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Contents: |
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Welcome to the world of part-time money. This is designed to
give you all kinds of ideas, hopefully one or more you will try.
One of the good things is that since these are part-time, you are
not making a long-term commitment. You can try several at once if
you like. |
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Sometimes the best way to make extra money is to keep more of it from slipping away. |
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Pay $100 or so for an OOMA, and you'll be free of telephone
company bills forever! |
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Do you need to be paying for television? Use online sites like hulu.com to watch a few shows a month, but turn off the TV and use that time to make some extra money! |
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Become an avid couponer. You can slash hundreds off your
expenses every year by using all the coupons you can
find. |
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Do you know anywhere you can get a consistent 12-700% return on your money that you invest?
There is only ONE place where you are guaranteed such a return - paying off debt.
Frequently when people are looking at earning part-time money, it is to pay off debt. It is also the best way to use your part-time money.
A good credit card rate is usually around 12% APR (annual percentage rate). Fall behind on a couple payments, and you'll get with an increase to the penalty rate. The median penalty rate charged on credit cards issued by banks is 29.99 percent, up 1 percentage point from the previous year, according to a July 2010 study from the Pew Health Group. Banks have even been known to charge interest rates of more than 30 percent. You may have seen media reports last year about an issuer that offered credit cards with interest rates of up to 79.9 percent. Payday loans typically range from approximately $100 to $1000, depending upon your state’s legal minimum. The average loam time is two weeks, after which time you would have to repay the loan along with the fees and interest you accrued over that period. These loans usually cost you 400% annual interest (APR), if not more. And the finance charge to borrow $100 ranges from $15 to $30 for two week loans. These finance charges are sometimes accompanied by interest rates ranging from 300% to 750% APR. For loans shorter than two weeks, the APR can be even higher.
If you are paying any high interest debt, EVERY PENNEY of part-time cash you earn should go to paying off the debt. In the example of the payday loans, that would be like multiplying your money several times over.
Even if you are not saddled by penalty interest rates or payday loans, getting out of debt should be your number one goal.
There are programs like Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover which can help a lot, especially if you can find a group going through the program.
Otherwise, here it the crux of it. 1. Cut back all unnecessary expense. 2. Pay cash for everything. Assign each dollar to an expense as you get a dollar. 3. Start saving for an emergency fund. 4. Start by paying off the smallest balance debt first. 5. Snowball once that is paid off, by taking the amount you had to pay for that debt each month at the start of the program and applying it to the next smallest debt. 6. Keep snowballing in the same way on your other debts. 7. If you can sell something, do that and apply the money to your snowball.
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If you can refinance your house to pay off credit card or
other high interest debt, that is usually a good move. Home loans
are below 7%, many credit card rates are over 20%. Caution - this
is only a good move if you have the discipline to: |
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I recommend you set up a private mailbox at a place like the
UPS store - you get to use the street address of that store as
your address, which does two really good things: |
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Love kids? |
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What could be as much fun as getting paid to be goofy?
I am a professional clown. I got my start when my granddaughter wanted a clown for her birthday party. My daughter couldn't afford the $150 per hour fee, so I filled in. I had a blast doing it, so sought out the help of more experienced clowns to see if I could do this more frequently and better.
In almost every city in America there exists a "Clown Alley" - a club for clowns. They are always welcoming to those who want to get into clowning. They'll help you create a clown character, makeup and get you involved in skits to polish your performances. They'll teach you clown skills like balloon twisting, pratfalls and how to pull off corny gags. You can find a clown alley at one of the two major clown association websites:
http://www.coai.org Clowns of America, International http://worldclown.com/membership-regions-alleysWorld Clown Association
There are also independent clown alleys that don't belong to either group. Do a google search for clowns in your city and contact one, they'll probably be happy to tell you where and when the next meeting will be.
My clown persona is a pirate. My clown website is at Piglegpete.com
You can do both volunteer gigs at nursing homes and Boys & Girls Clubs, and paid gigs at birthday parties, festivals and trade shows.
