Extra cash? (best, old, money, book)

[muochoir]

Originally Posted by NJBest

I've mentioned this on another thread about what I do for ebay. It's very profitable.

Go to a large university's website (ideally one local to you). Find what books they use for hard classes (Calculus III, Physics, Advanced Finance class, etc). Buy, rent, borrow the book. Do ALL the problems in the book in a notebook. Then type it all up and sell your work and answers on eBay for $40.

It takes me about a week to get through a book and you can often sell your work about 100 times per book. You make decent pocket money, and you get to enjoy the challenging material.

Only $40 for ALL the answers? That does not seem much considering 1wk worth of work + printing.

[Tober138]

How about...take some on-line courses to improve your educational standing and get a better paying job?

[andywire]

Originally Posted by Tober138

How about...take some on-line courses to improve your educational standing and get a better paying job?

Education does not always guarantee a better paying job. In fact, it does not guarantee anything. Get educated because you want to make something better of yourself, not because you think it will put you in a better financial position. You may find yourself very disappointed if you have to take a low paying job while trying to pay back all those student loans.

[Traeger]

I find that you can make the most money in the things that are not obvious. My experiences:

In college in the mid eighties working for near minimum wage I read a mother earth news article from 1976 on how to run a sprout business. There were many doubters (100%) but I started my sprout business. Within 2 years I was clearing 7K/Yr for 15 hours a week, this was in 1986.

Moving forward to 2000 in a different location with 3 kids, a mortgage, 40 acres and a ton of credit card debt, I thought about the "Buy a jeep for 75.00" ads I remember from popular mechanics. While I knew that was not true I did think that the surplus property must go somewhere. With a 750.00 loan I bought some stuff that turned out to be worth 10,000 to some military nuts.

When that started to take too much time, in 2002 I bought 10 cars (one at a time) at the state auction and turned those into 5K.

Now I am debt free and a little bit less motivated or just slowing down, but every now and again I think of an idea. My smoker uses a proprietary electric starter which is outrageously overpriced. Within 90 minutes on the web I located a comparable starter. So maybe I'll start a eBay business selling these.

My point is money can be made in the least obvious ways. Also do not believe your buddies, usually they are negative. And remember packaged money programs pay far less than your own ideas.

I hope this helps someone out there.

Oh I'll add this one reason I don't do more nowadays is I have a certain skill set which is in demand in the middle east (Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan) and for the times that I do this I am compensated well. So if you have a good skill your greatest wealth builder is your job. But for extra cash think a little outside of the box, be willing to take a few risks.

[NJBest]

Originally Posted by muochoir

Only $40 for ALL the answers? That does not seem much considering 1wk worth of work + printing.

Scaling economics. If you sell each one for the cost of time, then no one would purchase it. It's the reason why movies cost $15 instead of $15 million per copy. If you look at the original post, I ship each one as many as 100 times.

[hershey48]

I used to mystery shop. Some people do it full time. I just got tired of the traveling.

[Texas User]

Turn your hobby into a business.

[MaryleeII]

www.wahm.com lots of ideas there

[Tober138]

Originally Posted by andywire

Education does not always guarantee a better paying job. In fact, it does not guarantee anything.

Nothing is guaranteed in life. But those with a higher level of education are likely to make more more money in their lifetime than those with lower levels of education.

[Texas User]

Nowadays, getting a Bachelor is like a getting a HS diploma. With college being so expensive, a degree is not really required. Its who you know!