From playing bingo to reading books to a depressed parrot, people never stop dreaming up new, interesting, and downright weird ways to earn cash. Some come up with pretty smart life hacks, others spontaneously invent useful products, and many do things so outrageous you wouldn’t believe they actually pay off in real life. Whether they’re successes or spectacular failures, this list of 27 strange ways people have made money will leave you laughing, cringing, and maybe even scratching your head. Feel free to share your own weird money-making hacks in the comments below.
#1
A cabbie in Dublin once told me a story about one of his fares who had a brilliant hustle.
The guy was a sculptor. He would watch horse races, then when a horse won, he’d use social media to contact the owner directly with a digital mockup of a life-sized sculpture of the winning horse. Now, the people who own winning racehorses tend to be very rich – we’re talking sheikhs, oligarchs, billionaires. Every now and again, one of these owners would bite, and spend €100,000 euros or so on a statue commemorating their animal’s win.
Dude only did a couple a year, and spent the rest of the time living the good life.
Image source: escoterica
#2
I’m 100% honest and not joking nor lying.
I once woke up from sleep with a sudden urge to play bingo, there was something telling me to go and play, so i get up, hopped to my computer and opened the website i usually play on, played a few rounds for around a total of 20-30 dollars, and within few minutes i end up winning $1200!
Cashed them amount immediately
Image source: Mako-13
#3
I bought a pair of Nike Off-White Dunk Lows from the SNKR app. There were 50 color ways, #1 and #50 we’re uniquely different and more valuable. It was a blind box situation, so you didn’t know what color you were getting.
I never received them. I’m guessing they were stolen by the delivery person or something. I told Nike, got a refund.
And then, randomly, I did receive them. And wasn’t charged. And they were the #1 color way. So I sold them on StockX for more than $1000.
Image source: mayanrelic
#4
Importing is a fantastic but niche career.
I know someone else who goes to Nepal every year, fills all of her luggage with handmade shawls, scarves, hats, and gloves and then sells them at Farmer’s markets on the weekends the rest of the year.
She’s not rich, but she basically works two days a week and makes enough money to do whatever she wants the rest of the year.
Image source: dmazzoni
#5
Back when Dogecoin took off I wrote a guide on recovering old lost wallets and it got so popular I was flooded with requests for further help. Some corrupted wallet files, some lost passwords, etc
I have a background in computer science and experience in data retrieval and password cracking, so I started helping people in exchange for a percentage cut (industry standard for wallet recovery). All above board with a contract and everything.
For a while I was getting new clients every week and making hundreds up to thousands of dollars on every successful recovery (with a fairly good rate of success). The biggest one I ever recovered was a 19 letter long password someone had lost. The work dried up when the price of doge dropped but it got me the down-payment on a house.
Image source: internetpillows
#6
About 4 years ago I noticed we started running out of ziplock bags quickly every week. Turned out my 10 year old at the time was mixing gummy bears/worms with Hispanic spices and chamoy sauce then, selling them at school for $5 a bag. She was bringing in about $100-$150 a week. She is now about to turn 15 and I helped her build her candy business and she has her candies in stores in our city and is still expanding.
Image source: TheWizardry90
#7
Reading books to my neighbour’s parrot. He was depressed and needed company, apparently. I was 10, I enjoyed that work very much.
Image source: alentukh
#8
A girl from my hometown won an island on a Mr. Beast video. It was worth millions. She’s in the process of selling it currently. Until that money comes through she’s just living life like normal. I imagine that must be a great place to be in, knowing most of your problems are about to disappear but not yet overly intoxicated by money.
Image source: Snoo_18863
#9
Guy that I grew up hit big with Crocs. His family moved away when I was about 6th grade, but my older brother remains friends with his older brother. I guess the guy worked selling insurance and was offered an opportunity to invest in Crocs (the weird shoes). He went for it and got a few checks back in the $5 to 10 million range. I learned this through my brother, and I think it is true.
Image source: mcgato
#10
The best wealth story I ever heard was a nerdy computer guy – early internet adopter – realised things like Vancouver.com or Paris.com would be valuable.
So he bought up all the city.com websites he could and just had a landing page that said “page for sale – contact me”.
Badabing badaboom
Image source: MrsRobertshaw
#11
In college, I take a class on how to start & run a small business. Prof tells us to think of ridiculous business models for our fictitious businesses as we will get more out of the class that way. Stupid ideas ensue. Selling paperclips door to door, refilling car gasoline tanks in people’s driveways, service to read & summarize the newspaper to executives etc.
One classmate decides he is going to sell tumbleweed.
Guess who quits college and started a successful business? Tumbleweed guy. Takes a van to the desert, collects tumbleweed and sells them to Hollywood movie & TV studios who need them. Keeps the tumbleweed in a warehouse and since they never spoil, his only costs are gasoline, storage & a website. He eventually becomes the number one tumbleweed provider to studios around the world, shipping tumbleweed globally.
Made a heap of money selling what millions of people drive by and ignore every year.
Image source: Accomplished-Fig745
#12
Heard of crazier, but a guy I know, friend of my mothers, went to Texas 30+ years ago. (we are from Norway), and he noticed every single garden had a trampoline. And it was almost always “jump king” – the circular with blue mat ones.
So he went to the HQ, bought 10 and took back to Norway. Within days they were sold, and he ordered 50 more, same thing. So he became the only importer and has God knows how many millions to his name today.
Image source: alexdaland
#13
Back in the 90s, I knew a guy who put an ad in the classified section of the newspaper which read something along the lines of, “For $10, I’ll tell you my secret to making easy money. Send $10 cash to (address) to find out how.” People would send him $10 & he would then instruct them to put a classified ad in the newspaper telling people to send $10 & how to make money.