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Are you an artist? We are not talking complicated art here,
just simple designs. You will have people standing in line
waiting to give you money - how cool is that? |
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Most kids have grandparents, but for many children their grandparents are hundreds of miles away, and some may never see them. Yet grandparents can be the solution to many problems that young parents face. While young parents are often working multiple jobs to make ends meet, grandparents can make more time for the kids. While young parents may be facing struggles financially and in their relationships, grandparents are seen as more stable and wise.
Duties usually involves simply spending time with the kids. Think of the Big Brother/Big Sister idea, also meant to give kids companionship. Seniors are seen as more mature, and more trustworthy. You might be taking them to the movies, playing board games, sitting and watching them at a playground, or even counseling them when they are acting up.
Rentagrandma.com and Rentagrandpa.com are websites that serve this area. Rentagrandpa.com is for handyman type services, while rentagrandma.com is just about everything. Rentagrandma.com was a featured business on SharkTank, though they did not receive the funding the business was launched anyway. One downside, they require a $25 fee to be listed on their site. http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/220387 about rentagrandma.com
I think the better way to go would be to launch your own business, and advertise where you are likely to find parents of young children.
An interesting discussion from the UK illustrates the need is more than just in the US http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/parenting/a1065442-Any-Grandparents-for-hire
Another discussion: http://amberpagewrites.com/2013/01/rent-a-grandparent-the-best-idea-no-ones-ever-had.html |
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It is sad to see, but many kids today are growing up without
any good guidance from their parents. It isn't that the parents
don't care, but it is hard to give advice on money management
when you find yourself drowning in debt. It is hard to teach
relationships when your own may be on rocky ground. |
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Some things you can do with young people will get your
adrenaline going. Youth now are paying to have an adult ride
along with them, due to what is called Graduated Drivers License
laws being encacted in many states. The new driver must have so
many hours with an adult in the vehicle before they and their
friends can go off alone. The worst possible scenario for the
teen is usually to have their parents with them in the car when
they are out to have fun.
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Delaware's GDL law also includes a seat belt provision. If a teen
driver with a permit or their passenger under age 18 is found not
to be wearing a seat belt, the permit holder will have their
license suspended for 2 months.
Sources: Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and State Highway Safety Offices. |
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If a child is having problems with math, are the parents
nowadays going to help them with their math homework? Hardly
ever. Most parents are exhausted at the end of the day, and many
of them are poor at math themselves. |
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Believe it or not, you can get paid just for telling stories.
Most people get started reading to groups of kids, but then start
ad-libbing and adapting different voices for different
characters. Eventually, you could enter national story-telling
competitions! |
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"Do what you love and the money will follow" |
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Everyone knows what calligraphy basically is - making
beautiful letters |
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Are you an artist? Photographer? A poet and you know
it? |
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There are many ways to sell your craft items, but the ideal is
probably to sell many at once with recurring multiple sales,
instead of one at a time. |
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One of the more suprising turnarounds has been the resurgence
of the popularity of the apron. It used to be very common for
housewives in the kitchen to always have an apron on till the
meal was ready, then take it off and sit down to eat. Then for
many years people got away from using them. |
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Love animals? |
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Without getting crude about it, if you have a male and a
female pet that are both 'unfixed' - you have a pet breeding
business. |
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Dogs need exercise. |
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Dogs are man's best friend, they say - but they are more than
that. Truth be told, they are also totally dependent on us. Few
dogs could survive for long on their own - yet the owners might
need to go on a trip or be away for a period of time. The same is
true for cats, birds, reptiles - even fish. They need care, and
if the owners aren't around, the solution is the pet sitting
business. |
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Pets don't need clothes, do they? Yet for many owners, their
pet is their baby. They enjoy dressing them up, whether it is for
Halloween or everyday.
