Internet business, you must have noticed that there’s a hole that almost nobody seems to fill. There’s one point that even the “big guys” can’t tell you, or they’re simply ignorant an unwilling to disclose to you.

BUT, HEY, WHAT AM I REALLY GOOD AT?

This point is that in order to build a really successful business online, you got to make a plan first and determine what your business will focus on. You have to choose something than you really like to do, an then find out if there’s a market, thus how many people are actively looking for products an services in that niche, and how big the competition is in that field.

One of the biggest problems that I’ve seen most people breaking their heads on is the question: but what am I good at? What business is right for me?

Well, I can safely tell you that this is a almost a dead end. Almost nobody will help you out with this problem. This is the point where they leave you on your own. Try it: ask any guru: so, what do you suggest, what business is good for me? Most of the time, they won’t know what to answer on this question.

And it’s not their fault. Let’s face it: nobody really knows what you’re good at, nobody has an idea of what you like to do, what is your hobby, your knowledge, experience. Those are the things that you know best.

THE SECRET THAT DID’NT TELL YOU

But there are some ideas that can help you brainstorm and help you decide what is a good idea of a successful online business for you. I call it the “process of elimination,” thus think of what you’re definitely not good at. Better yet, take 3 separate sheets of papers, name them like this:

Make Extra Money - Six Unusual Ways

July 25, 2008 at 5:32 pm · Filed under make moneys

I was young and wanted some way to make extra money - something other than another fast food job. A friend of the family owned a small insurance agency. The owner decided to get into the business of process serving, and I applied for the job. Tracking people down and handing them their court subpoenas sounded like fun.

It was more interesting than most of the jobs I have had. I had to find two defendants in a lawsuit stemming from a school football injury (they worked for the school). Both had moved to the area, leaving no forwarding address. After using my best phone pretexts to get information from the family, and doing a little investigating locally, I found them both working in the same place.

I walked up to each, asked their name and handed them the papers. They were served. The problem was that the company was billing by the hour, and I had found these two quickly, meaning little profit. They dropped the idea for the new service, and dropped my job along with it. So much for getting ahead by doing a good job.

I had a wide variety of unusual jobs and other ways to make extra money when I was younger. Sitting here reminiscing at the keyboard might be considered an unusual way to make money too, but hey, it works. Here are some of the other ways.

Make Extra Money By…

Stealing cars: At twenty-one I was willing to try almost anything to make extra money. My brother’s towing business got a contract to repossess cars, and I became a “repo man.” Prowling the night with my brother, looking for and legally “stealing” cars - this was fun. Don’t expect to make too much money doing this though, unless you live in the right area. Oh, and it did involve getting chased, having a gun pulled on us, and other little adventures.

Making walking sticks: I sold hundreds of my own handmade walking stick alongside our other items at flea markets. I added handgrips made from recycled leather jackets, so they cost about 50 cents to make. I sold them for anywhere between $6 to $26. You may also want to make a hobby into a way to make money, but there isn’t too much money involved most of the time.

Financing other peoples plans. I put up the cash to buy cars for a couple friends. They knew cars, I had cash. A friend needed $3200 to buy and fix a corvette, for example, and two weeks later sold it for $4200, netting us $500 profit each. Letting your money do the work to make extra money - this is one of the best ways.

Rent rooms. At one point I had almost $10,000 per year coming in from renting the rooms in my home. I owed nothing on the home at this point, so this was a nice income. I had decent renters, and I had built a efficiency apartment on the back of the place for privacy for my wife and I. Easy ways like this are my favorite ways to make extra money.

Steve Gillman has studied unusual ways to make money for thirty years. To learn more, visit his website, Unusual Ways To Make Money: http://www.UnusualWaysToMakeMoney.com

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