Got A Spare Bedroom?

If you have a spare bedroom I found a fantastic way to turn it into cash. You can list it on a website (link below) as a sort of bed and breakfast overnight rental. You list your property with pictures, amenities, and a description for FREE. Potential travelers contact you directly and book through the website. Funds are released to you 24 hours after they check in.

After the stay, you BOTH write a review of each other and post it to the website. You don't have to be a homeowner, you can be a tenant. Many of the listings in my area included a small breakfast.

Make Your Own Part Time Job

In order to earn egg and butter money sometimes you can have a lazy strategy, but for the most part you are going to have to have some get up and go.

Today's suggestion involves some get up and go. Start a part time (or full time) cleaning business. When you clean as a job you are probably looking at minimum wage money. However, when it is your own business, you are looking at $20-$30 per hour on average.

Let me make it clear that I am not talking about buying a franchise. Rip off!!! So you are wondering how you get clients, right? Everybody shops somewhere, knows people, and basically gets out and about. Just start asking. When you go to the restaurant, hardware store, ANYWHERE take two minutes to ask the manager if they would consider someone to come and clean their store. Figure out how many hours it would take you to clean the place and multiply the amount of hours by $25.

Give them more than they expect - wash windows even though it isn't in your contract, you should be able to eat off the porcelain in the bathroom, scruuub, scruuub, scruuub. Your benchmark when you leave the place is "Does it SPARKLE?

You will be amazed at the power of word of mouth advertising once your first client is happy. If you want to place a small ad in the local paper that may bring some business, but remember Craigslist is FREEEEE!!!

Which cleaning products to use? The cheapest and most effective possible. Also, for my own health I use an enzyme based cleaner as opposed to a chemical based cleaner. This product is a concentrate. You mix it with a few drops of concentrate and a spray bottle full of water. It works great and costs not even pennies per use.



I can't really tell you what you can earn cleaning. I guess that depends of the level of your get up and go.

For more information on running a commercial cleaning business
Click Here!

Almost Effortless Money

My ten year old daughter started her aluminum can business five years ago. She asked as many relatives and my friends to save cans for her as she could think of. Every few months we picked them up and cashed them in. She has made as much as $30 in one business transaction. Over the past five years she has made hundreds of dollars.

A couple of days ago she took home $14 with the price of aluminum at $.70. Remember "egg and butter money" is a little here and a little there and it starts to add up. Fourteen dollars could help pay a bill, get a meal at a restaurant, or some groceries.

Remember, you can do this with all metals. My friend removed a cast iron bathtub during a rehab and instead of taking it to the curb, he took it to the scrap yard and got $35. It took some muscle and a friend but it was still $35.

This is the wonderful book that I first got the idea for the blog from. There is a series if you wish to explore.

A Little Money For A Little Money

I have found that from time to time keeping it small is best, especially to try something out.  So here is an idea you can start on as little as $100 or less. Check your Cragislist postings for "vending" in the search bar. All kinds of different vending machines will appear. Look for the type of machine that vends gumballs and hard candy. We aren't looking here for soda machines or candy bar machines. We don't want anything electronic. Also, we aren't vending chocolate. It melts and stales too easily. The type of candy we are vending is gumballs, Skittles, those hard yellow banana shaped and flavored candies - you get the picture, right?  Look for machines with three vending windows.  Put a quarter in each mechanism to make sure it works properly. The mechanism is the only part that would have to be replaced on this type of machine, so make sure it is functioning before you purchase the machine.

You can get a used vending machine of this type for $25 if you are patient.

Next, where to place it. Put yourself in the shoes of a business owner. If you walk into a place and say, "Can I put my machine in your lobby?" What's in it for him or her?  But if you share the take with them they have an incentive to listen.  Offer one quarter in four to them. This still will warrant you a profit, and it is a win-win situation.  Go to some businesses that you frequent regularly. Also, target mom and pop type shops so you don't have to go up the food chain for approval. Pick places that kids frequent. How many times have you heard a kid begging for a quarter for the vending machine?

You can check Sam's Club for candy prices, they are usually pretty good. Also, keep your eye out for coupons to get better prices.

This little side business could net you $30-$100 per month depending on traffic. You should only have to visit your machine to collect money and replenish candy once per month.

For more information on how to EXPAND your vending sideline from someone who has 500+ machines
Click Here!

Inspired By The Past

I read an article from a wonderful book written by Barbara Swell called Old-Time Farmhouse Cooking.
In the more argrarian days of the United States, wives of farmers made extra money for themselves and their children by selling the extra eggs and butter off the farm. This "egg and butter" money bought the extras and sometimes the essentials that the farm family needed.

This is the article:

The Poultry Queeen of Iowa

Farm and Fireside, 1907

"Mrs. Johnson, of Iowa, was a woman of too much spirit to waste any time in vail repining when she found herself with a husband suddenly incapacitated, and four little children looking to her for their support.  She decided that there was money in eggs and chickens, and she set to work to demonstrate some of her theories.  Mrs. Johnson took a thermometer and made a record of the temperature at which her laying hen, madame Biddy, kept her eggs.  Then she constructed an incubator of her own, using a couple of old wooden boxes. In theis homemade contraption, she put one hundred and sixteen eggs, and kept her lamps burning carefully for three weeks.  One hundred and five little chicks later, Mrs. Johnson would go into the chicken business and she would make it pay. She has suceeded so well that she is now known throughout the West as the "Poultry Queen of Iowa."

"In eight years, Mrs. Johnson made a living for the family, paid the help, bought farm machinery, built a new house, barn, double cribs, hog house, poultry house, smoke house, ice house, wash house, and tree brooders, and paid a debt of $14,000 on her mortgaged farm. She says, "I have two sons in college, and old Biddy is footing the bills."

So with this story in mind, I have started this blog to apply the same spirit to the twenty first century.  Creativity could be the cure for the problems of so many people out of work. This isn't a get rich quick philosophy.  It's a little money here and a little money there and before you know it, you create a steady income without having to get a job. Some ideas will cost a little to get going, some ideas are free or for pennies.  Add your ideas too.