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Animal grooming is another niche for animal lovers. |
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Spread the word about your pooper-scooper service by advertising in local newspapers, pinning fliers to bulletin boards, and through dog-related businesses and clubs in the community. Most services charge a flat monthly rate of between $30 and $60 to stop by customers' homes or businesses weekly to clean up their yards, which takes no more than 10 minutes per visit. You'll need reliable transportation, a cell phone, garbage buckets, plastic bags, shovels, gloves and a good pair of rubber boots. |
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If plants are your passion, there are many niches that you can
get into for part-time income. We are not even going to cover
growing plants that are illegal still in many jurisdictions
;-) |
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Everybody loves flowers, but not everyone can grow them. You can make quite good money growing flower starts for local gardeners. These could be sold at farmers markets, swap meets and any public gathering event. Some types of flowers - African violets for example - have dedicated groups of collectors and shows in many areas throughout the year. |
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Worms. Yes, worms. They are very useful for gardeners (the
castings make super topsoil) and for fishers. They can be grown
just about anywhere, and don't take much space. A cup of worms
will sell for about $4, and contain probably 10-20 worms. You can
buy a pound of worms to get started with for around 24
dollars |
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If you have bought fresh mushrooms in the store, you'll know they are expensive. You can grow your own for profit, and they require very little attention. Oyster mushrooms, a type of exotic mushroom, are one of the easiest exotic mushrooms to grow. They can grow in about six weeks’ time, and go for about $6 per pound. In a growing area that measures about 100 square feet, you can produce around 2,500 pounds of mushrooms a year. Selling at $6 a pound, that means even a tiny 100 square foot growing area can be worth about $15,000 a year.
http://www.naturalresources.msstate.edu/business/mushrooms.asp https://www.mushroompeople.com/growing-mushrooms-commercially/ https://www.mushroompeople.com/growing-mushrooms-commercially/ http://www.hobbyfarms.com/crops-and-gardening/mushroom-farming-14815.aspx |
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Growing herbs is an option that doesn't require much space.
You can sell them to restaurants, at farmers markets and even
online. |
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Many people now are concerned with mass-produced food, and
seek out organic, natural, local sourced, non-GMO
vegetables. |
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With a single hive and some equipment for an initial
investment of about $300, a home beekeeper could harvest about
100 pounds of honey, or 36 quarts, every six months, said Ray
Morris, who works as a professor of engineering at Florida
Polytechnic University in his "day job." At the going
price of up to $20 per quart of honey in today's market, that's
more than enough to recoup the initial investment. You can also
make money from pollination placement of hives near farms and
orchards and gardens. Even more profitable products from your bee
hives will be beeswax and what is called 'royal
jelly'. |
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Are you handy with tools? |
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Lawn mowers, edgers, leaf blowers, pumps and generators all
basically have the same engines, and small engine repair does not
require you to have the heavy duty lifting equipment you need to
do car engine repair. |
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Use a well sharpened knife and a dull one, and there is a
world of difference. A sharpening service can do knives for
restaurants, drill bits for shops, lawnmower blades for
landscapers, etc. |
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For a few hundred dollars you can buy a pressure washer at
Lowes or Costco or many other places, and then offer a pressure
washing service. You can pressure wash sidewalks, driveways,
siding, roofs, rvs, hot tubs, car undercarriages, and ??? |
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Engraving can be a fun and profitable business. You can
engrave plastic, metal, wood, just about anything. Make signs,
nameplates, awards,
etc. |
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If you can fix things well and for a reasonable rate, you'll
be called back over and over - because things are always
breaking. |
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Have extra stuff in your house? Can't park the car in the
garage for lack of room? Storage space full? |
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Everybody knows eBay, yet surprisingly few people are actually
selling on it. The process is actually quite easy, and you can
put 50 items on ebay per month with no listing fee (at the time
of this writing), so it really costs nothing to give it a try. If
the item does sell, you will have to pay the approximately 13% in
eBay and Paypal fees. |
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I'm a flea market junkie - I love spending hours just browsing
through the varied things available. Also called swap meets, they
are fun to shop at, and profitable to sell your stuff at! The
cost to sell is very low - often around $20 per day. Anything you
sell above that is yours to keep. |
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Yard sales are the simplest way to get rid of a lot of stuff
quickly and at a good profit. |
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Your greatest asset - any human's greatest asset - is between the ears. The human brain is perhaps the most amazing thing in the universe. Experts estimate that, over the course of a lifetime, modern human brains will retain up to 1 quadrillion pieces of information.
