Sunday, September 26, 2010

Making money as a cook

If you ever get stuck with finding a job one that never goes out of style as well as being always in demand is a short order cook. There is hardly a restaurant in the world that isn’t always looking for a cook. The restaurant owners will often hire you on the spot so that all you have to do is put on an apron, and go straight to work in the kitchen.

You will be required to make light meals, hamburgers, hot dogs, salads and keep the coffee pot full. This is the ideal job when you are between jobs while you are looking for something else. The pay is good enough so many people make a lifetime career out of cooking, and may even become a chef preparing fancy dishes.

Even if you don’t cook restaurants are also looking for busboys dishwashers and waitresses. There are always employment opportunities to be had wherever they serve food.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Making money as a day laborer

Making Money by being a Day Laborer

A fast way to make money and usually be paid for your efforts at the end of the day is a day laborer. This way of making money can cover a multitude of sins ranging from being an agricultural laborer to a stevedore unloading ships. None of these jobs are such that they need a college degree to perform, but what they do need is some muscle. There are many firms that specialize in providing this kind of labor or there is another way of getting a day job just by showing up at an informal gathering of would be day laborers commonly called a shape-up. Here the laborers are hired for a wide ranging variety of jobs.

There are a vast number of jobs available at one of these informal gathering places where one day you might be hired to mow lawns, be a landscape laborer. In the winter you might be hired to shovel snow or drive a snow plow. During the fall you might be hired to rake leaves and clean up people’s yards. Some of the work might involve cleaning up construction sires after the other work is finished. If you have a car the job might be delivering pizzas or running errands. The variety of jobs are endless!

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Renting Mineral Specimens for Profit


Not many people would think about renting mineral specimens for profit, but this outlandish idea works. Many offices use mineral specimens for decorations because they are attractive and require little or no care. By renting them the client gains flexibility on what he displays for his customers to view while in his office.

The specimens that are in the most demand are the showy museum grade specimens. These are not cheap, but they can be bought at wholesale prices at the larger gem and mineral shows like the one held every August in the Better Living Enterprises Building on the fairgrounds at West Springfield, Massachusetts. There are several of these large shows in all parts of the country advertised in the Rockhound Magazines. Fine showy mineral specimens can also be bought over the Internet. You can find dealers by typing “mineral specimens” into your browser.

Mineral specimens are nice because they require little or no care, and they can be swapped occasionally between between clients to keep something fresh before your clients customers eyes. Fine mineral specimens are also great conversation pieces.

One of the most effective places to display mineral specimens is in a glass topped coffee table where they are safe from pilfering or handling. These tables are usually custom built, but you can include the special tables or cases in the rental charge.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Renting Indoor Plants for Profit


How to make money by renting indoor plants is perfect for someone that has already built a clientele by cleaning the insides of buildings. This can take the form of an additional service your company provides going beyond the usual cleaning services. It also provides an additional income stream to your existing business.

The necessary plants are available from your local wholesale greenhouse or nursery. This leads to yet another business called “Interior Landscaping” where you can charge an additional fee for maintaining the plants once you have rented them to the client.

This maintenance includes watering and pruning them on a regular basis. It also includes providing attractive containers to hold the plants that are available through wholesale florists. The containers from most greenhouses and nurseries leave much to be desired, and you can even charge an additional monthly fee for the new container.

To find clients for the service you can tell your existing clients about your new service and additional clients can be readily found in any place that contains offices or other commercial operations that could use a touch of color.

Friday, August 20, 2010

Making $1,000 selling donuts


If you don’t think there is money in donuts you probably haven’t had your Tim Horton’s fix for the day yet. For those that don’t know what a Tim Horton’s fix is it is coffee and donuts at one of the Tim Horton’s donut shops that cross Canada and are coming into the United States. In Canada there are over 2,800 of these shops with an additional about 600 shops in the US. To be honest we haven’t had our Tim Horton’s fix lately because they haven’t moved into our neck-of-the-woods yet, and we miss our fix!

