The $100 Hour - Income Stream Ideas

[Arsinoe]

WISH: Recently I read Barbara J. Winter's book, "Making a Living Without a Job: winning ways for creating work that you love." Winter has many outstanding ideas. One of her ideas is to set aside time each day to come up with ideas that will bring you $100. During that hour you do not have to complete the plan, but if time permits begin to do research, make calls, write letters--anything that advances the goal of bring in $100. This technique can be used to focus on a single profit center (in this case, each day try to bring in an additional hundred dollars), or to generate new interests and profit streams. I have begun using this technique and find that it works well. OBSTACLE: I am trying to generate as many novel ideas as possible. What ideas do you have for earning $100.? [Note: I am not posting my particular skills just yet, because I want to generate a wide variety of ideas. That way I can work with those ideas, and also the posts will help others with different skills.]

[PeterH]

sell 4 books at $25 each....or in order to keep $100, sell 10 books at $25 each = 250. your profit should be around $100.

[Arsinoe]

Thanks, Peter. That's a great idea for me. I have several thousand books, some rare and some that are no longer of interest. Also have a closet filled with old art magazines. Where are the best places to sell books to get the best prices?

[Meerschaum]

Arsinoe, forgive me for being pedantic, but your above expressed obstacle appears, to me, to be a WISH. Could you clarify the obstacle? That aside, in regard to your books: in NYC, (I believe you are a New Yorker?) there is a wonderful book called "Marden's Guide to New York Booksellers". It includes a lot of used & out-of-print shops. If I were going to try to sell books, I imagine I might make the effort to contact these vendors, one by one, to see who might be interested in doing what. I also have several stores, NYC and others, in my database, which I wouldn't mind faxing to you, (or e-mailing, if you can open a FileMaker Pro document). Amazon.com has an out-of print book search, with which I imagine that you could register as a supplier, given the number of volumes that you possess. Alibris and others, including Barnes and Nobles, offer book searches as well. Here are some book sites on the web: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/home/home.html/002-6493057-5510617 http://www.alibris.com/cgi-bin/texis/searcher http://www.keplers.com/ http://www.booksearch.com/request.html http://www.auldbooks.com/biblio/asubs/ http://abaa.org/ http://www.scaruffi.com/fiction/booksell.html http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/oopbooks/oopsearch http://www.avenuevictorhugobooks.com/ Unfortunately, I have nothing to offer concerning prices and who might pay well....

[PeterH]

Sorry if you misunderstood...i meant opening a trading account with publishers and selling new books ------------------ Peter-Melbourne-Australia

[Arsinoe]

Meershaum, that wasn\'t pedantic at all. OBSTACLE: I love the idea of the $100. Hour, and it seems to work pretty well. My obstacle is that I am afraid that I might run out of profitable ideas (I certainly have an abundance of ways to lose $100.) Thanks for that great list of book selling/buying links. I will bookmark all of them. I can open Filemaker Pro files. My email address is arsinoe_nyc@yahoo.com. I welcome all good leads. Peter, it was my misunderstanding. There is a new idea here. Hadn\'t thought of selling new books. To whom would I sell them? Here in NYC it\'s pretty hard to compete with Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Perhaps I could become a very specialized book seller, dealing in a narrow range of interests? Hi, \"Being\"! Your \"test\" came thorough fine. Do you have some great ideas for making $100.?

[MW]

Give 3 pedicures in your home. Come to my house and help me pack. Clean five bathrooms. Bake a wedding cake. Sing or juggle on the corner with a tip jar. Babysit three children. Send complaint letters to big corporations (They always send you something of value.) That's all I have off the top of my head. MW

[Transitionalgirl]

Okay, here goes(deep breath)... Locate a couple of antiques you aren't THAT attached to, or some pieces of jewelry you could see yourself parting with and take them to a dealer or even a flea market. Have a garage sale. Buy junky furniture at garage sales or flea markets, fix them up and sell for 3x the price. Do telemarketing for a week. Cater a special party, wedding or corparate function. Design a web site for a new business, or an existing one that wants to get on line Open or close someone's pool or summer cottage. Offer to be a naked model for an art class (hey, I'm just brainstorming here! ) Trace someone's family tree and prepare an on line presentation they can email to all the relations. Have a home party (I once earned over $100 in merchandise when I held a Partylite candle party in my home) Tune up or repair a friend's car or major appliance. Borrow and drive a friend's cab for the weekend. More later... ------------------ Julia

[Arsinoe]

Wow, these are so terrific. I will be able to find something useful in every idea. Even the things that I can't do now have given me great ideas. For example, I can't "tune up" a car, but I could tune-up someone's aging computer. Keep the ideas coming!