Time to turn some of that information into money! |
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If I were to boil consulting down into one short phrase, it
would be 'problem solving.' The client has a problem, your job is
to come up with a solution. |
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A coach is a combination of consultant, confidant and nag.
Their specialty is helping people acheive personal goals, whether
that be quitting smoking or making a million
dollars. |
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Know something?
Share that knowledge by teaching adults in a noncredit class. There are several great advantages:
1. Just about every town over a couple thousand people has a community college, most of which offer noncredit classes. This means whereever you'd like to travel, you can propose a teaching gig. 2. This may make travel tax deductible in most cases. 3. The class is only 2-3 hours per day, leaving the rest of the time free for you to have fun in. 4. You don't need any degree to teach at most community colleges or at private schools. 5. It is a great way of establishing yourself as an expert. 6. The pay can be decent. In most cases you'll be working for a percentage of the tuition. That usually is 25% on the low end, but can be negotiated much higher if your classes are popular. Assume $40 per class, 25% would be $10 per student. Get 10 students in a class and that is $100, about $33 per hour for a 3 hour class.
Most commonly you'll find these types of classes at community colleges, but also at private schools, universities, school districts, even parks and recreation departments. I have taught classes in New York, Rhode Island, Massachussets, Maine, Florida, North Carolina, Illinois, Indiana, Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, California and Washington State.
Send in a proposal! |
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Watch late night informercials, and you'll see people telling
you how to get rich with classified ads, how to buy houses with
no money down, or how to invest in gold futures. These people are
not getting rich by buying houses with no money down, but by
selling you information. |
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Some folks have musical talent, while there are those of us
that cause people to flee in horror when we try. |
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Busking has a long and glorious history going back as far as recorded history.
Create your own venue to present your music, painting skill, magic or antics to an audience. Go where the people are. This is called street performance, more commonly known as busking.
Famous buskers who made it big include Bob Dylan, River Phoenix, Simon and Garfunkel, Jimmy Buffett, Bob Hope, and the founders of "Cirque du Soleil" so you’re in good company. Many entertainers have paid for their education, started careers and even travelled the world, with the money they made from busking.
http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/life-tunnel-mole http://diymusician.cdbaby.com/2013/02/busking-tips-from-june-caravel-of-busking-in-australia/ |
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You can present workshops in your talent, music or otherwise.
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There are many opportunities to use your voice to make money.
This could be the audio track for a commercial, a message on a
voice mail system, reading of text to create an audiobook, or the
voice of a video game character. |
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Are you a great cook? |
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Most states now have some form of cottage food law that allows
you to make certain items in your home kitchen and then sell
them. In most cases this means you don't have to get your kitchen
inspected or meet all the requirements of a full commercial
kitchen. Typical items allowed to be made are baked goods, jams,
candies and other 'non-risky' foods. |
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For a lot of people, their ability at cooking is measured by
how long to put the item in the microwave for. |
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Many busy households are giving themselves a treat a couple times a month - they have a personal chef come in and prepare a meal for them.
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Do you know a foreign language? Are you skilled with the
English language? |
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Interpretation is needed in almost any
language. |
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Most adults say they'd like to learn a new language, and most
immigrants sincerely want to learn English. |
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Freelance writing work abounds. There are tens of thousands of
magazines - all need articles. There are millions of websites and
blogs that will also pay for
articles. |
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Love people? |
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Do you love travel? Do you like making new friends? |
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Think of Welcome Wagon. You greet newcomers and give them
samples from local businesses. The local businesses win because
they get first crack at the newcomer's business. |
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Blessed are the peacemakers... |
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Consider yourself somewhat of a geek? |
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If you know someone who as a computer - you know someone who
has a computer problem. |
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If you have ever opened up your computer, you'll find that
everything in there is modular. Each module is held in with 1,2
or 4 screws and a wire clip. Computer repair rarely involves
soldering any
more. |
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If you have plenty of time, you can trade that for money. |
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Some things used to be done primarily by kids, but now are
almost exclusively done by adults. One of those is newspaper
delivery. |
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Some people get paid just for spending time with other people.
