Right now, I am desperate for money. About a month ago I was over $600 in debt. Now I'm close to $200. Almost there. I have such a hectic difficult semester right now though that I cannot afford to spend time on a job I am obligated to attend because who knows when I'll have a huge project due. So I have come up with a few alternative ideas to make money for myself.
Publish a book. Lulu.com lets you self publish books that you have written. I am looking into making a children's book, possibly with my boyfriend who is also an artist and who is good at writing. I know what elements in a book are appropriate and which are not, as well as a wonderful literacy teacher and an early childhood education teacher who I am sure would be willing to look over my book for appropriate content as well as quality. I plan on doing this for the rest of my life and this would be a very beneficial way to make money because it would also be such a great learning experience.
Make an indie game for Xbox. For $100 a year, Microsoft lets you create, share, and rate indie games. I am hoping one of my buddies will sponsor me in the monetary aspect of this endeavor. I know I have a whole team of guys who would be good at all the aspects of making a video game. I have one for graphics, sound, story, characters, and marketing. The only problem is that splitting the money six ways could be troublesome. It would really be a good learning experience in graphics, teamwork, and marketing for me, so even if I don't make very much it would still be worthwhile.
Create an auction-style website. One of my buddies came up with this idea and he really believes in it and wants me in on it as well. We are hoping to create a website that is similar to Beezid in the way that it charges users to place a bid and each item doesn't have a definite ending time, it resets after each bid. Also, each bid only makes the price go up $0.01. Beezid charges $1 for each bid, but we would charge about half that. On an item that sells for $1, they make $100. Brilliant. Even if we sold an Xbox 360 for $30 (I saw that happen the other day) we would make $1500 off it. And yes, people actually do use Beezid even though they pay so much for a single bid. I'm just hoping if we set this up we can be successful as well. Though, we're probably going to need a lawyer to create a website like this, so we'll see. Like I said with the previous idea, I do have a friend who is pretty well off and is basically best friends with the guy who came up with this idea, so, if we get him in on the profit, we might be able to have him get us off the ground with this.
Create an App or a Facebook game. App development would be a lot more difficult than a Facebook game, but people actually pay for Apps on a regular basis. Think about Farmville. They created a few very basic sprites, and not too many terribly intense graphics and it runs fairly simply. Many do not pay for this game, but there are some that do. They even sell Farmville cash at GameStop. I am not sure what the cost of publishing a game on Facebook is, but I can imagine the people who created Farmville are making a good chunk of cash off of something that took very basic knowledge and talent to create (albeit a load of luck). I will need to look into this option a little more
Sell my stuff. Right now, I am in the process of selling my books, movies and CDs to Hastings. I didn't even sell very much (a couple of bags full of mostly books) and I ended up with enough store credit to get myself an Xbox 360. I plan on selling the items worth a little more on eBay (such as my Beatles Capitol Records Vol. 1 and 2). I also hope to go to a ton of garage sales this summer (especially in the more ritzy neighborhoods) and pick up books to sell. I was getting anywhere from $1-7 for each book but I only spent about $0.50 on each one.
Commission. I almost made some good money over break for creating a graphic for some Christmas cards for my dad's work. If his boss wasn't so lazy about it, I would've gotten paid, but he decided against it (which put the whole office in an uproar because they liked my design better haha). Anyways, my point is, there are a lot of companies that do not have a graphic artist on hand but need somebody for trivial jobs such as Christmas cards. Because I am willing to work for dirt-cheap (possibly even a gift card) I might be able to gain experience in my field while making a little bit of money. Mostly though, this would be a good thing to put in a resume for later on.
So maybe these things will take more time and effort than having an actual job. These things are all things I enjoy, and are things that do not involve answering to someone 24/7. I can use my creativity in the comfort of my home and work on my own time. Plus, most of these things involve working with my boyfriend and my friends ...it doesn't get any better than that! I'm going to get a nanny job over the summer, but for now I am excited to try to make money in creative ways.
I'll probably update my progress with these ideas in a month or so. Spring Break will probably be when I will get one of these projects started.
"Whoever said money can't buy happiness simply didn't know where to go shopping."
Bo Derek
