CHALLENGE: Creative Ways to Make a Couple of bucks!!

[mama22qts]

I haven't seen these listed yet.

1. Offer to run errands for others. You could pick their groceries up while you're there, or dry cleaning, movies, etc for a small fee.

2. Consider sitting for an elderly person who needs company/a little help during the day. You could find someone like that at your church or at the senior center in your area if you have one. Lots of times family is looking for someone to stay with their elderly family member just so someone's around in case something happens, and so they have hot food, etc.

[WhiteBearDog]

Believe it or not, I've thought of this one and I just can't find a place around here that does it! If you have a link to locations around the US, please forward it!

Thanks so much for all the ideas, keep 'em coming!!!

I have been doing this for a couple of weeks now. I can go two days a week... have to wait two days in between visits, so I go usually on Tuesdays and Friday or Saturday. I get paid anywhere from $30-35 per visit and every forth visit I get paid $40-50 as a bonus. Plus your doing something for others... they use that plasma to make meds.... can only be made from plasma.

The first visit takes forever because you have to have a physical, forms to fill and then the plasma donation. Get there early to get the earliest times. Its usually close to an all day event for the first visit. Was for me anyway.
After the initial visit, expect to take any where from an 1 1/2 hours to 2 1/2 hours.

[PRANKIN]

Thanks to everyone for all the wonderful ideas!
I know it has been mentioned already, but AVON is one of my sources of extra cash as well. It is the start up cost that sold me to the company. ONLY 10.00 to get started. You just have to be disciplined enough to not spend your profits on yourself.

[uummm]

My son was not able to get a job at any local place and we live in a subdivision with maybe 300 houses. I told him to start making up Flyers to stuff into mail boxes for lawn service. The attraction to him would be that he could do it on a one time basis, like if someone was going on vacatoin and needed the lawn mowed. He also said he could do dog walking, litter box cleaning and simple yard work on the flyers.

Well it worked! He now has 5 regular lawns, an extra lawn or two a week for temps and he has a few people that call him up to watch thier dogs when they go out of town along with one lawn that he mows every time they go out of town which seems to be 3 weeks every other month. I think he has one couple they just like his company and they have him come over once a week and he uses their lawn mower and does odd little jobs for them!

On his flyer I told him to put that he lived in the subdivision and that he was just trying to pay for college (which he is).

One job he got was to trim some hedges at someones house. She called him up the night before and he went over the next day. It took him about 2 hours to do the work she needed. She paid him $80 because she said she had called 2 other people and they just couldn't be bothered to show up!

Since Mid-summer he has also gotten a sign for the side of his truck he is called "A Boy with a Truck" and his motto is "I do the Grunt Work"

The jobs he has done-
taken furniture to GoodWill
Helped clean garages
pulled weeds
trimmed hedges
cut grass
weed wacks
edging
dog care
hauled stuff to the dump
dug holes


Come Xmas time he has already been told he will be needed to hang xmas decorations for one person.

Simply put, he does the work that people just don't want to do. Most of these jobs don't take much skill just effort and because he "needs" the money they pay him well.
He does all this with his little 2000 Ford Ranger that he bought for $3600 (well he is on his second, he smashed the first one that we paid $2750 for). He has purchased a mower since he started too (ours won't start anymore)-he has more than paid for his first sesmester of college and helped to pay for the truck we made him buy to replace the one he smashed.

[trott]

Since Mid-summer he has also gotten a sign for the side of his truck he is called "A Boy with a Truck" and his motto is "I do the Grunt Work"

I love it! Sounds like your son has a great sense of humor and a great work ethic! I'm hoping to pick up a few house cleaning jobs. My friend and I have been talking about staring a "natural/organic" cleaning service. My neigbor may already have a couple of leads for us!

Keep those ideas coming... they are great!!

[momtocj7mea]

Well, you guys are just the greatest! We are totally self-employed in our household which has at times, been a little scary. But with our dedication and the good Lord above we have made it. The ideas already mentioned are great ways to earn extra income, but I want to add my 2 cents. We run a paper route for our local newspaper company and we make an average of $300-350 a week from this, it takes about 3 hours a night and it is a single copy route, meaning we deliver to stores and the racks--no houses. We have only been doing this for 2 full months and already have almost $2500 in savings because we put every dime of profit from this into our savings account. Plus, I get to keep unlimited amounts of Sunday coupon inserts (this alone makes the job worth it lol!) Some of the larger routes make 400-450 a week and this is with the sales being in a slump due to the economy. Before the economy went under, some carriers were making $500+ a week on a part time job!! DH also has a part time lawn care business that makes around $1000-1200 a month for about 6 months out of the year, again part time. His main job is with the local telephone company, but the beauty in all of this is that we set our own schedules and can pick up a few extra customers here and there if we need the money. Adjust our schedules if we need a break, etc. Another thing that DH and FIL do for extra income is buy non running automobiles from Craig's List every few months, fix and resale them. We bought a small cavalier back in January for $300, fixed the problem which only cost about $65 for parts and resold the car for $1200. Also, on my paper route we deliver to a rack in a luxury apartment complex and the tenants throw out all sorts of trash and since it is a compactor style dumpster all of the large, nicer items are placed outside of the dumpster and I have found tons of things that I have resold on Craig's List (gas grill, dresser, area rugs, wooden toddler bed, mission style desk, etc just to name a few of the things we have found). Scrap metal is a big business as well. DH takes the scrap wire that is left over from his work with the telephone company to our local metal yard about 3 times a year and depending on prices at the time he makes anywhere from $500-$1200 each time. Back in April he took a truck load and made a little over $1200, we just a took a truckload last week and only made $550, but it was almost half the size of the previous load. We picked up a free non-working outside air conditioning unit from someone on Craig's List who just wanted it gone, brought it home, dismantled it and turned it in to the scrap yard as well. I think it ended up yielding about $80 once all of the various parts were turned in. You could also offer a 3rd shift in home daycare, most of the kids would be asleep during this time anyway.

There are ways to make extra money it just takes some diligence and time. We work hard, but sometimes its necessary to take care of your family. However, we have no health insurance or benefits and since we are self-employed no company 401k plan so we have to take care of these things ourselves. We are working towards a retirement plan, but the insurance seems a ways off. But no complaints here, we are still truly blessed!


ETA: I also mystery shop!!

One more thing, Live Ops is a legitimate work from home company. Don't know how things are going there now since the economy has gone under, but when we did it a few years ago, DH was making about $200 every 2 weeks and I was making almost $500 every two weeks. But you need to have an up to date computer that is very fast, etc and we had to give it up because it got to the point where our computers couldn't handle it and kept dropping calls. We had fun though, we even worked the very first time American Idol did their Idol Gives Back show and I was on the phone for almost 8 hours straight (non-stop!!---I ended up losing my voice from that!) I keep meaning to look back into it, but just haven't gotten around to it.

[swansong]

With the RE market in ruines there are millions of foreclosed and abandoned properties across the USA. The new owners (banks) of these REOs need someone to repair and maintain them. This is simple labor and can be as little as watering the lawn and trash pick up for general curb appeal. Or as much as repair and replacing of doors and windows for code compliance.

One of the most professional companies in this field is Safeguard Properties - Home and you can learn more about this kind of work by looking at their website.

[swansong]

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[swansong]

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[ThePennyHoarder]

How about selling your empty wine bottles on Ebay. They go for .50 - $5.00.