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I’d bet you’d probably like a little extra spending money, right?
You could add it to your piggy bank.
Or, spend it on your dream vacation.
Everyone can use a little extra moolah.
If waiting on customers in your local pizza restaurant isn’t your thing, try work that’s a little out of the ordinary.
If you don’t want a side hustle that’ll bore you to death, there are all kinds of unconventional ways to boost your income.
In this article, I’ve compiled some of the most unusual money-makers I’ve heard of.
The following jobs will not only garner you a little extra money.
They’ll also stave off boredom too!
Table of Contents
1. Monetize Your Plasma
You can’t make money selling your blood anymore.
But you can make up to $300 a month selling your plasma. Plasma is the yellowish liquid component of blood that holds the cells in suspension.
It’s the part of the blood that carries cells and proteins throughout the entire body. Companies use it to create products that help people with blood clotting disorders and other diseases.
Extracting plasma from you is a more involved procedure than removing whole blood. It takes more time and isn’t as pleasant. So, the company financially benefiting from your donation makes it up to you in cold, hard cash.
The process can take about 90 minutes, and you can make between $20 and $50 per donation.
2. Sell Your Hair
You might be mildly shocked to learn that’s there’s a huge market for real hair. People use it to make wigs and extensions. And you don’t have to sell it for cheap.
One woman sold her long blonde hair for $1,000.
Hair extensions are crazy popular these days. So, if you have long, luxuriant hair, you can make good money! Some sites match up people who want to sell their hair with those who want to buy it.
The going rate is currently $20-$2000 dollars, depending on texture and hair length. Go to buyandsellhair.com if you’re serious about doing this.
However, your hair will have to comply with some precise guidelines.
3. License Cute Videos of Your Pets
There are a couple of ways to make money with videos. One way is to watch the kind where companies pay you. The other way is to license cute videos of your pets.
Have you ever shot a video and thought to yourself, “This would be perfect for YouTube?” Well, you might be surprised to hear you can sell those videos online.
You can make cute videos of your pet, and then, sell the licenses for them to people who want to share them on their own sites. The only thing you’ll need is a camera that takes quality videos. And, a little bit of luck.
If you have a knack for shooting videos with viral potential, your phone may be a goldmine. And to think your friends used to laugh at you for having tons of cat videos on your phone!
Well, now you can laugh at them. Because you can sell those videos for a little extra cash.
Video is a hot commodity these days. Users spend 88% more time on a website that has video content over one that has only text.
There’s an ancient saying that goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” The author of that aphorism must have been prescient because, in today’s digital age, video takes precedence over words.
But the video can’t look like it was filmed on a soundstage because it’s too slick and professional looking to go viral.
Once you have a bunch of videos with potential, send them to one of the websites that buy video content. One of the most popular sites is Jukin Media.
4. Use Your Bicycle as a Moving Van
You may have seen videos online of people moving entire households on bicycles. Portlandia even made fun of it in one of their episodes.
Sounds, crazy, but with a cargo bicycle or a bike with a trailer, it’s doable. It’s said that a bike can carry over 10 times its own weight.
That means you can carry 800 pounds with an 80-pound vehicle! There is no other mode of transportation that’s as effective. Another thing about bikes is they don’t have the maintenance costs of a moving truck.
There are plenty of bike trailers out there, but most of them are meant for toting tykes around. Their capacity doesn’t generally exceed 100 pounds. To start a moving business, you’re going to need something sturdier.
Bikes at Work sell bicycle cargo trailers that are perfect for a business that does big moves.
5. Work as a Psychic Real Estate Investor
Years ago, I attended a Silva Mind Control seminar.
The guest lecturer was James Needham, well known within Silva circles for his psychic abilities. He told a story about how he made a lot of money by what Silva calls “going to level” and then having a friend drive him around neighborhoods.
He would have his eyes close when he did this. Every so often, he would get a hunch that a house he passed would be worth buying as an investment property.
So, he would walk up to the house and offer to buy it. Did he ever guess wrong and get the door slammed in his face?
Absolutely. But James was right more than he was wrong. He ended up getting rich with this technique. If you want to see if this technique will work for you, there are courses out there that promise to teach you psychic development, including the Silva Method (they changed their name years ago).
There are other ways to use your psychic abilities to fatten up your bank account. Like, becoming a pet psychic…
6. Become a Pet Psychic
Psychic Lisa Miller believes animals are eager to make a psychic connection. She says that “animals are highly evolved souls here to teach us and heal us with unconditional love.”
Just about every human being who has grown close to an animal has probably wondered just what the heck they’re thinking.
Pet psychics capitalize on this desire. Like Lorrie the pet psychic, who appeared on Oprah. She used to be a psychic only for human beings. But, two years into her calling, she discovered that her clients’ pets were trying to communicate with her psychically.