Some of the best donuts we have ever eaten were served off the coffee cart that used to come to our office in Manhattan every morning. These were donuts made by the coffee break man’s wife. He used to start with one hundred dozen of these donuts every morning and had none left most of the time when he went home. This was over 50 years ago and the price per donut has risen greatly over the years. At that time he charged 25¢ apiece for the donut’s. Not bad, he started with 1,200 donuts at 25¢ apiece meaning he grossed $300 a ay from the donuts alone or $1,500 a week. The cost of the donuts was less then $100 per day meaning a net profit of about $200 per day.

The secret of success in the donut business is not to scrimp on the ingredients. If you do this to increase the profit on your donuts the customers will go elsewhere in a hurry. There is a chain of donut shops that tried this tactic, they are not around anymore!

You can buy all the equipment required to fry donuts and make coffee at a restaurant supply store whether you are going to open a single store, a whole chain of stores or sell your donuts from a coffee cart.

Making a $1,000 from donuts


If you don’t think there is money in donuts you probably haven’t had your Tim Horton’s fix for the day yet. For those that don’t know what a Tim Horton’s fix is it is coffee and donuts at one of the Tim Horton’s donut shops that cross Canada and are coming into the United States. In Canada there are over 2,800 of these shops with an additional about 600 shops in the US. To be honest we haven’t had our Tim Horton’s fix lately because they haven’t moved into our neck-of-the-woods yet, and we miss our fix!

Some of the best donuts we have ever eaten were served off the coffee cart that used to come to our office in Manhattan every morning. These were donuts made by the coffee break man’s wife. He used to start with one hundred dozen of these donuts every morning and had none left most of the time when he went home. This was over 50 years ago and the price per donut has risen greatly over the years. At that time he charged 25¢ apiece for the donut’s. Not bad, he started with 1,200 donuts at 25¢ apiece meaning he grossed $300 a ay from the donuts alone or $1,500 a week. The cost of the donuts was less then $100 per day meaning a net profit of about $200 per day.

The secret of success in the donut business is not to scrimp on the ingredients. If you do this to increase the profit on your donuts the customers will go elsewhere in a hurry. There is a chain of donut shops that tried this tactic, they are not around anymore!

You can buy all the equipment required to fry donuts and make coffee at a restaurant supply store whether you are going to open a single store, a whole chain of stores or sell your donuts from a coffee cart.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

How to make $1,000 picking and selling cherries

The average cherry tree will produce five or six bushels of cherries during the average growing season if properly cared for by pruning and spraying. The recent price for cherries in the local supermarket was about $3.99 per pound. Two years ago the author stopped at a roadside stand in British Columbia that sold strictly cherries. The owner of this stand was an old man who originally came to Canada from Portugal as a young man.

Just as I entered the stand a terrific thunderstorm broke out leaving me stranded in the stand while hailstones the size of cherries rained down. Lacking anything better to do I started a conversation with the owner. He looked absolutely like he was broke, and was trying to eke out a living by selling cherries.

What he proceeded to tell me really raised my eyebrows, and made me realize this man was in reality a multi-millionaire all based on his cherry business. He sold every cherry he could grow in this small non-descript roadside stand. What he actually had out of sight in the Fraser River Valley was an orchard of 518 cherry trees. At the time he was asking $3.95 per pound for his cherries. Now it doesn’t take a mathematical genius to figure out his orchard was producing around 2,850 bushel per year. At around 50 pounds per bushel amounts to about 142,500 pounds at $3.95 per pound or $562,875 gross. This little man was clearing over $200,000 per year just from cherries he sold by the side of the road.

You might not have a cherry orchard in your back yard, but there are plenty of cherry growers that will allow you to pick cherries for them, and pay you in cash. They will also allow you to pick cherries for a fee low enough so you can make some money. Like many other businesses tell the owner of the orchard what you are doing and he will offer you a much lower price for the cherries.

To be most effective you should have another person in the act like a wife or other family member so you can devote all your time on picking cherries. The season is short usually lasting less then a month.

There are many places to sell cherries, one of the best is at a farmers market another is from the side of the road. The ideal situation is a roadside stand on a busy highway. With a stand you can sell a wide range of fresh organic produce.

