Two Weird Ways To Make Money

Money isn’t everything, but it sure as hell is ahead of whatever’s in second place.  I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor — guess which one I prefer.  To that end, here are two weird ways to make a ton of money out of the New Economy.  The first one takes a lot of skill, but the second one just takes a little imagination and a lot of chutzpah.

Video Games — Of course, there are the traditional ways to earn money with video games — testing them, entering tournaments etc., etc. — but there’s also this semi-legit marketplace out there.  I heard about it from a World of Warcraft addict.  What he does is play World of Warcraft, like, all the time.  He builds different characters, adds powers and weapons, collects piles of Warcraft gold and like that.  (I’m not a player, so I don’t really know what’s involved.)  Anyway, once he advances to the upper game levels, he sells all his virtual stuff to other gamers (who maybe aren’t as good as he is, or just don’t want to put in the hours) so they can play at the higher levels.  The beauty is he gets paid serious money for this — real money.  Apparently, there’s a huge demand for this sort of thing and, according to my buddy, it works with most video games.  But think about it!  There are people in this world who are actually paying other people to play games for them.  Personally, I kinda think this defeats the whole purpose, but who am I to judge?

Selling Useless Crap on the Internet — These aren’t scams.  These are real products, available on the Internet, and people have paid real money for them.  Things like UFO Detectors, DVD Rewinders and Dehydrated Water (just add water.)  There’s also Rocky Mountain Morning Air, Ghosts In A Bottle, Unicorn Farts and Leprechaun Kisses.  More than a few people are selling dirt — by the spoonful.  There was a guy who took a photograph, turned it into a million pixels, sold the pixels for a dollar each and — yes — he literally earned a million dollars.  There was another guy, in Canada, who took an ordinary red paper clip and starting trading it online.   Eventually, he ended up with a three bedroom house! But my very favourite is Nothing.  That’s right : you can buy a little plastic bag full of Nothing on the Internet for (I think) $4.95 plus shipping and handling.  P. T. Barnum was right.

These are only two examples of what is going on in the New Economy, but in our brave new world, it looks to me as if your financial future is  limited only by your imagination.