Being an animal lover, she was elated to discover that her psychic gift extended to them as well. Lori wants everyone to understand that their bond with their pets transcends the merely emotional.
If you think you have abilities like this, perhaps you could monetize them! If you believe in psychic powers, there’s another way to make money…
7. Harness Your Psychic Powers to Win Contests
Decades ago Helene Hadsell wrote Contesting: The Name It and Claim It Game, the best book ever on using mind power to win contests.
Helene is billed as “the woman who wins every contest she enters.” The book showed how she used her God-given psychic powers to do it.
Sounds incredible, but it’s true. By 1982, Helene had won over 5,000 prizes.
She also won trips to Europe for herself and her family. Her biggest prize was winning a brand-new home from Formica, Inc. after being chosen from over 2.5 million entries.
Take a psychic development course, and perhaps you can do it too.
8. Get Paid for Your Sperm
Becoming a sperm donor isn’t as easy as it looks.
It’s rare to find a suitable donor. That’s because there are strict donor requirements that only about 5% of applicants meet.
To make a sperm donation, you have to be between the ages of 18 and 35. You can’t be older than 40. Before donating, you need to undergo a rigorous screening that cannot be completed in a single visit.
The sperm donation process can take up to three weeks. It includes a questionnaire, physical exam, and a semen sample.
If you pass the screening, you’ll have to provide 6-10 samples each month. At the Phoenix sperm bank, you can make $70 per donation. You get $50 at the time of your contribution and $20 when the sample is released.
You can earn up to $1,000 per month!
9. Try Your Hand at Professional Cuddling
If you have empathy to spare, you might be able to turn it into a job that pays you well. That is if you become a professional cuddler.
But to do this, you’ll have to be unconditionally accepting of all races, genders, and sexual orientation. It goes without saying you’ll need excellent interpersonal skills too.
Professional cuddling is catching on all over the planet. From New York to London and Tokyo and beyond, emotionally starved souls are paying big money to be cuddled. Some professionals make upwards of $360 a day!
In the Big Apple, a graduate student by the name of Jacqueline Samuel is charging $60 an hour. And business is booming so much she had to hire a second person.
Snuggling people for long periods might not be for everybody. But if you’re comfortable with the idea, go ahead and set up your very own cuddling business.
You can do a world of good for all the lonely people out there!
10. Open a Cosplay Kissing Booth
A great way to make money is a cosplay kissing booth.
Dress up as your favorite character from anime or the comics and offer kisses for $5.00 each. This is an untapped market, so if you do it, you’ll be on the cutting edge.
To maximize your earning potential, target the big conventions such as ComicCon or DragonCon.
As the booth proprietor, you’re not selling a physical product. And you don’t need much preparation time. All you really need is a sign, a cash box, and a booth.
Kissing strangers might seem a little weird to you. But if you can get beyond the initial awkwardness, you might have a way to make some cash on your hands that’s unusual and rewarding.
11. Start a Food Truck or Cart with Food You Can’t Get Anywhere Else
Street food has been around forever. And these days, food trucks and carts are more popular than ever.
The culinary entrepreneurs who run them know you don’t need a big sit-down restaurant to give diners a first-rate dining experience. There’s something fun about being served unique fare from an outdoor vendor.
And the food they’re offering is becoming increasing inventive.
King of Pops started as a conversation three brothers had while on an epic trip through Central America. Over the years, that conversation was transformed into a dream. And when the youngest brother lost his corporate job, that dream became a glorious reality.
King of Pops has uncommonly delicious popsicles served on roaming carts that are perfect on a hot summery day. And not the sugary, artificial tasting ones either.
With both fruit- and milk-based options, and flavors like blueberry lemongrass, cereal milk, creamy avocado, honeydew lime zest, watermelon mojito and tangerine basil to choose from, these frozen treats are definitely on the unusual side.
They even have pops for pups, so all your canine friends can enjoy the icy pleasures of a popsicle.
And if you love maple syrup, you would have loved Snow Day. This food truck’s entire menu was maple-centric, including its famous “Maple Grilled Cheese,” which included sharp cheddar, sourdough bread, and of course, maple syrup.
You could get optional additions like strawberry chutney. Unfortunately, Snow Day recently closed its doors after five years in business.
If you’d like to operate a food truck with unique offerings, you can! To start, talk with someone who already owns one. Then, negotiate a lease or rental agreement. Start selling at a farmer’s market, fair booth, or pop-up.
In 2008, Mike Merrill made news when he sold $100,000 shares of his life to the public at $1.00 each. In return, each shareholder got a say in how he lived his life.