Picking wild blueberries to make $1,000

How to make money from picking blueberries

Most commercial blueberries are grown on bushes of cultivated blueberries that are larger then wild blueberries, and unfortunately are not as tasty as the wild the wild ones are. The wild blueberries come from two different but related plants that either grow as high bushes or as creepers growing close to the ground.

Regardless of where they grow you can make a thousand dollars or more during the season that runs from mid-July to early September, but is best in late July. The berries you pick are packed in pint or quart baskets for sale. One of the best places to sell blueberries is at a farmers market, or just from along side the road as they do in many places where these berries grow. Another potential market for your berries is through local markets.

Blueberries are the foundation of more then one fortune. Right in the author’s family a cousin became a millionaire by raising and selling cultivated blueberries in the heights of the Berkshires in Blandford, Massachusetts. He sold all his blueberries to a large bakery that specialized in baking pies.

The town of Cherryfield, Maine styles itself as the “blueberry capitol of the world” because of the number of successful growers of wild low-bush blueberry plants. These are wild blueberries that for the most part are sold to local canneries. A lot of these berries are sold fresh to supermarket chains. The growers have perfected ways to pick these berries mechanically.

To get started in this business all you need is something to put the berries in as you pick them. This is usually a small pail that is tied to the waist with a strip of cloth. The bucket hangs from the cloth band at the front. You will also need a supply of pint and quart baskets, although most blueberries are sold by the pint.

Where picking blueberries can lead! Everyone has to start small to learn the ropes of a business, picking and selling blueberries is a good place to start that can lead to a lifetime career of harvesting wild plant products.

How to make money with worms

Worms come in two sizes as fishing bait. The most popular are large nightcrawlers and smaller garden worms. The promary use for these worms is fishing bait, so to be effective you must live near somewhere close to where you can fish, or go to where there are fishermen.

The basic equipment you will need is an empty tin can and a flashlight equipped with a red filter of some kind. Many users of this equipment use red cellophane as a filter. Many others don't use a filter at all. Nightcrawlers are not affected by red light, but they will head for cover if a white light shines on them.

The worms you are seeking are nightcrawlers that as the name inplies only come out at night, on a warm damp night is best. The best place to catch nightcrawlers is on a closely cut lawn. This might be at your own house, a city park or a golf course.

You have to be bent over to see the nightcrawlers in the grass, and be quick of hand to catch them. Once you have caught your work they are put into the tin can. Some professional worm catchers tie a tin can onto each of their ankles.

Nightcrawlers are usually kept in a refrigerator in a bed of peat humus, or shredded newspaper until they are sold. The average price for these worms is from $1.50 to $2.00 per dozen. Check around to see what the prevailing price is in your area.

The other worm that is commenly used as bait is the garden worm that is dug from the ground with a shovel. they are usually caught when you are spading a garden. A compost heap will attract these worms like a magnet by the millions making them very easy to catch. Like nightcrawlers these worms are kept the same way. Garden worms usually sell for $1.00 to $1.50 per dozen.

The worm business can lead to the creation of a full fledge sporting goods store specializing in sport fishing. In case you didn't know it sport fishing is the second largest sport in America.

Warren Buffet's favorite book

In the eearly 1950s a book was published with the grandoise title, 1,000 to make a $1,000. This book was read by a young Warren Buffet avidly. Buffet went on to found "Bernshire Hathaway" built on the principles he learned at a young age in that very book.

This book is now out of print, and even though it is dated the information the book imparted is still as valid today as it was then. This blog will attempt to recall the methods that were described in the original book, but we need your help with this project. If you ever owned the book itself and can remember any of the money making methods described in the book they would be more then appreciated. We would also appreciate any other methods of making money that have been developed since this book was published over a half century ago.

The criteria for any money making ideas is that they have to be valid and can be put into effect with little or no expenditure of cash!

We are going to place posts on this blog that are the result of our researches in ways to make money during this time of economic stress. These ideas are free for tha taking, just let us know how they worked out for you!