There are many lonely people out there. They could be seniors,
shut-ins, or just lonely
folks. |
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There are people who must be or choose to be away from home
for a period, and they do not want their house falling into
neglect, and they do not want it attractive to burglers who look
for unoccupied places. The solution is to hire a house
sitter. |
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There are a lot of opportunities to get paid for doing what you would be doing anyway. You have to get your oil changed anyway, why not do it so it is not only free but you make a little extra money?
Mystery shopping, also known as secret shopping, involves posing as a regular customer in order to evaluate the goods and services that a business provides. Mystery shopping will reimburse you for what you have to spend, plus a shop fee for filling out the evaluation form.
There are a lot of scams in this field, so be careful. If an opportunity is on the up and up, you won't have to pay an application fee or deposit a check and wire money on to someone else.
http://mysteryshop.org Mystery Shopping Providers Association http://bizshop.com/description.php/MMYSTERY Includes a directory of legitimate companies
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If you have or can find space, turn that into money. |
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If you see a big empty indoor space, the owner of that space
is probably not a happy camper. It could be where a supermarket
used to be, or an old warehouse. The owner is still paying
property taxes and probably insurance and a mortgage for the
space. It might have been sitting for a long time with an
"Available" sign on it. |
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If you see a parking lot sitting empty, you can rent that out
for the weekend. What would you do with a parking lot? |
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It used to be traditional for homeowners to take in boarders
for any empty rooms they had. That went away for a time, but it
has come back with a passion lately. The Internet has made it
easy to advertise the rooms, and easy for people looking for a
place to stay to find
hosts. |
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International students come here to learn English, and they
want to learn how American families live. They could be coming
for High School, College or post Graduate study, but they all
share one thing in common - they need a place to stay. They much
prefer, and their parents prefer, that this be in a home-stay
environment rather than a dorm. |
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Many people who want to make money part-time would like to do
it in their pajamas, through the screen of their computer. |
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Amazon has a marketplace where you can find simple gigs that
will take only a couple minutes to complete. The Mechanical Turk
service gives businesses access to a diverse, on-demand, scalable
workforce and gives Workers a selection of thousands of tasks to
complete whenever it's convenient. |
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Create a niche website, and you can be making money from it in
a whole variety of ways: |
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There are many sites that cater to those who want to do
freelance writing, or programming, or graphics. These serve as
marketplaces where you can search for jobs and prospective
clients can search for those willing to do
jobs. |
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What would you do for a Snickers Bar? |
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Believe it or not, some people get paid for doing Internet
searches. There are also a lot of scams in this field. |
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http://BackDoorJobs.com: Short-term jobs (teach abroad, farm jobs, wilderness therapy ventures, etc.) in the US and overseas.
http://CoolWorks.com: Seasonal and summer job listings at places like resorts, ski attractions and the national parks. |
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Santa Claus and
helpers |
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I know, a four letter word.
Still, some prefer a paycheck to entrepreneurship.
http://aol.careerbuilder.com/jobseeker/jobs/advancedsearch.aspx and then select part-time, contract and/or seasonal, as desired. |
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If you have a cellphone and a vehicle, and most of have both of those, then you can start a lucrative sideline business. |
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Look around your neighborhood, and look at the competition for
most types of businesses. If one of them could offer delivery -
or pickup and delivery, they could gain an advantage over their
competitors. Yet, they do not have extra staff that they can
afford to have someone out doing deliveries. |
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Ridesharing has sprung up around the world as an alternative
to taxis and other public transportation. All it takes is you,
phone and car. |
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I live in a small town 3 hours away from the big cities.
Others live in communities quite a distance away from the
shopping centers, or may have limited mobility. |
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Don’t need your car on the weekend or during the day? Going
on a trip? Services like Getaround and RelayRides let you rent
out your car by the hour, while FlightCar arranges for an
incoming traveler to rent your car rather than you having to pay
for airport parking and letting it sit
idle. |
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/home/bizshop/cd/Parttime/parttimemoney.html |
2014-10-30 |
