Four Ways To Make Extra Money

There are a thousand ways to make extra money. Of course you may not have the knowledge, training or experience to succeed with some of them. Or you may not have enough money to take advantage of some opportunities. That's why the following methods are all about using what you already have.

Use Your Knowledge of Values

All of us have some idea of what some things should cost, but we are all most familiar with prices in one area or another. Identify those areas where you are best at determining the value of things. This is where the profit opportunity is.

For example, a neighbor of mine could say what a car would sell for within a few hundred dollars. So when he saw a used car for sale and knew it would bring $3,000 after a bit of cleaning, he would offer $1,500 for it. If the answer was no, he quickly moved on until he found a seller ready to get rid of a vehicle cheap. Then he spent an hour or two cleaning up the car and selling it for decent profit.

The principle is what matters here. You Don?t need to know about cars. Ask yourself what can you put a price on and find a buyer for, and you have a potential source of extra money. One man I knew regularly bought used restaurant equipment for half of what it could be sold for. Engagement rings, dogs, and other things are "turned" for a profit in this way as well.

If you have no cash to invest, you can use credit card advances to do this. If you can make $1000 buying and reselling a coin collection, does $100 in fees and interest matter? Or you can find a partner to finance the deals at first. I have a friend who knows pickup trucks but rarely has cash saved. If he finds a truck for $2,000 that will sell for $4,500, he comes to me. I put up the money for half of the profit and we both do well.

Rent Rooms in Your Home

When I was younger I had a mobile home on a small lot. I paid off the mortgage, so my expenses were low, but I wanted to make some extra money as well, so I rented the spare bedrooms. The two rooms provided over $7,000 extra income annually, and I had decent renters. Having another person in the house adds little to the utilities, so the rent collected is almost all profit.

Make More Money In Your Business

If you have a business, why not mine your customer list for treasure. For example, if you run a window-cleaning business, you can call all previous customers in a certain area and offer a discount if they would like their windows cleaned the following week. Keeping it to one area makes it efficient so you can still make a decent profit while offering a lower price.

If you have a mailing list of your customers you can offer to present them with an offer from a non-competing business, for a fee or commission. Even customers that you have lost can be a profit source. Just introduce them to a competitor who can better serve their needs, again for a fee.

Sell Affiliate Products

When people visit my backpacking web site they sometimes click on the links I have put there and buy a tent or a sleeping bag. When that happens I get paid commission of about 7%. I just write about a subject that interests me, people come to read my pages, and they sometimes buy products that I link to. It is an example of basic affiliate marketing. Commissions range as high as 75% on some products, by the way, and you can start with a free blog on any topic of interest to you, and so make extra money without investing a dime.

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Five More Unusual Ways To Make Money

There are a lot of ways to make money if you have money. You don't have to turn to complicated businesses or ordinary ways like bank C.D.'s. And you don't even have to use your money. If you have Credit Cards, for example, you can get cash advances, and make money with the cash. These are ways that aren't quite a business because you can do them once or only when you feel like it.

Invest In Other's Expertise

My friend John had to show me several car magazines before I understood why an old fiberglass car was a good deal at $2,300, because I know nothing about cars. When he eventually convinced me to put up the money, it needed a new transmission for $900. Fortunately, he sold the corvette for $4,300, netting us about $1,000. I took half the profit ($500) for putting up the money for the two weeks.

I used to do this quite a bit years ago, and only once lost $50 or so on a car. I knew nothing about cars, so I did it with friends that know cars but don't have cash. By the way, if I had paid 18% interest and a $50 cash advance fee to raise the money with a credit card, my profit would still have been over $400, and John did all the work. I love playing with money. Do you have any friends who know everything about boats?

Buy And Sell Mobile Homes

Pay cash and you get better prices on almost anything, including mobile homes. Sell with easy terms, and you get the highest price, because you are making it possible for someone to buy a home. More than one investor out there is buying and selling mobile homes.

I read one investors story about a recent deal he did. He bought a mobile for $4,000. The seller was asking $6,500, but was tired of waiting and paying the lot rent. The investor cleaned it up and sold it for $10,000, with $1000 down, payments of $250, and 10% interest on the balance. Did the buyer overpay? Hard to say, since his alternative may have been renting and having nothing to show for it in a few years, instead of having a home with some residual value.

Be A Loan Shark

People occasionally need money for a short while. A friend of mine for example, got a good paying construction job because I loaned him $300 to get drywall stilts. I used to do this often many years ago, and I never charged less than a $5/week as a loan fee (don't call it interest). I made one or two thousand dollars extra some years doing this. If you have any qualms about it, check the laws in your area and put it all in writing. Also, if you want total security, take collateral.

Buy And Sell Estates

We recently met a couple who buy out estates, sell some of the things at flea markets, then run the rest through auctions. They've made a living doing this for years. They load up a trailer after negotiating to buy a whole house full of stuff. Then, if they don't want to do the flea market thing, they just auction everything on Sunday afternoon for a nice profit.
If you are a good judge of value and have a regular auction nearby, you could do the same with rummage sales. Just offer $100 for everything and then auction it off piece-by-piece. The auction near us lets anyone sell their stuff, with no fee to enter. They just take a 25% commission.

Playing With The Casino's Money

I worked at a casino for years and I saw a lot of people foolishly writing down the numbers that came up on the roulette wheel. Foolishly, I say, because their their theories were nonsense. Casinos will always welcome these players and even hand them the pen and paper.

One player, however, was actually scientific about it. By finding a bias in the wheel, after "charting" it for 5,000 spins, he made thousands betting on just one or two numbers. When a number comes up, it pays 35 to 1, but one of the numbers, because of manufacturing imperfections or whatever reason, was coming up 1 in 27 spins, instead of the average 1 in 38 spins.

So all he had to do was bet $10 a spin, and he profited $80 for every 27 spins of the wheel in the long run. That's about $100 per hour. The ups and downs are dramatic though, so this is not for the faint-hearted. In this case, I saw him lose as much as $700 in a night. Also, not all wheels have biases (they eventually replaced that wheel). So have you ever tried "card counting" in blackjack...? There are endless ways to make money.

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