[Confused empty nester]

Hi Arsinoe, I had a thought or two. About making money, maybe not $100 hr at first but you do know a lot about photography, why not do up a little book of your own How Tos and sell them on the net? Or how about contacting emerging artists and appraising their artworks for a cut of the selling price, (I'd be willing to pay you on that basis!!!) anyway just tossing my penny's worth in. Ms MC

[Being _All_Iam]

Hi Thanks for the welcome. Since you live in NYC and you know much about art history and probably many other things would make you an interesting escort. Advertise as an escort or tour service to corporations with visitors from out of town. It used to be only men traveling, but today there are many women who travel for business and the same people who would buy a female escort for a male would buy a male for a female. (Sex is not always part of the Escort's job, but hey if you are unattached, why not?) Also speaking as a woman it would be nice to have just someone to escort you to events like gallery openings. It is quite often the reason woman have gay friends that they do these things with as oppossed to straight men; it isn't always about sex. There are these types of services on cruise ships where you can actually work as a contractor to be a woman's escort on the ship. Restoring old art work or opening a service like the traveling antique show that examines and tells people what their art is worth. Many people find old painitngs in aunt Lucy's attic and have no clue as to what they actually have. An example. An alunus from my college went to an estate sale and bought this huge painting for about $25.00. It is nearly 20ft tall. It is of three generations of men. He decided to donate it to the art department of the school if they would help him have its worth evaluated. His $25.00 purchased turned out to be an original Italian Girogio worth $20,000,000.00. The Italian government even brought a case against him to have it returned as a national treasure, but it is housed in the Fine Arts Department of Spring Hill College. You never know what treasures are there that people have no idea of what they actually have. Another suggestion is for the next time you are in a bookstore puraches "Success Magazine", "Entrepraunuer Magazine", or "Income Opportunities Magazine." Quite often these mags have lists of such ideas and the information of the how to who to and what to do to start these business ideas. ------------------ On the wings of a Snow White Dove [This message has been edited by Being _All_Iam (edited August 14, 2000).]

[Thayer]

Some days I would be tempted to pay someone $100 to do an hour's worth of ironing. - or an hour's worth of matching up outfits for me to wear - or an hour's worth of cooking dinner's I could freeze. There are definitely week's I'd pay $100 to have 5 casseroles/whatever in the freezer. Find people with looming deadlines that need an hour's worth of research or writing or typing. I've heard you can get $50 for typing a college student's term paper or thesis. (You'd have to be really fast for that to pay off in just an hour, though.) An hour's worth of decluttering for someone? When my grandmother moved out of her huge home and into a retirement apartment, she had someone who specialized in interior design come and help her decide what should go with her and how she should arrange what she really wanted to keep. The designer also helped the family make distinctions between valuable antiques and things with solely sentimental value. I don't know how much the woman made an hour, but it was a lot, and she was worth it. It helped take so much of the emotional stress off, and people will pay a lot for that. Along similar lines, my husband's grandmother just died, and his family might have been tempted to pay someone $100 an hour to go through the attic and throw out what was obviously junk and set aside anything antique or seemingly sentimental. With your artistic background, you might be good at these.

[Arsinoe]

There have been some great ideas in the art-related suggestions, too. I want to think them through a bit, before I comment further. I know that I have some follow-up questions, too. In this thread I was not so much seeking new career paths, but more the quicker fixes for cash while I work on my larger dreams... Something like, "shave your head and sell the hair to a wig maker." Thanks, guys, and do keep them coming--not just for me, but for others here.

[Galia]

Arsinoe - Am not sure how much time/energy you have to spend on this - Buy a bit of stage make-up and do children's face-painting in a mall (you'd probably need permission from the management), or in conjunction with a store. Paint your own face first, so no-one will recognise you. Anything that will cause small children to pester their parents is probably a good money-spinner. If you walk for exercise, offer to walk pedigree dogs at the same time (on the perhaps mistaken assumption that owners of pedigrees will pay more than owners of bitzers . . .) Grow seedlings in pots and sell them. Grow sprouts and sell them. Clean silver Babysit on special holidays so you can charge more (I know someone who made $300 last New Year's Eve, and the one coming up will be big too) If you can do basic knitting, try some long scarves in the colours of the local team and see if you can flog them to supporters Make fruit cheese/mustard/?? and sell it to a local deli Link up with an interior decorator and give specialist input into what sort of paintings the nouveau riche should hang on the walls of their penthouses to look more riche than nouveau My knowledge of NYC comes mainly from Breakfast at Tiffany's, An Affair to Remember Moonstruck and Seinfeld! I'm assuming you live in an apartment rather than in a house with a garden. If you do live close to suburbia, mowing a few lawns on a weekend would give you an easy $100, even if you had to hire a lawnmower to do them. Galia

[Arsinoe]

All of these suggestions are wonderful, and a bit overwhelming, too. I have committed myself to spending at least one hour massaging each one of these suggestions listed in this thread. Today I am starting up at the top with PeterH and Meerschaum's suggestions about selling books. That'a a particularly good one for me, because I already have a large supply on hand. Also, antiquarian bookselling is a good adjunct to art dealing. So I am starting at the top, and working my way down. Tomorrow I will take a hard look at the next idea, "give three pedicures in your home." There's an obstacle with that one, I don't know how to do a pedicure and never had one myself. Also, I think in NYC that you need a license. The part that I like, though, is the suggestion about offering a personal service in my home, something that can be done with flexible hours. So tomorrow I will think some more about that one. I also like the creative part of this. These days nail salons do lots of interesting designs. I bet that I could come up with simple designs that are more interesting than some of the others. Not sure whether I should skip around, and start with the most "promising" ideas, or work my way down the list as I just mentioned. There is something about going down the list in order that creates a good structure. Also, I think that some of the ideas that may seem at first to be less practical, will in the end force me out of my boxes and help generate more creative approaches.