Obscure ways to make money

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I walked out of a dusty warehouse I was clearing donkeys years ago only to see a tramp pick up what looked like a pay packet. I saw a purple £20 note as he tore it open and swiftly gave him £5 for the packet. As he toddled off to the off license I opened it to find not a pay packet but just some cash, about £140 in all. I think I toiled all week for less than £100 in those days so this was a great find.

kellyandkk

my mil found a grand in an envelope in the public toilets next to the bingo hall :S

eskimo26

paddedjohn wrote: »

Wait until you have a decent amount say 20-30+ bags (full) and take then to the rag dealers. Have a look in your thomson local or yellow pages for your nearest.
The going rate at the moment is about £400 per ton which works out at 40p/kilo.;)

This sounds interesting, I went on yell and put in rage dealers i got 10 pages of hairdressers, haberdasheries, pet supplies (the bone and rag) etc.... are they maybe known as another name.

This sounds like its achievable if you snuffle around a little, with the sheer volume of old clothes and cloth that's around it should be easy enough filling bags if you pace it alongside other work so as not to deplete your sources.

If i was to visit some local charity shops and ask them if they have any unsaleable cloth from donations (people with throw all kinds into a bag for charity) i'd be more then happy to give them 50p to a pound per bag they give me. Would that annoy them or would they be happy to do that/ have me pop in and ask what they have regularly. Most of them are selling old curtains for 50p so i could even do it that way, some charity shops are hands down cheaper then others, you just gotta know which ones.

I like the idea of recycling for profit even minimal!

PasturesNew

eskimo26 wrote: »

If i was to visit some local charity shops and ask them if they have any unsaleable cloth from donations (people with throw all kinds into a bag for charity) i'd be more then happy to give them 50p to a pound per bag they give me. Would that annoy them or would they be happy to do that/ have me pop in and ask what they have regularly.

They already do that with all their unsellable clothes. Most of what's donated's a load of rubbish and they bag it up for the rag dealers. I was looking for something specific the other day in a charity shop and when I said what I was after they said "oh we have one of those we were just putting into the rag sack .... I'll go get it, you can have it for free". It was nicely laundered too (only an apron for my craft class, before anybody goes EWWWWW)

tinkerbel

i think charity shops already sell their unwanted rags

PasturesNew

Easiest bit of dosh I made was in about 1988, I had a job installing Pegasus Accounting software modules and training people in how to use it. I therefore had an understanding of PCs and DOS, which, at the time, most other people had no idea about. I had to visit one customer one day and they asked me if I knew how to move a program from one PC to another. Well, back then it was simple, to install a programme you created a new directory and copied all the files from the floppy disk into that directory. You would then edit a batch file (add one line in a text editor) to add that item to the main menu that appeared on the screen.

I said yes I did - and they asked me how much I'd charge to do it. Well, it was literally 2 minutes' work: go to the 1st PC, find the directory, copy everything in it to a floppy, stick the floppy into the next PC, create a new directory and copy everything off the floppy into there.

Tricky one.... would I do the job for 2 minutes' work? So I asked how much they'd pay, they said £25. Well, that was a lot of money! So I said yes and agreed to go back there after work.

I turned up, turned on the two PCs and grabbed a floppy. Copied the files onto the floppy and sat at the 2nd PC.... well, I couldn't make it look this easy could I.... so I spent the next half an hour making directory listings scroll on the 2nd PC .... it looked really impressive to them. I just did dir /p and dir /w and a few other variations ... and changed directories .... and did nothing really for half an hour, before announcing it was done, pocketing the £25 and leaving.

eskimo26

PasturesNew wrote: »

They already do that with all their unsellable clothes. Most of what's donated's a load of rubbish and they bag it up for the rag dealers. I was looking for something specific the other day in a charity shop and when I said what I was after they said "oh we have one of those we were just putting into the rag sack .... I'll go get it, you can have it for free". It was nicely laundered too (only an apron for my craft class, before anybody goes EWWWWW)

Ha well that's a shame but thanks for the heads up, i still can't help but think there's is plenty around. As far as resources go unwanted cloth is probably one of the most abundant outside of standard household recycling.

jamespir

i look for cheap cds games dvds from charity shops /markets boot sales then sell them either on ebay . cash generato or music magpie

SandP_2

Haven't done it for a while (i.e. probably 10 years) but I used to check out what UK shows were getting a cult following in the US and then buy associated books/games from charity shops and sell them on ebay.

Examples
Young Ones books 25p sold for £6-£7
Eastenders Game £1.50 sold for £35
- not ££££s but good percentage return.

You have to hit these before anyone else realises and floods the market however, very small window of opportunity maybe weeks at the most.

I've also helped friends/neighbours in the past by clearing out lofts, etc and splitting money on anything interesting. Found a bag of old chocolate wrappers in my in-laws loft, turned out to be Dr Who chocolate bars from the 70s - sold to Japan for £350.

JayCal_2

One of the easiest ways to make money or attract free gifts is to set up a free blog, post a few times a week, get some links from other bloggers and within three months you will find people offereing money to post on your blog.

Depending on the popularity of your blog you can make good money.

A friend who wrote about a computer game was offered a week in LA free for the launch of the follow up to the game on the condition he wrote 250 poistive words on the blog.