Scrapper’s Delight: Scrap Metal…The New “Gold”

You obviously don’t come to this site for same old make money free online ideas that you get on the majority of sites on the web.  You come here for fresh, cutting edge ideas.  Here’s one for you:

If you haven’t heard– prices for commodities like aluminum, copper and iron ore are on the rise as demand for them increases thanks to China and India.   There’s definitely an opportunity to make some money off these price increases that doesn’t include dumpster diving for soda and beer cans. 

Again, I’ll use this blogpost to point you toward Craig’s List.  Every CL city listing has a “For Sale” category under that category there are listings for “free items”.   If you check the “free items” category you’ll find lots of opportunities to pick up free “scrappable” items that can earn you some decent money.  Old metal swing sets, bike rims and non-working washers and dryers are made of material that is getting a premium these days from the scrap yard.  Anything with copper in it will get you the most money but that’s hard to find.  Iron Ore and Aluminum are much easier to come by.

If you want to make some quick cash:  Take a Saturday, get up early, check out the “free items” list in your town and go pick up a few things made of metal.  Most people that list free items put them on the curb for pick up, so you don’t have to coordinate anything.  Just drive by and pick up the item waiting on the curb.  Take it to the scrap yard and ring the register.  You certainly won’t get rich doing this but it’s definitely a quick way to make some extra cash when you need it.

To give you a little encouragement, a friend of mine just took a few dead, unwanted lawnmowers to the scrap yard and left with over $20. 

I’ll keep digging if you keep reading!

Use Craigslist’s “Etc” Page to Find Great Money-Making Opportunities

As we all know, Craigslist.org can be a mesmerizing site unless you know exactly what you’re looking for.  There are lots of categories and lots of deals–some good, some bad. One of the first places I go on Craigslist is to the “Etc” section under the “Jobs” section. This is where individuals and/or companies often list one-time money-making opportunities. Just a few weeks ago, someone needed help moving a few pieces of furniture and offered $40 for anyone who could come and help for two hours. Maybe you’re not into doing something that takes that much physical effort…but a quick $40 for 2 hours of work seemed like a good idea to me.

Survey and Focus Group companies also frequently post on the “Etc” section. About 4 months ago, I answered an ad by a company looking for people to come and anonymously answer a series of political questions. They paid me $75 in cash just to come and tell them what I thought about the upcoming election. Now that I’m on this company’s list they contact me almost monthly with new opportunities. Recently, I did a “hair products” focus group for them and they gave me $150 for only 2 hours of my time. All this from just answering one ad in the CL “Etc” section.

My advice is to check about every 2 days as the ads on CL are constantly updated and changed. Often, these “one-time” opportunities are first come, first serve… and thus go pretty quickly.  Have fun and Good Luck!

I’ll keep posting if you keep reading!

Re-Selling Tickets: Good Money if You’ve Got the Patience

Recently, I’ve had quite a bit of modest success re-selling tickets online.  It’s actually easy to do if you have a little time and patience.  There is always a market for “primo” seats at the country’s best sporting events and concerts.  Obviously, these tickets are very hard to come by but not as hard as you think.  The key is to camp out on Ticketmaster about 2-3 minutes before the tickets are released and then try like mad for 5 minutes to pull the best seats possible.  My success rate for pulling great tickets is about 20-30% of the times that I try. 

When you “pull” good tickets, great money can follow.  For example, last week I spent $400 on 2 tickets to Madonna in San Diego.  About 4 hours later I sold those same tickets on StubHub for $1,120 (after Stub Hub’s 15% commission).  Thus, I made a profit of $720 in one day.  Not bad huh?  Obviously, not all my ticket re-selling ventures have been that profitable but that’s ok.  The point is:  this can be very lucrative if you have the time and patience to keep trying until you get seats for a great act or event.

It’s also important to know when these events go on sale.  I’m certainly no expert on this so I subscribe to site called Event Experts.   It costs $22 a month and has been worth every penny so far.  They have ticket broker “experts” who post there daily and give advice on what shows to buy.  There’s also a forum where you can talk with other ticket brokers.  I don’t plan to retire on my ticket re-selling profits but every little bit helps.

Have Fun!

Make Money Today–Guaranteed

Ok…so we’ve all seen the sites about how to make money online.  Some are legit, some aren’t.  Some take time too.  Many people want to get started right away and make money free online today.  Well, there’s a site where that can come true for you today. 

 It’s Amazon.com’s mechanical turk site:  www.mturk.com.  “M-Turk” is an online portal where webmasters come to pay people to do things on their sites.  For example many webmasters come there and offer .20 to .30 for you to post to their new forums.  They do this to get things off the ground and create some traffic–so, they’re willing to pay for it at first.  There are other tasks offered on M-Turk like filling out survey forms or submitting your site to a directory.  Most tasks pay about .25 USD or so.   The pay off isn’t great because it’s difficult to make more than about $3 an hour.  But, the site is run by Amazon.com so you know you’ll get paid as Amazon is a pretty solid company and has no interest ticking people off unnecessarily.  So, if you want some guaranteed money today…start by opening an M-Turk account and get some coin flowing in the coffers.  If nothing else it’s an easy and profitable way to kill an hour or so online.  You can do as many tasks as you want so the payoff is virtually unlimited.

Have fun and go make money free online!