They got to vote on whether he should have a vasectomy. And, whether he should change his hair color. His shareholders barred him from eating meat. But they let him eat fish.
Even whether to break up with his first girlfriend, which interestingly, was shareholder number seven. And, they would get a return on their investment if Mike made any money outside his job at a small software company.
Over the next two weeks, his friends bought almost a thousand shares. Mike ended up with a wad full of cash.
After that, his IPO went viral. This is an idea you could try!
13. Invent the Next Pet Rock
In 1975, the pet rock craze was at its height. Its creator, Gary Dahl, sold 1.5 million of them at $3.95 each.
And even though the fad lasted only six months, it made Gary an overnight millionaire.
This idea is so shockingly simple, you might wonder why you couldn’t come up with something similar yourself. Most people chalk up his success to dumb luck. But there are lessons to be learned here by savvy entrepreneurs.
And once you learn these lessons, you could have a chance to create your very own product that could rake in big money for you! How do you come up with something like a pet rock?
You create a product that addresses a real need. In April 1975, Gary was having drinks with a few friends, when the conversation turned to pets.
He heard about his friends complaining about how caring for dogs and cats was so much trouble. You had to walk and feed them. And worst of all, clean up after them.
And that’s when inspiration hit him. He would come up with a pet for which you didn’t have to do any of these things. That’s when the pet rock was born!
What you can learn from this is go out and talk to your target audience. See what problems they have, and how you can use your unique talents to solve them. Add a dash of creativity, and you might have the next craze on your hands!
14. Bare All For Cash as a Life Model
It’s hard to draw the human body. The best way to hone your expertise with this is to sketch real people.
Art teachers are always looking for volunteers so that their students have an opportunity to draw the human frame. As it might be a little awkward for students to see members of their own class in the buff, they usually look outside the college for volunteers.
This is where you come in. You can make money by being a nude model for a life drawing class. You’ll have to be comfortable being in a roomful of strangers.
The beautiful thing about this gig is you don’t have to look like an Adonis. That’s because artists want the full spectrum of body types to draw. Get comfortable, because when they sketch you, you’ll have to hold the pose for 30 minutes.
Or even longer.
Call your local college to see about opportunities. You can get earn $20 an hour or more.
15. Rent Your Backyard Out to Campers
Do you have a big backyard? And if you do, would you like to make some extra cash this summer?
If so, rent out your backyard for campers.!
First, consider your yard. If you live in an area immersed in the scenic beauty of the wilderness and have a large backyard, you can rent it out on Airbnb. And, if it’s close to tourist attractions, you can probably make some decent money!
And, it doesn’t have to be your backyard you’re renting. If you have a vacant lot, you can rent that out too.
But you’re going to need to be able to provide a way for your guests to use the restrooms. This could be either be a bathroom in your house or port-a-potties. They’ll also need drinkable water.
Consider also parking for your guests, as well as electricity, parking, and trash disposal.
Look into any local laws that might prohibit the practice.
16. Come Up with a Wild, Weird, and Wacky Fiverr Gig
There are lots of gigs on Fiverr that are anything but ordinary. For example, Mike Imburgia will “quickly and creatively deliver a video as the Macho Maniac.”
He does a surprisingly good impersonation of the late Randall Mario Poffo. The basic $5.00 gig is Mike reading your 50-word or 30-second script against a plain background. There is a backing musical track as well.
If you opt for the green screen extra, you can choose a high def background, whether it’s a photo or video. Or, a high res background from his collection, including an outer space background.
There are also people doing gigs where they read tarot cards and cast money spells. If you have a creative idea for a gig you think might be a money maker, go for it!
17. Join the Ranks of Dumpster Divers
Some dumpster divers make over $2,000 in a single night! The California vs. Greenwood Supreme Court decision ruled that the practice is legal as long as you don’t go on private property to do it.
Dumpster diving does have its hazards. These include injuries from sharp objects like knives, nails, syringes, and glass.
Experts warn curious dumpster divers about the bacteria that dumpster food can harbor. Especially when left out in the heat. Bacteria from dumpsters can infect open wounds. Even washing dumpster finds doesn’t entirely remove biohazards.
The day after Christmas is a perfect time to find presents discarded by recipients who weren’t exactly happy with what Santa brought them.
If dumpster diving isn’t your thing, you could always drive through affluent neighborhoods on trash night and pick up all the cool stuff people throw away.
A Few Final Thoughts
If you’re utterly bored with all the ordinary ways to make money, try something unconventional. By doing so, you can blaze your own path to riches and success.
You don’t have to do what everyone else is doing. Exercise a little creativity and imagination, and in the process, make a few bucks.
Why settle for a banal existence when you can spice things up a little?
