While many of us will work a 9-5 or find a common side hustle, there are also plenty of weird ways to make extra money. There really is a market for almost anything where people are willing to spend their hard earned dollars. And with the continued advancement of technology and new companies, there are a lot of creative ways to make money.
Many of these ideas might be interesting if you are looking to make some extra cash. Others, might be a bit too weird or uh, even awkward for you. Either way, here are some weird ways to make money (and ones that many other people are doing currently).
1. Selling Plasma
The reason it’s popular is that it doesn’t take much time, you end up helping people, and you can make some money. But what is plasma? It’s the clear portion of your blood that contains water, salts, enzymes, antibodies and proteins. Your body produces it to form blood clots, fight diseases and more.
If you choose to sell your plasma, doctors use it to treat immune-system deficiencies, severe burns, and a variety of diseases. There are some limitations to how often you can donate and payment depends on a few factors. But if this stuff doesn’t make you squeamish, you can even make some cash doing this. More info here.
2. Bitcoin Mining
It’s also easy for anyone to open an account on a cryptocurrency exchange like Coinbase and link your bank account. This is where you can purchase and store any cryptocurrencies in your digital wallet.
But another way some people earn money is through Bitcoin mining. Mining involves purchasing and building computing equipment to confirm transactions in the blockchain. By doing this, you can generate more Bitcoins for free.
This does require technical skills to accomplish this correctly and requires some strong computing power, high electricity and internet bandwidth.
3. Wait in Line for People
You can actually hire people as your professional line sitter, where you pay them money to wait in line for you. So if you are someone who doesn’t mind waiting in lines, it might be a great way to make some cash. You can find this work through your own business (yes, people have made entire businesses out of this), Craigslist, or apps like TaskRabbit. Seriously, this guy made over $1,000 standing in line for people who wanted the new iPhones at the time via TaskRabbit.
5. Become a Professional Eater
If you love food and have the stomach to handle fast eating, people can make some decent cash. There are also some local ones you can enter or even at festivals. However, these probably do not pay out insanely high.
But if you are looking for some bigger eating events, you can find them on the Major League Eating website where prizes can be in the thousands.
6. Rent Yourself Out As A Friend
Yes, people get paid to be friends with others to hangout for events and other activities. There are websites to do this or I’m sure you could go into Craigslist to find some people looking to pay for your friendship. A bit weird and probably something to be a bit cautious about, but there are people making money and charging by the hour.
7. Paid to Fly Drones
There are people making good money as operators of drones in areas that would be considered “dangerous jobs” if a person were to do it. This of course requires you to own a drone, have any licenses and FAA exemptions, and be really good at flying a drone.
So let’s look at occupations and activities that can have a dangerous human element to it: energy company boiler inspections, oilfield companies, and windfarm inspections.
8. Framing Tweets And Selling Them
You can buy Tweets that are framed to hang wherever you like! Zach Katz started Framed Tweets in 2017 and he states on the site, “My mission is to bring the internet’s best tweets to life, for all to enjoy.”
Technically, it’s not that complicated to do, but he was the first to make it mainstream and now reaps the benefits of that. It’s simple, but with tons of well-known people, celebrities, athletes, and musicians saying random, funny, or iconic things — it’s a great way for people to have a talking piece in their home.