Image source: freudianfalls
#14
I had an acquaintance who was a financial dominatrix in her spare time. Which is to say, she spent men’s money for their sexual gratification. No actual sexual contact of any sort; I’m pretty sure the whole thing was long distance.
Unfortunately, she didn’t have the sense to keep her mouth shut at her day job (respiratory therapist) and got shitcanned for it.
Image source: Grave_Girl
#15
When I was in HS some friends and I did face painting at a mall for little kids on Halloween. Fast forward 10 yrs, I’m serving in a bar and my boss asked if I could do face painting in the bar on St. Patricks day. Why not? I set up in one of the booths and even though there was no charge the customers were just throwing cash at me. I did St. Patrick from some guys church handout, a few more customers wanted little leprechaun “footprints” across their faces. It was a blast.
Image source: reddit.com
#16
The summer after my freshmen year in college I was walking my little 20lb dog on a street near my house. A neighbor lady was walking her two dogs who were a husky and some other similar sized dog. The husky attacked my dog and in the process I got some teeth marks on my wrist. Since the neighbors dog started it and the owner obviously couldn’t control it I wanted them to pay the vet fees for my dog which was under 500. The guy ended up being a dick about it and my roommates dad was a lawyer so about a year and half later I ended up with about 20k.
Image source: Br1nkley
#17
My friend’s father was gifted an oil pencil drawing in the late 70s. His family always assumed it was pretty much worthless and I always joked that it looked like my friend had drawn it as a child. This stilly angry stick figure drawing ended up being an unsigned piece of art byJean-Michel Basquiat.
His family did some digging and eventually had it authenticated by the JMB estate before selling it at Christie’s auction house for an amazing sum of money.
I was absolutely blown away when I learned this. My friend and his family were far from wealthy so to realize they had this unknown treasure just sitting out in the living room for so many years was mind blowing.
Image source: Zuliman
#18
I bought a waterproof camera back in 2010 and thought it would be cool to try it out at the new water park that just opened. 1 years later the video blew up making me tons of money monthly. I still make some during the summer months but not much. Now I’m sitting at just over 100,000,000 views.
Image source: t073
#19
Well it just so happens I have quite the opportunity for you. You see, my father is the deposed King of Nigeria…
Image source: aholeintime
#20
I knew a woman whose job was literally to sleep.
A local office building owner wanted somebody on-site 24/7 to be the point of contact with first responders if they ever needed to be called. So they hired her to come in to the building in the evening when the maintenance crew was finishing their work. And she would settle up to sleep for the night in a bedroom they’d set aside for her. In the morning she’d hand the building back over to the office employees and go on about her day.
No first responders were ever called. It’s about the least stressful legitimate job I could ever imagine.
Image source: CaptainTime5556
#21
I got a job as a ‘fantasy model with long flowing hair’ where I modelled for B grade American fantasy novels. Paid OKish, not well.
I also signed away my rights like an idiot so occasionally turn up riding a horse, or casting a spell. Also once turned up on a book cover with ‘a lady’ and my GF went ‘Who the fuck is that!’?!
Photoshop my dear. Photoshop.
I tried to read one of the books and it started ‘He was not traditionally handsome’. Ouch.
Image source: HerrFerret
#22
Answered an ad on Craigslist. A dude shaved my head, and filmed it. Paid me $600.
Image source: Shaladox
#23
I used to get paid to read palms at parties. Despite my “entertainment purposes only” disclaimer, people always took it too seriously. Even when they had seen me doing magic shows. Apparently watching me do card tricks for an hour wasn’t enough to convince people that maybe – just maybe – I wasn’t actually a psychic.
I started feeling guilty about spreading nonsense, so I had to quit. It was such easy money, too. Stupid parents raising me with stupid ethics.
Image source: captainmagictrousers
#24
I worked at a recording studio and one of the engineers was working on a radio commercial. The spot called for a bit of dialogue between a vo talent and a bird whistling. The client figured we could just use sfx for the bird responses, but nothing was working. The engineer left the session for a bit to get some air and he told me what was going on. Not to brag, but I’m a pretty good whistler. I started mimicking what the bird “should” sound like, and his eyes went wide. He dragged me into the session to present what I did. I ended up being hired on the spot. I whistled for one commercial, which happened to be a union gig. So, I signed a contract that basically let me join for the day. I got about 800 bucks for the day, but also received residual checks for a couple more years after that. Whistling earned me about 3k in the end.
Image source: GtrSolo2TheFace
#25
Tutoring a kid in math who was far smarter in math than his mother thought. He didn’t do the homework because he wanted to play video games. He aced all the test and quizzes but homework was 50% of the grade so he was getting a C in math. Mother basically paid me $20 an hour to make sure he did his homework, which he finished in about 5 min. We then played video games for the next 55 minutes and whenever the mother would check on us I would say something “mathematical” then he would say something “mathematical” and I would say “exactly, now you’ve got it.” I felt bad taking the money from the mom, but as a poor college kid, $20 is $20.
Image source: RTAW0lf3
#26
Once turned up to an office for an interview however they gave me an pass, desk and access to a laptop and archives after I walked in the door. They kept calling me by my name so I never thought anything of it.
I was there for a couple of weeks indexing and digitising old documents and once I’d finished the allocation of work my temp contract was up as it was only 2 weeks. On leaving they were going to cut me a cheque and asked “How do you spell ?” I said how would I know I’m called…”
The shock on their face as they realised they had given a job to the wrong guy and had called me for the job instead of the knock back. Easiest but dumbest way of making money every day
Image source: reddit.com
#27
Sold my urine on job site to guys who knew they were going to be tested.
Image source: blackp3dro
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